The Edge of Dark

by Pamela Hartshorne

  Never again, Jane had vowed to herself. Never again would she break a promise.

  Wrapped in her thoughts, Jane did not register at first that Juliana was weeping, taut, gasping little sobs that would escalate into a full-blown tantrum if not stopped soon. And Juliana in a tantrum could make life unendurable for everyone. Jane had learnt early that it wasn’t worth the risk of leaving her to cry herself out.

  Mentally squaring her shoulders, she went over to her sister. ‘Come,’ she said, ‘you do not want to make your eyes all red.’ Briskness tended to work better than sympathy.

  Juliana turned and threw her arms around Jane’s neck. ‘I am a vixen! Do not listen to me, dear Jane. I don’t want your husband to be a toad, I don’t! I just hate the thought of you leaving me. What will I do without you?’

  ‘You will be mistress of our father’s house,’ said Jane, patting Juliana on the back, hiding a wry smile in her sister’s golden hair. When her sister was affectionate, she was very hard to resist. ‘You will be able to do exactly as you choose without me scolding you to get up and get dressed. Think how comfortable you will be!’

  ‘But who will manage the servants? I do not know how!’

  Because you have never troubled yourself to learn. Jane bit back the words. ‘Mary is very capable,’ she said instead. ‘You will have nothing to do.’

  ‘But it will not be the same.’ Juliana drew back, her bottom lip trembling. ‘You make us all comfortable. I still do not see why my father does not marry me to Sir Robert and keep you as his housekeeper.’

  Jane had wondered the same thing herself. ‘He plans an even greater marriage for you,’ she assured her sister.

  ‘Greater?’ Brightness glimmered in the beautiful blue eyes. ‘Oh, I wish it might be so!’

  ‘Why should there not come a time when you scorn to associate with me?’ Jane suggested artlessly. ‘Who are the Holmwoods, after all? Mere Yorkshire gentry! With your beauty, Juliana, you may look much higher for a husband. A lord, perhaps, or an earl.’

  Restored to smiles, Juliana twirled away, holding out her skirts.‘I may be a duchess!’

  Privately Jane marvelled that her sister could really believe a butcher’s daughter could rise to be a duchess, but then, was her own marriage not nearly as remarkable? Money, it seemed, could buy anything nowadays. Still, from St Andrewgate to nobility seemed a large leap indeed to Jane, but she knew if she said as much she would be vilified for her dullness and lack of ambition. It hardly seemed fair to encourage Juliana in such dreams, but to introduce a prosaic note of reality would plunge her back into the sullens.

  Juliana clapped her hands together, all smiles now at the thought of her glorious future. ‘We must have new gowns!’ she announced. ‘Your betrothal is but the first step in our family’s progress. When the Holmwoods come for the handfasting, they must see that we are worthy of them.’

  For herself, Jane had no desire for a new gown. She disliked being turned and prodded and measured, and was quite happy with the blue taffeta kirtle she wore on holidays. It lay in the chest in the chamber she shared with her sister, tucked about with musk balls she had made herself from nutmegs, mace, cloves, saffron and cinnamon. But to cross Juliana at this stage would be unwise, Jane knew.

  ‘I will ask our father if you may have something pretty for the betrothal feast,’ she said. Henry Birkby was close-fisted with his money, but if approached at the right time would usually open his purse for his pet Juliana.

  This time, however, he insisted that Jane had a new gown too, in spite of her protests that it was unnecessary. ‘You cannot meet the Holmwoods looking like a milkmaid,’ he said, eyeing Jane up and down critically. Her wool kirtle was plain but serviceable, and her hands were calmly folded over her apron. ‘God’s bones, can you not at least try to make a lady of yourself?’

  Did he expect her to oversee the house in a silk gown? Jane’s lips tightened, but she kept her eyes downcast.

  ‘There is much to do in the kitchen to prepare for the feast,’ she pointed out. ‘My sister will be happy with a new gown, and it will keep her occupied, but I have little time to spare.’

  ‘Then make time,’ snapped Henry, irritated as always by her calm good sense. ‘Else you shame me before the Holmwoods. Take Juliana and buy the costliest fabric, and then take it to John Harper in Stonegate. That rogue owes me a favour, and he will make both gowns up quickly.’

