The Edge of Dark

by Pamela Hartshorne

  ‘I wonder if there’s a possible link with our Sir Geoffrey? She could be his wife perhaps?’

  ‘Or his mother? Or sister?’

  Charles cut through the speculation. ‘Whoever she was, using her spirit as a business asset is disrespectful,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘I advise you to be very careful. You don’t know what you’re dealing with here. Roz, you in particular must find a way to protect yourself until we can persuade this unquiet spirit to move on.’

  Roz in particular. As always.

  Helen glanced at Jeff again. The candle flames threw flickering shadows over his face and his expression as he watched Roz sent a sharp shudder down Helen’s spine.

  Adrian was fulsome in apologies to Roz. ‘I should have thought about you. It must have been a very strange experience. If you don’t want to be involved in anything related to promoting the haunted house side of things, then of course we’d understand.’

  ‘I’m the events director,’ Roz reminded him. She seemed to have recovered some of her control. ‘Of course I need to be involved in any promotions.’

  ‘You won’t find it too upsetting?’

  Helen noticed that Roz avoided answering that one directly. ‘Mark is right. It would be a fantastic opportunity to get more visitors to Holmwood House. We don’t need to turn it into a tacky house of horrors, but I don’t see any harm in mentioning that we’ve had a séance here, and that in spite of some scepticism there were indications of a ghostly presence.’ She hesitated. ‘Perhaps we could do some research and see if we can find out who Jane really is – or was.’

  ‘That’s a great idea,’ said Mark.

  ‘Or,’ said Sir Adrian, ‘we could ask Charles to do another séance. We could see if he could reach Jane again through you and ask her.’

  But Charles was shaking his head. ‘It’s too dangerous. I’ve encountered a lot of spirits in my time, but there is something very wrong here. I won’t be involved in anything other than a cleansing séance. Spirits are not something to be played with or exploited for marketing purposes.’

  ‘We’re planning to be respectful. You heard what Roz said.’ Helen could see that Sir Adrian had made up his mind. If Roz had said something, that was what they were all going to do. For a moment she felt a spurt of contempt so vicious that she flinched, but the next moment it had gone, leaving her confused and distressed. Her admiration and longing for Sir Adrian structured her entire world and even a flash of contempt for him shook her foundations. It was almost as if somebody else had been in her head, looking at him with different eyes.

  Has anyone noticed themselves feeling different lately?

  Charles Denton had asked. Angrier or more hostile than they usually are? Helen brushed the memory away as if it were an irritating fly buzzing in her head. There had been enough nonsense here tonight. Sir Adrian relied on her to be practical and sensible. She was not going to join in all the hysteria about ghosts.

  She glanced up to find Charles Denton watching her. ‘None of you know what you’re dealing with. I think you should all be very, very careful.’

  ‘I was hoping for rain.’ Jane and Annis were lurking in the churchyard of the old priory, trying to look inconspicuous. Over Annis’s shoulder, she could see the sign of the red boar swinging gently in the spring breeze. Micklegate was thronged with folk, all glad to see the sunshine after months, it seemed, of a dreary mizzle that cast a damp dew over everything. For weeks the sodden guards on Jane’s kirtle had dragged at the roll on her waist, and inside every house the smell of wet wool from doublets, gowns, kirtles and breeches steaming in the heat of the fire had been overpowering.

  But today the lowering carpet of cloud had vanished as if it had never been. The sun was shining and the promise of spring at last drew people out into the street. It was as if they had woken to a different world. Instead of huddling into their gowns and hurrying home, heads down against the rain, they dawdled and smiled at each other. They stopped to talk and exclaim at the softness of the air, the brightness of the sky. The cobbles might be slippery still, the gardens still clogged with mud, but the sunlight glittered on the Ouse and the whole city seemed to be out and about and in a sociable mood.

  Which was the last thing Jane wanted. She was in disguise and she couldn’t afford to be recognized today. She and Annis were dressed as countrywomen in short skirts and coarse aprons, their neckerchiefs pulled up over their noses the way peasant women did on dusty tracks. There was little enough chance of dust after the last few weeks, and the real countrywomen in the market that morning were all bare-faced, breathing in the sparkling spring air, but Jane didn’t want to risk anyone seeing her face. Because this was the day she was going to steal Geoffrey back.

