The Weight of Ink

by Rachel Kadish

  The play had begun, the players’ speech nearly drowned by the bawdy laughter that rolled from the audience behind and above. An actor playing a character named Roderick Rogue made his way about the stage codpiece first, his face made up like a clown’s. To Ester’s surprise, she understood most of the rapid English banter. “If she a fool would marry, I swear I’ll fool her grandly.” The throng in the pit rumbled appreciation; scattered applause sounded from the balconies. The players, warming to their task, seemed to hit each new rude line at ever-higher volume, drawing encouragement from the crowd, hauling their tale from lowest humor to a plateau of dull moral pronouncements, only to plunge gleefully back again, like a ship that regained speed in the trough of each wave.

  “Be a man’s fortune not in his own hands?”

  “And I pray, look what lies between mine!”

  On stage amid the costumed men now appeared two women players in low-necked gowns, one with blond ringlets and one with brown. Cast as innocents, they parried each assault on their honor with unctuously feigned ignorance. Ester saw nothing especially provocative about them—surely their dress was hardly more immodest than that of the women in the theater’s balconies—yet by simple virtue of their elevation on the wooden platform they seemed to goad and tempt the men in the pit beyond endurance. A sea of work-rough hands extended each time one of the women neared the stage’s edge, as if to grab her by the ankles should she step too close.

  “Vile,” murmured Mary, moving so close, Ester could feel every breath she drew.

  The stage cleared of other players, and now a lively man of indeterminate age with a long curled wig stood at the center, his thin face sweaty and cheeks pink as from liquor. He made a grand speech, part of it seeming improvised, as though he’d been tasked with engaging the audience while some transformation was achieved behind the proscenium’s curtain. His speech, beginning with a rumination on love, “a man’s worst and most delicious folly,” and proceeding to detail the ideal lover’s qualities, soon turned overlong. Amid a winking repetition of the requirement that a lover be generously endowed in body, a piece of refuse sailed at his head. He batted it away and continued unperturbed, which provoked further assaults from the pit, yet he went on until he’d done with his speech and exited, sweeping the refuse from the stage with the insides of his feet, making a gay dance of it. Three players emerged in his wake, then, and sang a rollicking song. “If she be not as kind as fair, but peevish and unhandy . . . Leave her, she’s only worth the care of some spruce Jack-a-Dandy.”

  From behind, a callused hand crept about Ester’s waist and immediately began to search higher. Panicking, she dug into it, hard, with the tips of all her fingernails; it withdrew in haste.

  “We should leave,” Mary whispered faintly. Yet she stood transfixed.

  And then the singers exited and a strange vision greeted Ester’s eyes.

  A woman—the blond-ringleted player who’d sashayed about the stage in a bright yellow gown moments earlier—had now emerged onto the proscenium stage in a man’s attire. Her hair had been gathered back and knotted behind, her breasts were concealed beneath a heavy doublet, the slenderness of her arms was masked under gilt sleeves. She might have been a particularly tender-faced courtier.

  The calls of the crowd grew so loud, her words could barely be heard; she obliged by ceasing all speech and adopting a wide stance, allowing them to take in the oddity of her split legs.

  “The fish has a forked tail!” a man shouted, and the player swiveled prettily in response.

  The theater shook with the men’s answering roar—a sound that went on and on, beating in Ester’s ears.

  The crowd at length quieting, the player resumed her speech. Screwing her flushed face into a facsimile of determination, she intoned her character’s purpose. Some turn in the plot, the audience was made to understand, required that she perform this subterfuge: she would masquerade as a man and, by deceit, gain her suitor’s confidence and learn his true feelings for her.

  A woman in breeches. What power the maiden in this play had seized in one stroke, with a simple change of costume. Yet for her, the deception was all for the sake of a passing vanity: to learn the mind of an insufficiently complimentary suitor.

  Had Ester such a power, she thought, she would use it otherwise.

  The woman ceased her speech. And then, with a simplicity that stunned Ester, she walked out from under the proscenium, and onto the thrust stage, like a figure stepping out of a framed portrait and into the living, breathing world. And as she posed just out of reach of grasping hands, and as the other players emerged from the wings to be fooled by her costumery and the absurd story of the play wound on and on, Ester laid her hand on the stage to feel that it was real.