  So Jane went with Juliana to Stonegate, where they bought a length of red mockado at the draper’s, with some velvet for the trim, and Juliana chose a glossy satin in a blue that the draper’s apprentice said matched her eyes. He carried the cloths down to John Harper’s shop and handed them over to the tailor with a barely concealed sniff of distaste.

  Not that John Harper cared for anyone’s opinion but his own. He greeted Jane and Juliana with a bow, but there was nothing polite about the way his heavy-lidded eyes ran over them, as if he could draw the pins from their sleeves just by looking and see right through to their shifts. Jane shifted uncomfortably beneath his gaze, but Juliana was delighted by the suggestive smile that curved his mouth as he turned her backwards and forwards and sideways, flattering her outrageously, and she chattered about him all the way home, how handsome he was, how polite, how polished.

  Jane shook her head, marvelling anew at her sister’s ability to see only what she wished to see. Jane could admit that Harper had a certain brutal appeal, but he was not polite, no. There had been lewdness lurking in every glance, insolence in every word, and she worried that Juliana could not see it. Left to her own devices, her sister was wilful. She tossed her head when Jane lectured her on the need for modesty, and Jane was afraid that she would fall into wildness when there was no one there to steer her towards a more careful path. Their father had dismissed her concerns, though.

  ‘You always pull a long face about Juliana,’ he complained. ‘She is as capable as you, would you but give her a chance. You think no one can go on without you,’ he said sourly. ‘Once you are married, you will see my little Juliana come into her own. The world does not revolve around you, daughter.’

  You must look after your sister . . . promise me that you will care for her, her mother had begged as she lay dying, and Jane had promised, but how could she care for her sister if she was not there?

  Perhaps her father was right. Perhaps Juliana just needed to be left to manage the house by herself. Still, Jane worried for her. Between her anxiety for her sister and the thought of marriage and leaving home and everything that was familiar, Jane was uncharacteristically nervous as she bustled around the house, making sure that the wood gleamed and the silver was polished and that there were no cobwebs clinging to her father’s expensive new tapestries. In the kitchen, she set Mary and the maids toiling over a feast fit for the Queen’s Majesty herself. Her father had slaughtered a fine cow, and there would be baked venison and a shoulder of mutton as well. There would be roasted coneys and a goose, a pie of pigeons and a dish of larks. A dozen quail. Pigs’ feet boiled with verjuice and dates, and seasoned with cinnamon and ginger. Duck boiled with turnips. Custards and gingerbreads, fritters and a tart.

  Jane chopped and scraped and seasoned, trying to forget about the hollowness in her stomach. The closer she came to leaving her father’s house, the more affection she felt for it. It wasn’t just Juliana she would miss, she realized. She would miss Mary and the other servants, and the gossip in the warm kitchen. She’d miss her neighbours and her father’s old mastiff, Picard. She would miss the chamber she shared with Juliana, with the window that looked out over the yard, and the little herb garden her mother had planted and which she cared for still.

  But so it was for all women, Jane reasoned briskly. She would have a new home and a new family, and soon, God willing, they would be as familiar to her as her life in St Andrewgate.

  All in all, Jane was glad when the day of the handfasting arrived. At least now she would meet her bridegroom and be able to imagine her new life. It was ha
rd when at the back of her mind she kept wondering if he would be as toad-like as Juliana had envisaged. It was no use asking her father, and when in York, the Holmwoods lived in Micklegate, on the other side of the Ouse. They didn’t entertain the likes of the neighbours in St Andrewgate, or go to church in King’s Square or shop in Thursday Market. They might as well live on the moon for all Jane would have encountered them and seen for herself what Robert Holmwood looked like. He might have a wet mouth like Percival Geldart, or a bulbous nose that dripped all the time like Eliza Dawson’s son. He might have a cast in one eye, or a club foot, or have hairy hands like John Harper.

  There was nothing she could do about it if he did, Jane reminded herself, so there was no point in worrying about it. Still, she was more nervous than she wanted to admit as she checked the table one last time.

