The Edge of Dark

by Pamela Hartshorne

  ‘Juliana, what is it?’ Jane stroked the soft golden curls. ‘Of course I will help you, dear one, but you must tell me what is the matter.’

  Juliana’s answer was muffled in Jane’s skirts.

  ‘Juliana?’ Jane lifted her sister’s chin and looked her in the eye. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I am with child,’ Juliana whispered.

  Jane’s first thought was not a thought at all but a feeling: envy, jabbing like a hot poker in her entrails. Then cool reason washed over her and left her chilled with a sense of the disaster that had struck sure at the centre of their lives. Outside in the street, she could hear the clop of hooves, the rumble of a cart on the cobbles. Someone was laughing, two women were quarrelling. Right underneath the chamber window, Francis Bain and Henry Warriner were having a loud conversation about whether or not William Byrnand should be given a hogshead of Gascony wine. What did it matter? Jane thought wildly. How could they be fussing and fretting about council business when Juliana’s future was cracking and crumbling into ruin?

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘My flowers haven’t come down for two months now. I went to that old witch out on the common, but she said there was nothing she could do.’

  Jane was still struggling to understand. ‘Juliana, how is this possible? When . . . who is the father? You must marry him without delay.’

  ‘I cannot,’ Juliana muttered.

  ‘If you have lain with him, you can marry him,’ said Jane, unable to keep the tartness from her voice.

  ‘He is already married. Oh, do not look at me like that, Jane!’ Juliana flung herself away. ‘You do not know how lonely I have been since you left.’

  ‘Juliana, how could you?’ Jane couldn’t disguise her shock.

  ‘He made me feel . . . excited.’ In spite of herself, a smile of reminiscence curved Juliana’s mouth and Jane’s heart twisted a little. How did that feel? she wondered. ‘And he is handsome, and he makes me feel special. Don’t pull that sour face,’ she added snappishly. ‘You have a husband to pleasure you.’

  Jane sighed. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘John Harper,’ said Juliana sulkily.

  ‘The tailor?’ Jane was horrified. She remembered him measuring her for her wedding gown, that lascivious smile, that carnal mouth. ‘How in the name of sweet reason did you meet him?’

  ‘I wanted a new gown.’ Juliana plucked at her skirts. ‘He came to the house.’

  ‘But where was Mary? Or Alison?’

  ‘I sent Mary away. I do not like her hanging around me all the time.’

  ‘And now you are with child,’ said Jane heavily.

  ‘I’ve tried to kill it but I can’t.’ Juliana began to weep. ‘Once I grow large, I will be ruined. I will never be married!’

  ‘Our father is wealthy. He will buy you a husband.’

  ‘A gentleman won’t take me,’ said Juliana between sobs. ‘I won’t be married off to some clodhopping journeyman or a fat old man. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t! I would rather be dead! You said you would help me, Jane. If you do not, I will throw myself in the river!’

  Jane’s head was aching. ‘Calm yourself, sister,’ she said wearily. ‘I will think of something.’

  ‘What?’

  Jane didn’t know. ‘I can’t think while you are pacing around like that, Juliana. Come and sit down.’

  Juliana sat dabbing at her eyes, while Jane tried to think. It was a bitter irony that Juliana, who didn’t want a child, should be carrying one, while she, who yearned for one, had no chance of –

  Unless.

  Unless . . . Jane sat up straighter.

  ‘What?’ demanded Juliana, watching her expression.

  ‘We will go to Holme Hall,’ said Jane slowly. Very slowly, thinking as she searched for the right words, testing them as they came out of her mouth. ‘We’ll say you are unwell and in need of country air and quiet. You will give birth there. Nobody need know.’

  ‘Yes!’ Juliana clapped her hands. ‘And then I can come home. There will be a woman to take the baby,’ she added as a careless afterthought.

  ‘ I will take the baby,’ said Jane.

  ‘You?’

  Juliana looked astonished, and Jane coloured. ‘I have not conceived,’ she said with difficulty. ‘My husband longs for a son.’

