The Memory of Midnight (38 page)

‘I’ve been under a lot of pressure at work.’ Martin again, his voice cool and calm. ‘You know how demanding my job is, Theresa. When the government wants a contract
fulfilled, I can hardly tell them to hold on, I need to go home and listen to my wife, who has nothing to do all day but spend the money I’m earning, can I?’

Temper boiled beneath Martin’s surface, and it took all Tess had not to cower as she had done so often in the past. The next moment he slid a smile over it, a magician’s hand
smoothing over the turmoil so adroitly that she wondered if she had glimpsed it at all.

‘But I’m here now,’ he said with one of those lightning-quick changes of mood that had so often wrong-footed her in the past. ‘And I’ve got something for you that
will make it all better.’

A familiar, queasy sense of impotence gripped Tess as he pulled an envelope from his blazer pocket and pushed it across the table towards her.

‘What is it?’

‘Open it.’

‘Martin—’

‘Darling,
please
.’ He smiled boyishly. ‘It’s for you – well, it’s for
us
.’ Leaning forward, he grasped her hands before she had a
chance to pull them away. ‘I know I haven’t been as attentive as I should have been of late, but you know I adore you. I
need
you.’ He tightened his grip as Tess made to
tug her hands free. ‘We were meant to be together – do you remember you said that on our honeymoon? You said nothing would ever keep us apart. Well, it won’t. I won’t let
it.’

Tess felt sick. ‘Martin,’ she tried again, but he wouldn’t let her finish.

‘Open the envelope, darling,’ he insisted.

She glanced around. The two women on the next table were eyeing her with open envy. Tess’s stomach pitched nervously. She couldn’t face the scene that Martin was more than capable of
creating.

Reluctantly, she nodded, and he released her hands. She opened the envelope and drew out a piece of paper, bond, thick and classy. Unfolding it with a sinking heart, she scanned the type. It was
an itinerary for a luxury trip to the Maldives. ‘What’s this?’

‘A second honeymoon!’ Martin laughed delightedly at her expression. ‘Three weeks in a luxury resort. Our own villa. Just the two of us. Will that be enough attention for
you?’

Tess raised her eyes from the paper to stare at him. His gaze was clear, bright, rinsed of understanding.

‘What about Oscar?’ she asked, numb with disbelief. It was all she could think of to say. Martin hadn’t mentioned his son once.

He waved the issue of childcare aside. ‘Your mother can look after him.’

He was serious, Tess thought in dawning horror. He really thought that she was playing games and holding out for him to spend money on her.

‘Well?’ Martin demanded, his face hardening at her lack of enthusiasm.

Tess dropped the itinerary on the table. Her hands ached savagely as she wrapped them around her coffee cup to raise it unsteadily to her lips while she tried to think of what she could say to
convince him that she was never going anywhere with him ever again.

Nell raised the goblet to her lips and sipped the wine. It was well spiced and welcome on this cold spring day. Around her was the hum of women. The chamber was crowded with
them and the air was stuffy and clogged with the scent of pomanders and wine and the faint milky smell of a new baby.

It was Cecily Fawcett’s lying-in – her first. Cecily was nineteen, the same age Nell had been when she had married Ralph. Her husband, George Fawcett, was a draper nearly as wealthy
as Ralph. His first wife had died a year since, and he had been quick to marry Cecily to be mother to his four children. Nell wondered what it was like for Cecily to be married to a man more than
twenty years her senior. George was fat with a small pursed mouth and mean eyes, but Nell had to admit that Cecily didn’t seem unhappy with her lot. She was sitting up in bed in a smock of
the finest cambric, simpering at all the attention.

Well might she look pleased with herself. She had given birth to a fine baby boy, named for his father, who was being passed round the women, who held him up and clucked approvingly. Nell had
had her turn. She had stroked little George’s soft cheek with her finger and thought of Hugh, four years in his grave. He would have been seven by then. He would have been a sturdy, laughing
boy.

