Silvera shook his head. “They are still among the living, my son.”
“They have trusted me with their deepest secret, namely your presence at Brithall.”
“That was their decision. If it were up to me, I’d shout my existence to that witch of a queen. But Henley is fond of his neck. I hold my peace out of respect for him.”
“I will never betray you, Father,” Shakespeare said. “If I am so misinformed about Harry, educate me.”
Silvera stared at the player, his eyes still as hard as flint. “A moment,” he said. “I must pray.” He closed his eyes and lowered his head.
A minute later he said, “I suppose the family history has been gossiped about for years. I’ll tell you what is—or could be—common knowledge.”
“I thank you, Father,” said Shakespeare.
“When I first came to England…twas after fat Henry had cursed himself by marrying that whore Nan Bullen—”
“After the Reformation,” Shakespeare said.
“Have it your way,” Silvera said disgustedly. “You’ll all burn in Hell.”
“My apologies for interrupting you,” said Shakespeare. “I pray you, go on.”
Silvera described for Shakespeare the Whitmans. There had been three brothers, the eldest being George, Viscount Henley, heir to Brithall, Lord Robert’s father. He was the domineering one—shorter than the others, but he made up for his less than overwhelming physical stature by an astute mind and industrious labors.
“Robert Whitman is a tall man,” Shakespeare noted.
The Jesuit nodded as if Shakespeare had just learned catechism. He said, “He resembles Harry’s father—Lord Chesterfield, Isaac Whitman, Baron of Rochbury.”
The priest explained that Chesterfield was the youngest and tallest of the brothers. And he married a very tall, handsome woman, the type of girl that most men would be afraid to touch. But not Isaac Whitman. The girl’s father had been very rich and well connected, a distant relative to the virtuous Queen Mary. Upon Isaac Whitman’s engagement to the lady, the Queen raised him to peerage and he became Lord Chesterfield. Once a lord, Chesterfield dutifully impregnated his wife—and a variety of mistresses.
“A charming man,” Silvera said.
“Harry was very charming,” said Shakespeare.
“Isaac was the most bewitching of Whitman’s sons,” agreed the priest. “In sooth, Chesterfield’s enchantment came back to haunt him in the likes of Harry.”
“What about the middle brother?” Shakespeare asked.
“Ignatius Whitman—the spiritualist of the family. He became Lord Bartley upon his marriage to Beatrice Lennox—a very plain girl but well titled. Bartley was quiet and contemplative. The brothers were superficially staunch supporters of the new faith. King Henry demanded the support of his subjects upon the pain of death. But inside, like many, the brothers remained true Catholics. They raised their children secretly in the ways of the true religion.”
Shakespeare asked about Lord Bartley since Henley had made mention of Bartley’s influence upon him.
“Ah,” said the priest. “My gracious Lord Bartley. He, more than the others, found it intolerable to hide his true beliefs. He is now known as Fra Domingo.”
“He became a Jesuit,” said Shakespeare.
“Twas a most rewarding day for our order!”
Silvera smiled widely, his eyes shone brightly for a moment, then darkened as if a cloud passed over them. Then he told Shakespeare the sad tale. When the boy-king, Edward the Sixth, found out that Bartley had become a Catholic, he confiscated Bartley’s lands and stripped the family of its crest. Bartley’s eldest son was hung for heresy. Five years later some of Bartley’s lands were returned to his wife by the good Queen Mary. The Queen also knighted the second son, but the Bartleys never returned to their former state of wealth and prestige.
Shakespeare digested the history, noting how everything was beginning to piece together. No wonder there was no picture of the Jesuit in the long gallery. To have a portrait of a Catholic priest hung in a public place was to admit a kindredship with a traitor.
He thought a moment, then said, “Yet with all the dishonor, Bartley left a major impression on his nephew—the current Viscount Henley.”
“Bartley left a bigger impression on his grandnephew, Master Harry Whitman.”
Shakespeare asked how so.
The priest said, “Harry was much impressed with Bartley’s integrity, the strength of his conviction, his refusal to submit to hypocrisy. Harry was indeed a child of the true faith. Now, as I’ve stated, Lord Chesterfield, Harry’s father, was overtly a staunch follower of the false faith, a supporter of the Queen and her Church.”
