The Edge of Dark

by Pamela Hartshorne

  And yet here she was.

  She stared up and down the street, straining for a memory, but no picture slid into her mind. There was just that faint buzzing in her head, that sense of an unseen finger prodding her between the shoulders.

  Almost against her will, Roz turned and walked along the road, counting off the houses as she went. All the odd numbers were on one side of the road, all the evens on the other. The houses here were detached, a mixture of bungalows and two stories, unadventurously designed but clearly ideal for families. The side roads were quiet and every house sat well back behind low brick walls and carefully tended gardens. It felt like a safe but not very exciting area, a place where people washed their cars on a Sunday and mowed the lawn and were pleasant to their neighbours.

  This was where she had spent her first years. She presumed she had been happy. ‘Everyone adored you,’ her aunt had told her. ‘They used to call you Boo, because you loved playing Peekaboo with them all. You were such a dear little thing.’

  Roz had always liked the idea of being adored, but how could she be sure that it was true? If her aunt had lied about something so big, why stop at a little white lie? Perhaps she had been grizzly and whiny. Perhaps her sisters had resented her arrival. Perhaps neither of her parents had really wanted another child.

  Because if it had been such a big happy family, how come one member of it had decided one cold night to set fire to them all?

  And there it was on the corner, number forty-seven. Roz wasn’t sure what she had expected. Intellectually, she had known that it wouldn’t be a smouldering pile any more, but still, she hadn’t expected the house to look so exactly like all the others either. Shouldn’t there be something fizzing in the air here, some sense of the tragedy that had unfolded marking the stones? But it was just a house like a thousand others.

  Perhaps every house had its share of tragedy.

  It had been over twenty-five years since the fire, and no sign showed on the freshly painted walls. The PVC windows looked new, and it appeared that the owners had added an attic room recently. She walked past as slowly as she could without looking suspicious. To give herself more time to look, she pretended that she had a stone in her shoe and stooped to fiddle with it by the driveway. The wrought-iron gates stood open. The owners were house-proud, or hoping to sell the house. The garden was neat, the drive well tended.

  And none of it was familiar.

  Roz looked up at the windows. There was a large one, hung with net curtains, clearly the master bedroom, and what looked like a little room beside it. The kind of room you might put a baby in, so you could hear it in the night.

  Where you could snatch it up and carry it to safety if you needed to.

  Her room?

  A low privet hedge had been planted behind the brick boundary wall. It followed the street, curving round the corner. Roz could see over it and between the trees to the back of the house. A conservatory was an obvious recent extension. Whoever lived in the house now had small children too. Brightly coloured plastic toys were scattered over the grass. A football. A chunky yellow slide. A covered sandpit.

  Had the garden looked like that when she lived there? Had Mikey kicked a football around? Had her sisters played with her in the sand? All at once Roz yearned to know.

  A fence divided the house from its neighbour, and a concrete path led straight along its edge to the bottom of the garden. Roz’s eyes followed it down to a shed wedged up against the privet hedge and a memory reared up so suddenly that her heart lurched and she fisted a hand to her chest to hold it in, afraid that it might batter its way through her ribs otherwise.

  She remembered.

  Except it wasn’t really a memory, more a jumble of sensations: darkness, bewilderment, the smell of damp earth and privet. An orange glow. And a fearful voice: Stay here, Boo. Stay very quiet. Promise.

  ‘I promise,’ she had said.

  Chapter Nine

  Alone in her still room, Jane untwisted the paper very carefully. Inside lay the spell, a mixture of seeds with dried shredded leaves and bark and a powdery substance she couldn’t identify. Cautiously, she lifted it to her nose. It smelled strongly of garlic and she thought she caught the scent of gentian too, but for the rest she preferred not to guess. Who knew what dark arts Sybil had used to make her spell? Jane shivered a little at her own recklessness. If Robert or Margaret found out that she was putting a spell on him, their anger would know no bounds.