  ‘You are barren?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Jane, although in truth she had no idea. If Juliana thought so, she might be more willing to keep the secret. The more Jane thought about it, the more certain she became. Surely, surely, if she gave Robert a son, things would be better? The Holmwoods wanted it as much as she did.

  ‘Your husband will know the child is not his,’ said Juliana.

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Jane wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘We will say the babe is a seven-month child. I will write and say that I am staying in the country until I give birth.’

  ‘What if he comes?’

  ‘He won’t.’ Robert had little interest in Holme Hall, and Jane knew he would be only too pleased to get rid of her for a few months. She wouldn’t think of what he and Margaret would do while she was away. ‘Annis can come with us. She can keep the other servants away in case it be too obvious that I am not increasing. Then you will give birth and I will pretend the babe is mine.’ A warmth spread through Jane at the thought.

  ‘Do you think it could work?’ Juliana asked hopefully.

  ‘I think so. I will talk to Annis.’

  Annis pursed her lips when Jane told her the plan. ‘Haven’t you forgotten summat?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Even your husband must know how babes are conceived,’ she said bluntly. ‘You’re going to have to get him back to your bed before you go.’

  Jane swallowed and looked away. ‘He doesn’t love me,’ she said, low-voiced.

  ‘You can get a babe without love,’ said Annis. ‘But you’ll still need to get him back to your bed and you’ll need to arouse him. Think you can do that?’

  Jane’s flush deepened. She remembered how crudely Margaret had spoken to her. Take him in your mouth, she had said. Let him bend you over and go at you like a dog. He doesn’t want to see your niminy-piminy face, and he doesn’t want to hear you bleating about love. You are just a cunny to him.

  Her gorge rose just thinking of the things she would have to do, but if she wanted a baby, this might be her only chance.

  ‘I know what to do,’ she said.

  That night, Jane made herself look as good as she could. ‘Sure you can do this?’ Annis asked doubtfully, as she helped Jane on with her nightshift.

  Nausea rolled in Jane’s stomach, but she nodded.

  ‘I must,’ she said.

  ‘You could always let Juliana sort out her own problems,’ Annis pointed out.

  ‘I promised our mother I would look after her.’

  ‘You were a bairn. Do you always keep your promises?’

  Jane thought about Ellen, swinging at the end of a rope because she had told after all. ‘Not always,’ she said. ‘But this is one I will keep. Besides, Annis, what else will happen to the baby? Juliana talked of giving it to a country couple, but such folk need money to feed a child. They have little enough of their own. Where is Juliana to find enough to pay them regularly? I only have money for housekeeping. Juliana is so desperate to come back to York and make a good marriage that I fear she would throw a few coins to a countrywoman and leave the babe and that will be that as far as she is concerned.’

  ‘I’d not give the babe much of a chance if that happened,’ Annis agreed.

  ‘It will die if I do not save it,’ said Jane. Already she had seen one newborn baby die before it had barely drawn a breath. She would not see it again. She would not. Her soft mouth set in a stubborn line. ‘If I must do these things to make sure the babe lives, then I will.’

  She let Annis brush out her hair. It was her best feature, a warm brown like sunlight pouring through honey, and it fell long and straight to her waist. There was no point in ho
ping that Robert would come to her.

  She made her way down to his closet, just as she had done once before. This time Robert was there, sprawled in the turned chair, and Margaret was on a cushion in front of the fire. Her hair was loose too and she looked young and beautiful as she laughed up at her son. The smile froze on her face when she saw Jane standing in the doorway.

  ‘I would like to speak to my husband,’ said Jane steadily. ‘You need a son, and I want a child.’

  Robert looked uncertainly at Margaret, who nodded slowly and rose to her feet. She stroked Robert’s hair as she went past, and bent to whisper in his ear. ‘Think of me,’ she said, not caring that Jane could hear.

  ‘Well, madam?’ Robert was flustered without his mother’s presence.

  ‘We need to make a child, that is all,’ said Jane. ‘I will go to the country and be with my sister, but first, let us make the baby we both need.’

  His eyes slid away from hers. ‘You do not please me. How can I be expected to serve you when you just lie and look at me like that?’ he asked pettishly.

  ‘Then I must try harder to please you,’ said Jane, walking forward until she stood in front of him and could sink down to her knees.