Shakespeare noted the disdain in his voice when he mentioned the Queen.
“But twas Harry who truly felt the calling.”
Shakespeare was baffled. Nothing about Harry had ever suggested a calling.
Silvera continued, “He wanted to become a true priest—a Jesuit priest. Not what the Queen calls priests—men who marry, who scoff at the holy language of Latin, who fornicate with women they call their wives—and worse, believe it not to be sin. Harry wanted to be a true Jesuit. Like me. Like his uncle, Lord Bartley.”
The priest put his hand to his heart and continued:
“Harry’s father, Lord Chesterfield, was fearful that what had happened to Bartley would happen to his branch of the family if Harry were sent to Rome. Lord Chesterfield had used his charm wisely. It had earned him lands—rich lands. He wasn’t keen on the idea of being reduced to a pauper. Harry didn’t understand what he saw as sheer hypocrisy, and became a rebellious son, despising his father, I regret to say. Harry was deeply resentful that his father refused to send him to Rome and sought out ways of revenge against him. He spat on his bloodline, he fornicated with his father’s mistresses and other lowly women…marry, he even wed a commoner, the daughter of a false priest, irony of ironies. But the most shameful thing he did was to become a public embarrassment to his family.”
“By becoming an actor,” Shakespeare said.
“Yes,” Silvera said. “Disgraceful!”
“Yet he retained his Papist ties—”
“He retained his ties to the true religion,” Silvera corrected. “Yes, in his heart Master Henry Whitman, the prodigal son of Lord Chesterfield, was still a priest.”
Harry had acted anything but priestlike, Shakespeare thought. He closed his eyes and pictured Whitman, carousing with women and drinking with ne’er-do-wells. Then the tortured voice shot through his ears.
My father failed me. My God failed me.
You’re the man I wanted to be…a man of honesty.
Silvera cleared his throat loudly and Shakespeare opened his eyes.
“Am I boring you to slumber?”
“I apologize, Father,” said Shakespeare. “It’s been a most exhausting day, but that’s no excuse for such unmannerly behavior. I pray you, continue. I’ll be more diligent.”
The Jesuit seemed mollified, and finished up the family history. Viscount Henley, George Whitman, was the richest brother of the clan, since as the eldest son he was the heir to all his father’s lands. After the Catholic uprising of ’sixty-nine, when it was life-threatening to harbor a priest, Henley had decisions to make. The priest could be smuggled back to Rome or stay hidden in England and continue to be the spiritual leader of the three families. Henley decided to hide the Jesuit, and his son Robert—the current Lord Henley—carried on his father’s commitment. Fra Silvera ended by saying that Harry, badly in need of spiritual healing, had seen him for confession, two weeks every year for the last twenty years.
The priest wiped tears from his eyes. “I cannot believe he’s actually gone from the mortal world, Shakespeare. I loved him. My dear, dear son.”
Shakespeare let him weep for a minute, then asked softly, “Your son in spirit alone?”
The Jesuit looked at him with red-rimmed eyes. “Harry told you?”
Shakespeare
shook his head. “Simply a well-placed guess.”
Numbly, Silvera said, “I was once a handsome man, my son, not the ancient…skeletal…wretch you witness now. Women found me desirable, more so because I was a priest. I committed a very vile sin when I was young, and from sin can only come tragedy. I’ve prayed to God: let my body shrivel, my heinous appetites be gone, so that He would enter my heart forever. And Jesu Cristo, in His infinite mercy, has answered my prayers. He has made me old and weak, molded a shrunken dwarf out of a once strong and able-bodied man. May my body become even more hideous as my spirit fills with enlightenment, in nomine Patris et Filius et Spiritus Sancti.”
The Jesuit crossed himself and fell upon the floor weeping with grief.
Shakespeare waited patiently and contemplated. Harry’s behavior was easier explained in light of the priest’s confession. Harry had somehow found out that he was Silvera’s bastard son. Yet he hadn’t seemed to despise his mother for her deception. Perhaps because his father was such a cocksman, Harry felt his mother had justification. Whatever the reasons were, Harry and the priest formed emotional and spiritual bonds. In every sense of the word, the priest had been Harry’s true father.