  But she had the spell now. Jane closed her fingers around the paper. She couldn’t throw it away. She would have to go through with it.

  She stood with the spell in her hand, pondering how best to use it. In the end she decided to steep it in a little wine, and add it to one of Robert’s favourite dishes. Jane set the maids to readying the rest of the meal and prepared a small dish of capon boiled in a white broth with her own hands. She simmered a capon with prunes, dates and raisins, and boiled up almonds for a broth. In the still room, she strained the spell and carried the wine through to the kitchen and, at the very last minute, when no one was looking, she poured it into the broth. Her heart was jumping in her throat, fast and hard.

  It was done.

  Now she had to make sure that Robert ate it. Jane had puzzled over how to make sure that only Robert was served the spell, but luck was with her and the Holmwoods were dining alone that evening. She put a small portion of the broth into a bowl and carried it through to the hall where Robert was lounging at the table, cleaning his fingernails with his knife. Margaret sat beside him, inspecting each dish critically as she did every day even though she never cooked anything herself. ‘Your sauce is too thin,’ she would say. ‘Not enough salt.’

  That night she looked down her nose at the dishes Jane had prepared so carefully. There was a baked trout, and a spinach tart. Turnips filled with eggs. Stewed fillet of beef and a roast hare. A salad with all kinds of herbs. There were cakes and apples cooked with cinnamon and ginger and then the sweetmeats that Robert loved so.

  And the capon cooked with almonds.

  ‘Why is there so little of this?’ Margaret demanded as Jane set it on the table in front of her husband.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother.’ Jane kept her eyes lowered. ‘The dish was spilled in the kitchen. This is all that was saved, but it is good, I think.’

  ‘Clumsy girl,’ sniffed Margaret. ‘Robert, dearest, what will you eat?’

  ‘I will take some of the beef.’ Robert reached across, ignoring Jane as she took her seat at the end of the table and Annis set the last of the dishes out before dipping a curtsey and retreating to the kitchen. Jane wished she could go with her, but she had to see that Robert ate the potion. She tried not to stare as Robert and Margaret filled their plates, passing dishes between themselves, dipping their fingers in the basins of water and wiping them fastidiously on their napkins. They had the beef, some tart and the trout, while Jane fiddled with her knife and pretended to eat a piece of the roast hare. Why would Robert not taste the capon? She didn’t dare offer it to him, though, in case he refused it. It was the kind of thing he would do. She had to sit quietly and behave as normal.

  Still, she couldn’t help tensing when Robert at last pulled the dish of capon towards him. He lowered his head and sniffed at it. ‘Good,’ he decided, and then to Jane’s dismay, he offered the dish to his mother. ‘Do you care for some capon? There is little enough of it.’

  ‘I will take a little, and you may have the rest, sweeting,’ said Margaret, who always spoke in a sugared voice to Robert, quite different to the one she used to snap at Jane and the maids. She stabbed a piece of the capon with her knife and spooned some of the sauce onto her plate before passing the dish back to Robert, who tore off some bread and dipped it into the broth before pushing it into his mouth.

  ‘It’s good,’ he mumbled through the bread, still chewing. He glanced at Jane as if surprised to see her sitting at his board. ‘You set a good table, wife.’

  Jane was so surprised at the une
xpected compliment that she thought at first that she must have misheard. ‘I am glad you are pleased,’ she said after a moment, but her mind was racing. Was it possible the spell was working already? Could one taste be enough to amend his humour and make him look on her more kindly?

  She took a little of the trout but couldn’t eat. Her entrails twisted and looped with nerves. Perhaps, she thought, he would start to feel amorous soon. Perhaps he would come to her that night.

  Perhaps tonight would change everything.

  That night, Jane took extra care as she prepared for bed. She made Annis bring a bowl of water to her chamber, and she washed under her armpits and her privy parts. She rubbed her teeth and Annis brushed her hair so that it fell long and straight and shining down her back.

