Taking Wing

Isabel Steals a Boat

A few weeks pass after Sabine’s betrothal. The last false chill of winter grips London, snow that is not the pretty kind but the stinging kind that piles like dirty oatmeal in the gutters. In these weeks, Isabel and Meg have fallen into the habit of walking together whenever Meg’s chores allow. Meg regales her with colorful stories of her afternoons at the playhouse. Father has gone north on business, leaving Aunt Elinor and Sabine in charge of the household.

Then Master Hart falls ill with a fever. Aunt Elinor storms into the parlor with his letter, indignant that he cannot teach. She recalls that Isabel’s old tutor, Master Strype, never missed a single day in all his years with the family, right up until he died of smallpox.

When Isabel rises to go do her Greek translation anyway, Aunt Elinor scoffs, asking what use Greek and Latin will be to her once she is married. Isabel dares to say that perhaps she will not marry at all. Aunt Elinor snaps that all women must marry. Then she catches herself and adds, more quietly, that her own case was different. Her betrothed, Edward, died of the sweating sickness only seven days after their betrothal. Father was kind enough to take her into his household afterward, since not every woman is so fortunate.

Isabel presses further, asking whether women and girls have nothing at all in the world unless their male relatives provide it for them. Aunt Elinor flushes with fury. She accuses Isabel of trying her patience and blurting out nonsense. Then she warns her sharply that Sabine will be gone within a few months. She adds that Father will expect Isabel, not Sabine, to keep his linens starched and his household running smoothly. It has never before occurred to Isabel that this duty will fall to her. The realization leaves her breathless.

So there will be no Greek and Latin that day. Instead, Aunt Elinor drags Isabel through an hour of tedious accounts, adding and subtracting endless columns of figures. Then she takes her down to the scullery, where she demonstrates how to lift grease stains from a velvet doublet using castile soap and a feather. She explains that a mistress cannot properly oversee her servants unless she can do their work herself. Isabel obeys meekly while silently praying for Master Hart’s swift recovery.

The days that follow drag on in the same way, with Aunt Elinor forcing her to memorize which herbs best repel fleas, moths, and other household vermin until Isabel feels she might scream. The frustration seems mutual. One morning, Aunt Elinor abruptly complains of a headache, blames Isabel for trying her patience, and banishes her to the garden until the midday meal.

The walled garden feels no less confining than the house, its shrubs and paths as trim and orderly as Aunt Elinor’s own embroidery. Isabel paces it like a prisoner in the Tower of London. She decides she finally understands why poets refuse their heroines happy endings. It is because girls’ lives are so narrow in real life.

It happens to be the end of February, with a few days of false spring warming the sheltered garden, new buds and spikes of crocus showing everywhere, though Isabel barely notices them. She wonders what good beauty is if her days are meant to be spent indoors scrubbing at stains. And what good are hopes and dreams if a girl’s world is this small?

Meg comes out to empty a bucket of dirty water and gives a start at finding Isabel there looking so miserable. Isabel confesses that her whole life is about to change once Sabine marries and leaves. She adds that she will lose all hope of adventures, and of ever visiting the playhouse Meg had been vividly describing on their outdoor walks. Meg mentions wistfully that her brother, Kit, has told her she may visit him at the Rose Theatre anytime she likes.

The idea strikes Isabel at once. It is Cook’s afternoon off, so why shouldn’t the two of them slip away and go to the Rose together? Meg hesitates, saying she has work to do. But Isabel refuses to accept no for an answer, desperate for even the smallest taste of freedom on what might be her first and only adventure. She promises no one will ever know. Father is away, and Aunt Elinor and Sabine will be gone for hours at the dressmaker’s.

They still have no money for a ferry, which means walking across London Bridge. It’s a prospect Isabel dreads, because of the severed heads of executed criminals displayed there on spikes, and at Temple Bar, too, as a grim warning to others. Meg has no sympathy for such criminals. She calls them villains fit only to feed the crows and warns that all manner of scoundrels live near the bridge, caring for no one but themselves. Isabel pictures the birds swooping down on those sightless eyes and jokes that perhaps she could simply run very fast past them.

Laughing, Meg tells her that won’t be necessary at all. Her Uncle Alfred is a waterman, and they can simply borrow one of his boats and row themselves across. Overjoyed, Isabel throws her arms around her. But Meg protests, only half-serious, that embraces are meant for relatives and sweethearts, not for a maid like herself. Isabel insists that embraces are for friends, too. They agree that Meg will watch for her by the gate once Aunt Elinor and Sabine have left for their appointment.

That afternoon, once Meg finishes her chores, the two of them creep down to the jetty. The little boat has water pooling in its bottom. But Meg waves this off, insisting all boats leak a bit and that they can bail with a pail if needed. They cross the Thames so quickly that Isabel marvels she has never done this before. Then they tie up and make their way toward the playhouse under the spire of Saint Mary of the Ferry.

Southwark assaults Isabel’s senses at once. Bawdy singing spills from the taverns. Ramshackle houses crowd so closely together that she cannot tell where one ends and the next begins. Women in torn, gaudy finery shriek to each other across the stinking alleys as fiercely as seagulls. It feels like a foreign country.

Ragged children point and call out rude remarks about Isabel’s fine clothes. Two women nudge each other, mocking her as a sweet little rosebud before bursting into laughter through blackened teeth. A drunken man staggers up and slurs an offer of his protection, reaching for her arm. Meg jabs him hard in the chest and threatens him so fiercely that he mumbles an apology and stumbles off. Meg warns Isabel not to stare about her so, advising her to fix her eyes straight ahead so no one will trouble her.

