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AT THE SIGN OF THE STAR
by Katherine
Sturtevant
Farrar Straus & Giroux (Juv)
ISBN: 0374304491
Age Level: Ages 9-12
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News From The Stars Almanac For The Year of Christ 1677
I was with Hester when we saw the comet in the night sky over London,
saw it before anyone spoke of it or wondered what it meant. It was
just past midnight on an April evening, a week or more past Easter.
My father had come home late from being in company, and I was anxious
to hear if the playwright John Dryden had been there, or perhaps Aphra
Behn, London's famous female playwright. Hester and I waited up in
the parlor, as we often did, thinking to have a mug of ale with him
while he shared his gossip. But he told me Dryden wasn't there, and
when I asked who was, he only smiled at me and winked, as said it
was none of my affair.
Then he went into the small parlor to reach manuscripts by candlelight,
and Hester and I went to our room. But before we undid our stays we
both decided we were not sleepy, and agreed that the spring air felt
fresh and fine. So it was that we ended up sitting out of doors on
the step, looking into the lane that ran behind the house. We sat
with the kitchen door help open so that we might dash within if a
cutthroat should come suddenly upon us. This was my own precaution.
Hester was careless of such matters, and said I ought to have been
named Prudence instead of Margaret. But I am no Puritan to bear such
a name as that, and am satisfied to be called instead after saints
and noblewomen. Margaret it my name, and I am called Meg.
"My father is not himself," I said to Hester as we sat peering into
the darkness. "What bothers him, do you think?"
"Why, nothing bothers him. Think how cheerful he was over the counter
this morning, when Mrs. Beckwith and her daughter came in."
"That means nothing. 'Tis part of his job, to laugh with those who
buy his books."
"He has been in fine humor," Hester observed.
"Too fine. He is almost foolish. He is trying to make up his mind
about something, and seeks to hide from me while he does it."
"About whether to publish Mr. Coles's Latin and English dictionary,
that is all."
"Nay, it is something bigger."
"You make too much of little things. Are your feelings hurt, that
he chose not to answer a girl's prying questions when bedtime was
long past?"
She meant to affront me, for the fun of it, so I stayed sulky and
silent to please her. We both gazed at the night. It was full dark,
for the moon had set, or had not yet risen, and we had no lantern
in our street. I counted three candles in the windows across the street
from us. I heard the rattle of a laundry tub from the house of Mr.
Grove, who lived nest door, for the laundress was beginning her night
work. Soon after I heard the bell of the watchman as he made his rounds.
There was the smell of rosemary nearby --- Cook grew it under the
window.
"With whom did he sup?" I wondered aloud after a little, but Hester
spoke at the same moment.
"Why, look at that, Meg," she said, and pointed upward with her long
arm.
I gazed up so mightily it made my eyes sting, and there saw a star
with a fiery wake, as though a chariot had flown through the dark
heavens and parted them behind. " 'Tis a comet," I said.
"Surely not."
"I'm certain of it. Sir Henry has described them to me, he saw one
five years ago."
"God protect us," Hester said in a grave voice. "What can it foretell
for us?"
I shook my head doubtfully.
"Perhaps another great fire will consume the City," she said.
"Perhaps the Plague will return," I offered.
"Or the Dutch will sail up the Thames once more and will murder us
in our beds."
"Or the drought will come and the crops will fail."
"Or the King may die without an heir."
It was my turn to think of a calamity, but I could think of none.
Instead I said, "Sir Henry says that we see the same stars as folk
in foreign lands. So they are seeing this selfsame comet. Perhaps
misfortune is meant for some other country. Perhaps it is the French
who will suffer. Or the Spanish. Perhaps it is the people in the colonies,
across the sea."
"I never heard such nonsense," Hester said. "The people in the colonies
can worry about their own misfortunes; we must worry about ours. A
comet is a sign from God that terrible things will befall us all unless
we mend our ways. And what is less likely that London Town mending
her ways?"
Hester was from the countryside in Surrey and had no very great opinion
of London. She was both cousin and maidservant, and in those months
lived with my father and me at the sign of the Star, where we sold
the books my father published, and other books as well. She was then
sixteen, four years older than I, and was married Thomas Whitcombe,
from her village, someday.
I stared up at the comet. I knew it was moving, though it seemed still
as stone. I wondered what it really meant, for London, and for me.
"London isn't so very bad," I said, not because I thought so but to
make Hester fire up. "What ways ought she to mend?"
"Ha!" was all Hester said.
"I'm sure I'm pious enough."
"You! Is that why you sit reading almanacs and plays, instead of sermons
and psalmbooks as you ought?"
This was an old argument --- old and comfortable as slippers. It was
I who taught Hester to read in the first place, but she made no more
use of it than to peer into Bibles and recipes books. She didn't mind,
though, when I sat on a stool in the kitchen and read stories to her
of Robin Hood or Long Meg, while she rolled out the dough for tarts.
"I don't mind a sermon, it it's nicely argued," I answered Hester.
"I'm sure God's grateful to you for that!"
"But I can't think why Father has taken to going to St. Botolph's
of late. Reverend Little is so dull!"
"I'm sure your father has his reasons."
"The choir's fine. Do you think it's the hymns he likes?"
"Ask him, if you want so much to know."
"I did, but he just laughed and said that I am curious as a cat. He's
not himself, Hester."
"This again," she answered.
We sat a few minutes more, and heard the watch call the hour.
"We'll go in now, or you'll get a chill," Hester said. Every once
in a while she thinks she's my mother instead of my servant. But she's
nothing like my mother was, nothing.
Excerpted from AT THE SIGN OF THE STAR © Copyright 2000 by Katherine
Sturtevant. Reprinted with permission from the publisher, Farrar Straus
& Giroux. All rights reserved. |
