Taking Wing

Table of Contents

• A Kindred Spirit
• “Lullay My Liking”
• Sabine’s Secret
• Isabel Steals a Boat
• Banished!
• Brigands on the Road
• A Voice in the Dark
• An Actor Born
• A Merlin for a Lady
• The Plague Mask
• City of Ghosts
• The Limitless Sky
• Then and Now: England

A Kindred Spirit

Isabel shoots upright in the dark, startled by something she can’t quite place. A delicious excitement hangs in the air. She pulls back the bed curtain to find a dull sheen of ice on each windowpane, feathery snow drifting past the glass. But it isn’t the season’s first snow that woke her. It’s the bells, ringing from every steeple across London. It’s Christmas Eve.

Every Yuletide since she could walk and talk, Isabel has woken with the same jolt of joy, diving into her nurse, Alice’s, bed and colliding her cold feet against the nurse’s warm skin. Alice would grumble that she should go back to sleep, that Christmas would come soon enough without her tormenting. Isabel would lie there in an agony of impatience, unable to understand how anyone could sleep through such bright happiness.

But this year, for the first time, Isabel lies back down beside Sabine and pulls the covers over her head. Her family will never be the same, drifting apart one by one since Mother’s death. Isabel will never again see Mother’s smiling face or hear her sing “Lullay My Liking” slightly off-key. Without her, nothing feels quite real, including Isabel herself. She pictures the family filling that emptiness with too much talk and laughter: Aunt Elinor criticizing her manners, Father retreating to his study, Sabine fussing over the linens.

A tiny, grating cough sounds close to Isabel’s ear. That isn’t Sabine. Isabel lifts a corner of the coverlet and finds her baby sister, Hope, nestled there fast asleep, her face flushed with fever under her frilly nightcap. Isabel vaguely remembers Hope crying in the night. Sabine must have carried her into bed to soothe her, then risen without a wink of sleep to oversee the day’s preparations.

Isabel flops back, rocking the high-curtained bed like a ship at sea, remembering how she, Sabine, and Robert used to hide behind these curtains, eating stolen gingerbread and whispering secrets. Now, Robert is apprenticed to Master Johnson, home only on feast days. Sabine is too busy playing housewife to spare Isabel any time. Mother’s keys now jingle at Sabine’s waist, and she’s forever talking of mending or some cure for Hope’s cough.

Hope has fallen asleep again with her eyes half-open, which always makes Isabel queasy. Joan, their cook, is always saying Hope is only lent to them and will soon join Mother in heaven, which makes Alice furious. Alice insists, as a fact from her own Granny Partlet’s gift of clear sight, that Hope will grow up to have ten strapping sons and live to be a cranky old woman of 104.

Aunt Elinor found Isabel that evening and told her she ought to be grateful, since she’d had Mother’s love for twelve whole years. She also said Isabel must be brave, for Father’s sake and poor motherless little Hope’s. Sabine, she added stiffly, is now the lady of the household, as Father’s eldest daughter. But Aunt Elinor herself would stand by Sabine’s side like a second mother. Remembering it, Isabel fumes all over again, and beside her, Hope coughs and mumbles in some private baby language.

A tiny feather has settled on Hope’s lip, rising and falling with her breath, when Isabel hears footsteps outside the door. Meg, their new maid, comes in carrying a jug in one hand and a flickering candle in the other. “Merry Christmas, Meg!” Isabel says softly, careful not to wake Hope, and Meg shyly returns the greeting.

Isabel slides out from under the covers, and the cold strikes her like an icy wave. She pours the water into a basin, chattering through her teeth. She asks whether Meg loves the first snowfall as much as she does, knowing no one has trodden it before her except the birds and foxes.

Meg is busy coaxing Hope awake, cooing that it’s morning and that poor Alice has the rheumatism. So Miss Sabine says she must get the baby dressed downstairs in the warm. Hope only whimpers and flings up an arm. Isabel tells Meg she’ll wake by herself, and asks her to stay and talk while she washes. Meg agrees, just for a minute.

Trembling with cold in her linen shift, Isabel washes quickly with the squishy soap, the water having lost its warmth on the way up from the kitchen. She asks through the splashing whether Meg isn’t longing for tonight, whether she doesn’t love Christmas Eve as much as she does.

Meg answers plainly that she liked it when she was little. But now that she’s grown, it’s just another day. Isabel feels a shock of surprise, since that’s exactly how she’s been feeling. She agrees that it is better when you’re little. She tells Meg Alice’s story of how at midnight on Christmas Eve all the beasts kneel in their stables to welcome the Christ child.