  For months she had wracked her brains about how to keep her promise to Juliana. She had been bundled off to Holme Hall with Annis, a groom and two male serving men the day after the feast, before she had an opportunity to appeal to her father or her friends. Not that her father would have taken her part anyway, Jane knew. He would not forgive her for Juliana, and her friends would soon hear the rumours that she had been found making merry with Sir Thomas Parker. They might shake their heads at her banishment, but they wouldn’t question Robert’s right to keep his son. No smoke without fire, they would say.

  Jane was on her own.

  She fretted constantly about Geoffrey, and would not be consoled. ‘They need him for his inheritance,’ Annis had tried pointing out. ‘They will have to take good care of him.’

  ‘Oh, they will feed him, I dare say,’ said Jane, wringing her hands, ‘but they will not be tender with him. They will not sing to him or rock him to sleep.’ She imagined Geoffrey left to cry in his cradle, or worse, Margaret lifting him up, as she must once have lifted Robert, playing with him in ways that made Jane’s skin crawl to think of. ‘I must find a way to get back to him!’

  Swallowing her pride, she wrote begging for forgiveness for the things she had not done. She asked if she could go back to York. She would live as a servant, she said, as long as she could care for the child.

  Robert’s answer was gleefully cruel. She must stay in the country. She had shamed him too much. She was lucky he had not sent her for trial for adultery and fornication. He would not have her tainting his son.

  Jane tore up the letter, her lips compressed in fury. If Robert would not let her care for the child, she would take Geoffrey, she vowed.

  Annis was doubtful. ‘Where would we go? This is the first place the Holmwoods would look for him.’

  ‘We will go to London.’ The idea appeared fully formed in Jane’s head, and the words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to think about them. ‘York is too small to hide. They would find us in no time.’ She turned the idea over in her mind, testing it, liking it. ‘No, it must be London, or I will never be free of them. They say there are so many folk there, you can walk a mile and never see a face you know. How would Robert find us in London?’

  ‘But how would we get there?’ Annis’s eyes were wide. ‘What would we do? We know no one in London.’

  ‘We know Jack.’

  For Jack had come a-wooing of Annis at the first break in the weather. He was quiet but sturdy, like Annis, with a calm face and steady blue eyes, and Jane had rejoiced to see how Annis glowed when he arrived.

  Jack brought news of the city, and of Geoffrey. A girl had been brought in to care for the baby, he reported, but she was reputedly a slattern, and although Jack was only next door he hadn’t seen her for himself. He had heard the babe crying occasionally, so he knew Geoffrey was alive, but more than that he could not say.

  Geoffrey, cared for by a doxy. Jane could not bear the thought. She had to get him away.

  Jack, when applied to, was definite. Jane and Annis could not go to London on their own, babe or no babe.

  ‘Annis, let us be wed,’ he said. ‘I will tell my master I need to go home to London. My family have an inn near Aldgate. We can go there. There are so many people coming
and going, there will be none to notice you amongst so many. Annis and I can work in the inn but you, my lady . . .’ He looked doubtfully at Jane. ‘You are a gentlewoman. What can you do?’

  ‘You forget I am a butcher’s daughter,’ said Jane. ‘I will do what I must.’ She turned over her hands to show Jack her palms. ‘These are not a gentlewoman’s hands, Jack. I can cook and I can read and cast accounts. I can sew and make remedies. I do not sit in my chamber sighing for company.’

  She glanced at Annis for confirmation and saw that her maid was poppy red. Jane bit down a smile. ‘Well, anyway, we will make our plans, but first I have things to do. Do you stay with Jack, Annis, and perhaps he can find better words to ask you to marry him!’

  Jack looked sheepish. ‘I’ll try, my lady, but I’m not handy with words.’ His eyes rested on Annis and what she saw in his expression made Jane’s heart twist with envy. ‘And I might need you as a witness in case she changes her mind.’

  ‘Will you marry Jack, Annis?’

