Windsong

by Valerie Sherwood

  But this breath of air from across the seas seemed to limber him up, and he spent the rest of the morning regaling them with stories of the infamous Moll Cutpurse, whose real name, he told them, was Mary Frith. And when Virginia learnt that The Roaring Girl - Dekker and Middleton’s play about this famous pipe-smoking wench who wore men’s clothing and was not only a thief but an accomplished forger as well - was playing this very day at Drury Lane, she could not wait to see it.

  ‘Well - I don’t know if Rye will want to appear in such a conspicuous place,’ Andrew said doubtfully. ‘Things being as they are.’

  ‘Oh, of course he will,’ Carolina put in with vigour, for she knew the reckless gentleman in question very well and little doubted that he would stick at attending a public performance. ‘Perhaps we can persuade him to rent a periwig for the occasion,’ she suggested roguishly.

  Andrew gave her a helpless look. He was endlessly amazed at the difference between the two sisters - Virginia so studious and demure despite her occasional biting wit, and Carolina so lighthearted and devil-may-care. As different as he was from his brother, he would come to realize, for Andrew was a homebody who had never ventured farther from home than London and was intimidated by beautiful women, while Rye had ever had a restless foot and an eye for spectacular beauties.

  When they returned to the inn and suggested that periwig to Rye, he snorted. ‘We will attend the play if you like,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I don’t expect to be recognized - I’m not that well known in London. God knows I’ve spent little enough time upon English soil these years past.’

  ‘You see?’ Carolina turned to Andrew with a puckish grin. ‘Your brother not only will attend - he refuses a disguise!’

  Andrew’s response was a worried frown.

  ‘Oh, buck up, Drew.’ Rye dapped his brother jovially on the shoulder. ‘I’m not caught yet - nor will be if I can get my business here attended to and get back to sea to straighten matters out. Remember I’ve a pardon for all I’ve done.’

  ‘But not for what this other fellow’s done that’s now attributed to you,’ Andrew said, sighing, and Virginia nodded solemnly.

  ‘Let’s have no long faces for our outing,’ laughed Rye. ‘The girls are probably set on seeing the play because they’ve bought new dresses and they want to show them off. They’ll be so ravishing that none will notice us, Drew!’

  ‘Should we wear face masks?’ asked Virginia, big-eyed, for this would be her first London play.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t bother,’ Carolina told her carelessly. ‘It’s mainly prostitutes who wear masks - those and women who attend the play with someone other than their husbands!’ she laughed.

  Virginia coloured to her ears at the word ‘prostitute’ and when Andrew gave Carolina a reproving look, Rye quirked an eyebrow at him an amusement.

  ‘I think we’ve taken in two babes in the woods,’ he murmured to Carolina when they went upstairs to dress for the play.

  ‘Yes, they do seem to fit together, don’t they?’ said Carolina, once they were in their own room. She was donning, as she spoke, an elegant ice-green gown, narrow-waisted and with an enormous gauzy skirt. The satin bodice was moulded to her delicate breasts and waist like her own skin, and the elbow-length sleeves were embroidered heavily in silver threads with an enormous spill of nearly transparent silver lace falling from the elbows. She caught the skirt up in wide panniers at each side to display her ice-green satin petticoat frosted with silver embroidery, then pirouetted before the mirror and looked over her shoulder at Rye with satisfaction. ‘Do I meet your approval?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah, you do.’ His hot gaze roamed over her. ‘Still - that dress is a bit low-cut for wearing in public. ’Twill attract attention.’

  ‘Just so it attracts your attention.’ She laughed and gave a little twitch of one almost bare shoulder that set the gauzy lace of her cuffs atremble. She was setting pale green brilliants into her fair hair as she spoke.

  ‘To squire such a lady is worth taking chances,’ he admitted with a rueful grin. ‘Are you ready?’

  Carolina nodded and swept out on Rye’s arm to join Andrew - soberly dressed like Rye, although in shades of brown rather than shades of grey - and Virginia, very excited in olive silk.

  ‘The real Moll Cutpurse prowled the area they call Alsatia, just south of Fleet Street,’ Rye told Carolina as the four of them arrived in a hackney coach at the theatre and he handed her out. ‘After you’ve seen the play, you’ll know why I didn’t trust having you stroll about Fleet Street without an escort.’