  An idea came to her then, as simple as it was impossible. She gripped the wood until her fingers ached.

  The play was ended. The audience broke up about them and poured out of the theater; the flushed, restive throng turned into men and women blinking at the bright haze at the theater’s opened doors. They stepped out into the city, singly or in clusters.

  Ester’s hand remained on the edge of the empty stage. She could feel the theater growing quiet behind her. She let her gaze rise to the soaring dome of the roof, the emptying galleries with their elaborately carved posts. Here and there she could make out a lady’s mask—delicate arched eye-holes and blank velvet face—lying discarded or forgotten.

  A soft cry beside her. Ester turned, in time to glimpse Mary’s face gone pale, barren and unknowable as the moon. Then Mary slumped against her.

  Ester caught Mary in her arms, but could hardly hold her. Staggering back, Ester looked for a clean place to lay her. But the floor was a mess of oyster shells, and a piss-pot in the corner had overflowed, fouling the floor. With effort she pulled Mary, legs trailing, to a dry patch, then took off her own shawl and bunched it under Mary’s head.

  Mary’s breath was shallow. Crouched awkwardly above her, Ester watched her eyelids flicker. At the far edges of the proscenium, figures moved here and there: the players setting costumes in order for tomorrow’s performances. Ester cast about for help, to no avail—the remnant of audience still trailing from pit or gallery paid her no mind. Without help she’d never succeed in carrying Mary’s limp weight to the coach waiting outside, nor dared she leave Mary here alone while she summoned the coachman for assistance.

  Something small and hard hit her in the center of the back. She turned in time to see one of the players retreat, his slim form disappearing behind the curtain. By her feet was the cloth-wrapped object he’d thrown. She opened it and saw a dirty cube of some whitish substance. She gave it an uncertain sniff, and immediately recoiled: hartshorn. She held it beneath Mary’s nose and watched her jolt awake, her lids fluttering and her lips shaping a curse.

  Mary gazed at the balconies, the fouled floor, the stage, before at length seeming to recognize her surroundings. Registering the amusement on Ester’s face, Mary swore again, louder. She raised herself on her elbows.

  “A disgrace,” Mary muttered—though it was unclear whether she was referring to the play or to her own position amid the shell fragments. Attempting to rise too swiftly, she lurched against a bench. With a scowl, keeping her eyes fixed ahead so as not to admit the indignity, she awaited assistance. Ester helped her stand, and kept a hand on her elbow to stabilize her until Mary, surveying the theater with head held high, shook herself free.

  “Let me loosen your stays,” Ester said.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Mary said. “I simply overtaxed myself.” When Ester shook her head sharply Mary added, glancing away as though in embarrassment, “In the garden this morning. Working.”

  Ester couldn’t restrain a laugh. “Since when does Mary da Costa Mendes work a garden?”

  “I’ll claim that, my does.” A man—the slim player who had thrown the hartshorn—was striding toward them on the thrust stage. Still cleaning the paint off his face with a soiled cloth, he hopped to
the floor of the pit and extended a palm. Ester gave him the hartshorn.

  He lowered the cloth. This was, Ester saw, the same man who’d borne the storm of refuse on stage and kept on with his rambling monologue about love. Yet shed of the puckish spirit that had animated him on stage, he was barely recognizable. The gaudy paint he’d worn still marked the channels of his face, so that he appeared petty and carved by age, a man divided into pieces. In place of his flowing wig, his own graying brown hair showed, slicked back from his face, and the years that had been disguised by his youthful grace on stage were now evident. Instead of an elaborate doublet and hose, he now wore the threadbare clothing of a man fallen from wealth. His silk shirt was darned, his velvet breeches worn.

  He took in Mary, from the crown of her glossy head to her pretty mouth to the patches on her breasts, the fine shoes nested in pattens. A rakish smile lit his face. Swiftly he wiped the remaining paint from his cheeks and neck. “You’re the third to go down since Lord’s Day,” he said to Mary. “But most of the fainting sort pay to do it in the galleries rather than the pit.”