Silvera returned to his knees and whispered, “My son’s death was the will of God, His retribution for my most hideous sin.”
“Did Harry know?” Shakespeare asked.
Silvera said, “I never told him, and I don’t think his mother did. But somehow he knew.” The Jesuit suddenly pounded on the back of the fireplace panel.
“Your time is up!” he announced.
The panel opened. Henley escorted Shakespeare out of the chapel.
Chapter 47
It was nearly two in the morning before Rebecca sank into her feather mattress. The fatigue she felt was all-encompassing, the kind of weariness that gripped and squeezed and encumbered the sweet dust of sleep. Her stomach quivered with waves of nausea. Her head throbbed so badly that her pillow seemed as solid as a bar of iron. Her limbs ached and her vision was blurred. Yet her physical discomfort was easily tolerated compared to the pain in her heart. And nowhere was she more acutely aware of her nagging loss than when she lay alone in darkness.
It had been three weeks since she’d last seen him. They would have been in Venice by now. Perhaps they would have gone down to the southern Italian states—Naples or Sicily—with a troupe, until the winter was over. In the late afternoon she’d bask in the strong sun of Tyrrhenia while Willy sat under a veranda writing playbooks of comic conceit or history. They’d eat citrus picked from sweet-smelling orchards, pluck piquant grapes from emerald vineyards, nibble on fresh cheeses, sip fine sherries.
She turned onto her left side and groaned, wiping tears away from her eyes, willing herself back to the present. Outside, freezing rain pounded furiously against the slate roof. She had strained a back muscle yesterday. Rebecca wondered what she’d done to pull it. It must have been when she held the shoulders of the barrister with the melon-sized growth in his stomach. Marry, it was huge, but encapsulated. He’d survive if blood poisoning didn’t do him in. What was his name? Folly? No, of course not. Twas Foley. He’d fought like a tiger, struggling against the restraints even before her father had taken a knife to him. She heard her father’s voice in her head.
For God’s sake, hold him tighter, woman!
Rebecca had gripped him with all her strength. The armpits of her sleeves were soaked. It hadn’t been enough.
Tighter, girl! Roderigo had screamed. Use your whole body, Becca, not just your arms!
It was then that she felt a sudden sharp pain in her side. But she had done her duty. Her father had been able to begin the surgery.
Her father’s work seemed endless. The list of patients grew longer as the winter progressed. The daylight hours were spent ministering to the sick at St. Bartholomew’s, followed by an infinite amount of home visits. In the past Rebecca had begged to come along. But since Father’s release, it had become routine for her to accompany him—to assist him. He had an endless need for her companionship, and after what he’d gone through, she dared not displease him.
When they were together, he expected her to work—preparing salves and poultices, spoon-feeding medicines and drugs to the feeble, holding the hands of the mortally infirm, cradling babies as they died in her arms, restraining surgery patients. As hard as she worked, her father’s labors were even more stressful—his hands washed as often in blood as in water. Death was a constant companion, life as fragile as spider’s silk. Yet despite the raw and demanding days, her father’s tongue lashings and an occasional slap, a tacit understanding grew between them, and with it came a stronger bond of love.
Their daily toils were finished once they reached home. But the night brought on a new set of chores and obligations. After a quick supper, Roderigo met with the other men of the family. Then the whisperings began. Plans to save the Iberian conversos were birthed, along with new names, secret letters, code words, different agents. Whisper, whisper whenever the staff was out of earshot.
Who would take over for Miguel? Rebecca had asked her mother.
They’ll find someone, Sarah had answered. Keep your voice down!
Who? We’ve hardly any able-bodied men left. Dunstan is too old, which only leaves Ben, and he’s—Rebecca had stopped herself. Ben was too slow-witted. Everyone knew it. But no need to rub salt in a wound.
Sarah went back to her work. But Rebecca heard the name de Gama—their Spanish connection—surface in the whisperings. He seemed the logical heir apparent to Miguel’s luckless throne. The entire family worked with an urgency as if time were a dream, destined to end.