Isabel asks whether Meg’s mother ever told her that one. Meg only says, politely, that she doesn’t rightly remember.

Isabel sighs. Meg has worked for the family almost six weeks. At first, Isabel only glimpsed her strewing fresh rushes or hanging washing. She is brown-haired and rosy, about Isabel’s own age though not so tall.

Since Mother’s death, Isabel has felt not lonely so much as lost, longing for a kindred spirit. Meg intrigues her, always on the verge of a smile, full of the mischief Isabel used to have herself.

Isabel is certain they’d become great friends if only Meg would stand still long enough to talk. It never occurs to her that Meg might feel otherwise. Instead, Meg goes out of her way to avoid her, offering only a curtsy and a mumbled yes or no.

This morning, Isabel decides to trick Meg into talking with questions that can’t be answered yes or no. She asks slyly where Meg lives. Meg says at once that she would not know it, miss, that it’s no place for gentlefolk. Isabel’s eyes widen, and she asks whether that means it’s dangerous. Meg gives her a knowing grin and says not for her, since she’s been brought up to take care of herself.

Isabel tries again, asking whether Meg is oldest or youngest, or in the middle, like her. Meg shrugs and bends over Hope, her expression unreadable, and says she couldn’t say. There’s such a crowd in their house that her own mother can’t keep track.

Isabel asks Meg whether she has three brothers, as Alice had mentioned. Alice said one of Meg’s brothers works at the Rose Playhouse. Meg doesn’t respond, and Isabel finds it hard to read her expression.

Isabel opens the clothespress and takes out her new kirtle, its crimson velvet smelling of lavender. She tugs it on over her head, saying through the muffling fabric that she has always longed to go to the playhouse. She asks whether Meg has ever been to one. She emerges breathless and blushing, realizing she’s been chattering to herself. Meg has already gone, taking Hope with her.

A twinge of distress creeps over Isabel. Perhaps Meg believes her too high and mighty, not realizing Isabel only wants to be friends. She resolves to prove her wrong, right then, by going down to the kitchen and helping wash Hope, as if they were equals.

Isabel runs downstairs, new leather shoes slipping on the polished wood. The hall is decked with garlands of evergreen, holly, mistletoe, and bay, their fragrance mingling with the smells of fruit and spices from the kitchen, where Joan has been cooking for days. Isabel arrives just as Joan is scolding Meg for burning the frumenty, the special wheat porridge Father loves.

Joan breaks off her tirade to lift a bubbling kettle from the fire. Quick as lightning, Meg pulls a hideous face behind her back, then spots Isabel and gasps.

Isabel grins from behind Joan’s broad back and pretends to lock her lips, to reassure Meg she won’t tell. Then she asks Joan, in her most innocent voice, whether she may help Meg bathe Hope. Joan says disapprovingly that’s not for her to say, little mistress. But Isabel had better not make a mess of her nice clean floor.

Isabel had hoped they might finally talk. But that’s impossible with Joan crashing pots and pans like a vengeful kitchen goddess. Meg shoots her a humorous look, and Isabel works hard not to laugh.

Meg empties the kettle into the tub and adds cold water until comfortably warm. Together, they lift Hope in and soap her waxy limbs. Hope, as ever, isn’t sure whether she likes being bathed, her lip quivering. So Isabel sings “Ride a Cockhorse,” her favorite rhyme, splashing her tummy in time.

Meg picks up a street tune, “Bonny Sweet Robin Is All My Joy.” Isabel joins in, spirits soaring at their voices blending. She thinks Meg feels it, too. Hope claps with delight and, once the song ends, makes hopeful singing sounds, wanting more.

Joan says suspiciously that this bath is taking a long time, that if the baby were made of sugar, she’d have melted by now. Then she turns her back to grate nutmeg furiously for a sweet custard she calls a doucet.

Isabel seizes her chance, leaning close to whisper that she’s glad Meg came to work at their house. Then she asks whether they might go for a walk one day, once Meg’s work is finished. Meg considers this a moment, then breaks into a shy smile. “I should like that, miss.”

Realizing she’s no longer the center of attention, Hope lets out a loud crowing sound and whacks the bathwater with both hands, sending soapy waves over the floor. She sings out in delight. Joan spins around to find Meg mopping the puddle, ordering her to dry that poor mite and get her dressed before she catches her death.

Just then, Aunt Elinor appears in the doorway, sniffing that the servants have work to do and Isabel really must not get under their feet in this way. Isabel apologizes meekly and hurries out before Aunt Elinor can think of some new reason to scold her.