Free The Quality of Mercy by Faye Kellerman Page A

her hand and kissed it.
    “I apologize, my gentle mother.”
    Sarah squeezed her daughter’s hand and said,
    “Grandmama shows no fretting over the news. She keeps her tears inside. Yet we both know she feels deeply. Raphael had been kind to her.”
    “May I spend my mourning in Grandmama’s room?”
    Sarah thought for a moment. “Father would never permit it. Guests will come to comfort you—”
    “They come to eat.”
    “Nonetheless, you must be visible and behave appropriately. Accept their platitudes of sorrow as if they meant something to you.”
    “Playact, aye?”
    Sarah sighed. “Yes,” she said. “Playact.”
    “At least may I pass my nights with her?”
    Her mother lowered her head and said, “Father prefers to keep you away—”
    “Father errs,” Rebecca interrupted. “Father thinks Grandmama’s an old harpy with a head full of mush. You know that’s not so.”
    “Rebecca, my obligations come first to my master, second to my mother and children. You must learn that else you’ll make a poor English gentlewoman and wife.”
    “I’d rather become not an English wife but an English spinster,” Rebecca blurted out. “I’ve no desire to marry!”
    She expected to hear reproachment from her mother. Instead Sarah patted her hand in sympathy.
    “Time will alter your desires,” she said.
    Rebecca noticed for the first time how her mother trembled from cold. She held open her cover for her, bade her to come inside. Sarah shook her head.
    “I must get back to my chambers. Father will be furious if he finds me sleeping with you. He thinks I’ve spoiled you beyond redemption.”
    “In sooth, his assessment is not far from wrong.”
    Sarah smiled. “Do try to sleep.”
    “Mother?”
    “Aye.”
    “Can you request of Father to allow me to sleep with Grandmama? I’d find it most comforting.”
    “I’ll pose the question to him. But I think you’ll mislike the response.”
    “Plead with him.”
    “I’ll do what I can, Becca.”
    Rebecca hesitated, then said, “I’m being selfish, Mother. Plead not with him. Ask him most noncommitally. Don’t risk his wrath for my sake.”
    Sarah kissed her daughter. “I’ll do what I can,” she repeated. “Should I call the chambermaid to rekindle the fire?”
    “Not necessary,” Rebecca said. “I’m very sleepy.”
    “Well then,” Sarah said. “Good night, Becca. Things will be better come the morning light.”
    Rebecca nodded, watched her mother’s shadow disappear from the room. Her mother, the hours of her life divvied up by Father and his work, by her and Ben, by Grandmama. But never a moment for herself. Sarah had once told her that she thought of herself as an extra arm for the members of her family. Rebecca also remembered when her mother had confided her reveries as a young girl — how one day she’d live in the clouds made of spun sugar, fly upon the back of a golden eagle and touch the sun. Where did those dreams go? Her mother — her heart in the sky, her muscles saddled with duty.
     
Chapter 6
     
    Shakespeare knew he was lost. He’d passed the same bridge-shaped rock an hour ago. Madness to come up North alone, trying to retrace a dead man’s last steps, chasing revenge as elusive as the wind. He should have insisted to Margaret that the trip would accomplish nothing. But something had propelled him forward, something more than a widow’s pleas.
    Past images. A costume and a scroll being shoved under his nose as he tended the horses of the playgoers. Harry slapping him on the back…
    Fiacre Nits, who plays the watchman in the second act, has just turned ill. Vomited all over the ground. Good hap that he wore not his costume
.
    Harry had turned nearly purple from laughter.
    You want me on stage?
was all that Shakespeare had been able to say.
    You’re the only one who’s sober enough to memorize the lines on such short notice
.
    More laughter. Whitman’s laughter. It played in Shakespeare’s head. A painful reminder,