  John Harper had delivered the new gowns that morning, and Jane was tricked out in red and velvet skirts that hung over her farthingale. She had a freshly starched collar and lace cuffs, and pearls at her waist. Her bodice was decorated with silver buttons, her sleeves fashionably slashed. Her hair hung obstinately straight down her back in token of her virginity.

  She wished she had on her old kirtle and her apron.

  Her father grunted his approval. ‘You’ll do,’ he said, and then his expression softened as his eyes rested on Juliana, whose pleasure in her new gown was offset by the realization that she would not be the centre of attention that night. ‘Now, now, my pretty, do not take on so,’ he said, eyeing her trembling lips with foreboding. ‘I will marry Jane off and then look around for a nobleman for you. What say you to that?’

  Before Juliana could say anything, her father’s old mastiff lumbered to its feet and began barking at the door.

  ‘Aye, that will be them now,’ said Henry. ‘You must hide yourself away, pet,’ he said to Juliana. ‘We do not want Sir Robert to be so dazzled by you he passes over Jane, do we?’

  Jane barely heard. She put a hand flat on her stomacher with the sudden, dizzying realization that life as she knew it was about to slam to a halt, and nothing would ever be the same again. She wanted to cry out to her father to stop, to not open the door, but it felt as if a stone was lodged in her throat and she couldn’t speak, she could only stand rooted to the spot while her vision blurred with nerves.

  Henry Birkby threw open the door and welcomed his guests into the hall himself. They came in with much stamping of feet, much slapping of shoulders. Jane had an impression of assurance, of richness and colour. Their doublets were velvet, their gowns trimmed with fur, their boots buckled with silver. Gold gleamed around their necks. Her father must be mistaken, Jane thought. These men were not poor. But it must be true. Why else would they be here, marrying their son to a butcher’s daughter, and a poor dab of a girl at that?

  Her blurred impression resolved into four men and a woman. Three of the men were her father’s age, and the woman much the same. She was coldly beautiful with a hard mouth and eyes that flickered dismissively around the hall that Jane’s father had furnished at such expense. That must be Sir Robert’s mother, Lady Margaret Holmwood. Jane could not imagine calling such a woman mother, and she thought with a pang of her own mother, so long dead, who had been plain and sensible and kind, and who would at least have smiled at her child’s betrothal.

  The older men were witnesses for the Holmwoods, Jane gathered as her father greeted them, but her gaze was already moving on to the other man, where it stopped in disbelief.

  This was her husband?

  He was not old. He was not fat. He was not a toad. He was golden-haired and handsome, with wide-set eyes and a red mouth, and his beard was barely more than down on his jaw. He could have been a knight at King Arthur’s table, a prince. He belonged in a storybook, not in a butcher’s hall.

  He could not be for her, thought Jane, dazzled. There would be some mistake. She was plain Jane, the dull daughter, the dreary, sensible one. Girls like her did not have handsome husbands.

  But her father was beckoning her forward, and gesturing to the young man. ‘So, Sir Robert, this is my daughter Jane,’ he said. ‘She is modest, as you see, and dutiful, and qualified in all the household skills. I have told her what I have done for the preferment and advancement of your marriage and she has agreed to be ruled and married by my good counsel.’

  Jane dipped a curtsey and tried not to notice the dismay in Robert’s eyes as her father passed her hand to him as he might a pig’s trotter across his shop window. Robert held it limply. His fingers were cold and flaccid, and when he looked from Jane to his mother, his desire to be released from the betrothal was writ large on his face.

  But Margaret Holmwood nodded firmly, and he turned back to Jane. ‘I bring you gold as a token of my goodwill,’ he said woodenly, releasing her hand to dig in his purse, and without thinking Jane wiped her fingers against her skirt as if his reluctance was a slime she could rub away.

  From the purse Robert produced a ring, which he dropped into her palm rather than touch her again. Jane had to pick it up and slide it onto her finger herself.

  Well, what had she expected? That a man so fair should delight in finding himself yoked to a plain bride?