  Carolina tossed her head and the corners of her expressive mouth curved into a smile. For last night’s wooing had convinced her that she was more than a Fleet Street bride to this complex husband of hers. They had lain close together in the warm darkness, shared lovers’ dreams, and she had felt soothed and comforted from any of the day’s rebuffs. Tonight she might be only a Fleet Street bride, but tomorrow - ah, tomorrow ... on some lovely tomorrow she would be married properly in a tall church in Essex and be acknowledged to all comers as the mistress of his heart!

  But outside the Drury Lane theatre something happened that was to erase both the night before and Moll Cutpurse from Carolina’s mind.

  They had barely alighted in the milling raucous crowd that always congregated at the theatre entrance just before the performance. Well-dressed dandies mingled with merchants of the town, apprentices stared at silken ladies and ogled giggling street girls - a motley crowd. Suddenly, just behind Carolina, someone in the crush rudely jostled his neighbour, who was just then in the act of taking snuff.

  ‘Ho, there!’ cried the jostled gentleman wrathfully. ‘Y’dare to shove me, sir? Ye’ve made me drop my snuffbox!’

  Before an apology could be offered he gave the culprit a hard shove - which sent him, off balance, hurtling against Carolina’s back. Beside Carolina a sumptuous lady all in black and with a large black mask covering her face clear to her brunette curls had just bent down to brush an invisible fleck from her rich taffeta skirts. Carolina lost her balance and went ricocheting past her - and in reaching out in an involuntary effort to regain her balance, her fingers caught in the edge of the dark lady’s mask and jerked it from her face, knocking it to the ground.

  Rye’s arm had gone out instinctively to catch Carolina about the waist and beside him Andrew had already turned and was berating the man who had done the pushing. The crowd was shoved backward as there was a struggle to retrieve the snuffbox, which had been kicked away under somebody’s buckled shoes. Carolina was aware of a musky odour of exotic scents, very distinctive, from the lady’s black taffeta gown as she went plummeting by. She heard a tow-headed orange girl say, ‘Lor’, look at that!’ then looked up into the orange girl’s face and saw her staring at the mask - and at the lady who had lost it.

  Supported by Rye’s strong arm, Carolina snatched up the mask from the floor and, with a word of apology, proffered it to the lady, who was a ravishing brunette, slender as a reed, with thick shining dark hair and large almond-shaped eyes flashing beneath high-arched dark brows. Her nose was aquiline, her lips perhaps a trifle too thin, her demeanour imperious - and she wore a startled expression which Carolina attributed to having the mask suddenly dashed from her creamy features.

  The dark woman snatched the mask from Carolina’s fingers. Carolina twisted upward and Rye automatically gave her aid with a lifting movement of his arms. But as Carolina’s head swung round, she saw that Rye was not looking at her. He stood transfixed, staring at the dark woman, and he had gone very pale beneath his tan.

  A moment later the mask was back in place, the dark lady turned without a word and the swarthy man with her guided her on by.

  Rye, who had been occupied with rescuing Carolina as the struggle went on behind them, now turned his frowning attention to those who had made the disturbance in the first place. He would have reached out a rough hand to chasten someone but Carolina, realizing that if there was a general brawl they might all
be hauled before a magistrate and Rye’s true identity discovered, clung tenaciously to his arm.

  ‘Let us not attract attention,’ she said quickly.

  They were the right words. Abruptly Rye remembered where he was and who he was and that there was a price on his head.

  ‘Did you know that woman in black?’ Carolina asked him as they moved on into the theatre. ‘You turned pale back there and the woman whose mask I tore off looked so startled.’

  ‘No, I could not have known her,’ he said slowly. ‘And I don’t wonder that she looked startled at having her mask ripped off. But - she bore a striking resemblance to someone I once knew, and for a moment I thought I had seen a ghost.’

  Rosalia. He did not have to say it.

  And just the sight of someone who ‘bore a striking resemblance’ to Rosalia was enough to make him blanch. To Carolina that was a bitter thought.