Would Ralph have been kinder if his son had survived? Nell wondered that sometimes. Not that he had ever been an easy man, but since Hugh’s death, the darkness in him had intensified. To
their neighbours he was an important man, a godly man. They thought of him as sober and discreet. One day Ralph Maskewe would be Lord Mayor himself, they said, nodding knowledgeably. They
didn’t see the savagery in his eyes at times. They didn’t feel the malevolence that shimmered in the air around him. They didn’t sense the beast prowling beneath the surface.

But Nell did, and so did their daughter. Meg was eleven, a pretty child with Nell’s coppery brown hair and blue eyes that reminded Nell heartbreakingly of Tom. She was afraid of her
father.

Nell kept Meg out of Ralph’s way as much as she could. There had been no more babes, or at least none that had lived. Two miscarriages, and a son stillborn. Each had torn at Nell’s
heart. Ralph blamed her for their deaths, and for the fact that Meg was the only child who had survived, and she a girl.

Ralph despised females, of that Nell was sure. And yet lately she had caught him looking at their daughter in a way that chilled her to the core. She didn’t want to lose Meg, but she
wondered if her daughter would be safer in service with another family.

But how could she be sure that Meg would be safe elsewhere? The face some folk showed to the world was not always the true one. Nell knew that better than anyone.

If Ralph touched Meg, she would kill him.

Nell had quite decided on that. She stood in her still room often now and thought about how it could be done. The surest way would be to hide ratsbane in Ralph’s pottage if she could be
sure no one else would eat it. She would hang, no doubt, but Meg would be safe. That would be enough.

Or perhaps she shouldn’t wait. Perhaps she should kill him now? More and more often, Nell found herself considering the question quite seriously. She ought to have been horrified by how
calmly she could contemplate a crime so heinous, but her sense of what was right had been beaten out of her by her years at Ralph’s mercy. If anything happened to Nell, Meg would be powerless
against her father. Ice spilled through Nell’s veins at the thought. She could not risk it.

Ralph had to die.

But how?

Nell was prepared to die to save her daughter, but she would as soon not swing. Meg was only eleven. How could she trust anyone else to look after her?

Nell fretted at the problem as she sipped at her wine, only half-listening to the hum of conversation around her, until Margery Dixon leant forward beside her.

‘What is this I hear of Mistress Clitherow?’ she asked and her question dropped like a stone through the comfortable chatter of babies and servants and husbands.

There was a silence. The women looked at each other. Margaret Clitherow lived in the Shambles. It was not their neighbourhood, but they all knew of her now. She had reconciled to the old faith
and she would not recant. She refused to go to divine service, no matter how many times they imprisoned her. She cared nothing for the law, it seemed. In the streets, they whispered that she
concealed priests in her house, though none was ever found when it was searched. They found books and vestments and vessels used for Holy Mass, but of the priest there was no sign.

When Nell heard that, she thought about the closet in the Stonegate house, the one she had searched for that long-ago day. She wondered if it really existed, if it was ever used. Tom’s
mother had been a papist. Nell remembered that everybody knew, but nobody spoke of it. For the most part, folk kept their thoughts to themselves. It was wiser that way. Nell herself went to divine
service with Ralph, but since Hugh’s death, her faith had been a feeble thing, and just for show. She admired Margaret Clitherow for her bravery, for her refusal to do as she was bid, but she
knew better than to say so to Ralph. Nell herself would not risk so much for the God that took her small son.

Jane Harrison spoke at last. ‘They are saying she has refused to let her children be called to the court,’ she said, and beside her Isabel Dickinson nodded.

‘She will not make them give evidence against her.’

‘I heard she was to be pressed,’ another said and a hush fell on the room.

Pressed
. Nell’s hand went to her mouth. So it was true. Ralph had told her the same thing. His eyes had lit up when he described for her what would happen.

They would strip Mistress Clitherow naked. They would make her lie on a stone and they would place a door over her, and then they would put rock after rock on the door until her ribs cracked and
her heart burst.

Nell’s throat closed. She thought of how it was whenever Ralph had shut her in the chest, how the darkness and the horror had pressed down on her, how she couldn’t breathe.

For Margaret it would be real. That weight would not be fear. She would be trapped under the door and even if she changed her mind, how would she be able to speak? She would not be able to move
or speak or cry.