At last the Rose Theatre comes into view, its flag fluttering over a great thatched roof. Isabel is dismayed to hear strong voices already booming from within, certain they have arrived too late. Meg murmurs something to a man at the door, who grins and lets them slip inside. The crush of so many people nearly sends Isabel fleeing. But Meg yanks her through the door. She finds herself standing on a floor of crunching hazelnut shells, briefly too astonished to speak.

Carved wooden galleries rise in tiers on either side, reserved for playgoers wealthy enough to pay extra for a dry seat and a good view. Isabel cannot help glancing curiously toward the uppermost balcony, which she has heard Aunt Elinor describe as a place where shameless women display themselves for men. But the garishly painted faces and half-exposed bosoms she glimpses there strike her as no more shocking than plenty she has seen in the street. Below, in the open yard, stand the groundlings. There are butchers in dirty aprons, porters, tailors, fishwives, poor scholars, and apprentice boys, hundreds of Londoners milling about, chatting, and buying hazelnuts or apples from the sellers.

What amazes Isabel most, though, is the playhouse’s beauty. It is decorated so skillfully that she could believe she stood in a fine palace among real marble pillars gilded with gold leaf, rather than painted wood. Meg beams at her expression, calling it as colorful as a peacock’s tail.

But the stench of so many bodies packed together soon makes Isabel feel faint. She wishes she had thought to bring her pomander. Noticing her turning pale, Meg produces an orange from her skirts and tells her to rub the peel on her wrists to mask the smell, a remedy that works at once. They push closer to the stage, Meg warning that otherwise they will see nothing but the groundlings’ dirty doublets. Isabel clings tightly to her hand, terrified of being separated in the crush.

When the stage finally comes into view, gooseflesh rises on Isabel’s skin. It is more magical than she ever imagined. The stage is painted with a blue heaven scattered with glittering suns, stars, and moons, and filled with actors striding about in brilliantly colored costumes. A young man nearby tells Meg that the play is by a new playwright named Will Shakespeare. Isabel excitedly recalls that Master Hart thinks very highly of him. A drumbeat sounds, and nothing else matters after that.

At one point a pigeon flutters in through the open roof, startling Isabel into looking up and noticing, with surprise, the real cloudy London sky above her head. She forgets entirely that the convincing heroine on stage is actually a boy in a wig and gown, since women are forbidden from acting. She boos and hisses along with everyone else when the heroine cruelly pretends not to recognize the humble shepherd who is secretly her own father.

Afterward, Meg leads Isabel backstage to the tiring house, so busy with actors changing costumes and resting between scenes that no one notices the girls slip in. Two young actors stage a mock swordfight nearby, their costumes looking far shabbier and dirtier up close than they had from the yard. Isabel spots Kit at once, sharing Meg’s same warm smile though taller and sturdier. He is perched on an upturned barrel, sewing gold braid onto a costume while trading friendly insults with the actor who played the shepherd.

Kit’s face lights up at the sight of his sister. He proudly shows the girls the playhouse’s treasured properties: suits of armor, a royal throne, a witch’s cauldron, a golden fleece, and a frighteningly convincing snake.

Kit points out a trapdoor hidden behind the painted heavens, explaining that an iron ball rolled up there creates thunder. Ropes and pulleys make a man appear to fly, a trick that looks like magic to the groundlings. But it actually requires three stagehands to manage, or four if the man being lifted happens to be Ned Scrivener. He adds that down in the cellar is a theatrical “hell” complete with a smoke machine and its own hidden trapdoor, so that ghosts and devils can burst dramatically up through the stage.

Meg finally insists they must leave before they are missed at home. But Isabel begs for just one moment on the stage itself. Meg relents. The two of them tiptoe out onto the boards, where the soles of Isabel’s feet seem to tingle as though some invisible magic still lingers there.

Isabel is filled with longing, imagining that if only girls were permitted to act, she could join the theatre exactly as Kit has and travel the countryside with a troupe of players once London’s playhouses close for the summer. She could thrill audiences with her performances, and perhaps even write plays of her own one day, just like Master Shakespeare. Meg has to tug urgently at Isabel’s sleeve to break the spell. She warns that the sun is nearly down and that she will be in terrible trouble if they do not run for the boat at once.

They gather their skirts and dash back through Southwark. Meg rows frantically across the darkening river in the unusually mild evening air. Suddenly music drifts across the water. A long, low barge glides past, lit by flaming torches, its carved prow gleaming with gold leaf and its canopy of gauzy fabric decorated with twinkling moons and stars.

Through the shimmering veil, Isabel glimpses lords and ladies in strange golden masks, one of them softly playing a lute. The whole sight feels so dreamlike that she thinks, at last, that she is having a real adventure. But as she stares, enchanted, she feels water sloshing around her feet.

The boat is filling fast. Isabel bails frantically with the pail while Meg drops her oars and begins scooping water out with her cupped hands, sobbing that they will both drown if Isabel doesn’t bail faster. Isabel screams for help toward the barge. But its passengers are lost in their own glittering world and never hear her. Just as she becomes certain they are about to go under for good, a steady splash of oars sounds nearby. A torch’s glow bobs toward them through the dark, and a rough voice calls across the water. It is Meg’s uncle, come to rescue them.

Without a single word of reproach, Meg’s uncle hauls the girls from the sinking boat, rows them to shore, and hurries them through the dark, silent streets to Isabel’s home. She keeps bracing herself for him to scold them over the loss of his boat. But once he sees them safely home, he simply bids them a gruff good night and disappears back into the darkness.

In a panic, Isabel dashes into the house without a proper word of thanks or farewell to Meg, thinking only that she must change before anyone sees her soaked clothes. Her pretty slippers are ruined beyond saving. So she pulls them off and squelches up the stairs in her wet stockings. But before she can reach her chamber door, an angry voice rings out behind her, freezing her in place. Aunt Elinor demands to know exactly where she has been.