  Mary’s wan face had gained color; Ester watched her cast about for a witty answer. “I prefer to faint closer to the ground,” she said after a moment.

  “Aha! Beauty and wisdom.” The man extended his arm. Flushing, Mary took it, and he strolled a few paces off with her as though they were on a promenade, rather than in a pit. “And you fainted, I take it, due to the power of our disquisition.” He enunciated as though still on stage.

  “She fainted,” Ester offered, “from the shock of the crowd.”

  “Or it might have been due to the dazzling wit of the actors,” he said archly to Mary. “Only you, being the proprietor of the faint, are in a position to know.”

  Already a flirtatious pout was forming on Mary’s lips.

  “Shall we go now?” Ester said. It felt urgent to dispel this stranger’s charm before it took further hold.

  Mary shot Ester a sour look. At this, the man turned on Ester a bright, magnanimous smile—as though she were speaking out of envy. “You can join us as well if you like. Unless my acting so offended you?”

  Ester countered with an overseriousness even she could hear. “It’s not any insult to your acting to say you recite the lines of a middling play by a middling playwright.”

  His laugh filled the hall. “Yet it’s not any compliment either. I shan’t ask your opinion of my acting, dear lady, for I fear it. Perhaps your other admirers enjoy barbs. But I like a lady sweet.” He looked only at Ester as he spoke, but she watched his words have their intended effect on Mary, who smiled a soft, blushing smile.

  Behind Mary and her companion, other players began to drift across the stage. A woman with pale frothed hair and tired eyes approached from the proscenium—hardly recognizable as the brazen actress who had just walked the stage in breeches and, with a foolish pretty speech, cracked the sky over Ester’s head.

  The woman, jumping down neatly from the stage, murmured, “See you tomorrow, Thomas my love,” and—paying no notice to Mary on his arm—kissed him carelessly on the lips and hurried off. Mary stood agape, her expression of resentment giving way gradually to a sparking, curling curiosity.

  On the stage, two men who’d emerged behind the woman lingered, clearly awaiting Thomas. One, a tall, bearded, Spanish-looking man, scowled impatiently at Thomas. The other, a slim, short-haired Englishman in modest but tidy attire, had a light cap of hair and no beard. His expression was alert, his gray eyes quiet, and he observed Thomas with a thoughtful detachment that made Ester wonder if he were a student of the ministry.

  “Thomas, man, what might you possibly want with two Jewesses?” the darker man said. His voice was low and amused, but as he spoke his lips curled in a half smile that seemed to Ester more dangerous than mirthful. He’d a narrow face, pale, unblinking eyes, a thick, cropped beard.

  Thomas let out a shocked laugh. “Jewesses?” he echoed. Turning, he searched their faces. “But this one wears a cross.”

  “So do all their people who wish to hide what they are,” said the darker man.

  “Is it so?” said Thomas, peering into Mary’s face with eager fascination. But for once Mary looked away.

  Alarm rose in Ester. “It is,” she answered bluntly.

  Thomas whistled. “A Jewess. And hens make holy water. Who thought I’d find myself a Jewess?”

  The slimmer man, who stood slightly behind the others, spoke up quietly. “An honor to make your acquaintance,” he said. “I’m John Tilman. You’ve met Thomas Farrow. And this is Esteban Bescós.”

  But Thomas, still laughing, was uninterested in niceties. “Heaven strike me.” With his free hand he thumped the proscenium stage as though celebrating his good fortune. “A cross-wearing Jewess, and her dour keeper.” He gestured vaguely at Ester—then stepped back a pace from Mary, though still holding her arm, to examine her. In confusion, Mary shrank from him—but Thomas waved to show himself harmless. As Mary straightened herself self-consciously, Ester saw Thomas’s gaze fall on Mary’s jeweled ring and the pearl-set bracelet draping one of her wrists.

  “She’s recovered now, thank you.” Ester took Mary’s free arm and made to depart.

  Holding Mary by one arm while Ester led her by the other, Thomas kept pace with them on their way to the door. The other two men followed at a distance. “But you still have no praise for the players and all our philosophy?” he charged Ester, though his words were all for Mary. “’Tis a deep philosophy,” he added, with another glance at Mary’s ornate jewelry, “that lurks beneath all our wit.”

