The Memory of Midnight

by Pamela Hartshorne

Nell took the wing from him. Her gorge rose but she managed a tiny bite and forced it down. The gamey texture of the flesh stuck to the roof of her mouth and sauce thickened with bread clung unpleasantly to her tongue. She tasted ginger, vinegar, despair.

  ‘Eat it all,’ said Ralph.

  Somehow Nell made her way through it all. When she finally judged that she could lay the bones down, Ralph took them and sucked them between his teeth, on and on and on. The sound made sweat break out on her forehead.

  I must not be sick. I must not be sick.

  I must not think of Tom.

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ Alice had sighed as she helped Nell dress earlier. ‘I wish William would give me a kirtle like this!’ She fingered the fine worsted enviously. Alice had done what no other maid could do. She had penned William Carter’s wandering eye, she had pinned him down, and now they were betrothed. Nell thought privately that William himself was not quite sure how it had happened, but Alice was happy and she was glad for her friend.

  Happy she might be, but Alice was hard-headed enough to know that lust alone was not enough to make a marriage. She knew how Nell felt about Tom, but she approved of her decision to marry Ralph instead. ‘Ralph Maskewe is a fine-looking gentleman, and rich too. He is a man of substance and good reputation. William says he will be alderman long before anyone else his age.’

  Nell smiled faintly, but only because she had heard a lot about what William said since Alice’s betrothal. He seemed to have an opinion on every subject.

  ‘And he dotes on you, Nell. You will have everything you want.’

  Nell didn’t answer. Not everything, she wanted to say. I cannot have Tom, and if I cannot have Tom, I do not want anything. But what would be the point?

  It was the way of the world. We cannot always have what we want, Nell told herself. We do what we must and we endure. There was no point in telling everyone her heart was breaking. It would not make any difference, and it would just make them feel bad. Already her father’s shame-faced gratitude was more than she could bear.

  And now she was dancing with Ralph, his hands pressed against hers, his teeth glinting in the candlelight. Nell went through the motions, her smile still pinned to her face, while their guests put their heads to one side and smiled indulgently at the newly-weds. Couldn’t they see? Nell marvelled. Couldn’t they tell just how wrong this was?

  She was dreading the night to come, so much so that now she was impatient to get it over with. At least she did not have to try and pretend that she was still a maid. She had been honest with Ralph. He couldn’t accuse her of being untrue.

  After Ralph, she danced every dance. Her bridelaces fluttered blue and green from her golden headdress and she could smell the posies of rosemary pinned to the hair that today fell loose down her back. The wild hair that Tom used to love to twine his hands in. I see gold and bronze and copper . . . I see flames, hot and red. And then he would rub his face in it. I smell gillyflowers.

  Nell kept smiling. Oh, she was the perfect bride. Let no one say she was not playing her part. But her eyes were blank and she didn’t notice who she was dancing with except when she danced with her brother, gentle Harry, who minded his steps carefully and whose eyes were troubled.

  ‘Nell,’ he said. ‘Will you be happy?’

  He was the only one who had asked, the only one, it seemed, who cared.

  For a moment, Nell could not answer him. She looked away, her throat too tight to speak, and then the dance separated them. She turned, clapped, smiled, and when they came back together again she was able to look into his face.

  ‘I will try,’ she said.

  She had lost Tom, but she had saved Harry. That was something, and when the dance ended, she embraced him, this brother who was so dear to her heart.

  For the first time it occurred to her that she might have children of her own. Ralph would never be Tom, but they might come to an understanding. Perhaps it would not be too bad.

  Only it felt very bad when Ralph beckoned her. ‘It is time for us to retire,’ he said. ‘Make yourself ready, my dear.’

  Stifling giggles, Nell’s maids led her to the great bedchamber overlooking the street. A tall bed draped in red damask nearly filled the room. In the light of the candles one of the maids set on a table, Nell could see the great curtains, embroidered with bees and flowers on the outside, pulled back and looped to the bedposts with twisted golden cords. There was a turned chair by the window, with a tasselled cushion, and a huge chest that made memories freeze like ice in her belly.

