The Quality of Mercy (64 page)

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.

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. Rebecca 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.

Shma Yisroel…

Am Yisroel Chai
— the people of Israel live.

Fifteen hundred years was a long time, and she was too much a Jewess to let her children’s legacy be washed down the river. Though she ached for Shakespeare, it was duty before love.

Shakespeare slept badly. He dreamt of dwarfish priests, of Rebecca masked as the Virgin, of Harry nailed to a cross. There was a foreboding miasma in the air, a suffocating vapor that spoke to Shakespeare of danger — both close at hand and distant. He awoke before dawn, lit a candlestick and kindled a fire in the hearth. Brithall had many guest chambers. His was situated with a window facing east. After washing from a basin of near-frozen water and dressing quickly, Shakespeare leaned against the chilled stone wall and watched the sunrise. The night had given way to daylight, the wintry landscape turning from a darker to a lighter shade of gray as the hidden sun broke through the horizon.

An hour later Shakespeare was offering his final words of appreciation to his host, his speech stuffed with overflowing hyperbole. Henley insisted that the player drink a tankard of ale before departing. Shakespeare complied while a groom fetched his horse, and he was on the road before seven.

The snowdrifts were deep, the air bitter. Shakespeare’s hands felt frozen an hour into the ride. He wondered if he could make it to Hemsdale before dark. Unlike his springtime trip, sleeping outdoors was no longer an option. Henley had given him a circuitous route, one that required an overnight stay at an inn called the White Hart. Ordinarily Shakespeare would have traveled the more direct route — one that required passage over steep hills and treacherous crags. But not in such a climate. Shakespeare was determined but not daft.

Back he rode, retracing Whitman’s last steps. Harry hadn’t lodged at the White Hart, Henley was sure of that. Which meant that Harry had to have traveled from Brithall to Hemsdale using the more dangerous but faster route — the path due directly south. Which meant he conceivably could have met the stew whom Shakespeare had bedded in the bilberry bushes. What was her name? Cat, the alderman had said. Her forename was Catherine.

But the whore claimed not to have known Harry.

But the alderman said she was a liar and Harry regularly passed through Hemsdale. And Harry was fond of women. If no decent wench would bed him, a strumpet would suit him well. But the Jesuit had said there was gossip about Harry having Italianate sexual proclivities. In Hemsdale, did Harry play with men?

Chambers. He was a sly one. He’d spoken nervously of Harry. Mayhap Harry was killed not because he was a Papist but because of a lover’s spat between him and Chambers.

Tomorrow he’d speak with Chambers. Perhaps the innkeeper would help him, perhaps he’d be mulish and say nothing.

And maybe the innkeeper had nothing whatsoever to do with Harry’s death. Perhaps Harry had been a random victim slaughtered by a greedy highwayman. Or cut down by the blood-lusting hand of an anti-Papist fanatic. Or the sacrificial lamb of some madman’s demented mind.

Shakespeare shook his head in confusion.

Another hour passed. The icy winds had finally calmed and the air lost its painful bite. The sky was tufted with silver clouds. At noon honey-colored beams broke through the gray skies, pillars of shimmering gold streaming to earth. The blinding snow reflected and scattered the sunlight back into the sky and atop the snowdrifts. The day held about it a virginal freshness, a sweet, clean smell. Even Shakespeare’s horse seemed to sense a change. It had become less sluggish, less winded. Shakespeare burst into song, the echoes so sustained that he could almost sing harmony with himself.

God was everyone. God was everything. God was all around.

The following day was steeped in violence, the weather refusing to clear until early afternoon. Shakespeare had bedded down at the White Hart and left around one of the clock, his stomach full, his bones warmed. The air was so choked with mist, Shakespeare could barely see ten feet ahead. But thanks be to Providence, his sense of direction was good. He reached the area outlying Hemsdale shortly before dark.