  Annis tossed her head. ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ she said, and Jane laughed.

  ‘Jack, if anyone asks, I will swear that I heard her say yes!’

  Annis’s betrothal and marriage were the only bright spots in the dark of those few months. Jane worried away at a plan to rescue Geoffrey but in the end could think only of the simplest: to walk in and take him for herself.

  Today was the appointed day. Jack had struck up a flirtation with Geoffrey’s nurse, and had arranged an assignation with her when he knew that Robert would be out of the house. Margaret’s movements were less predictable, but Jane had waited long enough. Robert’s mother didn’t concern herself with the running of the house. She stayed in her parlour, a spider at the centre of her web, and rarely ventured out. Jane would have to risk walking past her door.

  Annis didn’t like it. ‘What if someone sees you? Do you know what they would do to you if they caught you stealing the child? Let me go.’

  ‘Do you know what they would do to you if they caught you stealing the child?’ Jane quoted her words back to her. ‘I could not have that on my conscience, Annis. No, Geoffrey is my responsibility. I will go myself.’

  Across the street, Jack had emerged from the passage leading down to the yard with his arm around a buxom maid whose bodice was laced tight over a scandalously low-cut smock. She was tittering and tossing her head, and she didn’t even try to resist when Jack drew her into a doorway and let his hand dabble at the edge of her smock.

  Annis’s eyes narrowed above her neckerchief. ‘I hope he’s not enjoying that too much!’

  ‘Quick, I must go now,’ said Jane. She picked up her basket. If anyone asked, she was delivering cheese to the kitchen. She had bought some in the market that morning and covered it with a cloth.

  Annis touched her arm. ‘Be careful.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Making herself saunter casually like everyone else that fine day, Jane walked under the lychgate and was heading directly for the arched passageway leading to the back of the house when the front door opened and Margaret swept out, accompanied by her slack-jawed maid. She would have walked right across Jane’s path if Jane had not veered away through the crowd, her heart beating like a wait’s drum.

  Her knuckles were white on the handle of her basket. If Margaret spotted her, she would drop the basket and run, she decided wildly – but run where? The slightest suspicion that she was in York would make the Holmwoods guard Geoffrey carefully. She would not get another chance, Jane knew. She stopped and put her basket down, stooping as if to adjust her garter, and watched under her lashes as Margaret swished past, her maid trailing behind her.

  Straightening in relief, Jane met Jack’s eyes over the nurse’s shoulder. He jerked his head towards the passage, and Jane nodded briefly back, telling him that she understood that she had to hurry.

  It was strange to be back in the house of which she had once been mistress, but Jane had no time to linger over memories. The fine weather worked in her favour now. Most of the servants, it seemed, had found an excuse to be outside and only a sulky crashing of pots in the kitchen indicated that one of the younger maids had been left to clear up. Meg, probably. Jane tiptoed past the door and along the passage to the buttery and then into the hall. It was very quiet, so quiet that Jane could hear a fly, warmed from its cold-induced stupor, beating itself against one of the expensive glass windows.

  It was hard to keep her sturdy shoes from ringing on the wooden stairs, but Jane went up as quietly as she could. She had put Geoffrey’s cradle in her chamber, but when she peeped inside, the room was empty. So was the parlour and Margaret’s chamber.

  Cautiously, she stepped over to the doorway and listened. The house felt empty. Where else might a child be? Moving as silently as she could over the creaking floorboards, she climbed the next flight of stairs and was almost at the top when a latch clattered and Nan, one of the servants Jane had employed, came whistling to the top of the steps.

  There was nowhere for Jane to hide. Nan saw her the moment she swung down the stairs and she opened her mouth to cry out in shock. Quickly, Jane tugged down the kerchief to show her face. ‘It is I, Nan,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘Where is my child?’

  Nan swallowed. ‘In the chamber above, mistress.’

  They had put Geoffrey up with the servants. ‘I wish to see him.’ Jane was amazed at her own calmness, the authority in her voice that had Nan turning obediently and leading the way up to a sordid room under the eaves. There stood the cradle, unrocked, and within it Geoffrey, black eyes blank and unresponsive.

