The Cursed Wife

by Pamela Hartshorne

  ‘I wish you would ask him to rid you of Mistress Parker,’ Cecily said, too pertly. ‘She is hateful!’

  ‘Or my French master.’

  ‘Or that tedious Goodwife Blake, always fretting about her child and sending for you at the most inconvenient times.’

  ‘Hush,’ I broke in firmly. ‘You speak of a sin.’

  These children, they think murder is a laughing matter. They know nothing.

  Now I take the shell from Jacopo and try not to notice how strong and quick his hands are. Hands that might twist a garrotte or spin a knife.

  I turn the shell carefully. It is a fragile thing, much lighter than I expected, curved like a snail’s shell but twenty times the size, with curious red stripes as it curls into itself. ‘It is beautiful,’ I say.

  ‘Hold it to your ear, my lady,’ Jacopo says. ‘You will hear the sea.’

  I tilt my head and cover my ear with the shell. A gentle rushing, roaring sound fills my head and I close my eyes and imagine the sea that I have never seen. But then through the rushing comes the sly echo of the tune Sarah was humming earlier – Oh, John, come kiss me – and my eyes snap open as my heart jolts in horror. I want to throw the shell away from me, but instead I force a smile.

  ‘Thank you, Jacopo.’

  It is a poor meal that we sit down to when Gabriel and Richard emerge at last with the satisfied air of business well done. It must have been a profitable trip. I view the table with dissatisfaction. Poor little Sarah is still nervous and clumsy in the kitchen and Amy too preoccupied with her toothache to be any help at all. Between mending the petticoat and making sure that Sarah swept up all the shards of the broken jug, I boiled pigeons with cinnamon and ginger. There was some veal pie left over from the day before, but Sarah let the cream for a custard curdle and the tart I made with some wrinkled apples burned at the edges while she was attempting to comfort Amy.

  The men do not seem to notice. They eat heartily as they compare memories of dipping their hands into barrels of peppercorns and cloves, of clinging to masts as their ships bucked and reeled through monstrous storms, of bargains struck and risks taken and profits made. I listen, rubbing the scar on my hand absently as they swap stories spun on distant quaysides: cities paved with gold, savages gorgeously attired, monstrous snakes and strange fruits. Tom listens wide-eyed.

  Gabriel had three sons when I married him. John, the eldest, is lately returned from his apprenticeship in Hamburg. I sent him away a boy, and he has returned a man, his shoulders broader, his neck thicker. I am biased, I know, but he is a fine-looking fellow, with Gabriel’s steady eyes, an open face and a good-humoured mouth. Cecily adores him. When he first returned she was shy of him, after four years apart, but now everything is ‘John says’ or ‘John thinks’. Gabriel pretends to be sad. ‘It used to be “Pappa says”,’ he teases her. ‘But you do not care what your pappa thinks now, do you, sweetheart?’

  Twelve years ago, John was nine and Tom only three. And between them, quiet Nicholas, so like his father and closest to my heart. When he died of an infected wound at fourteen, I grieved for him as if he had been my own son. Now Tom is older than Nick was then, and wild to start his own apprenticeship in Hamburg. It seems no time at all since he was a small boy, sturdy and tousle-haired, trailing home from school with his shirt billowing out of his muddied hose, his laces trailing and his cap askew. I tell Gabriel that Tom is too young still to go away, but he is fifteen and a child no longer. He is ready to leap.

  I will miss him. There will only be Cecily left a child, and at thirteen already, it will not be long until she, too, will leave. I can hardly bear to think of her married. I look at her beauty and her innocence, and I shudder to remember her father. We must choose a husband for her with care.

  But not yet.

  I pick fretfully at a piece of pie. Oh, I am all raw edges today, scratching against the slightest thing: the scrape of stools over the tiles, the clunk as Sarah sets the pie too heavily on the table. I put the seashell on the chest to keep it safe, and it catches irritatingly at the corner of my eye. Every time it does, I seem to hear that whispery echo of the tune pressing like a cold knife at the back of my neck and the scar on my hand twitches and throbs.

  When the men have out-marvelled each other at last, Gabriel notices Amy, who is slumped wanly on a stool at the end of the table, pressing a linen clout to her cheek.