  She averted her eyes from it as her maids helped her out of her gown. They took the posies of rosemary from her hair, rolled up the bridelaces and brushed out her hair, whispering advice and encouragement. Nell had already had an awkward conversation with her stepmother, who advised her to lie still and let her husband do what he wanted, and it would soon be over. For a second, she allowed herself to remember Tom and how easily they had moved together. She had never been able to lie still, had never wanted it to end.

  But she couldn’t think of Tom, not now.

  She had been smiling so long, her face felt fixed in a grimace. Nell let them help her into the great bed. Tonight she would lie still; tonight she would wait for it to be over. She could smell rosemary on the sheets, in her hair from the posies.

  Rosemary for fidelity. Rosemary for remembrance.

  But she had not been faithful to Tom, and remembrance was the last thing she needed then.

  Her maids left and for one blessed moment Nell was alone and could let the smile drop from her face like a stone. She lay and looked up at the canopy over the bed. She was used to sleeping with Alice in the little chamber in the Harrisons’ attic. This bed on its own was almost as big as that chamber, but the heavy curtains made it seem close and dark in the guttering candlelight.

  What if Ralph wanted to close them? A new dread swamped Nell, twisting her stomach and clogging her throat and ringing in her ears. They would be shut in the thick darkness and she would not be able to breathe. It would be like being closed in the chest again, but this time it would be worse.

  Ralph would be with her.

  Nell’s breath raced to catch up with her accelerating heart. If he closed the curtains, if he closed them . . . what would she do?

  Perhaps he wouldn’t. She latched onto the thought. The cords and tassels were very grand. Perhaps they were just for show. Perhaps Ralph, too, felt stifled when the heavy silk fell down and cut the bed off from the rest of the room. With an effort, Nell slowed her shallow breathing. She could endure this. She must.

  She would have to be careful not to offend Ralph. He must not guess the terror that awaited her if he tried to close her in. So she would put her smile back and speak fair words and hope that he would want her enough to treat her kindly.

  She had no more time to think in any case. There was boisterous laughter outside, then Ralph came in. Laughingly, he pushed out the men who pretended they would crowd into the chamber to help him. They left at last, jeering advice and encouragement.

  Ralph and Nell were alone.

  Nell’s heart was thudding slowly and painfully in her chest, as if it would smash her ribs and burst out of her body. The beat of it was deafening in her ears, so loud that she was sure Ralph must hear it.

  ‘So,’ Ralph said. He began to unbutton his doublet, his eyes on Nell, his expression unreadable. She wondered if he expected her to get up and help him undress, but it felt false to her so she stayed where she was. No doubt he would tell her what he wanted.

  In the hall along the passage, their guests were still drinking, and dancing had begun again after the bride and groom had been delivered to their wedding bed. The waits spent the break making the most of the liberal supplies of spiced wine, and now the music was getting more raucous, but in the chamber there was only raw silence.

  It went on so long that Nell lost her nerve. She cleared her throat. ‘The feast seemed to go well enough,’ she said at last.

 
‘It did,’ Ralph agreed pleasantly, ‘had it not been for the fact that you acted the harlot.’

  Nell thought she had misheard. ‘Acted the what?’

  ‘Do not act the innocent with me, mistress. We had an agreement. You are my wife now.’

  ‘I am not like to forget it,’ she said bitterly, forgetting that she had meant to give him soft words and smiles, to make him forget how the bed curtains could close around them like a shroud.

  ‘I saw you.’ He stripped off his doublet, his hose, until he was down to his linen undershirt. There was a tautness to him, like a pinner’s wire stretched tighter and tighter and tighter until with a final twist it would snap. ‘I saw you flirt with every man you danced with.’

  Nell puffed out a laugh at the absurdity of it, but that was the wrong thing to do. His face darkened. ‘It amuses you, to shame me in front of our guests?’

  ‘I was not flirting,’ she said honestly. ‘I barely knew who I was dancing with.’

  ‘So you do not know who you embrace?’

  She was puzzled at first. ‘You cannot mean Harry?’ As far as she remembered, that was the only moment of affection in the whole day. Ralph just looked grimly at her, and she looked back in disbelief. ‘Ralph, he is my brother!’

