The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories

  "I'm not asking a favour for myself," I told him coldly. "I ask justice for Somerset."

  The old man breathed heavily. Finally he said, "I have always called American slavery an odious institution."

  I waited.

  "But the fact is, its effects are woven through our whole social fabric. To rule that a master mayn't put his own slave on a ship—well, it could bring on ruin."

  "For whom?"

  "For everyone, Dido. Agriculture, trade, the economies of many nations ... the consequences ... if misunderstood, if too widely interpreted," he said, almost babbling, seizing my hand, "such a ruling could lead to fifteen thousand slaves casting off their yokes in the morning! If no man may own and control another in England, some will argue, how may he do so elsewhere?"

  I felt power like sugar in my mouth.

  "At the end of an honourable career, Dido," the old judge said, clinging to my fingers, "I might stand accused of having brought down chaos on us all."

  "Should I take my leave, then?" I asked him, at the end of a long silence. "Is it time for us to part?"

  His mouth moved, but he could not speak.

  "Are we not family, then, after all?"

  He wept. He nodded. He called for the carriage to take us home.

  Note

  Dido Bell, aka Dido Elizabeth Belle, aka Elizabeth Dido Lindsay, was born in England to an African slave woman who had been on a Spanish ship captured by Sir John Lindsay (one of Lord Mansfield's nephews) in the West Indies.

  My sources for "Dido " include the diary of Thomas Hutchinson (published 1886), who visited Kenwood on 29 August 1779. Zoffany's portrait of Dido and Lady Elizabeth Murray hangs in Scone Palace. I found much conflicting information on her in Gretchen Gerzina, Black England; James Shyllon, Black Slaves in Britain; Julius Bryant, The Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood; and Gene Adams, "Dido Elizabeth Belle: A Black Girl at Kenwood," Camden History Review 12 (1984).

  On 22 June 1772 Lord Mansfield finally delivered what became known as the Somerset Ruling, which said that no master was to be allowed to take a slave abroad by force. Many abolitionists interpreted it broadly to mean that slavery was now illegal in Britain, and thousands of slaves left their masters or demanded wages. But black people continued to be bought, sold, bunted, and kidnapped in England, and sometimes shipped back to the West Indies, for many decades to come. It is not clear what age Dido was in 1772, or whether she bad any influence on Mansfield's decision, but Thomas Hutchinson quoted a Jamaican planter who said of Somerset, "He will be set free, for Lord Mansfield keeps a Black in bis house which governs him and the whole family."

  Lindsay and Mansfield both left Dido substantial sums of money, and Mansfield took the precaution of confirming in his will that she was free. After his death she left Kenwood and probably married a Frenchman, because in 1794 she was listed in the family accounts at Hoare's Bank as Mrs. Dido Elizabeth Davinier.

  The Necessity of Burning

  Adrift in a boat made of butter on a sweet milk sea, she glimpses a castle on the horizon, a stately palace built of cheese and ornamented with curds of whey...

  Margery Starre wakes from a dream of fat. Her mouth is as dry as a sack. Late afternoon sun prises the shutters apart.

  For the first time in her forty-seven years it occurs to her not to get up. June fifteenth, a Saturday, a working day like any other and the Widow Starre was only having half an hour's shut-eye but now she's inclined to press her face back into her mattress and wait for the old straw to tickle her back to sleep. Let her neighbours on Bridge Street think she's fallen sick; let the Cam flow green and sluggish below her window; let this day, out of the too many days she has laboured through on this earth, wind into evening without her.

  She scratches a bite on her hip. No, it's not straw she can smell, it's trouble. There's been whispering at corners and proclamations against unlawful assemblies. The peasants' army has crossed the Thames, or so they say. Kent's risen against the poll tax, and Essex too; Bury St. Edmunds, St. Albans, and Norwich, even. Troubles on its way across the Fens like a flood of brine. She can hear it coming now outside her window in the hiss of geese being driven across the bridge after market, and the wooden soles of the goose maid, in the clop of a horse and the complaining wheels of the cart it pulls, in the banging of Ned Smith's hammer three houses up the hill, in the mewing of the new baby two floors above the room where Margery Starre lies, facedown, wishing this long afternoon over. Trouble has got into her own head, too. There's a treasonous rhyme going round; she picked it up this morning in the Market where she was buying a pig's trotter for her dinner:

  When Adam delved and Eve span,

  Who was then a gentleman?

