I was grateful for Scarfe’s help, but he made me nervous with his forward behaviour. I wondered what my father would make of him, and something within told me not much. But then, if it came to that, what would he make of me?
We had a quarrel that afternoon—Scarfe and I—by the Bankside dock. “Why don’t we return along the bridge?” I asked. “You don’t like wherrymen, and walking the bridge will cost nothing.”
“We’ll go by water,” he said.
“But I’d like to go by the bridge and look at the shops. I’m told it’s something to see. Even Uncle Philip says no city in Europe has a bridge to match London’s.”
Scarfe, however, looked grim and determined and repeated only that we would return by water. It put us both into a sulk, but by water we went, arriving again at Old Swan stairs.
When we parted at the corner of Gracechurch and Lombard streets, he told me to come by the bookstalls on Saturday afternoon. He might know more then and we could arrange for a visit to Cripplegate. We each felt ill used by the other as we parted, and it wasn’t until later that it came to me—his telling of how his mother had leaped to her death from London Bridge. That would account for his shifting humours that afternoon, and I was sorry I hadn’t remembered earlier. He had probably vowed never to place a foot on London Bridge, and who could blame him? Even crossing the river in a wherry might have proved an ordeal.
C
HARLOTTE UNWELL THESE TWO
days past and she took to her bed finally this afternoon with a mild quinsy. This damp weather has provoked coughs and fevers in many, but this evening the doctor came by and told Charlotte that her throat would soon improve and she was not to fret about her wedding, now two weeks off. Emily has been attending her with cold cloths to her brow and a soothing syrup for her throat. Mr. Thwaites looked in too and sat with her for a quarter hour, a calming presence to the poor girl, who can easily get into a state over something as uncomplicated as flowers in the church.
I too have not been well of late and fear the stone may be blocked, for this week past I have been making only a little water each day, and that with some difficulty. It is a true measure of my selfishness that with Charlotte now laid up I worried about finishing my story. Then, quite remarkably,
as Mr. Thwaites was leaving, he asked if he might take down my words while Charlotte was recovering.
“She feels you may be worrying about your memoir, Miss Ward,” he said, “so I told her that with your permission I would be only too happy to assist you for an hour or two each afternoon until Charlotte is well again.”
When I asked if he was not occupied with his duties and his forthcoming marriage, he laughed and said that weddings were for women to fuss over. “I merely have to turn up at the church, Miss Ward.”
I knew this was exaggerating; he has many accomplished friends in the university and ecclesiastical communities who are coming to his wedding, and Charlotte told me that he was arranging a dinner for them at the rectory the evening before the wedding day. Still, he is a man who remains unflustered by uncertainties; he will be an excellent husband for Charlotte.
I accepted his offer with thanks, though now it feels odd to imagine him taking down my words. Yet why not? Charlotte has read what’s already there to him, and he has always expressed a keen interest in my father and his work.
T
HE DAY FOLLOWING MY
Bankside visit with Scarfe, Marion came to my room, a surprise because she had virtually ignored my presence in the house until then. But that day she sat upon my bed, where I lay reading, and spoke of her unhappiness. There had been yet another quarrel with her mother, and Marion’s eyes were red from weeping. Of course she didn’t know that I was aware of her situation, so she began to tell me all about Alphonse Couric and what a good man he was, how they had fallen in love and how she didn’t care that he was eight years older. It wasn’t his age that bothered her parents; it was the fact that he was not a merchant’s son. He was not good enough for the family.
Marion told me she had not slept for a week and I could believe it, for her beautiful hair was lank and uncombed, her pale face swollen. I had dismissed her merely as a spoiled and headstrong girl. Yet now I could see that she was capable
of genuine distress and therefore pitiable. She loved this Couric, who might well have been worthless; Boyer was probably right about the dancing master with his good looks and charm, his considerable debts. Couric was not the right man for his daughter. But Marion loved him. She said they had talked of going to France, but where? They had no money and her father was intent only on hindering their happiness. She was wretched with grief.