  ‘What is wrong with Amy?’ he asks, picking out a choice piece of pigeon and offering it to Richard.

  ‘She has the toothache, Pappa,’ Cecily tells him. ‘Mamma says she must go to the barber surgeon, but Amy will not go.’

  ‘She is afraid,’ I say, but Gabriel only nods.

  ‘I had a tooth drawn once,’ he tells Amy. ‘I was afraid too.’

  ‘I would rather sail into waves twenty yards high than let the barber surgeon at my mouth,’ Richard adds, ignoring my warning frown. ‘Jacopo once had to tie me down and take out a tooth for me himself, did you not, Jacopo?’

  ‘Aye, and you cursed me for it up and down the seven seas, cap’n.’

  ‘I’ll pull Amy’s tooth out for her,’ offers Tom, his mouth full of bread. ‘We can tie a thread around her tooth and tie it to an open door, and then slam it closed very quickly and the tooth will be out before she can say barber surgeon,’ he suggests. ‘Why pay for his services?’

  ‘You will do no such thing,’ I say firmly as Cecily and Sarah squeak, round-eyed with horror, and Amy whimpers.

  ‘Fear not, Amy.’ John leans forward with a kind smile. ‘I will be your knight errant and keep Tom away from you.’

  Amy only manages a wan smile. Ordinarily she would have been blushing with pleasure at John’s attention. Her tooth must be hurting.

  ‘I will give her something for the pain,’ I say, ‘and if the tooth be not better tomorrow, I will ask the barber to come whether she wills it or no.’

  But when Richard and Jacopo have taken their leave and I go to my still room, I find only a few dusty seeds of poppy head in the drawer of the little cabinet where I keep my roots, seeds and herbs. In spite of it being daylight still, I have sent Amy to bed but she will not sleep without a syrup of poppy, and there is not enough here to make it. I sigh, pushing the drawer closed with too much force. I wish I could go back to bed and start this day anew.

  Foolishly, I find myself blaming Sarah. If she had not been humming that cursed tune, the drawer would be full of poppy, I decide. Or Amy would have agreed to go to the barber straight away, and the dinner would not have been such a hotchpotch. It might even have stopped raining by now.

  I am absurd, I know.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Gabriel asks when he sees me coming down the stairs with my heavy cloak over my arm.

  ‘To Sopers Lane. There is a woman there who sells seeds and roots, and I need more poppy.’

  He cocks his head towards the door. Outside, the rain can be heard crashing still onto the roof and splashing from the eaves. ‘In this?’

  ‘Amy will not sleep otherwise.’

  ‘Send Sarah.’

  ‘You know what Sarah is like. Poor girl, she is so lost still. She will bring home the wrong thing, or trip over the gutter and spill it.’ I shake out the cloak and throw it around my shoulders.

  ‘At least take her with you.’

  ‘There is no point in two of us getting wet, and I am respectable enough to walk out alone, am I not?’

  Gabriel sighs and helps settle the cloak into position. ‘You are a stubborn woman, my lady.’

  ‘Amy is in pain,’ I say. ‘And it is my fault that I did not check my cabinet.’

  A faint smile plays around my husband’s mouth as he sets his hands on my shoulders. ‘You may be stubborn, but you are a good woman, wife.’

  Familiar guilt rolls queasily in my stomach. He does not know what I am, and I dare not tell him. He is a decent man. He may not be a gentleman but he believes in compassion and kindness, in fairness and in truth.

  And truth is t
he rub.

  My eyes slide painfully away from his. His hands are warm and solid through the cloak. I stare at his collar instead, to where the pulse beats steadily in his throat. The temptation to lean against him, to rest my cheek against his chest is overpowering, but if I succumb, I might tell him everything. Sometimes the truth festers like pus in a boil, and I think it would be a relief to burst it and let the poison out, but I cannot take that risk, not for Cecily, not for me.

  So I keep myself laced tight, I wear my guards high. Only at night, lying in the dark with my husband, do I let my passion for him loose. The rest of the time I keep my secret safe and I make myself the wife he wanted, a gentlewoman who has brought him status, a woman of good repute, respected in the neighbourhood. I am modest, I am demure. I do not laugh too loudly or berate my servants. My neighbours ask me for advice, for recipes and remedies, they ask me to attend them in childbed. I am blessed.