  But she gets up and goes about the last business of the day, of course. The Widow Starre wouldn't have lasted forty-seven years and outlived most of the people she's ever known if she was in the habit of forgetting her business and opening her door to trouble.

  Five o'clock. She sips the ale and lets it linger on her tongue; faintly sour, or is her mouth still full of sleep? For supper she eats old cheese and onions off a trencher of dark stale bread. Licking her knife clean, she puts it back into the sheath that hangs from her girdle.

  Then Margery goes into the back room. Edgy, she checks everything twice. She rakes her fingers through the barley, oats, wheat, and malt, looking out for weevils or worms, peering into the barrels in the angular light. She sniffs at the pungent mash vat, checks the coolers and the rudders and the great copper kettle that's big enough for a woman to climb in and lie down. She's promised this batch of ale to the owner of the Pig and Parrot for Wednesday; a halfpenny a gallon she'll get for it.

  In her time, Margery Starre has made hay and cheese, built walls, and tended pigs. Back home in her village she used to run a tavern out of her own kitchen, but she wouldn't try that in this town. Such troublemakers as the scholars are, with their pointed shoes and their high laughter. They'll swap jokes in Latin and Greek all night, then throw the trestles in the river. The worst of it is, you can't say a thing against them because they're under the protection of the University. Town hates gown, and no wonder.

  It's not the King's Sheriff but the University's Chancellor who's the real master in this town. It's he who has whores arrested if they pick up scholar boys, and fines bakers for selling a loaf that's half an ounce too light. The University holds all liberties, all the privileges granted it by a long line of kings; it oversees the weights and measures, the selling of bread and meat and fish and wine and ale; it holds governance and punishment of all things. Last year, a brewstress from Castle Street was found guilty of selling weakened ale to the scholars. In Margery's village you'd be fined sixpence for that, if anything, but the woman shouted out in court that her accusers were a pack of liars, and Chancellor said it was high time to set an example to these grasping townsfolk. He had her ducked at the stool by the bridge, not five yards from this house. The woman survived, but took a spluttering cough that killed her by Christmas. Margery passes the Stool every day; she tries not to look into the water, or imagine the press of it in her lungs, the brief green taste of death. It reminds her of one of the rules she holds to: Never cross a cleric.

  But what do they do all day, you may ask, these scholars and their masters who lord it over those who feed and clothe them? What's their honest work, their valuable trade? Books, that's all! It makes Margery laugh. These clerics spend all day reading books and copying them out onto paper, and what's that but dried mash of dirty old rags or straw? Some books are the size of your palm, others the width of your table, all with leather covers as hard as wood. Some are psalters and some are hour-books and some are romances and Margery's damned if she knows the difference. In her youth, at least a man who was reading muttered the words aloud, but this sinister new fashion for reading with eyes alone means a bystander can't even tell if it's scripture or fable! All Margery knows is, this strange town is built on paper, and it prizes greasy old books above wool or wine or roasted goose
.

  What good ever came out of a book? she wonders sometimes. She doesn't need to read them to know what's in them; she's heard enough. Tales of lickerish widows who force men to lie with them; tales of clever young men who trick girls into lying with them; whole books full of wicked wives, like Eve who let the snake into Paradise. No wonder, Margery reckons, seeing as it's men who write the books.

  Now she comes to think of it, there's an anchoress down at Norwich who lives bricked up in a cellar and has visions and has set them down in a book. Sometimes, this woman claims, the devil comes and seizes her by the throat with his big stinking paws. So that's where book-learning gets you!

  No, Margery Starre is better off keeping to herself and making her ale. Brewing has always been women's business, and folk will always want the stuff, that's one sure thing. No one can live without ale, whatever may happen; whatever may overtake the land. Ale for bridals and wakes, for dinner and breakfast, for thirst and misery, in times of merriment and disaster alike.