  ‘God, Roz, you look awful.’ Lucy was staring at her, and Jeff’s gaze narrowed at the look of revulsion on Roz’s face as she stared off into the yard. There was an eerie blankness to her eyes, and he had the uncanny notion that she was watching something horrifying, but when he turned to see what she was looking at, there was nothing there, just an old brick wall, a dilapidated outhouse and a green wheelie bin.

  ‘Roz?’ Lucy put a hand on Roz’s arm and she jerked as if Lucy had slapped her. Jeff saw her eyes snap into focus before she gagged and clapped a hand to her mouth.

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered after a moment. ‘I just felt a bit sick.’

  ‘You don’t look well,’ said Lucy in concern. ‘Do you want to sit down?’

  ‘No . . . no, I’m okay.’ Tentatively, Roz lowered her hand from her mouth and swallowed hard. ‘The feeling’s gone now.’ She cleared her throat. ‘What were you saying, Lucy?’

  ‘I was talking about whether or not there would have been a still room, and you suddenly pointed at the bin and said of course, you made remedies there.’ Lucy’s smile was a little uncertain. ‘It was weird, wasn’t it, Jeff?’

  He gave a nod, but he was watching Roz’s face. Something was going on. Her eyes were skittering around, searching frantically for an explanation. He could tell that just by looking at her.

  ‘I was just thinking . . . a still room is a great idea,’ she managed in the end. ‘We could have an actor playing the mistress of the house . . . and talking about the remedies she’s making. A sort of interactive display.’

  It wasn’t a bad effort, but Jeff didn’t believe her for a moment. Lucy seemed to accept it, though.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, her face clearing. ‘Yes, that might be fun, mightn’t it? Especially if we used herbs and things that are readily available today. I must do some research.’

  ‘I could probably help you with that.’ Jeff didn’t understand the wry note in Roz’s voice. She still looked ghastly, but went inside with Lucy, all the while talking about Tudor remedies, and Jeff was left looking at the bin with a suspicious frown.

  ‘Jesus.’ Nick peered up through the windscreen at the imposing gatehouse that straddled the turn-off. ‘I didn’t realize we were going to be staying in a castle!’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a castle exactly,’ said Roz, but she hadn’t been expecting quite such a grand entrance either. The gatehouse was a huge stone arch, with towers on either side. Carved over the arch was the Holmwood coat of arms, and there, in one quarter, was the red boar. Roz shuddered at the sight of it, and averted her eyes.

  ‘I should have brought my valet,’ said Nick, putting on an exaggerated upper-class accent that sounded disconcertingly like Adrian’s.

  A reluctant smile tugged at Roz’s mouth as she let off the handbrake and drove carefully under the arch. ‘God, I hope it’s not going to be too awful.’

  In the end, it hadn’t been as hard to persuade Nick to come for the weekend as she had imagined it would be. His only objection had been the fact that he had booked an appointment with the hypnotherapist for her.

  ‘Can you change it?’ Roz had asked on the phone. ‘Please, Nick. This weekend is important to me.’

  She’d met him at the station the night before. It was a fortnight since they had seen each other, but it felt like much longer. Roz watched Nick walking down the platform, and it was as if she had never seen him before. He looked like a stranger, a lean man with a bony, quirky face and intelligent eyes. His hair was a little long, his clothes a little scruffy, but he walked like a man easy in his own skin, and he was wonderfully solid, wonderfully real. For some reason she found herself blushing as she greeted him with a hug.

  Nick was awkward too. ‘It feels like a first date,’ he said with a grimace. ‘You’d never think we’d been married for eight years.’

  ‘I know. Maybe it’s being in a strange place?’

  ‘Or maybe we’ve changed without realizing it.’ He studied her with shrewd brown eyes. ‘There’s something different about you. I can’t quite put my finger on it . . .’ Then he pulled her back against him and buried his face in her hair. ‘You still smell the same, though. Nice.’

  ‘Same perfume,’ said Roz.

  ‘Same you.’