  ‘Good fortune to you,’ Annis whispered as she set the brush back on the chest. She was the only one who knew about the spell, the only one who guessed how much it would mean to Jane to have a child.

  When she had gone, Jane was left alone in the middle of the chamber, thrumming with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. Robert hadn’t indicated that he would come to her chamber, but surely the spell would be having its effect and turning his mind to love.

  Or if not love, desire.

  And if not desire, need.

  He needed a son, she longed for a child, to be loved. Surely, surely, tonight he would leave his closet and come to her bed?

  Dry-mouthed, Jane left the candle burning hopefully, hitched up her nightgown and clambered into the big bed. She lay beneath the coverlet, unable to get comfortable on the bolster, kicking at the weight of the blanket, staring up at the canopy. In the flickering candlelight the red cloth seemed to be moving in and out of the shadows, leaping in the darkness like flames.

  Jane made herself lie still and listen to the sounds of the house settling for the night. She was waiting for the sound of footsteps on the boards outside, for the click as Robert lifted the latch. She heard the servants moving around overhead, a cough, a low-voiced grumble about hogging the bedclothes, the thump of a chest lid. She heard a dog barking and a sleepy curse from across the street. A baby’s thin wail made her face twitch.

  She waited and waited, but the latch never lifted. Spell or no spell, Robert wasn’t coming.

  A bubble of resentment was blocking her throat. Was she so grotesque? Jane ran her hands over her body through her shift, feeling the curve of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the line of her thighs. Perhaps she was too slender for Robert? He might want a woman with fuller breasts perhaps, or a fleshier body. She couldn’t do much about her plain face, but she could try to eat more and make herself fat.

  Oh, why didn’t he come? She had been so hopeful when she came home from the common, so sure that one tiny potion would make everything better. This might be her only chance. She had used all the potion tonight. She couldn’t go out to Sybil again and say that she had failed. It was tonight, or never.

  If Robert wouldn’t come to her, she would go to him. She could go and ask what she could do to please him. The idea, terrifying in its simplicity, slid into Jane’s brain. She pushed it away at first. How could she? He had made it clear he didn’t want her in his closet. She would not dare.

  But if she did not dare, there would be no baby.

  Jane shifted restlessly in an agony of indecision. After all, why shouldn’t she go? She was Robert’s wife. She had a right to lie with her own husband.

  Do you want to know how to please your husband? Margaret’s words seemed to bounce off the canopy and Jane turned her face into the pillow as if she could block out the memory. The truth was that she knew what Robert wanted, but she didn’t want to do the things that would please him. She didn’t understand how they could give him pleasure.

  Perhaps Sybil’s spell would make his desires different, Jane tried to tell herself.

  Ah, she could not lie here any longer! Suddenly, she was tired of waiting. It was all women ever did, Jane thought crossly. Sitting bolt upright, she threw back the coverlet. It was too hot to sleep anyway.

  The rush matting was ridged beneath her bare feet as she trod over to the door and hesitated before lifting the latch very carefully and easing it open. The house was dark and quiet. Behind her, the candle guttered and threw leering shadows around the room, and Jane waited in the doorway for her eyes to adjust to the darkness outside.

  Robert would be asleep in his closet. She would sneak into his bed there, wake him with a kiss and hope that the spell would work its magic after all. And if it didn’t, she would reach for his yard before he had a chance to push her away. She would do the things Margaret had told her to do to satisfy his gentlemanly desires.

  At the thought Jane nearly turned round and went back into her chamber, but she thought of the child she would never see unless she acted, and she drew a deep breath and walked silently through the house and down the stairs.

  The house looked different in the dark. The great hall was shadowy and still and strange, as if it had thrown on a different gown over the colourful hangings and cushions. The chests were dark shapes in the dim light, and the table was pushed back against the wall. Beneath her bare feet, the stone floor was cool.

