“Aye,” said Hal, surprised into honesty.
“And no sister or wife to keep thy house or warm thy bed?”
“My sisters will not forgive me my learning, an it not go hand-in-hand with wealth. As for a wife, I’ve no stomach for the wooing, nor coin for the keeping when she’s won.”
“No matter,” said the old man. “See here, Hal Spurtle. Should I find thee a ’prentice fit for the work, wilt undertake to print my book by Sunday moonrise?”
“He needs must be a prodigy of nature.”
“As prodigious as thou wilt. ’Tis a bargain, then. Thy hand on it, Hal Spurtle. This purse will stay thy present need.”
The purse contained five pounds in silver: a goodly earnest. Hal weighed it in his palm. “Why, if I’m a madman, you’re another, and there’s a pair on us. My hand on it, then.”
They shook hands solemnly, and then the old gentleman took up his carven stick, hobbled to the door, and, without another word, was gone like the devil in the old play.
St. Martin’s tolled midnight. Hal rubbed his cheeks wearily and picked up the lamp to light him to bed. Catching a movement in the corner of his eye—a rat, he thought, and had turned him away when a voice arrested him: a small, dry voice, like the rustling of pages.
“Sinner,” it said, “look thou to thine end.”
The hair crept upon Hal’s skin like lice. What had the old rogue left behind him?
“To each thing must thou pay heed,” said the voice. “To thy comings-in and thy goings-out, to thy pleasures and thy pains, that they be pleasing unto the Lord.”
Surely a demon would not prate as from a pulpit; though ’twas said the devil could quote scripture to the soul’s confusion. “Back to Hell with thee, demon,” said Hal sternly. “I’ve no wish to look upon thy hideous countenance.”
There was a faint rustling from the corner. “The kingdom of God is of a fairness beyond the measure of man, and the tidings thereof are comfortable.” The voice was sad and something fearful, like Hal’s sister Kate begging grace for some roguery. The memory softening his heart, he turned and beheld no horned devil, but a girl-child of six years’ growth, sitting mother-naked in a nest of paper.
“Hallelujah, saith the angel, and the sons of man rejoice,” she said firmly.
Hal squatted down before her and reached out one hand to touch her head. It was not bald, but covered with an uneven pelt, white mottled with black, like blurred print. Her face was likewise piebald and soft as old rags, her cheeks round as peaches, like Kate’s or Ann’s or any of the small sisters whom Hal had dandled. Like them, she was as bony as a cur-pup, and as hollow-eyed. Only her mouth was fair, a pure and innocent bow.
The fair mouth opened and she spoke. “A groat will buy my hand, good sir, and a penny my cunt. But ’tis three pennies for my mouth, for washing the taste out after.”
“Out upon thee for a forward wench,” cried Hal, and struck her with his open hand so that she wailed aloud. As shocked as he’d been by her bawdry, still more was Hal grieved by her piteous cries. He caught up a clout from a chair, bundled it around her naked, flailing arms and legs, and gathered her, howling, to his breast.
“There, now,” he crooned over the piebald head. “Hush thee, do. Thou’rt not so hurt as astonished, the which may be said of me as well.”
The child quietened at his voice and sniffled and settled against him. “His yoke is easy and his burden is light,” she said tearfully. “Wherefore dost thou grieve him with thy sins?”
Hal rocked her silently for a moment, then asked, “Art hungered, sweeting? Shall I fetch thee a sop of milk and bread?”
“Flesh and ale’s good meat to my belly, and swiving thereafter.”
Hal looked stonily upon the lass; she showed him small, crooked teeth in an imp’s smile. “Thou shalt cry, ‘Pardon, Pardon,’ and it will avail thee naught. For sin is stamped upon thy soul from thy mother’s womb; thou art cast and molded of it.”
“‘As prodigious as thou wilt,’” murmured Hal. “I begin to apprehend.” He loosed his arms, and the girl-child stood upright on paper-twist limbs and made her ways to the composing-table, where she began to distribute the scattered type into the cases, her arms spinning like flywheels so that the clout dropped from her shoulders and she stood naked on the floor.
Hal slipped into the inner room, where he hunted out hose and a shirt only a little torn and a rope to belt it. These he carried into the shop and tossed upon the table where she could not choose but to see them.