  Still, it was strange at first sleeping in the same bed again. All evening, Roz tried to find a way to tell Nick about her experiences as Jane, but there never seemed to be a good moment and conversation was sticky, coming out in great dollops and then drying up abruptly. They talked about their jobs, about their flat, about friends, but they didn’t talk about Daniel. They didn’t talk about any of the things that had lain between them for too long.

  When they went to bed, the darkness vibrated with everything unspoken between them. Nick turned on his side to face her, and after a moment, Roz turned too. It was sad, she thought, that they could only look at each other properly in the dark now.

  ‘I missed you,’ he said, and there was an ache at the back of her throat, a stinging behind her eyes.

  ‘I’ve missed you too.’

  Then his hands were on her skin, warm and sure, and she reached for him, welcoming the spike of her pulse, the lovely, liquid pull of desire after so long apart, letting the familiar feel of him blot out Jane’s memories of Robert’s fumbling attempts to mount her, the way she had had to degrade herself to ensure a child was at least a possibility. Roz gave herself up to the arching pleasure of Nick’s hands, Nick’s mouth, Nick’s body. Every touch, every taste, loosened the tight, tense knot inside her, and as the pleasure built, stroking and skimming, streaking, it unravelled further until she felt it spin wildly free at last with her shout of release.

  And afterwards, it had been the most natural thing in the world to press up against his spine and tuck her arm over him, to feel the steady rise and fall of his chest. It had felt like coming home. Easy then to forget the bitter words, the recriminations and the resentment. Perhaps this was all they needed, Roz thought hopefully, and she remembered Jane, poor Jane, who had never known the comfort of lying close to someone she loved, of skin on skin, of breathing quietly together.

  But the next morning, watching Nick peering through the window and grumbling about pastiche architecture, Roz realized that sex could only go so far. It might have broken down the barriers, but there was still so much that she and Nick needed to talk about. Daniel hadn’t gone away just because Nick was here with her.

  And nor had Jane.

  She went to join Nick at the window. ‘What do you see?’ she asked him.

  ‘I see a botched, unimaginative building,’ he said, snorting. Nostalgia’r’us.’

  ‘What else?’

  He glanced at her. ‘Is this a game?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well . . .’ He loo
ked back at the scene. ‘I see some cars. Some planting, equally unimaginative. A satellite dish. A few puddles. Is that the kind of thing you mean?’

  ‘The first day I arrived in York, I looked out of that window, and I saw a stable and a long yard with apple trees and a woodstore and a herb garden.’

  There was a long silence. Roz could feel Nick’s eyes on her face, but she couldn’t look at him.

  ‘I know, it sounds mad, doesn’t it?’ she said, her voice rising, rattling out of control, and her breathing with it. ‘It is mad.’ Now the words were out, she started to shake as the reality hit her. ‘I’m losing my mind, Nick. I’m afraid I’m going mad.’

  ‘Hey.’ Nick took her hands, held them firmly, gave them a little shake. ‘Look at me, Roz. Good,’ he said as she lifted her gaze unwillingly. She was breathing in short, panicky gasps, and her eyes skittered wildly around at first, as if terrified of being trapped, but he kept watching her steadily and eventually her breath calmed and her eyes settled on his. ‘Good,’ he said again. ‘Now, we’re going to sit down and you’re going to tell me all about it, and then we’ll decide whether you’re mad or not.’

  Chapter Eleven

  They sat on the beige sofa and she told him everything that had happened since she had first looked out of the window. Right until the moment Jane had sunk to her knees in front of Robert.

  ‘I looked up schizophrenia,’ she finished. ‘It’s a psychotic disorder, when you can’t distinguish between your imaginings and reality. Schizophrenics can see and hear and smell things that other people don’t – like that yard out of the window there.’

  Like the sound of a wet baby being dropped into the straw.

  Like the smell of Robert’s penis.

  She pushed the memories away with an effort. ‘Sometimes it can be triggered by stressful events.’

  ‘And you’re thinking about Mikey,’ said Nick, who had listened carefully. Roz was grateful and amazed at how calmly he had taken it. There had been no interjections, or insistence that she must be making it up. ‘You think that because your brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia, you’re going to be genetically predisposed to having schizophrenia too.’