Chameleon in a Mirror

by Ruth Nestvold

  “What should I do?” Ravenscroft asked, pacing in front of Aphra, his hands behind his back. “What did I do?”

  “The wrong thing, forsooth,” Aphra said with a wry smile.

  “'Twas the gentlemanly course of action. Most women want a man to offer them lodgings or an allowance.”

  “Clarinda has means of her own, and her needs are modest. And she is very unusual.”

  “Think you I have not noticed?” Ravenscroft said, marching up and down her carpet at a speed quite foreign to his usually languid nature.

  “Damon,” Aphra said gently, “please. Merely watching you is making my head ache.”

  Ravenscroft strode over and took both her hands in his own. “Ah, Astrea, forgive me, I beg you. Neither Will nor Clarinda will speak to me, and I am in a state.”

  “That is obvious, my friend.” Aphra patted the spot next to her on the settee, and Ravenscroft sat down. “Would you like me to speak with her?”

  The plea in Damon's golden eyes made Aphra's heart turn over. She couldn't look away. Although they had been friends for over five years, for the first time she understood more than just intellectually his appeal for her own sex. How could Clarinda resist him if he gazed at her like this?

  “Please,” he said simply.

  Aphra squeezed his hands. “I cannot promise anything, but I will see what I can do.”

  Billie watched as Katherine gathered the remnants of the huge meal in her arms, wondering once again at the odd relationship between mistress and maid. Yet another thing in this era she couldn't completely understand. Much of the time, it looked to her like friendship, but then Katherine rose to clear away the dishes and take on the role of servant again.

  One thing did make more sense to her than when she first arrived: the amounts of food people consumed in the seventeenth century. Physical activity was much more a part of life here. Supper had consisted of leftovers from the noon dinner, including bacon in pastry, salt beef with mustard, a rabbit pie, and heavy sourdough bread Katherine referred to as “cheat.” There were few vegetables available in winter; instead, there was a lot of meat. Billie craved a nice, big salad again for a change.

  “Could you bring another pitcher of wine?” Aphra asked before Katherine disappeared through the door.

  The maid returned with a full pitcher. Aphra nodded, and Katherine left them alone.

  Aphra poured Billie another glass, not bothering to ask if she wanted more. “Damon came to me the other day.”

  “I know.”

  “You do not want to take his offer of rooms?” Aphra added a spoonful of sugar to her wine and stirred. She didn't offer any to Billie; she knew by now that among Billie's strange habits was drinking her wine without sweetening.

  “I do not want to be bought.”

  Aphra nodded slowly. “You are lucky you have a choice.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “No 'perhaps,' Clarinda,” Aphra said. “Most women do not have a choice but to sell ourselves. Marriage is no better. For most of us it is worse, because there is no escape.”

  Billie gave a short shake of her head. She knew Aphra was right, but her conditioning made it impossible for her to accept. If she were a woman of this century, she probably would be grateful for Damon's offer. Her moral scruples were only possible because she had a way out, a safety valve, a mirror to disappear through. She did not have to take money for her sexual favors like Elizabeth — and perhaps even Aphra herself.

  “There should be other ways, ways such as you have found,” Billie insisted.

  Aphra shrugged. “I sell myself too. My plays are not always what I most want to write. I must give the audience what it wants, what will make enough money to keep us in bread and wine.”

  Perhaps that was what Ravenscroft had been thinking of during his curious silence. But what difference would it make if Aphra had allowed Hoyle or some other man to support her for a while? Would that make her plays any worse, her accomplishments any less?

  “At least you're very successful at that,” Billie said, toasting her hostess playfully.

  “That I am,” Aphra agreed with a certain amount of pride, and joined Billie in drinking to herself. But if Billie had thought she could distract Aphra from the subject of Ravenscroft, she was mistaken. Aphra put her glass down again, her expression firm. “I understand better than he why Damon's proposal made you so upset — I have felt the same myself, and I know very well it has nothing to do with moral considerations.” Aphra gave Billie a sympathetic smile. “But Damon is a very dear friend. For him it is a great step, offering to keep you. It is a sign of his sincerity, not an attempt to rob you of your independence.”