She spoke as I imagined adults might speak of love, yet she was not much more than two years older than I was, and listening to her made me think my feelings for Scarfe were childish. I was taken with his youth and swagger, his careless good looks. Would I weep so at his loss? Could I ever feel so despondent over losing someone? Marion and Couric were like Romeo and Juliet, whereas I was more like Mercutio, who would never love another so ardently that he might risk heartbreak. Marion spoke that afternoon of loving another completely, and listening, I saw how I had misjudged her. To this day I regret my misjudgment, because Marion with her reddish golden hair, her long perfect feet and fingers, her slender neck would be in her grave within a year, as would Aunt Eliza and Jenny, and Prew and Corbet, all perishing in the plague that ravaged London the following summer.
We learned all this a year later from a letter sent by Boyer to my aunt and uncle in Worsley. Reading it then, I recalled how during one of our walks he told me of once being
in Antwerp to buy lace goods, and there becoming infected with the pestilence. But the infection was mild and he survived, and somehow that saved him during later outbreaks, including the dire plague of 1603. I expect that he married again, but after that letter we never heard from him. He lived to the great age of eighty years, as I discovered in a letter from a London solicitor in 1633 informing me that I had been left five pounds in Philip Boyer’s will. The bequest helped me to purchase the Folio that summer.
Yet all that lay in the future. As much as I listened with sympathy to Marion’s plight that day, my mind was ever drifting to Scarfe and whether he could lead me to my father. The Saturday following, I went to St. Paul’s yard, but Scarfe was not to be seen and I did not want to ask the red-headed boy, who clearly didn’t like me. I kept well out of his sight and loitered about the stalls most of the afternoon, but Scarfe never appeared. Nor did I see him again over the next fortnight, though I went each day, once summoning the nerve to approach Parrot and his surly manner.
When I asked of Scarfe’s whereabouts, he said only, “Robin doesn’t work here now.”
“And does he work elsewhere, then?” I asked.
He smirked. “Here, there, everywhere, that’s our Robin.” At the time, I guessed he had been caught stealing and was dismissed, and perhaps was even in prison. So it was a great surprise one December afternoon, a day of fog with
drizzle and the smell of coal smoke in the air, when Jenny came to my room and said there was a boy to see me. My aunt had turned him away from the shop entrance and told him to use the alleyway door. When I went below stairs, there was Scarfe standing inside by the door shaking the rain from his cap and grinning. I could see Prew and Corbet sneaking glances at him while they worked at their benches. Corbet seemed especially irritated by Scarfe’s presence, and Jenny stood apart, frowning with her arms crossed. Scarfe had been drinking. I could smell it on him. He swept the cap before him as he bowed.
“Your humble servant, Miss Ward.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at his unkempt look, his lopsided grin.
“Are you free?” he whispered loudly so all could hear. “Can I take you away awhile from all these bonnets and feathers?”
Grasping his arm, I quietly said, “They can hear you, Scarfe. And you’re drunk.”
“And why should I care if they listen?” he said. “Those two at their benches are rogues and want hanging from the look of them.”
Corbet’s face was reddening. “You hold your tongue, boy, or you’ll find trouble.”
“What’s that?” asked Scarfe, settling the cap on his head. “Trouble? I’ll give you trouble, bonnet maker, if
you step out into the alleyway with me. I’ll thrash you to within an inch of your life. Yes, and you can bring the runt with you.”
Little Prew kept his eyes on the box of feathers before him.
I took Scarfe by the arm again. “What are you about? You’ll have my aunt back here before long. You shouldn’t have come here during work hours.”
Scarfe whispered in my ear. “Today is my birth date, girl. We have new rooms and are going to celebrate. I want you to join us. I’ll have you back before the Angelus bell.”
Hushing him, I said he was carrying on like a drunken fool.
“Perhaps, but I have news which may interest you.” He looked over my shoulder. “Stop your ears, you two,” he called. “It’s none of your affair.” He glanced then at me. “Now it has stopped raining. Will you step out into the laneway with me?”
In that alleyway dripping with water from the overhanging roofs Scarfe said, “I have news of a certain poet known in this town.”
“What news?” I asked.
“First you must come to our rooms and help me celebrate my birth date.” I must have looked uncertain, as he then said, “Fear not, for Pa will be there and later my good friend Parrot.”
