The Cursed Wife

by Pamela Hartshorne

  But a joint of beef lies inert on my slab. It does not flinch and groan or resist the blade. It does not jerk or choke as Anthony is jerking and choking and retching in shock.

  The horror of what I am doing makes me wrench out the knife and stab him again, and again, and again, frantic to make him stop that awful noise. He slumps over the chest, gasping, groaning in pain, and Cat gapes at me, the lantern shaking in her hand and sending the light jumping frenziedly around the counting house.

  ‘Mary! Dear God, Mary . . . what are you doing?’

  I don’t answer her. It must be obvious what I am doing, what I have been driven to do.

  Anthony won’t die. There is a terrible gurgling sound coming from his throat, and his fingers scrabble weakly at the coins, and I have the terrifying conviction that he will never die, that I will have to stand here forever, stabbing the knife into him, smelling the blood and the loosening of his bowels, while the shadows swing wildly in time with the candlelight. My gorge rises, but I cannot stop now.

  Again and again I push in the knife. It is like a nightmare: the soft squelch of knife in flesh, the sound of my harsh breathing, the grotesquely lurching shadows. And the smell, sweet Jesu, the smell! My hands are slippery, with blood or sweat I cannot tell.

  ‘Mary, stop!’ Hampered by the lantern, Cat tries to pull me away one-handed, but it is easy to brush her aside. She almost loses her grip on the lantern and the light jolts before she manages to steady it.

  ‘Take care!’ I say sharply. ‘We do not want to set the whole warehouse on fire!’

  As I speak, Anthony topples from the chest and crumples onto the floor. I have to jump back to stop him rolling onto my skirts. God save me, still he is not dead. There are ghastly choking sounds coming from his throat, and I crouch down beside him, my face set. I cannot stop now. He looks up at me in horror, lifting one hand feebly to ward me off. His lips part. He is trying to say ‘no’, but it is too late. He has threatened my family. My eyes meet his, and he knows that he is doomed. I thrust the knife deep into his heart. Blood spurts from his mouth and he gives a great twitch and eventually lies still.

  It is done.

  My throat closes convulsively and I gag, but there is no way to keep the revulsion inside. Retching, I turn my head and vomit onto the floor, careless of Cat’s exclamation of disgust.

  Trembling, exhausted, I sit back on my heels after a minute and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand while silence clangs around the little room and the candlelight shudders in the lantern. Cat is still holding it, her other hand pressed to her throat, staring at me as if I am a monster.

  ‘What . . . what . . . what . . . ?’ she stammers.

  I wipe the blade of the knife on Anthony’s jerkin. ‘He would never have stopped,’ I say, surprised at how calm I sound, how reasonable, although my hand holding the knife trembles a little. ‘He would have come back, whatever he said. We would never have been safe,’ I say as I stand and straighten slowly, like an old woman, stiff and bent. ‘Always he would have been lurking around the corner, waiting to threaten you with the coroner, waiting to lure John to the alehouse, waiting to start a rumour for the pleasure of ruining all Cecily’s prospects. This way it is over,’ I tell her. ‘It is Anthony’s choice. He could have taken the hundred sovereigns and left us alone as he promised, but he was greedy, and now he has died for it.’

  ‘You planned this.’ Cat sounds more shaken than I have ever heard her.

  ‘Of course I planned it. Did you really think I would be foolish enough to give him three hundred sovereigns and let him walk away?’

  Clearly she did. Her eyes drop from mine to Anthony’s body on the floor. I can’t read her expression properly in the dimness but I wonder if she is remembering how passionately she loved him. She gave up everything for Anthony, and now he is just a carcass on the floor.

  ‘I am sorry,’ I say. ‘I know you cared for him once, but it had to be done, you do see that?’

  ‘I did not think that you would be the one to do it,’ she says.

  ‘I know how to protect what is mine.’

  ‘Aye, you have always done that.’

  A silence falls, shrieking, in the counting house. My ears are ringing with it. With one part of my mind, I note dispassionately that reaction is setting in: I am very cold, my heart is racing and nausea wavers under my skin. I don’t know what to do with the knife still in my hands. My body is leaden. I should move, I should think, but I can’t. I can just stand here in the unsteady light, listening to the silence, refusing to acknowledge the horror that is roaring behind it.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Cat says at last. ‘We cannot leave him here.’