  Jane wasn’t sure what made her stop in the middle of the hall. A sound, scampering across her hearing, a flicker of something at the edge of her consciousness, something that made her eagerness evaporate. She stood very still and listened, and there it came again, a gasp, a groan, a grunt. Was he ill? She should run and find out, but instead she found herself staring at the corner of the hall and the passageway that led to the closet, and a dull dread began to drum along her veins. She didn’t want to go and see what was happening in the closet, but she had to. She moved jerkily towards the passage, her bare feet making no sound on the floor. It was as if someone else was moving her limbs, making her go forward when her head was screaming at her to turn round and run back up the stairs.

  The passage was dark too, but she could see the flicker of candlelight where the closet door stood ajar. Silently, unwillingly, Jane walked up to the door. She could see inside without opening it. The desk where her husband sat and did whatever gentlemen did in their closets. An inkwell and a book. The fine mantelpiece and the burning embers of a fire burnt low. A chair before it. Margaret sat in it, legs lewdly splayed, skirts and smock hoisted high and bunched around her waist.

  And Robert, on his knees before her, his face buried between her thighs, slurping at his mother’s privy parts. Margaret’s eyes were slitted, her lips peeled back in carnal pleasure, foul words tumbling from her as she thrust her hips towards him and knotted her fingers in his hair so that he could not pull back.

  There was a roaring in Jane’s ears. She went hot, and then cold, and then burningly hot again as she backed, unnoticed, from the door.

  Her husband, his mother. Nausea heaved up into her throat without warning and Jane fell back against the passage wall, pressing her palm to her mouth to stop herself vomiting. She had known Margaret and her son doted on each other, but this? How could she have known such a thing? A depravity so unnatural had been beyond Jane’s imagining.

  Unless . . . The dread thought swooped out of the darkness. What if Sybil’s spell were to blame? Margaret and Robert had both eaten the capon in its broth. Had that tipped them over into warped desire? Or had there always been this darkness between them? Jane remembered Margaret whispering in her ear all the things Robert liked to do, liked to have done to him. It hadn’t occurred to Jane to wonder how his mother had known.

  When the worst of the nausea had passed, Jane pushed herself away from the wall and made her way unsteadily back down the passage. The dark hall seemed to mock her. It had known all along. It was only minutes since Jane had come down the stairs so quietly, so carefully in case she woke Robert. So certain that a spell and a little effort on her part would be enough to change her husband.

  Now Jane felt as if she were standing on the other side of a deep, dark chasm, looking back at
her earlier innocent self with disbelief. Had she really not understood the wrongness at the very heart of the house? How could she have watched Margaret stroking Robert’s face and not seen how unnatural they were together? But she, simple fool that she was, had thought that an old woman out on the common could mutter a few words over some herbs and make it all right.

  And now what was she to do?

  Jane faltered in the middle of the hall. Where did she think she was going? Up to her chamber to pretend that nothing had happened?

  The image of Margaret’s head tipped back, the lascivious smile that curled her lips as she urged Robert between her thighs was seared into the darkness, but when Jane closed her eyes, it was still there. She pressed her fingers to her mouth, fighting the disgust and the panic. She couldn’t go back to bed, but where else could she go? What else could she do?

  She thought of her father, of trying to explain to him what she had seen, but she knew what he would say. He wouldn’t believe her. Henry Birkby had paid out a dowry and bought his family an entry into gentility. He would not be prepared to throw all that away for a megrim. She must be mistaken, Jane could hear him roaring already. Robert’s mother? What a grotesque idea! It must have been another woman, and so what if it was? What was she thinking to spy on her husband in his closet anyway? A man was entitled to do what he wanted without his wife poking her nose in his affairs. Jane was a Holmwood now. She should go back to her husband and be glad of the roof over her head.

  No, her father would not welcome her.

  Jane stood stock-still in the dark, absorbing the truth. She had nowhere else to go, and there was nothing she could do.

  So she walked back up the stairs, back to the great chamber. She climbed into the bed and pulled the coverlet over her. There would be no escape. There would be no child.