  No, not delight, but some courtesy, perhaps, would not have been too much to ask for. Jane sighed inwardly, and then chastised herself. If she was not careful, she would be as tragical as Juliana. She was no simpering miss wanting a lover’s adoration. She should count herself fortunate that she was not to be married to a man with lips that slobbered like her father’s mastiff beneath the table. Robert might not want to wed her, but she would be his wife anyway. She would share his life and bear his children and make him comfortable, and perhaps in the end he would not mind her lack of beauty so much. All might still be well. It would be up to her to make sure it was.

  So she smiled as she settled the ring into place on her finger and looked straight into Robert’s strangely blank eyes. ‘With this ring I submit myself to be your wife before these witnesses here.’

  Robert looked back at his mother. ‘Kiss her, Robert,’ Margaret said, and her voice brought a chill to the warm spring air. ‘Kiss her and plight your troth. It cannot then be undone.’

  Dutifully Robert lowered his head and pressed his lips to Jane’s. His mouth was hot and moist, the kiss perfunctory, but Margaret was right, it was done. They were betrothed.

  Handfast, they turned to receive the stiff good wishes of the witnesses, and of Juliana, who pressed her cheek to Robert’s. Jane had been dreading this moment, to see the yearning in his face as he realized that he had missed out on the beautiful sister, but his expression didn’t change.

  Perhaps there was some courtesy in him after all.

  ‘He is very handsome,’ Juliana whispered in Jane’s ear when she came to kiss her. ‘You are so fortunate, Jane.’

  She was, Jane knew. Why then did she feel like weeping?

  Her father was rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. ‘Now we will have some friendly cheer. My daughter has prepared a feast to mark the betrothal. Come sirs, sit you down,’ he said, gesturing the guests to the table. ‘Jane, is all prepared?’

  ‘It is. I will send for Mary to bring in the first course.’ Over her father’s shoulder, she could see Robert standing close to his mother, who stroked his cheek tenderly with her hand.

  ‘She is a doting mother,’ Henry Birkby said, following her gaze. ‘But you will be his wife. It will be up to you to earn his affection in the bedchamber,’ he said roughly.

  ‘I understand,’ said Jane.

  Her quiet reply seemed to make Henry uncomfortable. ‘Well, you are a sensible lass,’ he said. ‘You won’t be moping and pining if Robert doesn’t dance attendance upon you. Make him comfortable and give him an heir, and you will do well enough.’

  She was to be married. It was her first thought when she woke, and she rolled over in the bed, surprised to find that it was empty. It wasn’t like Juliana to be up before her.

  It
was dark still. She pulled herself up against the pillows, pushing her hair back from her face only to pause, struck by how different it felt. It was thicker, softer, shorter. Unbraided. How strange.

  Puzzled, she let her hand fall onto a sheet far finer than any she had slept in before, and she blinked into the darkness. Was she married already and disorientated by waking in a strange house? But where was her husband if that were so? A memory of Robert’s blank expression rose before her eyes and she frowned. Surely she would remember her marriage? Unless she had been ill?

  Her fingers crept to her throat; they encountered only warm flesh. No linen nightgown. She felt along her shoulder. A thin strap. Following it down, feeling her way, she discovered that she was wearing a scandalously brief gown in a slippery, silky fabric she didn’t recognize. It barely covered her breasts, and her cheeks burned.

  Could she be dreaming? It didn’t feel like a dream. She dug her fingernails into her leg to test herself and winced – and woke up properly.

  With a shaking hand, she reached for the bedside light, relieved when the room sprang into focus, and she stared around her, desperate for something that would prove that she was Roz Acclam, not Jane Birkby. That this was the twenty-first century, not the sixteenth.

  Her phone. She fumbled for it on the bedside table and clutched it, needing its sleekness, its lightness, its now-ness in her hand. The icons glowed up at her, and there was the date and the time: 03.19.

  No wonder she was disorientated. The middle of the night, sleeping in a strange bed and in a strange city, after a strange day. Under the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that she had dreamed.

  She had dreamed before, of course she had, but nothing like this. She dreamed of being carried through the night sometimes, although that was so vague that it hardly merited being called a dream; it was just a remembered sense of darkness and panic and wrongness, a feeling that only meant something now that she had learnt the truth about the night her family had died. It was a memory, not a dream.