  I draw a breath, and then another. The worst is over. Now we just need to get home.

  ‘Jacopo is nearby. Stay here.’

  But she comes with me as I open the warehouse door and Jacopo materialises from the shadows. He looks at the knife in my hand. ‘I’ll take that, mistress,’ he says almost gently.

  Dumbly, I hand it over. I have started to shiver.

  ‘Where is he?’ Jacopo asks.

  ‘In the counting house.’

  He nods. ‘You get on then.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘The Margaret leaves with the tide,’ he says gruffly. ‘He will go with her.’

  ‘How—’ Cat begins, but Jacopo holds up a hand to silence her.

  ‘Best not to ask questions.’ He nods in my direction. ‘Your mistress is cold,’ he tells her severely. ‘Look to her.’

  ‘Cold?’ Cat laughs a little wildly. ‘You have no idea!’

  I gather myself together. ‘Come, Cat, there is no more to do here.’ I go to take her arm but she shakes herself free of my grasp.

  ‘What about the coins?’ she says.

  ‘They are safe in the chest.’ I glance at Jacopo. ‘Take what you need,’ I tell him. I have not asked him how he will manage it, but doubtless silver will be required to change hands. I do not care how much it costs, as long as I do not have to see Anthony again. The thought of lifting his slack body, of touching his cold skin, fills me with horror.

  Jacopo knows all this without me saying anything. He nods his understanding.

  I swallow. ‘Thank you,’ I manage, and he nods again. Our eyes meet and I know then that he will never bring me another gift. His debt is repaid, and though his presents made me uncomfortable at times, now I feel a wave of sadness that there will be no more.

  I take Cat more firmly by the arm and steer her back towards Three Cranes Lane. ‘Is that it?’ she whispers furiously. ‘Take what you need! You have just tossed three hundred sovereigns to that Barbary ape!’

  ‘I trust Jacopo. He will take only what he needs,’ I say. ‘Besides, there is not near that amount at stake. You saw some coins on the top, but I filled the bag with oats first.’

  ‘Oats?’ Cat starts to laugh again, a shrill, frenzied laugh. ‘Oats!’

  ‘Stop that,’ I say, low and angry. My reserves are too low to deal with hysterics. ‘Do you want everyone to look at us and wonder what we are about?’

  But she is beyond reason now, and keeps on laughing until I draw back my arm and crack a palm to her cheek. ‘Quiet!’

  Shocked, Cat stops on a gulp and stares at me with a dazed expression.

  ‘Be quiet, Cat,’ I say again more gently. I take a breath and it shudders out of me. ‘We must be calm,’ I remind her after a moment. ‘We have been out to attend a difficult childbirth, that will explain any blood. Say nothing else of what we did here tonight.’

  What I did. She does not need to correct me. Tonight’s work is mine alone.

  ‘We had no choice,’ I say. I am speaking slowly and clearly, as if to a child. ‘We are safe now.’

  ‘Only until Jacopo talks,’ Cat points out, sounding more herself. ‘What is to stop him turning to blackmail too?’

  ‘Jacopo is no Anthony. He will say nothing. Would I have turned to him unless I trusted him completel
y? The only people who know what happened tonight are the two of us, and we will say nothing, will we? We are bound together, after all. We know too much of each other, Cat. We always have done.’

  Are secrets all that bind us to each other now? I wonder sadly. Once there was love between us, but now I have had to remind my mistress, my friend, that if she tells my secret, I will tell hers.

  Though I have more to lose now, as I am sure Cat is well aware.

  Cat hesitates then nods. ‘I will say nothing,’ she agrees.

  Bone-weary, sick and shaken, we trudge in silence back to Little Wood Street. I keep my expression composed, but any minute I expect to hear a shout, to feel a constable’s hand fall heavily on my shoulder, but nothing happens. It is as if when we left the warehouse, we stepped into a different world, one where we are just two respectable women walking back from helping a neighbour. Anyone passing on the other side of the street would not know that my hands are sticky with blood, that tonight I stuck a knife into a man’s heart.