  But they do not know the truth.

  They do not know what I did.

  I pull the cloak over my head to hide my face and Gabriel opens the door for me, grimacing at the scene outside with the rain coursing from the eaves and splashing into great puddles on the paving. The mid-part of the street is running like a ditch, the gutters full of it, brown and churning.

  ‘We should clear the grate,’ I say, and he is standing so close that I feel his body shake with laughter.

  ‘My practical wife,’ he says, and he lets his hand rest for a moment on my back. ‘Are you sure you want to go right now?’

  His question makes me hesitate, and I falter, my stomach swooping with the sudden sense that I am poised on the brink of something terrible, with the conviction that if I step outside the shelter of the house, there will be no paving beneath the puddles and that I will find myself twisting and tumbling into a terrible void.

  I don’t want to go, no. But how can I say that now? I shake the strange sense of foreboding aside. ‘I will be back soon,’ I say as I tug the cloak closer around my face, put down my head and step out into the rain alone.

  And I forget that I am cursed.

  Chapter Two

  Cat

  London, Cheapside, March 1590

  I am sulking, huddled under the eaves of a goldsmith’s shop while I wait for the rain to stop, but it still falls as if a solid sheet hanging from the jetties above, crashing and splashing into the street. It is raining so hard that I can barely see the great conduit opposite, or the cross with the poor Blessed Virgin, her arms broken and her son wrest from her knees, held in place with some old ropes. I feel like that too, as if a few lazy ropes are all that is holding me together.

  When I think back to Steeple Tew and how the countryfolk would bob and doff their caps when Pappa took me out riding, I can hardly believe that I am here, like this. I would sit perched in front of his saddle and wave back at the countryfolk like our Lady Queen herself, and Pappa would roar with laughter. ‘Is she not the fairest lady you ever saw, and the most gracious?’ he would demand. ‘I will marry her to a nobleman at least, you mark my words. Do you hear that, Kitten? Would you like to marry a great man and live in a fine house with all the gowns and jewels your heart desires?’

  ‘Oh yes, Pappa,’ I used to lisp. ‘I should like that above all things.’

  What a ninny.

  Look at me now, my shoulders hunched against the cold. My gown is of wrought velvet, my kirtle embroidered with flowers, but both are threadbare now. I have no guards for my skirts and they drag at me with their sodden weight. My shoes are ruined and my feet so cold I can barely feel them. I wish I could not remember what it is to be warm, but I do, and the memory is piercing: how once I would hand over my cloak without registering who would take it, how easily I would move towards the fire and hold out one slippered foot after another to it, letting the delicious heat warm me from my toes.

  Once all that had been mine. Now there is no fire, no servant. Just Anthony, with his empty promises. We live on the turn of a card, the throw of a dice. When he wins, he spends it on wine; when he loses, we drink ale, but we always drink. If we can scrounge a pie or a piece of bread and cheese, we count ourselves lucky. When I think of the feasts my mother would throw, the banqueting house she built to impress the neighbours, my throat burns and sometimes, yes, I weep hot tears.

  Oh, I am weeping now . . . but it might just be the rain. I dare say it is. I knuckle the wetness from my cheeks and remember how pleased I was to return to England. I truly thought it would all be better once we were back.

  Yes, I am a ninny still.

  It seemed so easy when we boarded the ship at Calais. Twelve years we lived in France, moving from city to city as the whim took us. I eked out my jewels, and for much of the time Anthony earned plenty playing cards. We lived in style when we could, moved on when we could not, but still, we were gentlefolk. We had servants.

  But then the last pearl was sold, and the last maid ran away when she saw that she would not be paid. How disloyal servants are nowadays! They would not have treated Pappa so. And Anthony’s luck with the cards turned too, the way it does. He killed another gentleman in a drunken brawl over dice, and so we ran.

  We were sure we would have better luck in London. All Anthony needed was a run of good cards and we would be in funds again. We could make our way to court, he said, his eyes alight with dreams.

  Hah! I am not the only ninny.