She straightway fetched up the clothing and held it this way and that against her body until Hal began to laugh, whereat she cocked her head, aggrieved. “So ask not, saying, how shall we eat, or how shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed; for after all these things do the Gentiles seek.”
“Do them on nonetheless; the wind will not temper itself to a shorn lamb, and thou’rt prodigy enough in a clothed state. Thou’lt need a name, too. Textura? Roman? Bastarda?” The child blew a fart with her lips. Hal grinned. “Not Bastarda. Demy. Broadside.” Gazing here and there in search of inspiration, his eye chanced to light upon the press, the frisket unfolded, the tympan empty. “Frisket,” he said decidedly.
The child smiled at that, and uttered not a word, neither of bawdry or scripture, by which Hal understood that she was much moved, as, in truth, was Hal himself.
“’Gie thee good den, Frisket,” said Hal. “Now to bed, under the press, as snug as a mouse. We’ll up betimes and begin work.”
Upon entering his shop at cock-crow next morning, Hal half thought he’d wandered in his sleep to his master’s printing shop at Alder’s Gate. The composing and imposing tables were scrubbed clean of ink stains, the floor swept and garnished, the ink-balls washed and hung to dry. The piebald child was bent over the press, industriously greasing the tracks. She’d shot up in the night, mushroom-like, to a gawky girl of twelve or thereabouts, with her hair grown to rat’s tails strewn across the back of Hal’s shirt and her bony arms black to the elbow with ink.
“Frisket,” said Hal. “Is’t thou in very sooth, lass?”
“When I was a child, I understood as a child; now I am become a man, I put away childish things.”
“Thou’rt nigher Heaven than thou wast, and something stouter.” He glanced suspiciously at the cupboard. “Has left me a sup?”
“Man doth not live by bread alone,” said Frisket smugly. “Come kiss me, sweet chuck, and clip me close.” And she gestured to the hearth, where ale was warming, and a half-loaf of bread and a crust of cheese laid ready on a plate, to which Hal applied himself right heartily.
“There is a wanton will not want one, if place and person were agreeable to his desires.”
Hal swallowed hard. “Before we make a start, I would say a word. Sermonizing I can bear. Bawdry ill befits thy tender years. Cleave to Dr. Beswick, an it pleaseth thee, and let In Praise of Pudding-Pricks be.”
Frisket looked dumpish. “As the goose is sauced, so is the gander,” she said.
“I’d think shame to read the knavery my poverty beds me withal,” Hal said.
“Out upon thee, old juggler! Thy sparrow is dead ’i the nest, and will not rise up and sing, squeeze and kiss I never so cleverly.”
Hal yielded the field blushing, nor sought to engage again; but as they worked that day composing and printing the sheets, he made note that Frisket’s tongue wagged less, and more upon a pedantical breeze than a bawdy. The morning flowed into day and the evening into night like streams into a river, quiet and unmarked. But when St. Anthony’s bell came tolling midnight, there were only three sheets made perfect, twenty-four pages out of fifty-two. Despairing, Hal sat him down for a brace of minutes to rest his aching back.
He woke to broad daylight and Frisket mixing ink.
“Wake thee, wake thee, sinner, for the bridegroom cometh,” she caroled.
Hal started to his feet. Ten stacks of perfect sheets stood ranged upon the composing-table. He took one up and checke
d it, back and front. The inking was dark and even, the lines prettily justified, the text as sensible as such a text might be.
“So thou shalt ask of thyself: am I a sinner, or am I a righteous man?”
Hal looked up at Frisket’s ink-blotched face in wonder. “A righteous man, beyond all doubt. In fact,” he continued, “there’s a question which of us is master and which ’prentice.”
Frisket smiled to show her teeth—piebald as her skin and hair—and then he and she turned to collating the sheets, to folding and cutting them into books and sewing the signatures together. They worked in quiet amity, with the ease of long use and custom, the one handing the other knife or thread at need, without a word exchanged. Now and again he’d glance from the sewing-frame to see her ink-drop eyes upon him, whereat they’d smile at one another and bend to their tasks again.