  “No praise,” said Ester, and she pulled the heavy door open with her free hand.

  “None?” he cried, and this time his indignation seemed real. “Your ignorance insults!”

  “None.” She banged her elbow as she tried to hold the door wide without letting go her grip on Mary. “Though if you must shout such nonsense and call it philosophy, this theater is a fine ringing shell for it.” She pulled on Mary’s arm.

  Stopping beside Mary on the threshold, Thomas replied airily. “It’s fortunate for the play it wasn’t subjected to your foreigner’s English,” he said. “Else we’d have witnessed for the first time in history an English play hanged, drawn, and quartered.”

  Bescós snorted his appreciation.

  “In my English,” said Ester, her words tight, “your play would have enough weight to make impress in the minds of the listeners, not puff them full of a meal of spun sugar, so they leave with their bellies seeming full, only to feel their hunger a few minutes thence.” She’d never spoken thus in English, nor had she dared so accost an Englishman. But in her impatience to return home, shyness no longer gated her speech, and the English that had grown in her these years easily breached its confines. “Once your audience realizes the play’s failure,” she went on, her face hot, “they’re no longer in purse to purchase any true meal for the soul or the body, while you retreat with their shillings to purchase drink sufficient to float an armada. A comedy is a fine treat, so long as you serve it with no pretension. Call it entertainment, sir, but not philosophy.”

  Bescós was laughing loud. “This is something like!” He cuffed Thomas’s shoulder. “She understands the principles of your trade.”

  Thomas made a show of dusting himself off, then replied with a mute punch to Bescós’s arm.

  Ester tugged Mary one final step into the clouded light of the street outside the theater. There Mary broke away from Ester with a look of fury. “Her rudeness,” Mary said to Thomas, “is considered a burden among our community. I alone agree to go about the city with her; the other girls won’t.” At Thomas’s laughter a still deeper flush rose on Mary’s cheeks. With defiant formality—as though she spoke not only before Ester but before the whole congregation—she extended her hand and announced, “Mary da Costa Mendes.” For an instant she faltered, then—with a furtive glance at Ester—added, “And Ester Velasquez.”

  “Mary!”
>
  But Thomas was laughing. “My pleasure to learn your name, Mary. I see from your friend’s anger it’s a forbidden pleasure, which makes me like it the more. In a name lies truth. And,” he added, “I’m eager to know the truth of you.”

  From behind Thomas, Bescós gave a bark of laughter. “You must not begrudge our actor friend his pronouncements about truth and philosophy. He reminds all at least once a fortnight that he was sent by his too-hopeful father to study at Oxford during the battles. But his principal work there, I’m afraid, was to publish pamphlets saying the Parliamentarians enjoyed relations with their horses.”

  At this John, until now silent at the back of the gathering, spoke up. “These are ladies, Bescós!” he said.

  “Yes, Bescós, he’s right.” Thomas made an obsequious bow to Mary, ignoring Ester. “Please forgive us, the theater makes us forget ourselves.”

  Ester looked once more at John. He had a sculpted face, faintly pink cheeks. Seeing Ester watching him, he gazed at her seriously for a moment. Then a smile lit his face, replacing its solemnity with a fleeting boyishness.

  “Lady Mary,” Thomas intoned, “have no fear of our John. If he makes judgments on us, he does not press them, though he seems prim as a very magistrate—a profession we must be certain not to mock overmuch, as his father serves that function. But every knave needs a foil, and John is mine.” He turned and spoke over his shoulder as he walked again. “Aren’t you, John?”

  John answered with a tolerant laugh—but Thomas persisted. “What would your father say, John, of your choice of friends?”

  “My father isn’t here,” said John carefully. “But if he were, he would take care to collect all the evidence before passing judgment.”

  Thomas laughed. “And have you collected the evidence needed to judge us?” In turning to address John, Thomas steered Mary carelessly close to a wall lining the alley. Her wide sleeve brushed a clay pot containing some loose dirt. It teetered, then toppled from the nook where it had been nested; John caught it with quick grace before it hit the pavement, and set it back in place without a word. This time, though his reply was mild, the smile he turned on Thomas had something stiff in it.