  ‘And you kept all your embraces for him. Do you never do that to me again, wife,’ Ralph said and the expression in his eyes made her shrink back onto the pillows. ‘You are my wife now, do you understand me?’

  ‘You’re being absurd—’ she began, but his hands lashed out without warning and grabbed her arms so hard that she cried out.

  ‘Do not dare call me absurd,’ he ground out savagely. ‘You are mine now. You are not to embrace anyone but me. Do. You. Understand?’ He shook her between each word, and his fingers bit agonizingly into her flesh.

  ‘Yes,’ she gasped. Anything to be free of the pain of his grip. ‘Yes, I understand.’

  He let her go so suddenly she toppled back against the pillows, shaken by this brush with violence. He hadn’t touched the curtains, that was all she could think. She could cope with anything as long as she wasn’t shut in the dark.

  She hoped that would be the end to his roughness, but it seemed Ralph was just beginning. He climbed over her, bigger than Tom, broader and heavier, and his expression was feral, glinting with such menace that Nell caught her breath.

  ‘You . . . do not need to force me,’ she managed.

  ‘Oh, but I do. I know you are thinking of him,’ he snarled. ‘You have been thinking of him all day, haven’t you?’

  Nell knew who he meant. ‘No,’ she said in a level voice. ‘I cannot bear to think of him.’

  ‘Do not lie to me!’ He pinched her breast so hard that she yelped. Immediately, he clapped a hand over her mouth.

  ‘Be quiet!’

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ she gasped, struggling to free herself from his hand.

  ‘You deserve to be hurt. Don’t you?’ he added, when she stared up at him, aghast at the man unravelling before her eyes. He pinched her again, and this time she managed not to cry out. ‘Don’t you? No sooner married than unfaithful in thought. Do you think to make a cuckold of me so easily? Do you? Do you?’ He was twisting her flesh, hurting her, pinning her down with the brutal weight of his body as she tried to wriggle out from beneath him.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘In God’s name, Ralph! You are hurting me!’ she tried again, but he was panting, his eyes fevered with excitement, and he wouldn’t let her go.

  ‘I’ve dreamt of this, dreamt of you, and you’re spoiling it,’ he told her through clenched teeth, pulling her back by her hair until she whimpered with pain.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said, his voice clotted with satisfaction, and she realized in a cold wash of horror that he wanted her to feel pain. He needed it.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ she whispered.

  ‘There is nothing wrong with me!’ His face changed and he punched her with brutal efficiency under her ribs, and he kept on punching as she curled up protectively. ‘Nothing! Nothing! It is you who are wrong, you little slut, lying with my own brother, fornicating in the hedges, like a common whore. Did you think I did not know every time you were busy at your stair work and your trunk work and your field work? Did you really think you needed to tell me?’

  He kept hissing vile words in her ear as he turned her onto her front and forced himself into her, driven frantically on by the violence spewing out of him. To Nell, lost in a red mist of pain, the horror seemed to go on and on, but at last he cried out and slumped over her.

  When he finally pulled away and crawled off her, she hauled herself to the side of the great bed and clung there, fighting down nausea and forcing herself to breathe through the pain. At least he didn’t close the curtains, that was all she could think. At least he didn’t do that.

  All she could hear was the rasp of Ralph’s breathing. ‘I thought it would be better than that,’ he said peevishly into the darkness at last. ‘I’ve dreamed of bedding you for so long. Nell Appleby, a little nobody who only ever looked at me as if I were an earwig scuttling out from under a stone – I, Ralph Maskewe!’

  He spat out a breath. ‘I’ve watched you for years – watched the way you sway your hips, the way you smile at everyone but me – and I knew when you and that goatish fool-born brother of mine were at it out on the common. I could smell it on you both, and I wanted it to be me.’ His voice was high, querulous. ‘I thought of it all the time, having you beneath me, doing what I wanted with you, and now you have spoilt it.’

  Dimly, Nell realized that he was waiting for her to apologize. She dragged in a shuddering breath. Nothing could make this worse.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said dully.