Hope came to Hal, that long had been a stranger to his heart. His mind began to wander in uncharted seas of poems and plays and philosophical tracts that might be registered and put for public sale in St. Paul’s churchyard, and a little house in St. Martin’s Lane, with a shop at the back and two journeymen to run the press, and Frisket, of course, properly bound and entered in the Rolls of Apprentices. She’d need a better name than Frisket. Mary, he thought—the mother of Our Lord. Mary Spurtle, his elder brother’s child, if any were to ask. But he and she would know she was Hal’s own Frisket, the daughter of his heart.
Come moonrise, Hal and Frisket were grinning at one another across the hearth, with thirteen quarto alchemical ordinals stacked neatly on the composing-table behind them. The door latch rattled and Frisket ran to open it.
“Behold, the bridegroom cometh, and upon his brow is righteousness,” she said, flourishing a bow.
The alchemist beetled his brows at her and at Hal, who sat laughing by the fire. “Thou art pleased to take thine ease,” he said testily. “The silver I gave thee cost me something in the making. I trust thou hast not squandered it in liquor.”
“Nay, nay, good Master Alchemist, I have not, nor so much as a moment in sleep or sup. There is your book as you required it, printed as fine, though I say it, as Caxton in his prime.”
The alchemist took up the topmost book and leafed through its pages, hemming here and hawing there, looking up at last and nodding to Hal almost with courtesy. “Excellent,” he said. “Excellent good in very sooth. Thou hast labored mightily, thou and thy ’prentice, in bringing forth this text. And so I will ask thee, Hal Spurtle, whether thou wouldst take a copy in payment, that is the only true receipt for the making of gold and silver, or content thee only with the twenty crowns I promised thee.”
Hal laughed aloud. “I cry you pardon, granddad, but I’d leifer have ink upon my hands than quicksilver. Twenty crowns, wisely spent, will bring me to twenty more as well as thy receipt, and with more surety. We’ll do well enough, my ’prentice and I.”
The alchemist shrugged his shoulders, and having dealt the books here and there about his person, took out a purse and gave it over to Hal’s hand and prepared to go his ways. Upon reaching the door, a thought stopped him. “Thy apprentice,” he said. “How dost thou like him?”
Hal, feeling Frisket shadowy at his side, drew her forward into his arm. “I like her very well,” he said.
“Her,” said the old man. “Curious.”
When he was alone, Hal tossed the heavy purse aloft, jingling. “Here’s a weighty matter, poppet, must be lightened ere it burst. We’ve need of meat and ale and bread and women’s weeds to clothe thee withal.”
“Smock climb apace, that I may see my joys.”
“Aye, a smock, and petticoats and a woolen skirt and a shawl against the winter wind, and leathern shoes.” He kissed her lightly upon the head. “I’ll warrant thee to make a bonny wench. We’ll to market at daylight.”
Overwatched, Hal slept almost until noon, by which time Frisket had finished printing Dr. Beswick’s sermons, aye, and cut and sewn them, too. Hal crowed with joy, swung her under the arms, bundled the books with binding thread, and carried them to Dr. Beswick’s lodgings, where he gave them into the gentleman’s hand, full of apologies for the delay and thanks for his patience.
“Patience,” piped Frisket, “is of the Virtues the most cardinal; for all things come to him who waiteth upon the word of God.”
Hal looked sharp to see whether the reverend gentleman be offended or no. “My new apprentice, sir, my brother’s child. Touched by the finger of God, sir, but quick and good-hearted as may be.”
“So I perceive,” said Dr. Beswick. “My own words upon patience, pat as I writ ’em. ’Tis pity he’s so ill-marked. Stay, now, here’s another sovereign. I’d not thought to see my books this sennight.”
Hal took the sovereign and thanked the reverend gentleman, and bore Frisket off to the old-clothes market at Cornhill. He bought a woolen gown and a shawl, two smocks, a pair of stays, and after some hesitation, a petticoat of fine scarlet—lifted, no doubt, from some merchant’s drying-yard—and a linen cap. Home again, he pinned and laced her into her new array as tenderly as a mother, even to braiding her magpie hair down her back and tying her cap over it.
“Thou’rt a proper lass now,” he told her, “and the apple of mine eye. I’m off now to St. Paul’s to hear the news, see perhaps may I come by a pamphlet or a book of ABC to print and sell. No more Merry Jests, my Frisket, or Valentines or Harlot’s Tricks for us. From this moment, the bishop of London himself will have no cause to blush for our work.”