After supper Rebecca tended to Miguel. Their nuptials, originally scheduled for February, had been postponed, giving Miguel as much time as he needed to convalesce. Together they strolled the gardens when the rain and snow fell lightly, Rebecca surprised at how gracefully he walked, albeit with a noticeable limp. It was learning to use his left hand that gave him troubles. She coached him as he wrote. It was a humiliating experience for him. His letters were wobbly, his sentences illegible. Sometimes he accidentally ripped the paper with the tip of his quill. Once he spilled ink over his hose. Often he tongue-lashed Rebecca, blaming her for his failures. She took his temper in stride and pushed him to continue, even as she saw tears of frustration well up in his eyes.
She worked Miguel to the point of exhaustion. When she knew she could take him no further, she whispered the daily prayer to him, kissed him good night, then hurried to the stillroom to make the medicines for the next day. Sometimes she met her mother there. They’d talk as they squinted in the dim light of flickering rush candles, grinding leaves to powders, blending salts with syrups. Usually her mother spent her daylight hours tending to household business, supervising the staff (the kitchen alone took up hours), making sure the stock of food wasn’t depleted too rapidly, sewing and embroidering, accounting of the household expenses, and sending servants to market when weather permitted. Rebecca began to notice knots in her mother’s hands, a pastiness in a complexion that once had been smooth and rosy. Often she would hug her mother ferociously, then worry that she had broken the woman’s bones. Sarah would simply smile.
Rebecca turned onto her back. The clattering upon the roof intensified until the house seemed to shake under the downpour. Lightning exploded through the sky, followed quickly by a tremulant clap of thunder. Her brain was an ensemble of irritating buzzes. Her eyelids suddenly fluttered, one leg twitched. She felt as if a demon were burrowing inside her body, and it scared her.
Dear Grandmama gave her solace. Rebecca prepared her morning toilet, then breakfasted with the old woman. She loved the sweet nectar of mead and brewis—bread saturated with gravy, which required no teeth to eat. But with each new wintry day the old woman seemed to be withering away. She couldn’t walk anymore, even with her walking sticks. Rebecca had to feed her, bathe her, and change her sheets often because the old woman had lost control of her bladder. Rebe
cca was worried. But when she voiced her concerns to her mother, Sarah just shrugged philosophically. There was nothing either one could do for her except make her final days comfortable.
Final days? Rebecca had asked. What do you mean by final days?
Sarah had answered, My mother is old. She has already cheated death.
When Rebecca didn’t immediately respond, Sarah kissed her daughter gently and said, You’ve been a most dutiful granddaughter, Becca. May your daughters be as dutiful to me.
There were questions that begged to be asked, but Rebecca knew that none would be answered to her satisfaction. She suffered in silence, doting upon Grandmama whenever time permitted.
Rebecca knew she was doing goodly work, helping her father, mother, grandmother, and future husband. She knew she was doing God’s bidding, becoming industrious, instead of petulant and idle, using her hours wisely, not selfishly. But her slavish devotion to duty did nothing to rid her of a shattered hole in her chest.
She loved her Will, wanted him, missed him with a painful longing. Three times she stole away and rushed to his cell. She knew he’d left for travel three weeks ago—his neighbor told her that—but she kept hoping he might have returned.
Fruitless hopes.
She had meant to leave with him, to convert to his God. But something intangible, something incredibly strong, held her back. Rebecca thought of her ancestral rituals—the prayers, the fasts, the food prohibitions that the family secretly followed. Their refusal to eat pork, slaughtering their own chickens and cows. The secret sabbaths.
It’s your legacy, Grandmama had once told her. You observe the same laws that our matriarchs—Sarah, your mother’s namesake; Rebecca, your namesake; Rachel and Leah, God willing, your future daughters’ names—observed fifteen hundred years ago, when God still spoke to us through prophets. And you will ensure a legacy for your children, Becca.
Though she laughed and loved with her heart, she lived by her blood. Her ancestors: sacrificing, dying for Kiddish Hashem—for the holy name of God. Hundreds of thousands of them. Yet the people of Israel, the Jews, persisted as a nation. Babylonia had tried to erase them. Babylonia had disappeared as a people, a nation. Rome tried to murder her people. Rome—gone. Greece failed, Persia as well. And so would Spain. So would any nation that tried to eradicate God’s chosen. He would never let it come to pass. She believed that with all her heart, with all her soul, and with all her might.
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