  When Jane lifted him up, she smelt that he had soiled himself and she was so angry she felt dizzy. ‘What have they done to you?’ she whispered. She swung round to Nan. ‘I am taking him with me, Nan, but I don’t want you to suffer for it.’

  ‘I will say I saw nothing.’ Nan looked at the baby. ‘That slattern should be caring for the babe, but she don’t like him. Says he looks at her funny.’

  ‘He is a child.’ Jane had been worrying about how the Holmwoods would react to losing Geoffrey, and whether they would take it out on the maid, but now she had seen how little the nurse did for him, she didn’t care any more.

  ‘She holds the candle right up to his face. Like a game.’ Nan shivered. ‘She says he likes it but it don’t seem right to me.’

  ‘No,’ said Jane, grim-faced.

  ‘Here.’ Nan snatched up some clean swaddling cloths, tipped the cheese out onto the floor, and pushed the cloths into Jane’s basket. ‘I’ll carry this if you bring the bairn.’

  She led the way softly down the stairs, but as they turned for the next flight, they heard someone coming up. Frantically Nan shoved the basket into Jane’s free hand and gestured her into the nearest chamber.

  ‘Is that you, Meg?’ she called.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Meg grumbled, stumping up the stairs. ‘I’ve been calling and calling you.’

  ‘I’ve been in’t parlour. You’ll never guess what I saw from the window.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come and see.’ Nan drew Meg into the parlour, and Jane slipped down the stairs, tucking Geoffrey into the basket on top of the swaddling and covering him with the cloth. It wasn’t right for a baby to lie so still and unprotesting, but right then she was glad of his quietness. In the doorway, she pulled up her kerchief once more, took a deep breath and stepped out into the street. No one shouted, ‘Stop, thief!’ No one stared.

  Her heart was in her mouth as she walked, not too quickly, across to the churchyard, and her hands shook as she handed the basket to Annis while she got her breath back.

  ‘You got him?’ Annis said, feeling the weight of the basket, and Jane let herself smile at last as she nodded.

  ‘I did it!’

  ‘When you came out with just the basket, I felt sure you hadn’t been able to find him. I wondered what we were going to do.’

  ‘Now we can go.’ Jane took the basket back. �
�You give Jack the signal all’s well.’

  Annis sauntered across to where Jack was still dawdling with the maid and offered him a posy of flowers from her basket. ‘A posy for the pretty lady?’ she begged him.

  The maid looked hopeful, but her face fell when Jack made an irritable gesture. ‘Begone!’ he said to Annis, then he turned with a flourish to lift the maid’s hand to his lips. ‘I have tarried too long. I must go, my dove.’

  ‘My dove?’ Annis echoed caustically when they met down on the staith as they had planned and Jack grinned.

  ‘It worked, didn’t it? Now, come, we’ll miss the tide if we’re not quick.’ The captain of one of the keelboats plying between York and Hull owed him a favour, he’d told Jane. He would take them to Hull and there they would find another boat to take them to London.

  Jane sat stiffly on an upturned barrel and kept her head bent and her face covered in case anyone noticed them. It was the kind of day when people dawdling over Ouse Bridge might stop and watch what was going on at King’s Staith. She didn’t dare take Geoffrey out of his basket, but turned back the cloth so that he could feel the sun on his face. She had tried cooing comfortingly to him but there was something so sly in the way the black eyes glittered back up at her that the baby words had died on her lips. It was as if he knew that she had slunk in like a thief and snatched him, as if he were reserving judgement on whether he approved the change or not. It made Jane uncomfortable. But better that he had some expression, however disquieting, than none, she argued to herself.

  She was wild to be gone. The tide would be right, Jack had said, but they needed the wind too and now even the soft breeze had dropped, leaving the city basking in a summery warmth. The sun flashed and glittered on the water, but the sails hung listlessly on all the keelboats drawn up at the staith.

  Any moment now the nurse would discover that Geoffrey had gone. Nan, Jane hoped, would keep her counsel, but when Margaret or Robert discovered what she had done, their fury would know no bounds. Jane feared for Annis and Jack if the Holmwoods ever knew their part in this.