  We have been in London near three months now, and there is no sign of luck, just a succession of ever more squalid lodgings and the dull ache of hunger in our bellies.

  It was Anthony’s idea to come to Cheapside for a change. This is where the wealthy come, he said. In a tavern in one of the streets to the side, there would be gentlemen aplenty who would gamble away their gold for the pleasure of shaking the dice in their hands, or the sons of fat citizens he could fleece at cards, he was not proud. Since we arrived from France, we had been frequenting inns in the wrong part of the city. Now our luck would change.

  I did not want to come here today, but Anthony insisted. He said there was nothing else to do in the godforsaken rain, and it is not as if there is any pleasure to be had in staying in the wretched room that we have rented with our few remaining coins. The rain comes in through a hole in the roof and drops onto the bare boards right next to the mean mattress. When I complained to the widow who owns the house – if you can call such a hovel a house – she curled her lip at me and said that I should be grateful that the likes of me had a room at all. She said she would be glad to avoid the pair of us if we did not care for it.

  How is it that a common goodwife is able to look down her nose at me?

  Anthony was impatient with me. ‘I will make us a fortune today,’ he said. ‘Then you can be a lady again and turn up your nose at any goodwife you choose, but until then, Cat, you must hold your tongue. I am weary of being moved on.’

  He is weary of it? I am wearier, I swear. Weary of wretched lodgings and stinking taverns where I must smile and lure wealthy gentlemen to sit beside me. Anthony is all charm and good cheer and the men are more interested in cards than in me in the end. They fondle my knee absently and call for more wine and, if we are lucky, for food, but what they really want to do is to play. So I sit and I smile while the fiddlers scrape away in a corner and the slurred voices rise in song, and if I have to listen to ‘Rogero’ or ‘Tom Tyler’ or ‘Oh, John, Come Kiss Me Now’ one more time, I will scream.

  I stare miserably out at the rain. I told Anthony there would be little luck to be had in such weather, but he would not listen. Only the hardiest or the most desperate of folk are out today.

  Folk like me.

  And a woman who does not look desperate at all. My gaze sharpens, my interest caught. She keeps her eyes lowered as a modest woman should and she does not draw attention to herself, but she walks as if she has a right to be here. No busybody will summon the constable to move her on, no men will leer and thrust their hips suggestively at her. She will not be jeered at or spat
upon. Her cloak is drawn up over her head against the rain so that I cannot see her face, but something about the straightness of her back, something about the way she moves kicks at my senses and sends a jolt of recognition through me, sharp and sure. My heart stumbles and then soars so hard and so fast that my breath stops in my throat.

  Mary . . . Mary, is that you?

  I am befuddled with ale. My head wobbles on my neck as I nod at the truth of my observation. My ears are still ringing with the raucous din of the Dog’s Head, my nose stinging with the rank smell of sweat and wet cloth and spilled ale and the hot pies being passed over heads, and now, yes, the world is blurry and disconnected. I am glad of the wall behind me to prop me upright. So perhaps I have imagined you. It is very possible that I have.

  But what if it is you?

  You lift your skirts to hop over the gutter. I can’t see properly through the rain but I am sure it is you. I even step forward to call to you, but the hollowness inside me swoops and spins in my head and I lurch, stumble and just manage to grab onto a carved beam before I fall. By the time I right myself and the dizziness settles to nausea, you are already walking on, across the far gutter, along the footway, towards Sopers Lane.

  Without knowing why, I am following you, dodging unsteadily out of the shelter of the eaves and crossing the street after you, careless now of the rain. I am so wet now, I cannot get any wetter, and I could not stand there shivering and sick any longer with the relentless rain pounding around me. I nearly trip over the gutter and stagger from side to side to stop myself falling into it. Anyone watching would think that I am a lightskirt, sodden with drink, but it’s not that, Mary. I am ill. I think my courses may be coming, and you know how bad they always make me feel. You used to have a remedy to make me feel better.

  Please, make me feel better. If it is you.

  You have stopped at Sopers Lane end, in front of a little cottage, dwarfed by the five-storey houses around it. It looks absurd, as if it has been transported out of some woodland clearing. I stop too, dragging my arm under my nose, drenched and breathless with the effort of staying upright.