  “Ah, but that is not entirely true.” Billie gripped the stem of her wine glass. Perhaps Ravenscroft was just too much of a “man” for her; she needed someone more like herself, more “in-between.” “He was trying to control me by putting a price on my favors, I know he was. He wanted to make his ownership clear, stake his claim.”

  Aphra didn't answer immediately. “Perhaps you are right, Clarinda. But if such was his intent, 'twas because he's uncomfortable with the King's interest in you.”

  “I told him I had no interest.”

  Aphra chuckled. “But he is the King, my dear. Is it a wonder that Damon is insecure?”

  “Insecure? Damon? I think not.”

  “Yes, Clarinda, insecure,” Aphra insisted, pouring them both more wine. “Can you not see how your unusual behavior would make even a man like Damon unsure of himself? Perchance 'tis wrong of him to long to make you 'his mistress,' something he is familiar with, but surely it is understandable. 'Tis not every day a woman is a rake.”

  “A rake? Me?” Billie put her wine glass down and stared at Aphra. “I thought Elizabeth was your ideal of a female rake.”

  “I have changed my mind,” Aphra said with a smile. “You are much better than Elizabeth at taking what you want, without a thought to the future. Do you love Damon?”

  The muscles in Billie's stomach clenched tight. If only Aphra knew how much she thought of the future. “I don't want to ask myself that.”

  “Is that not the attitude of a rake?” Aphra asked, no trace of malice in her voice. She seemed more admiring than judgmental. “How many women conduct an affair in such a way? Elizabeth Barry is the most independent woman I know, but even she wishes her Earl could afford an establishment for her. Faith, Clarinda, 'tis natural for an unmarried woman to want something more permanent from a man whose bed she shares.”

  How could Billie tell Aphra that she couldn't want more from Damon? That his place was here, but hers was over three hundred years from now? “You don't understand. I don't belong here. I can't stay.”

  “You intend to go back?” Aphra asked with obvious surprise. “There is no danger for you?”

  “No. I only came back here because of you — and him,” she admitted reluctantly.

  “You should tell him that.”

  Billie shook her head. “I can't give him that power over me.”

  Aphra examined her with a hint of respect. “It does not seem fair. Damon is a dear friend. But I think I understand.” She looked down at her wine glass, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I wish you would tell me a bit about your past. I'm quite curious, you know.”

  It was obvious Aphra thought Billie's romantic past accounted for her present behavior. If only Billie could explain that three centuries from now, many women would be capable of building a life of their own, without the support of a man. Certainly most women in the twenty-first century were still disadvantaged, exploited and beaten and treated as little more than property. But compared to what Aphra knew, it was paradise. Change was slow, but it was there. And Aphra had been one of the first to show the way.

  Aphra looked up from her wine and into Billie's eyes expectantly. Billie was at a loss — she didn't want to lie to Aphra, but she didn't want to disappoint her either. Aphra deserved a good story. Billie would have to come up with one if sh
e didn't want to start telling fairy tales about time travel and magic mirrors.

  She leaned back in the carved oak chair, wine glass in hand, and tried to remember all the things she'd ever allowed Aphra to believe. “You think I am more independent than most, but I have not always been that way,” Billie began. “I fell in love with a clever, handsome man — penniless, of course. I was indiscreet, and my family threatened to marry me off to an old merchant.” She let a note of distaste creep into her voice. “That was the first time I ran off, as you suspected.”

  Aphra nodded. “I was quite worried about you when you disappeared.”

  Billie gave a theatrical shudder. “The agents of my husband found me and brought me back.”

  Aphra laid a hand over Billie's and pressed it sympathetically. “And now?”

  “Now I am most likely well provided for,” Billie said with a grin. “If my flight has not lost me everything, that is. When the old man fell ill, I escaped again, and no one has come after me this time. I have sent to a friend to learn of his fate. Perhaps I will soon be able to return home.”

  “You could remain here in England,” Aphra said.

  Billie shook her head. “Life is different there, freer somehow. Not really free, of course, but the conventions are not as strict.”