His excited cheerfulness was always hard to resist, but it could also mean trouble ahead.
“Listen,” he said, “I have come into money. I have chinks in my purse and I am dying of thirst. And soon it will be raining again.”
“How can I leave my aunt like this? Without a word?”
He shrugged. “An hour or two of merriment. You’re good company. I told Pa about you and your Mr. Shakespeare. He’d like to make your acquaintance.”
To go with him would be defiance and no doubt trouble. Where was Boyer that day? He was not at home. But it didn’t matter anyway. I was going. Scarfe had news about my father, but he wouldn’t tell me unless I went with him. I knew I wouldn’t have it out of him until he felt like giving it.
“Why aren’t you working anymore at Sharples?” I asked.
“A long and sorry tale,” he said. “Far too cheerless for my birth date.”
“Are you working elsewhere now? It can’t be easy to change masters so quickly.”
“Miss Ward, I have money in my pocket and wish to celebrate my birth date. Will you come along with me for two hours, or no?”
I remember running upstairs for my cloak and coming back down past the apprentices and out the door with Jenny’s laughter behind me. A milky sun behind the clouds
glimpsed between rooftops as we moved through the streets, and I hurrying as always to keep up with Scarfe’s long legs, stepping around puddles and dog turds, horse buns, dodging the wheels of carts and wagons in Cornhill, passing by Leadenhall Market and onto Aldgate. I had walked this far eastward before, but as we went beyond the wall I was soon lost amid the alleys and laneways and shabby buildings of Whitechapel. I knew I could never find my way back on these streets among such rough-looking people.
I followed Scarfe into a tall, narrow house, one of many like it, and we climbed four floors to the topmost, where he knocked on the door and waited for the sound of the key turning. The door was opened by a frail elderly man with a shawl about his shoulders, for the room was cold and dank with no fire in the grate. It was Scarfe’s father. I could see him in the face. But the old man’s eyes were blank and I watched him feel his way towards a chair by the grate. The room was makeshift and dishevelled with boxes lying about unopened and a trunk by the only window. I wondered what had brought father and son to these dismal quarters; it struck me that it was a place not so much for living as for hiding.
The old man had found the chair and was seated. “There’s someone else about, Robin,” he said. “Is it the girl you spoke of?”
I hadn’t made a sound since entering, but the blind can sense others without seeing them, as I myself now know.
“Yes, Pa,” said Scarfe. “It’s Miss Ward from the countryside. The young friend I told you about. A great admirer of Shakespeare and a fine reader of poetry.”
He had found a bottle of wine, and after pouring some into a wooden cup, he took it to his father. Then he drank a cup himself and poured another. I told him I didn’t want anything.
“A reader of poetry,” said Scarfe’s father. “Well now. Come over and introduce yourself, Miss Ward.” He had reached out with his left hand. “I’m afraid my other hand is no longer useful,” he said. “I am Robin’s father, Martin Scarfe. Welcome to our new home. I’m sure there is untidiness about, as we’ve only just settled here.”
Scarfe was refilling his cup. “All the comforts of home, Pa. I’ll get us sorted out in time.”
“As you can tell,” said Martin Scarfe, “I no longer have my sight, and so may I ask your age, Miss Ward?”
“I am fourteen, sir,” I said.
Scarfe was now rooting in the chest, and looking across at him, I realized how foolish I had been to come with him to this place. The rain was heavier now, and I watched it striking the window by Scarfe’s head as he knelt at the chest. What did I know of him anyway? He was a drinker and a thief and a liar. And what would my uncle Jack think if he could see me in this meagre place? There must have been money in that chest because Scarfe had found what he was
looking for and was putting on his cap. I asked him where he was going because I feared being left alone with the old blind man and his ruined hand. I shouldn’t have been afraid of him, but I was, as he sat there leaning forward in the chair staring vacantly into the empty grate.
“I have to get provisions,” Scarfe said. “There is not a rind of cheese in the larder, nor a drop of wine in this vessel. We want meat and drink in abundance and coal for the fire.”
“Yes,” the old man said. “These rooms are insalubrious and no mistake. A little fire would be welcome, Robin.”