  The play and Moll Cutpurse went by Carolina in a blur. Around her the audience was large and noisy, talking, eating oranges, stamping their feet. Somewhere, not far off, Carolina spotted the dark lady seated beside the swarthy man. The fabrics she wore were elegant but her effect was somehow inconspicuous - as if the wearer wished to escape notice. Carolina could hardly take her eyes from her - and twice she saw the lady’s dark head swivel around and that featureless black mask turn in their direction. Could the woman be staring at Rye?

  During an intermission, when Virginia was vivaciously discussing the play with Rye and Andrew, Carolina found an orange girl at her side - and remembered that this same tow-headed orange girl had been crying ‘Oranges, oranges!’ nearby when Carolina had knocked off the lady’s mask.

  Under pretext of selecting an orange, Carolina leaned towards the orange girl. ‘That lady in black over there just behind that man in green and purple,’ she muttered. ‘Who is she?’

  The orange girl turned and shot a lazy look in the direction Carolina indicated. She shrugged. ‘How should I know?’

  Carolina felt for a coin in her purse. She displayed it.

  ‘She is the one whose mask was knocked off outside the theatre. You were standing nearby.’ She was still talking in an undertone. ‘Can you find out for me who she is?'

  ‘Oh, that one?’ The orange girl took the coin with a laugh. ‘I know who she is because I have seen her before In a coach and without her mask. She is the wife of the Spanish ambassador.’

  ‘Do you know her name?’

  ‘No, I don’t - and I don’t have no way to find out Why don’t you ask her yourself?’ With a mocking look the orange girl turned and sidled away from Carolina, loudly offering her wares. ‘Oranges, oranges!’

  The wife of the Spanish ambassador . . . This woman could have known Rye in Spain, then. As Carolina watched, the dark lady - who seemed to be arguing with the swarthy man beside her - gave her head an angry toss and beckoned to a tall thin orange girl who swayed towards her through the crowd, carrying her small basket of China oranges on a graceful arm.

  Covertly Carolina watched the brief conversation the dark lady had with the orange girl, watched the girl turn to glance in Rye’s direction and then nod, watched her wend her graceful swaying way towards them, saw her offer an orange to Rye, saw him shake his head - and then the girl leant closer and muttered something and Rye took out a gold coin and gave it to her. And was rewarded with an orange.

  Carolina felt her heart sink down to her slippers. One did not pay in gold for a China orange.

  One paid in gold for . . . what? For a lady’s address?

  She was so upset she could never remember afterwards what the rest of the play was about.

  She did see the elegant masked lady and her frowning escort leave abruptly. Rye did not seem to notice.

  Carolina wanted to turn and rage at him, to demand to know what was going on. But she knew it was no use - he would not tell her. There was a shuttered look in his eyes when he turned to offer her the China orange.

  Carolina took it. It might have been delicious, but to her it tasted as bitter as a half-ripe persimmon.

  And then the play was over and they were struggling out with the crowd, picking their way over discarded orange peels and crushed baubles and forgotten broken fans, and making their way back to the inn.

  Carolina was very silent that night at dinner. She was waiting for the expected to happen - and it did.

  Directly after dinner, when they had gone upstairs, Rye excused himself. ‘I have to see one of my men,’ he explained to Carolina. ‘He has sent me word that he got home to find his wife had run off with another man and he needs help in finding a place for his children. I think perhaps my London agent can help him.’

  ‘Then why have you slipped two pistols into your belt and thrust a dagger into your jackboot, if you are going to meet a friend? And carrying a sword-cane as well as a sword?’

  So she had noticed his heavy armaments ... ‘I am to meet him in a bad part of town,’ he said briskly. ‘Alsatia. He has lodgings there. Buccaneers grow used to living in odd places,’ he added pleasantly. ‘And this poor fellow doesn’t realize that he has chosen to live among cutthroats again. Don’t wait up for me, Carolina. I may be late.’

  ‘Late . . .’ Carolina repeated woodenly. ‘No, I will not wait up.’ She did not meet his eyes.

  But after he was gone and she was alone in the big square bedchamber, the best the inn had to offer, the Iow-ceilinged room seemed suddenly so barren and lifeless without him that she turned and fled to Virginia’s room - and found her sister not only awake but brushing her strawberry-blonde hair vigorously.

