At the Sign of the Star by Katherine Sturtevant

Author:Katherine Sturtevant
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466895195
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

SIR PATIENT FANCY

1

The day after I told my father of my decision I sent our boy Godfrey to the Gosse house with a two-word message to Anne: I stay. And the truth of those two words gave me more satisfaction than I had imagined that I could feel at the prospect of staying on in my stepmother’s household.

Susannah was pleased, too, that I had chosen to stay in London, which did not surprise me. She knew I would be a great help to her when her babies began arriving, at least, if they lived. And she may have thought that it meant that I had chosen at last to love her. That I could not do. But there were moments I almost loved her without choosing it.

One of those was the day she told my father she meant to invite the Gosse family for Christmas.

Before my mother died, Christmastide was always marvellous at our house, with the most delicious treats, the brightest lights, the most fragrant green boughs brought from the countryside to decorate the hearth, the sweetest carols sung. I remember well the last Christmas she lived, how my mother labored late into the night baking mince pies, and how I woke her early the next morning because I could not sleep for excitement. She cuffed me for waking her, and began to scold, then suddenly she hugged me instead, and bade me be merry all the day. And I was, for she was carrying then, and I hoped for a little brother or sister when the spring came.

But instead the spring brought only death, and since that time my father would not celebrate Christmas at home. We never dressed the house, nor made mince pies, nor asked company in. Instead we went always to someone else’s house, and that someone was often a man, and childless. Last Christmas we had gone to the house of Titus Woods, my father’s uncle. He spent the day telling me how lucky I was to have been born in the reign of Charles II, and how he himself had grown up under Puritan rule, and was not allowed to have Christmas. Then he told me of all his neighbors, and which ones were Puritans in their hearts, though he had seen them that morning at St. Mary-le-Bow. At last, however, he fell to talking of bowls with my father, and I was allowed to help the servants clear the table. I almost wished we had stayed at home.

So when Susannah said at supper one evening that she would ask the Gosse family for Christmas Day, I looked up from my plate to see what my father might say.

“’Tis an enormous bother to have guests for Christmas,” he answered her, hardly pausing between his bites of roast mutton.

“Why, you need not worry about the bother, you have a wife now.”

“Meg and I have got out of the habit of it. I believe my uncle may ask us to dine.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Susannah said briskly.

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