  It is late when we get back and the household is dark and quiet. I gesture Cat inside and close the door very quietly behind us, my knees weak with relief. Lighting a candle, I hand it to her. ‘Go to bed,’ I tell her. ‘Remember, it was a childbirth, no more.’

  She says nothing, just turns and heads up the stairs. I wonder what she is thinking? Is she sad? Is she shocked? Or is she calculating how to work the situation to her best advantage? With Cat you can never tell. It might be all three, it might be none.

  I watch her out of sight and then take a candle of my own and light it. In the kitchen, I ladle water into a basin, and carry it up to my chamber. There I strip off every piece of clothing, yes, even my smock. Every time you change your smock. I set the basin on a stool and wash my hands in water, again and again, and then I take the cloth and rub and rub and rub at my skin until it is red and raw, and still I do not feel properly clean.

  As I rub myself, the back of my neck is prickling. Someone is watching me. Someone who knows who I am and what I did. But no one knows except Cat, I tell myself. Even so, I keep glancing over my shoulder, although I know there is no one there. The feeling is so strong that in the end I step round the stool until I am facing the door so that I can be sure no one else is in the room, and that is when I see Peg. She is propped up on the chest as she always is, her single arm dangling by her side, her expression so aghast that I gasp and knock over the water. The basin clangs onto the floorboards, and the bloody water splashes over me and runs into the cracks.

  Trembling, I turn Peg to face the wall. Then I take the cloth and mop up the water as best I can, wringing it into the basin, and only then do I climb into bed.

  I have never been as tired as I am tonight. The weariness is a lead weight pressing into my eyeballs and pinning me into the mattress, but I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see my arm lifting, driving the knife into Anthony’s bent back. I feel the springy resistance of his muscles, the loosening of his flesh, and my head rings with the sound of him coughing up blood, and wound through it all like dancers around the maypole is the curse, the vagrant woman’s cry: until you die kicking and choking on the gibbet.

  I can barely swallow. I can feel the rope rough around my neck already, and I circle my throat with my hands as I lie in bed staring up at the canopy.

  Did I really think I could escape the curse? I am a killer, many times over. Ellen the vagrant girl, Lord Delahay, Peter and Agnes Blake . . . Mine was the hand that caused their deaths, but I meant harm to none of them. I could be forgiven them all.

  Anthony, though . . . this time it was different. I took a knife and sharpened it. I planned to kill him and I did. There was no mistake, no accident. I do not expect to be forgiven such a sin, but what else was I to do?

  No sleep comes this night, or the next, or the next. For two days I lie in bed, sick with guilt, sick with horror. Sarah is worried and brings me dainty dishes to tempt my appetite, but I send them away. My stomach revolts against food. I try to nibble a cake, but vomit it back into a basin. Wine has the same effect. It is as if my body is trying to rid itself of the poison of guilt.

  Cat offers to make me a caudle to comfort the stomach. ‘You showed me how,’ she reminds me. ‘Stale ale and a pint of muscadine and the yolk of new-laid eggs, have I not remembered that right? And sugar and . . . what else?’

  ‘Some whole mace,’ I say weakly.

  ‘Of course!’ She claps her hands. ‘And I will soak some bread in it and you will feel much better.’

  She looks sincere, she sounds sincere, but I do not quite trust her. I wish I had not introduced Cat to the skills of the still room. What is to stop her adding a pinch of something poisonous to the caudle?

  Is this what guilt does to you? Is it guilt that twists me inside out and upside down, so that I cannot tell what is right and good and true any more? That coats my vision with darkness and dredges suspicion in my ears? I listen for every inflection in a voice, every flicker of expression. Is that sympathy in Cat’s eyes, or sly satisfaction?

  ‘Let me bring you the caudle now,’ she says, but I stop her.

  ‘I thank you, but I cannot face anything now,’ I say. ‘Tomorrow, perhaps, if I am stronger.’

