The Memory of Midnight (10 page)

Hurt by the way his gaze slipped away from hers now, Nell pretended that she had changed too. When he was near, she laughed and slanted looks at the other young men under her lashes the way she
had seen Alice do. She tossed her head; she dimpled a smile. But the instant Tom appeared the air was charged with his presence, and no matter how fixedly she watched another, no matter how
determinedly she chattered, her skin twitched under his bright, blue gaze and her throat grew hot and thick. It was exhausting. She had to be continually alert in case Tom should happen to find her
looking as lost and lonely as she felt.

So today, instead of finding Tom as she used to, Nell was with Alice, who was also maidservant to the Harrisons. A pert wench a year or two older than Nell, Alice yearned for William Carter.
William was a journeyman to a bladesmith and Nell didn’t care overmuch for him. She didn’t like his swagger, the cock o’ the walk smirk that played around his lips, but he was
handsome, yes, she could see that.

Alice was determined to find him. William would not be lurking in any quiet corners. Where most people were, there William would be, surrounded by giggling maids and cocksure boys.

So Alice tugged Nell towards St Maurice’s churchyard where a cheering throng was gathered around a wrestling match. There was much betting going on, and as much attention on the money
changing hands as on the two men struggling to pin each other to the ground.

‘There he is!’ Alice pinched Nell’s arm as she spied William Carter through the crowd. ‘Let’s move over there where he can see us.’

Nell winced as a clodhopping countryman stood on her foot, and an elbow landed in her side, but they managed to squeeze their way to the front. By the time she got there, Nell’s hat was
askew and she was ruffled and red-faced, while Alice looked as if she might have strolled along an empty street. Her coif was in place, her skirts perfectly ordered, her smile demure.

The crowd whistled and jeered and catcalled while the wrestlers grunted. They were locked together, naked apart from their breeches, and Alice nudged Nell, momentarily distracted from William
Carter. Both wrestlers were young and lean and fit, and although one was much slighter than the other, they were so equally matched they hardly seemed to be moving at all.

And then the smaller wrestler flipped the larger one onto his back so elegantly that no one saw quite how it was done. There was a shout of approval from the crowd, and the victor raised a fist
in triumph. He turned round to acknowledge the applause with a blazing smile, and Nell sucked in a breath.

It was Tom, but Tom as she had never seen him before, and her mouth dried.

He had a bloody lip and a bruise on his cheek, but his body was sleek and muscled and sheened with sweat. Where had the thin boy she used to play with gone? In his place was a man, a stranger. A
stranger who set her heart slamming painfully against her ribs.

Alice followed Nell’s gaze. ‘That’s never
Tom
?’

‘Yes,’ Nell said, but there didn’t seem to be enough breath in her lungs, and the word came out as little more than a wheeze.

As if he had heard them, Tom’s gaze swung round, and when his eyes caught Nell’s, the triumph in his face faded with his smile, leaving an expression that Nell couldn’t
identify but that made her heart clench in her chest. She wanted to look away but she couldn’t. She wanted to give him a casual wave, to turn to Alice, pretend she didn’t really care,
but all she could do was look back at Tom through the crowd that was seething around them, eager for the next fight.

Alice looked from Nell to Tom and then back to Nell again. She smiled knowingly. ‘Oho! So that’s how it is,’ she said with a wink.

‘What? No! How what is?’ Flustered, Nell wrenched her eyes from Tom’s but Alice only smirked.

‘I see William,’ she said, and pointed back at the churchyard. ‘I will wait for you by the stile there at seven of the Minster clock. We can go back to the house
together.’ Reaching out, she straightened Nell’s hat. ‘Be good!’ she said.

‘Wait, Alice—’ Nell began, but Alice was already sauntering towards William Carter, and there seemed nothing to do but wait dumbly for Tom. He had grabbed his shirt and was
dragging it over his head as he pushed his way towards her, accepting congratulatory pats on his shoulder on his way through. And suddenly there he was, standing right in front of her, dabbing at
the blood on his split lip.

‘Nell,’ he said, and something inside her crumbled at the sound of her name in his mouth. She ran her tongue over her lips and swallowed the dryness in her throat.