  It was the right thing to do. Ralph let out a long sigh of satisfaction. ‘Well, you are new to the way things should be between man and woman,’ he said, all understanding. ‘I doubt not my cloddish brother knew nothing of pleasure. I will teach you,’ he said. ‘You have much to learn, but we may make a good wife of you yet.’

  Nell lay awake all night, listening to Ralph sleep beside her. She throbbed all over where he had beaten and pinched her, but he had been careful not to mark her face, she realized. Her ribs might be tender, her belly bruised, her arms and breasts covered with pinches, but from the neck up she looked as she had always done. Short of stripping down to her shift, she would not be able to convince anyone that her husband had hurt her.

  And what if he had? What could they do? She was Ralph’s property now. She was his wife, and he could do what he liked with her.

  ‘Mummy, is Ashfer frightened? Why won’t she come in?’

  There was a red mist in front of her eyes. She ached all over and her head throbbed with pain. She didn’t want to wake up. She wanted to sink back into the merciful darkness of oblivion, but something about the voice tugged at her. She didn’t recognize it, but it was important, she knew that. She had to pay attention.

  She blinked slowly, and looked around, uncomprehending at first. The bed had gone, and so had the dark, oppressive curtains. Instead of the chamber, she was in a tiny narrow room lined with cupboards and strange shiny boxes. A small boy crouched by a hole in the wall, peering through it.

  ‘Mummy,’ he said, ‘Ashfer won’t come in.’

  Oscar. Memory swung back and hit Tess like a wrecking ball. She just managed to catch her head in her hands before it crashed onto the breakfast bar. Dear God, how long had she been unaware? How long had Oscar been here effectively on his own while she was being raped and tortured by her own husband?

  ‘Mummy—’ Oscar began again, only to stop at the scrape of Tess’s chair across the tiles.

  ‘Just a minute, Oscar.’ Her legs barely held Tess up, and she just made it to the bathroom before throwing up.

  ‘Are you sick, Mummy?’

  Tess was curled in a foetal position on the floor, her arms wrapped round her. Shivering, she lifted her head to see Oscar
in the doorway. Bink was tucked under his arm, and his eyes were huge and brown, his mouth wobbling with distress. ‘What’s happening?’ he demanded in a thin voice that cracked Tess’s heart.

  Somehow she struggled up to a sitting position. ‘I’ve just got a bit of a bug,’ she told him and ventured a smile, although she guessed it must be a ghastly one. ‘Why don’t you and Bink watch a bit more television while I have a wash, and then I’ll feel better?’

  ‘What about Ashfer? She hasn’t eaten her supper.’

  Tess rubbed her hands over her face, struggling to remember who Ashfer was. The cat, yes. Ashrafar. The cat who had turned tail and bolted as Nell took Tess over.

  ‘She’ll come in when she’s hungry, pip.’ She hoped. ‘You go and watch TV. I’ll be in in a minute.’

  ‘’Kay.’ Oscar hesitated then trailed off to the front room. Normally he would have been thrilled at the chance of extra television, but he could tell that something was very wrong.

  Shakily, Tess got herself onto all fours, and then pulled herself upright. Imagination or not, she ached inside and out, and the memory of being brutalized made her gag still. She ran a bath as hot as she could bear and sat in it, scrubbing at herself until she was raw, desperate to get the feel of Ralph off her skin, but she couldn’t get clean and she couldn’t get warm.

  Afterwards, she huddled into a towel and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. It was all in her mind, she made herself remember. As far as Oscar was concerned, she had been sitting in the kitchen with him all the time. She hadn’t actually been raped, Tess told herself, but when she looked down, her arms and breasts and inner thighs were covered with bruises where Ralph had pinched and twisted her flesh.

  ‘You must be boiling!’ Vanessa looked at Tess in surprise when she saw her hugging a cardigan around her. ‘Is that a long-sleeved T-shirt you’re wearing too?’ She herself was wearing a cut-off jogging top that showed her enviably flat stomach, and skintight Lycra shorts. Spreading her hands, she looked significantly up at the sky, its blueness barely feathered with a few high wisps of cloud. ‘It’s a gorgeous day, or didn’t you notice?’