  I force myself to get out of bed the next day. I must take back the reins of the household, else all will have been for nought. I am very weak, but it is easier to eat when I can oversee the kitchen. Cat has no interest in cooking, and is content to retire to the parlour and play the lute instead.

  She seems unchanged.

  I am the one who has changed. Even when I recover from my sickness and can eat and drink again, I am edgy and irritable. I snap at Sarah and Amy, at Cecily and Cat. I am short with the countrywomen in the market and shunned by my neighbours. They turn away from me now and pretend that they have not seen me. They cross the street to avoid my greeting. Between Peter Blake’s death and my disgraceful quarrel with Isabella Parker, my reputation lies in tatters. Amy tells me there are even whispers that I may be a witch, that more than one remedy I have made has caused a patient to sicken further, or that I ill-wished all of those currently suffering from misfortune. Sensible people scoff at such rumours, Amy says, but she looks uneasy.

  I cannot find it in me to care. My terrible crime has divided me from the rest of the world. I think I see Anthony everywhere, even though I have seen Jacopo who came to the house with Richard soon after. ‘It is done,’ was all he murmured to me. He too seems to have receded. I believe him, but at the same time I cannot shake this conviction that Anthony is lurking around every corner, that he will spring out of the shadows and laugh in my face, my knife still quivering in his heart.

  There is a constant queasiness in my belly, and a fine tremor under my skin. I long for Gabriel to come back, but I dread it too. He knows me so well, surely he will see that I have changed. That I have been changed. Richard tells me that he will be sailing for Hamburg next week, and that Gabriel will return with him. All I want is for my husband to come home and for everything to be as it was, but I am afraid, afraid I have crossed a line and that nothing will ever be the same again.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Cat

  Well, well, well. I did not expect that. I eye you under my lashes as you walk home in silence, straight-backed, stern. Nobody looking at you would guess that you had just taken a knife and stabbed a man in the back, and then knelt beside him to finish him off, like a pig you were planning to hang for bacon.

  It felt as if I were watching everything in slow motion. The way you drew your arm back, the expression on your face as you thrust: intent, implacable. Anthony arching in agony, the slow tumble onto the floor, disbelief clouding his eyes. He underestimated you, Mary. Perhaps I did too. I must say, I did not think you had it in you.

  And now what? Anthony is dead. I cannot quite believe it.

  When we get in, you send me to bed like a child, but I am glad enough to climb the steep stairs to my own room. I am weary, and shocked,
and I let myself feel a little maudlin, remembering how madly Anthony and I loved each other once. I sit on the edge of the bed and rub my hands on my thighs, pressing down through the fabric, thinking about how Anthony once touched me. I won’t feel his hands on me again. I tired of him, but lately he has made me feel desired again. Perhaps it was because we had to go at it in secret. Is there something in me that craves the forbidden? It is a mournful thought.

  But perhaps after all it is for the best. I amused myself with Anthony, but he could not give me what I really wanted, and besides, he could always hold the threat of blackmail over me. You were so intent on protecting your family, you barely gave me a thought, but I was far more at risk than you. I could have hanged for what I did to George, and yes, it was I who killed him. I had to, or else he would have killed me and Anthony, too, most likely. Perhaps I should have waited longer in the hope of a son, but I was not sorry that he died then. I wanted him dead. He repulsed me. I did not want him breathing in the same room as me. I wanted Anthony, and you gave me the means to have him. It was a pleasure to see George writhing and gagging on the floor, his face congested, his eyes bulging in terror. I just watched, the way he liked to watch. I remember how heavy the poker felt in my hand, the thrilling rush of rage as I brought it down on his head. And then I put on a fine show of fear and ran to get you to clear up the mess. I knew you would not be able to resist the temptation to show me how clever and capable you are.

  You have taken me by surprise tonight, I will admit. First with the murder – and let us not be shy, that is the word – and then with your lack of remorse. A little vomit, and you were quite yourself again, taking charge and dragging me along. And then, when I realised that Anthony had died for a bag of oats, putting an end to my merriment with a slap.

  I touch my cheek where it still smarts from your blow. You had no need to hit me quite so hard. I was shocked – and no wonder – but you have to admit that it was funny too. Oats!