‘Tom,’ she said, and then, realizing that no sound had come out, she cleared her throat and tried again. ‘Good day, Tom.’

A new pair of wrestlers were taking a turn, to renewed whistles and catcalls from the crowd, but Nell hardly heard them. It was as if the raucous crowd had receded behind an invisible curtain,
there but not really there, while she and Tom were isolated in a pool of sunlight where every sense was intensified. His hair was slick with sweat, his eyes dark with an expression that made her
blood pound. She could smell the grass crushed beneath her feet, feel the tickle of the ruffled linen at her throat, the padded roll at her waist.

Very carefully, she let out the breath she was holding and managed to look away from him.

‘Where did you learn to wrestle?’ she said at last.

A smile cracked Tom’s face as he slapped his hat back on his head. ‘One of the sailors on the
Little George
from Hull taught me some tricks. He said I’d need it if I
wanted to survive the ports, and he was right. They are no places for raw boys who can’t defend themselves.’

‘And it comes in useful now you are back in York too,’ she said, pleased to find that her breath was steadier now, her voice clearer. She nodded towards the ram that was tied up,
glowering, as it waited to be awarded to the victor of the wrestling. ‘Will you stay and fight for the prize?’

‘What would I do with a ram?’

‘You could sell it.’

‘True, but where would I keep it until I had negotiated a good price for it? I am a merchant trained,’ he reminded her, his eyes laughing. ‘I cannot just give it away to the
first who offers. I must make a good profit, and consider my costs in feeding it and housing it, and it is too nice a day to think about such things. Are you hungry?’

‘Hungry?’ Nell was thrown by the abrupt change of subject.

‘You used to be hungry all the time.’

She put up her chin, stung by the idea that he thought of her as a child still. ‘Perhaps I have changed.’

‘You have,’ he agreed. ‘I have noticed.’

She didn’t mean to, but somehow she was looking at him again, and the air evaporated around them as their gazes tangled once more, like sheep in a briar patch. Nell’s heart had
stopped plunging and had settled instead to a slow, steady thud that made her ears bang like the waits’ drum. What started out as a little silence stretched, then yawned alarmingly.

Nell swallowed and fiddled with the purse hanging from her girdle. This was silly. It was just Tom.

‘But it is a long time since I have eaten,’ she offered. ‘I
am
quite hungry.’

‘Then I will buy you a pie,’ said Tom. ‘Come.’ He touched her arm to steer her away, and she felt his fingers burn through her worsted sleeve, through her Holland smock,
and onto her bare skin.

The pie seller lifted the tray from his head as he saw them approach and hung it around his neck so that they could choose. Nell could smell browned butter and gravy. ‘Fresh from the
oven,’ the pie man promised and indeed the pies were hot. Nell and Tom had to juggle them between their fingers to cool them down before they could eat them.

Nell bit into the pastry at last, careless of the crumbs falling on her bodice, only to realize that the inside was still hot enough to burn her tongue. ‘Ah . . . ah . . . hot!’ she
gasped, laughing, and it helped to break the tension between them.

‘Serves you right for being greedy,’ said Tom, smiling.

‘Good, though,’ she mumbled through her mouthful.

‘Come on, let’s get away from the crowds.’

Eating their pies, they wandered up Monkgate towards the bridge. The calsey was broad and dusty between the posts and rails outside the houses there. A pig ambled along the gutter, snouting
through the refuse. The dung hill outside Mr May’s tenements stank in the warmth, but Nell hardly noticed. The stench was cancelled out by the freshness of the grass, the lush green growth
along the roadside, the smell of orchards and gardens. The thorn trees were heavy with blossom. They looked as if a white cloth had been thrown over them to dry in the sun.

At last, Nell thought, she and Tom could talk easily again. It was better now that they were walking side by side, and had their pies to occupy them. ‘Is it like this in Hamburg?’
she asked him.

A smile creased his eyes. ‘York is just a country town compared to the Hansa towns,’ he said.

He told her about his life there, about the things he had seen and the things he had learnt. When he talked about the journey, the snap and crack of the sails filling with wind, the creaking of
the timbers and the groan of the ropes, his face lit up. Some men clutched their stomachs the moment they set foot on a ship, but Tom was born, it seemed, to brace his feet against the swell of the
ocean and feel the deck roll beneath his feet.