  Aphra nodded. “I felt that in Surinam too. Still, London is as free as any place I have ever known.”

  “Ah, but the rules of the game are very strict.”

  Aphra gave a rueful chuckle. “I fear you are right, Clarinda. We are damned if we don't and damned if we do. But you cannot convince me that is different where you come from.”

  “No,” Billie said, grinning. “Perhaps the only difference is that I know the rules better. But things are also newer there, bigger; people are not packed together like sardines as they are in London.”

  Aphra laughed. “Sometimes you have such an original way of expressing yourself, Clarinda!”

  Billie shook her head. It was funny to think how all clichés must have been original once. “Not I. 'Tis you who are the poet.”

  “And what of your songs?”

  “I have written no more since the last time I was here.” That was true enough. “Another thing I do not care for here is living in a country with a king.”

  “Why, Charles is as much your king as mine!”

  “'Tis very different when he is so far away,” Billie said. “In the northern colonies, the king is little more than a foreign figurehead.”

  “There were those in Surinam who felt that way as well.” The faraway look Aphra often got at the mention of Surinam crept into her expression.

  Billie grinned. “And not only there. Are you not rather fond of parliamentarians?”

  “You must learn to mind that quick tongue of yours,” Aphra scolded, smiling. Suddenly she grew serious. “I do not know how fond I am of parliamentarians at the moment.”

  “Lawyer Hoyle has been noticeably absent lately,” Billie said carefully.

  “Yes.” Intimacy between them was growing by the minute, but it did not yet seem to include confessions of present hurts. Aphra changed the subject. “'Tis easy to be Tory after living under the yoke of the Puritan Cromwell, Clarinda.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I do not know if you can. I was committed to the royalist cause early.”

  “Were you involved with the royalists before King Charles returned to England?” Billie asked, leaning across the table.

  Suddenly Aphra seemed to notice where the conversation was leading. “Involved?” she repeated, laughing. “How could I be involved? I meant only that I supported the restoration of the monarchy even before it was obvious the so-called protector would not be able to establish his own monarchy; even before others thought I was capable of such opinions.”

  A sudden pause descended upon the conversation, and Billie finished the wine in her glass and poured herself another. If this wasn't a lead, nothing was. Problem was, Aphra wasn't talking.

  “Can you tell me your real name now?” Aphra asked.

  Billie grinned. “Willa.”

  Aphra laughed out loud. “You truly are more 'Will' than 'Clarinda,' are you not?”

  She nodded.

  “Methinks I will continue to call you 'Clarinda,'“ Aphra continued. “I am so used to it.”

  “I like Clarinda better,” Billie said, pouring the last drops into Aphra's glass. “You never told me about your marriage.”

  Aphra watched Billie place the empty pitcher back on the table in silence. “I do not generally speak of it. Perhaps we should get ourselves more wine from the cellar.”

  As Aphra rose, Billie could hardly believe her luck. Was Aphra really going to tell her about Mr. Behn — the mysterious husband no one could find?

  25

  Women those charming Victors, in whose Eyes

  Lie all their Arts, and their Artilleries,

  Not being contented with the Wounds they made,

  Would by new Stratagems our Lives invade,

  Beauty alone goes now at too cheap rates;

  And therefore they, like Wise and Politick States,

  Court a new Power that may the old supply,

  To keep as well as gain the Victory.

  They'll join the force of Wit to Beauty now,

  And so maintain the Right they have in you.

  Aphra Behn, The Forc'd Marriage

  * * *

  Off the coast of England, 1664

  * * *

  Aphra stood at the deck of the ship, watching the coast draw near, gray and drab in the late winter rain of England. When they'd left Surinam, autumn was hardly noticeable; the rain was warm and the colors of the birds and flowers almost painfully bright. It was hard to believe she had been there less than a year — she felt as if she'd lived through several lives since she last gazed on the shores of her own country.

  But while Surinam was beautiful and wild, it was not for her. There would soon be nothing left for her there. Will Scot had promised to follow her to England, and although she would miss Treffry and Martin, she was well rid of the likes of Byam.