“Here lieth an alehouse, with chambers above and beds in the chambers. Pray you, love, walk in with me.”
“Nay, child, I’ll take thee another time. Take thou thine ease, but see thou stray not, and, as thou lovest me, temper thy tongue as thou mayst; for not all have the trick of thy speech. If any ask, thou art my brother’s child, called Mary, Mary Spurtle, come to keep my house and learn my trade.” He took his purse then, and finding therein some coppers and a silver piece, wrapped them in a clout and bade her tie them underneath her petticoat.
She looked at the little bundle with bemusement. “I swive for love, and not for base coin,” she said doubtfully.
“The daughter of the house must have coin when she ventures abroad. And thou art the only daughter I am like to have. So take thy purse. Thou has earned it.”
So Hal went whistling towards St. Paul’s and Frisket watched him down the street, her eyes bright and shy as a mouse’s.
“Hey there, wench.” A boy’s sharp treble hailed her from Mistress Dunne’s front window. “What makest thou at Hal Printer’s?”
Frisket stepped out in the street and smiled, which brought Jane and Ann and Katty forth across the cobbled street to sniff about her skirts in the manner of pet dogs: cautious, but more apt to fawn than to bite.
“What’s thy name?” inquired Ann, who was the eldest.
Frisket opened her mouth and closed it again. “Frisket” was nowhere printed on her body. Yet Hal had given her another name, a name found in both sermon and bawdry. “Mary,” she said. “Come, play with me.”
“What wouldst thou play?” asked Katty, ever generous. “Wildflowers and Old Roger and Thread the Needle’s our favorites, but we’ll play a new if thou’lt learn it us.”
Frisket had knowledge of many plays, all of them new to Katty and all of them from that part of her mind Hal disapproved of her speaking. Accordingly, she hoisted one skinny shoulder as one who defers to her hosts, and Jane said, “Let it be Lazy Mary, then. Dost know it?”
Frisket shook her head.
“Hath the cat a-hold of thy tongue, Mary?” taunted Jane; in response to which Frisket exhibited hers, catless, but mottled pink and black, whereat Jane laughed ’til Ann cuffed her ear and bade her mend her manners. Jane subsiding, Ann told Frisket the words to the game, that were Lazy Mary will you get up, will you get up today?
“And then thou shalt answer,” interrupted Jane, “that thou wilt not, whatever dainties we offer, until that we offer thee a nice
young man.”
So they laid Frisket down among them, with her apron over her face, and turned about her, singing. And when it was time for her to answer, Frisket frowned under her apron, opened her mouth, and sang:
My mistress is a cunny fine
And of the finest skin.
And if you care to open her,
The best part lies within.
Yet in her cunny burrow may
Two tumblers and a ferret play.
Jane giggled; Ann blushed rose.
“Nay, now, Mary, prithee do not mock us,” said Katty.
“The devils of Hell mock the blessed,” said Frisket, “for those very joys they are blest withal.”
“Art mad?” asked Ann. “We are not let to play with mad folk.”
“Sing again,” said Jane, and Frisket sang again, by bad fortune just when Mistress Dunne was out at her door to see her children play. Now, Mistress Dunne was a God-fearing woman, a great enemy to oaths and tobacco and all manner of loose living; so that hearing Frisket’s song, she screeched like unto a scalded cat and pounced upon the girl and boxed her ears until they rang like St. Paul’s at noon.
Frisket put her hands to her ears wonderingly, as though she hardly understood the smart. “Well mayst thou look sullen,” scolded Mistress Dunne. “Thou’rt overripe for a beating. Filthy girl. Dost not know so much as wash thy face?”
Frisket spat upon her hand and rubbed her cheek, then held her hand to Mistress Dunne to show it neither more black nor more white, but mottled as before, like the coat of a brindle dog. Mistress Dunne looked at the hand and the face and the thick, piebald plait lying over Frisket’s shoulder, and made the sign of the Cross in the air between them. “Devil’s mark,” she cried, and spat, and gathering her children to her, chivvied them within, Frisket trailing after, saying:
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