‘I wish I could see the sea,’ Nell sighed as they stopped on the bridge and looked down into the Foss. She dropped the last bit of pastry into the river and the swans below set up a
clamour as they squabbled over the crumbs.

The Foss was not a pretty river. The water was goose-turd green and sluggish, the banks overgrown with bushes, but Nell had always had a fondness for it. She still remembered the hideaway she
and Tom had built on the riverbank when they were children. It was little more than a few branches piled together, but it had been their very own. Those days were gone, Nell reminded herself. The
hideaway had long rotted. Tom had followed the river down to Hull, across the sea, leaving her alone.

But now he had returned, and they were together once more. Just the two of them.

They had left the crowds behind. In the distance, the jeers and cheers could be heard faintly, but the busy cheeping of the birds was louder. Nell looked at the river, so
sleepy and still. So different from the sea Tom had crossed. ‘York must seem tame to you now,’ she said.

Tom looked around him as he brushed the crumbs from his fingers, then allowed his gaze to settle on Nell’s profile. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘But it is home. And you are
here.’

Warmth trembled in her stomach. ‘I did not think you had noticed me,’ she confessed.

‘I was shy,’ he said. ‘You have grown up, Nell. I hardly recognized you when I came back.’

A little huff of relief escaped her. ‘That is what I thought about you.’

They smiled at each other, and happiness rose in Nell’s chest, a rolling swell that pushed almost painfully against her ribs and into her throat so that for a moment she could not speak
with it. ‘Come on,’ said Tom, taking her hand just as he used to do when they were small. ‘Let’s go and find our old place.’

They followed the riverbank as it meandered up towards the mill. Their shelter had long gone, of course, but that meant they could argue about exactly where it had been. In the end they settled
on a little clearing where the grass was long and sweet, and dappled in the shade of the elders that crowded the bank. It felt natural to throw themselves down there, to pull off their shoes and
stockings so they could dangle their feet in the water. Nell pulled up her skirts and wriggled her toes in the cool river.

‘I haven’t done this for a long time.’ She looked at Tom who was leaning back on his hands, watching her. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she said.

‘And I you,’ he said, and the air between them sang with the truth of it, with the sudden, sharp knowledge of what was between them and what could be said at last.

There was a silence, but it was not an uncomfortable one. It shimmered with promise. No longer did Nell’s gaze have to slide away from Tom’s face. Instead she could look into his
blue, bright eyes and let anticipation flutter in her belly.

‘When I was on the ship or at the markets, I thought of you and how much you would enjoy it,’ Tom went on after a moment, easy now. ‘You would like the feel of the salt spray
stinging your cheeks and the sound of the waves against the hull. I know you would. You would have liked the quaysides at Hamburg. You might hear men talk in every language there.’

‘What do they talk of?’ Nell asked, not because she really cared, just to hear Tom’s voice, just to know that he was there, that he had missed her.

‘The merchants boast of their deals and the mariners boast of the voyages they have made. They say they have felt wind hot enough to melt men’s bones and seen many marvels. They say
they have been to the lands where peppers and cloves grow, far to the east, and that they have been west too, to the New World. Oh, they are full of it! I dare say not a twentieth man among them
has actually been, but they have such stories, and every time I listened, I thought of how much you would have liked to listen to them too.

‘And I would have liked it more if you had been with me,’ he added and his voice deepened until it was like a caress on Nell’s skin.

A water boatman paused as if listening, leaving tiny indents on the still water.

‘I thought about you,’ said Tom. ‘I bought you a gift.’

‘A gift?’ Nell sat up straighter. ‘For me?’

‘For you.’ He shifted onto one hip so that he could dig in the purse at his belt, and he drew out a plain gold ring set with a garnet that flashed a deep, dark red in the dappled
light.

Nell drew a long breath as she took it from him and slid it onto her finger, tipping her hand from side to side so that she could admire it while a feeling like sunshine on a May morning spilled
through her.

‘Like it?’ he asked, carefully casual.