  ‘Oh, Carolina, what a day it has been! Isn’t London wonderful?’ Virginia’s dark blue eyes were shining.

  Until today Carolina had thought so. Now she gazed pensively at Virginia. ‘You’ve only seen it in good weather,’ she said. ‘Wait till the fogs roll in.’

  Virginia spun around from her brushing, and her long hair streamed away from her in a shining mass. ‘Oh, I wish it were winter!’ she exclaimed. ‘For Andrew has told me that when the Thames freezes over and the frost fairs are held, that coaches go out on the ice and the printers from London Bridge go down upon the frozen river and set up their presses and print your name and the date right there while you’re on the ice! He tells me that Charles II and Queen Catherine both had it done - the printers charge a small fee of course. And he tells me that next winter we will all come down into London by sleigh and attend a frost fair and I will have a printed souvenir to take home!’

  If you ever go home, thought Carolina. For London seems to have cast its spell over you!

  ‘And you were right, Carolina!’ Virginia put down her brush. ‘There are men in England who find me attractive!’

  ‘Rye’s brother?’ Caroline guessed with a wan smile. Virginia nodded her head vehemently. That brisk shake set her strawberry-blonde curls in motion - Virginia had started curling her hair again, Carolina noticed with approval, since they had arrived in London. ‘Yes, Andrew told me the women he had met before were so shallow, so unlettered.’ She blushed. ‘I am glad he has not found that to be the case with me!’

  I am glad too, thought Carolina. It was wonderful to see Virginia brought to life again.

  ‘Andrew is the most interesting man I’ve ever met!’ Virginia told her in an animated voice. ‘He loves books and he talks about them - with me, a woman! I’m so used to hearing men tell me everything is above my little head and beyond my poor female understanding! But Andrew doesn’t feel like that at all.’ She blushed. ‘Do I sound very silly?’

  ‘No.’ You sound like a woman in love. Carolina didn’t say that, of course. It was plain to her that Andrew and Virginia were falling in love, more each hour. But they didn’t know it yet. Some day - perhaps in Essex - it would burst upon them with all its radiance and their lives would be changed forever.

  ‘Here, have a sweetmeat,’ Virginia proffered a box. ‘Andrew gave them to me.’

  ‘Oh, Virgie!’ Carolina gave her older sister an im
petuous hug. ‘I think it’s wonderful!’

  ‘What? That I asked you to have a sweetmeat?’ asked Virginia with a wicked grin. ‘You’re always imploring me to eat - and here I am, stuffing myself!’ She popped a sweetmeat into her mouth.

  ‘Yes - that too,’ Carolina said, smiling.

  ‘Well, ’tis plain a woman does not have to be parchment thin to hold Andrew’s interest,’ admitted Virginia. ‘Or beautiful. He is interested in things of the mind. He has written a group of essays on the future of man, which he has promised to read aloud to me when we get to Essex - oh, I can hardly wait! Someday he may even publish! And he is writing me a sonnet, did you know that?’ she added proudly.

  ‘No, I did not.’ Carolina’s grey eyes had gone misty.

  ‘Yes, he is working on it now. He said he would not rest until he had finished it and I am to hear it tomorrow.’ Virginia munched another sweetmeat. ‘And do you know, he told me he thought me much too thin? He said that winters were cold in Essex and that being too thin himself, he feels every blast of wind go through his very bones.’ She gave a schoolgirlish giggle.

  Carolina, watching her sister affectionately, thought with deep relief, I have done the right thing. I have brought Virgie to safe harbour. They will be a couple of scholars, these two - wrangling happily over Latin translations and obscure meanings. And once in a while Virgie will spice up Andrew’s life with some wonderfully trashy novel - indeed they should get on famously!

  She didn’t say any of that, of course. She said instead, ‘I am glad to see you are eating well again. Andrew is right, you must keep up your resistance if you want to survive the snowy Essex winters.’ She remembered an Essex winter ... at Christmastide . . . and a man who had fallen in love with her. And left her in anger in a maze.

  She felt somehow as if she were in a maze again, but this time in a London maze without grass, where the cobbles were slippery underfoot and there was no guarantee she would ever find her way through it. Life was like that, she supposed.