  And Caesar was dead.

  Aphra had plans that needed a larger stage than the colonies. Women were acting in the newly re-opened theaters, and she was determined to write for them. It was not entirely unprecedented, after all; Margaret Cavendish, the “crazy Duchess,” had published her first book of poems over ten years ago, and the poems of Katherine Phillips, the matchless Orinda, had been circulating in manuscript before Aphra left England. Why not plays? If any woman could do it, it was she. All her life she'd been praised for her cleverness and her way with words. She wrote her first poem when she was no more than eight. At the applause of the cast of her own small world — her father, her mother, Frances, her late brother George, her foster brother Thomas, Mary and Diana and Lord Willoughby — Aphra had known she wanted to be a poet. What she hadn't known was that her sex and station in life made the ambition nearly as unreasonable as if Thomas had said he wanted to be king.

  Despite the bleak aspect of the northern climes, Aphra smiled. Her life was here. She was hopeful — despite one very small detail that could mean disaster. She knew now: Scot had given her more of a memento of himself than either of them had bargained for. Her mother was watching her closely already. Elizabeth Denham had suffered the fate of unwed pregnancy herself, and her family had disowned her for it. She would not be as unforgiving if the same thing happened to Aphra, but she would not be lenient either. Aphra had been sicker on the voyage back to England than on the voyage over, and unfortunately mothers were sensitive to these things.

  Much of their time in Surinam, her mother had seemed more asleep than awake, but the closer they got to England, the more she revived. For her, the move to Surinam had been little more than a hot, humid nightmare.

  Aphra leaned over the railing and gazed into the churning gray waters. What if Scot did not follow her? Would she be auctioned off to the first comer to avoid scand
al? Aphra was strong-willed, but retiring to the country and bribing officials was not an option; with her father's death, the family fortunes had no chance to improve in Surinam. A knot began to form in her stomach.

  On the other hand, if Scot did follow her, did the honorable thing and married her, he might well drag her down with him in schemes and debts. Scot was a rogue — an endearing rogue, but a rogue nonetheless. Aphra was cursed with a fatally practical side, and the farther away from him she was, the clearer she saw him. Would he even still love her if they were married? What she'd seen of that institution didn't inspire her with much optimism.

  She lifted her gaze from the water to watch the shoreline come into focus, troubled by an uncomfortable mixture of hope and fear. Those shores could hold fame for her — or perhaps nothing more than a husband.

  Aphra hurried down the street, on her arm a large basket, while Katherine followed close behind. The London mist was cold and dank, mixing with the smoke of chimneys and clogging the air and blocking out the sun. She passed the medieval church of St. Bride's and the print shops that had sprung up around it. If her mission today was successful, she would one day be able to do business with those printers herself, negotiating terms for the folios of her plays. A stubbornly optimistic streak in her nature made her certain it would happen someday.

  She didn't want to think what her fate would be if she wasn't successful.

  After their arrival in London, her mother had gone to the Barber Surgeons Guild in Cripplegate to apply for a widow's pension. Luckily, Bartholomew Johnson had still been in good standing with the guild at his death, and Elizabeth Johnson did not need to fear starvation. Their former neighbor Sir Thomas Culpepper, now a colonel in His Majesty's service, helped them out as well, and Aphra, her mother, and Stephen were able to settle in a neat little house in the parish of St. Bride's.

  Aphra was thrilled they were in London, so different from the Canterbury they'd left behind. When she set sail for Surinam, England was only in the first stages of throwing off the muffling cloak of Puritanism. Now she was in the decadent London of Charles II, the center of the world. People lived as if they would never have another chance. They wore lavish silks and bright colors. They read romances instead of the Bible. Tennis courts became theaters and women became actresses. Aphra's huge laugh was no longer a sacrilege. Being anti-Puritan by temperament, she was automatically a royalist by persuasion. Aphra was born in an age of casual infidelities and semi-public cover-ups; she herself was a result of that morality or lack of it. Cromwell had temporarily put an end to such immoralities, but the King was reinstating the practice of sexual indiscretion with a passion.