  But trouble hangs like mould on the air: she can smell it. Where will the ruckus begin, when it begins, as surely it must? On Peas Hill or Findsilver Lane or Butchers Row, among the clinking weights at the Tolbooth, in the gutters of Foul Lane under the college privies? In St. Rhadegund's Convent, where the dozen remaining nuns sing like swans and nibble their crusts to make them last? In the stew run by the Weavers Guild, where the whores lie counting the cracks in the ceiling? Between the pursued mouths of the fish caught in the tangled river, in the taut bowstrings of the archers always practising on the Green?

  Margery Starre jumps at the sound of a bell. Then another, louder. That must be St. Benet's, calling the boys to their last lesson of the day. Margery looked in the door of St. Benet's once, as she was passing with a great jar of honey on her head. The scholars knelt there on rushes, taking words down on green wax tablets—puny half-sized lads, some of them—while the Master read aloud in Latin from a long scroll unwinding from a wooden pin like a distaff. Vellum, that was, Margery knows that much; the skin of a newborn kid or lamb, stretched and polished thin till you'd never know it was hide. Some books are made of vellum instead of paper, stiff buckled sheets of it gone dark at the edges from handling, with little pictures in blue and scarlet and gold. Not that she saw any pictures that day, because the Master saw her looking in, and he barked a word at one of the boys, who ran and shut the door in her face. It's odd, she thinks now, that a woman can sell a field or pay a fine as well as any man, but she can't walk in the door of a college without spreading havoc.

  No, those aren't Benet's bells, she realises; they're lower. Besides, she's seen no young scholars out this evening, and there's another sign of trouble. Most Saturdays they're to be found hanging round Fitzbilly's pie shop, with their catapults and scornful looks. The older ones roam the streets in packs of three score or more, and nobody can bar their way. Scholars will never be townsfolk; they're only here to study their seven arts for seven years, serving their time before they go out into the world as priests or physicians, lawyers or treasurers. To them, this town is no more than an inn on their road.

  Could these be the bells of Great St. Mary's she's hearing? But those never toll except for Sunday Mass. Besides, they've gone on too long. And now that Margery lets herself listen, there are feet thudding by as fast as goats, and the odd shout on the warm evening air.

  The Widow Starre stands in her doorway, hands braced against the jamb. It's started, then. The bells of Great St. Mary's must be the signal. Her heart joins in, clanging against her ribs. Cambridge is rising.

  "Our time is come!"

  Midnight on Saturday, and the old rabble-rouser howls out his message from where he stands on the keystone of the bridge. His beard is white and stringy.

  "Ye are folk in bondage as were the Israelites in Egypt of old. And now comes this new poll tax, this cruel stone laid on the head of every person in England, which to the rich man is felt as a mere pebble, but as for the bondsman, it weighs him down and bends his neck. This is too much to bear!"

  Behind her barred shutters, the Widow Starre covers her head and tries not to listen.

  "All men be made equal in the beginning, come of one father Adam and one mother Eve," roars the rabble-rouser almost joyfully. "Whereby then can these gentlemen say they be greater than we? No more will the honest folk of Cambridge squirm under the boot of this University! No more shall ye sweat your days to pay these foul taxes to the Kings cruel ministers! For too long," he bawls, his voice cracking, "these lords and bishops and clerics have gone clad in camlet and ermine, while ye wear but coarse cloth. For too long have they feasted on wine and spices and white bread, while ye be choking on rye and husks and plain water!"

  Margery sits in the dark. She blew out her lantern hours ago, for fear of it's being noticed. There's not much plain water getting drunk tonight. She can hear the shrieks and splashes of men fighting in the river. The Mayor has issued a Proclamation of Revolt, or so they say. The College of Corpus Christi—landlord to half the town, including Margery—has been sacked. Not an hour ago, she saw three girls stagger up the street, bearing between them an oak door with the College's crest on it. Margery felt a tiny flicker of excitement at that news, but still, it's a dreadful thing, and one of the mob lies dead of his wounds, and in time, she's sure, the tenants will all pay for the damage ten times over in higher rents. Also a tax collector's son is holed up in the little church of St. Giles, claiming sanctuary from the mob who tried to cut his head off in the graveyard. Rebellion passes from street to street like a burning sickness, like a plague, like the Black Death that ate through England the year Margery turned twelve. Terrible!