She would die for her faith.

They said there was a child in her womb. That would die too.

Nell was thinking about Margaret Clitherow as she walked back along Stonegate. She would put her child before her faith. She couldn’t imagine choosing to die. Even in the darkest hours
– her wedding night, Hugh’s death – there had been a light inside her that refused to go out.

She was prepared to hang for Meg, yes. But to choose to be pressed . . . Nell couldn’t conceive of it. To know that her chest would heave uselessly against the dark, and the horror would
crowd her head and suck the last breath from her lungs . . .

She would rather hang.

But even as she thought it, she shivered. A goose walking over her grave.

Or perhaps it was just the wind. It was a bright day, but it was only March and the breeze still nipped with the memory of winter. The air was sharp that day, slicing the street into blocks of
sunshine and shadow.

The sun was in Nell’s eyes as she stepped from the dimness of the passage into the yard, and she screwed them up against the dazzle. At first she couldn’t see. She could only sense
that there were two figures outside the door, figures who had turned to look at her, and she hesitated at the entrance of the passage, one hand shading her brow, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

‘Ah, wife.’ It was Ralph’s voice, with an undercurrent that made Nell tense even as she squinted into the light. ‘See who has come back to York to see us. Fresh off the
boat.’

Blinking, Nell took a step forward, and then her vision cleared like a sword falling and her heart stopped for a long moment before bounding into her throat. She clapped a hand there, afraid
that it would burst out of her body and reach for the man standing next to Ralph by the door.

It was the last person she had expected to see.

It was Tom.

Nell’s body reacted before her mind did. After all these years, still it was as if every part of her was dancing and twirling with joy at the sight of him. There was a
ringing in her head, a buzzing in her ears. For one terrible moment she was afraid she might faint.

He was older, of course, and he had a trim beard, but it was unmistakably Tom. He was taller, tougher, and his mouth was hard now. He was burnt brown by the sun and there were lines at the
corners of his eyes, but the blue, blue eyes were the same, alert and alive and able to reach right inside her and squeeze her heart.

It was
Tom
.

Nell’s toes flexed; her heel lifted. The muscles in her thigh bunched. Instinct was about to send her running across the yard to him, but at the last moment before she launched herself
forward, her eyes flickered to Ralph.

He was watching them both, his gaze flicking between them almost hungrily. He was enjoying this, she realized. He liked the idea that this meeting would be painful for her. He wanted her to lose
control and give him an excuse to punish her in front of Tom.

So she lowered her heel and lifted her chin. She could do nothing about the fierce joy surging through her, but she disguised it behind a cool smile as she walked towards Tom to offer a kiss of
welcome.

‘Welcome home, Tom,’ she said, amazed at the steadiness of her voice. For a fleeting moment, her eyes looked into his, but it was enough. The heat in his expression seared her, and
when his mouth touched hers in the accustomed kiss, everything in her leapt and trembled and her heart soared.

‘Nell,’ was all he said, but nothing more was needed. He knew and she knew. It was the way it always had been between them.

Ralph was disappointed that she didn’t appear more shaken, Nell could tell. His expression was peevish as he turned to Tom.

‘You should have sent word that you were coming, brother. We would have had a more seemly welcome for you.’

‘I hadn’t planned to come,’ said Tom. ‘But I was in Hull and I got talking to the keelboat captain who said he was coming here on the tide, and I found myself thinking of
you all. I jumped on before I had a chance to change my mind.’ He smiled easily. ‘I was ever one to look before I leap, as you know.’

‘Indeed,’ said Ralph with a thin smile. ‘But why have you stayed away so long?’ he asked, clapping Tom on the shoulder, although he must have known why. ‘We have
felt you had quite forgotten us.’

‘Forgotten you?’ Tom’s gaze rested on Nell’s face. ‘Never.’

Nell was trembling inside with the reaction she could not afford to let Ralph see. She hid her hands in her skirts and forced a smile.

‘Why are we standing outside in the cold? I am a poor hostess. You will be hungry if you have come straight from the staithe,’ she said to Tom, as she would to a stranger.
‘Husband, do you take your brother inside, and I will bring wine and cakes.’