  She's done nothing, and no one will be able to say she has, afterwards. She's stayed home and waited for it all to be over. Do her neighbours not know what happens to rebels and rioters, to all who spit in the face of the King's law or the Church's? What kinds of fools are they, that they'd bring down ruin on themselves?

  "Servitude to lord or cleric be against the will of God," bawls the rabble-rouser, "for why else would he have made us all the same on the first naked day, formed of the same dust? So throw down this yoke, men of Cambridge, and seize your liberty!"

  Back in her village, Margery was a bondswoman, like half her neighbours, and never thought to feel any shame about it. She worked two days a week for the lord and paid all her taxes, whether to the lord or the priest: she paid the plough-alms and the church-tithe and the tallage, the merchet when she married Roger Starre, and the soul-scot when their child died, and again the best cow as a death-duty when Roger was taken too, by a gripping of the bowels, and then the chevage fine for leaving the estate, the day she set off for Cambridge. She paid all her dues and didn't give any trouble.

  She's never regretted moving to the big town, though. Once she'd lived here, breathing free air, for a year and a day, she knew she was a bondswoman no more. There are still taxes to pay, but she works for no master but herself. This is a better life for a widow; she has fresh rushes on the floor, two windows with shutters on them, and a hearth of stone. She eats barley bread instead of pottage; she's better off than she ever expected to be. Why would she be ungrateful? Why would she risk losing all she's won for herself over the years?

  The rabble-rouser is waving a torch now, scattering sparks on the hot night. "Men and women of Cambridge, your grievances are sore! Who is this puffed-up Chancellor, that ye should pay him a fee or a fine for every step ye take? The same man who forbids all tournaments and frolicks for five miles around the town, in case the noise might cause nuisance to his scholars at their book-reading! Tell me, who are these masters and scholars, these lily-handed churchmen and bookmen who never worked a day in their lives?"

  It's no good defying them, Margery could tell this stranger. Question a cleric, and he'll find laws and precedents enough in his books to make a fool of you. Attack one, and his whole band of brothers-in-the-cloth will back him. In Margery's village, in her mother's time, there was
a girl who was found to have falsely charged a rape against the priest, and the church court set her a dreadful penance, that she was to walk barefoot to Rome and back again. She set off all right—the whole village watched her go—but she never came back, Margery remembers.

  "Widow Starre!" Its her neighbour, Philbert Carrier, from across the way, gone sixty years old. His tunic is all askew. "Come down to Market Square. The bonfire's started!" He grasps her by the hand.

  She shakes him off like a burr.

  "Come now."

  "You're looters and rioters and fools," she tells him in an unsteady voice. "Are you not afraid of the Sheriff's men?"

  His grin is wide and toothless. "They can't clap us all in the gaol, can they? It wouldn't hold a tenth of the town!"

  And with that he's gone, stumbling across the Bridge with the rest of them.

  A little later comes the sound of men's feet stamping in time to the rhyme they shout out:

  Those who can't eat will meet.

  Those who can't make will break.

  Those who can't read will lead.

  Those who can't write will fight.

  Margery doesn't go to her bed. She sits bent over on her stool, almost dozing sometimes until she jerks awake with a little choking sound. She holds her eyes shut and waits for the night to be over.

  The Widow Starre wakes in a silent town. She puts her head out her door onto Bridge Street, and it's as if all the townsfolk have run away in the night. She crumbles an oat cake in ale for breakfast but can't make herself swallow it.

  She knows she's safer in than out, but she can't bear to stay at home any longer. The bridge is half smashed; she has to edge along the rim of it, testing each board with her foot. Below her the weed-choked river smells of ferment. Something drifts by, and she thinks it's a body, till she recognizes it as a child's coat.