The Memory of Midnight

by Pamela Hartshorne

  Tess didn’t hear her. ‘Hugh.’ She sank to her knees, the ice cream falling unnoticed from her hand. ‘Sweeting.’

  ‘Hush now, sweeting,’ Nell crooned, trying to keep her voice steady. Gently, she wiped a cloth over Hugh’s face. He tossed restlessly in the bed as the fever burned him up. Sweat slicked his skin and plastered his hair to his head.

  Her sweet boy was dying.

  The sickness had sliced viciously through the city without warning. At least it’s not the pestilence, folk told each other, but what difference did it make? Nell wondered bitterly. Hugh was still going to die.

  He was only three.

  One of the maids fell sick first, but she recovered, so when Hugh turned pale and listless, Nell told herself he would get better too. But he was not getting better. His small body, once so sturdy, was wasted and the fever shook him like a dog with a rat. He no longer even had the strength to cry, although he must have been hurting.

  Nell cursed her own helplessness. All her skill in the still room counted for naught now. She had tried every remedy she could think of. Even prayer, though her heart surged with resentment against a God who could visit such suffering on a small child.

  Ralph had a horror of sickness and hadn’t been near his son, although he was impressing the neighbours by the amount of time he spent on his knees in church. When he did come home, he was irritable. He took Hugh’s sickness as a personal affront. He did not love the boy; he loved the idea of a son. And he objected to the way the child was consuming Nell’s attention.

  He took out his frustration on Meg, snapping and criticizing her, and when she dropped a jug, he erupted into a furious temper. Hearing him, Nell had to leave Hugh with the maid, Eliza, and hurry down to the hall. She got there just in time to see Ralph raise an arm to buffet a quailing Meg on the ear.

  ‘Stop!’

  Nell might have learnt to endure Ralph’s fist, but to see her daughter suffer the same way . . . No, she would not have it. She squared up to him, pushing in front of Meg, her chin thrust forward and her eyes narrowed.

  Ralph was furious. ‘Stand aside, wife. Am I not allowed to discipline my own child?’

  ‘Meg, go to the kitchen,’ said Nell calmly. She would have sent her to be with Hugh, but she didn’t want her to catch the sickness. She would face Ralph on her own.

  Meg didn’t need to be told twice. She slipped away and left Nell facing Ralph.

  ‘So, wife, you think you can tell me what I must and must not do?’

  ‘I will protect my children,’ said Nell. ‘Whatever it takes.’

  She could see the savagery surging in his eyes, and spoke briskly before he could raise his hand to her.

  ‘Your son lies sick upstairs,’ she told him. ‘You can beat me if you must, but it will have to wait. For now, I need to be with Hugh.’

  ‘Go then,’ he snarled.

  ‘Do you leave Meg be,’ she warned as she turned to go. She loved her children more than she was afraid of Ralph, and that made her stronger. ‘She is nothing to do with you.’

  ‘She is my daughter.’

  ‘Then you treat her as such.’

  Rage roiled in her belly as she climbed the stairs back to where Hugh lay in the grip of the sickness. She couldn’t let herself be consumed by hatred of Ralph, not now. She needed all her energies for her son.

  ‘How is he?’ she asked Eliza, who shook her head.

  ‘Oh, Mistress,’ she said brokenly.

  Nell’s heart cracked but she set her jaw. She would not give up her boy to this sickness that was like a monster panting over the bed, its tongue lolling, its eyes red and glistening. She had faced down Ralph at his worst; she would face down this.

  ‘Hugh, little one, open your eyes for Mamma,’ she urged, but he couldn’t hear her. He just whimpered as he tossed his head from side to side.

  Eliza was weeping. Nell took the cloth from her and wrung it out, then set to bathing Hugh’s small body. His skin was afire with fever. She had to get him cool. It was all she could think of to do. The barber surgeon had been to cup him the day before, but Hugh screamed so desperately when the heated cups were placed on his chest that Nell had to cover her ears, and she told the surgeon not to come again. But perhaps she was wrong. What if only cupping could save him?

  She had made a posset, mixing ale with lettuce, spinach and purslane, and a decoction of camomile, well sweetened with treacle. She had bathed him with the water of onions stewed in a close pot, and dripped sugar mixed with sweet almond oil into his mouth. She had strewn rose and rue on his pillow, lavender and sage on the floor. She had sent to the apothecary for a piece of unicorn’s horn.

  Mary had taken some hair from Hugh’s head to the wise woman who lived on the common and given her a whole shilling for a spell to ward off the sickness.

  But none of it was working. None of it.

  ‘There, there, my little heart,’ Nell whispered, wringing out the cloth and starting again, refusing to see that he had stopped even whimpering now and that his breath was barely a thread. ‘Mamma is here. Mamma will make you well.’

  Her chest was so tight with fear she had to breathe in short, shallow gulps. The worst of nights with Ralph were not as bad as this. Not even being shut in the chest.

  She thought of Hugh’s wrinkled face when he was born. Her first thought was relief that she could tell Ralph that he had a son at last, but the moment they put him to her breast, her heart swelled, just as it had done when Meg was born, and she was lost in the wonder of him.

  Hugh. Her little boykin. Her shining star.

  ‘Please, Hugh,’ she begged him. ‘Please get better.’

  But Hugh didn’t get better. Nell’s bones ached with the knowledge that he wasn’t going to. She clung to every memory as if it would hold him to this world. Pressing her face to the back of his neck and breathing in the sweet baby smell of him. The dimples on his fat hands. The way he squealed with laughter when she tickled him.

  When was the last time she had heard him laugh? Had it only been two days earlier?

  When she accepted that Hugh would never laugh again, Nell dropped the cloth to the floor. She gathered the small, limp body into her arms and cradled him to her breast, and she sang to him, the lullabies he loved, and her heart splintered and ripped apart. The sound of it tearing was so loud in her ears that she didn’t hear the moment when the last breath leaked out of him and was not drawn in again. But she felt the stillness in him, the absence of him.

  She was still singing in a cracked voice, still rocking him, when Eliza touched her arm. ‘Shall I fetch the minister, Mistress?’ she asked, her eyes red with weeping.

  Nell was closed up tight, her shutters sparred. She couldn’t let herself feel.

  ‘It is too late for a priest,’ she said. Although she had been singing, her voice sounded rusty and unused, as if the words were coming out of another mouth altogether. ‘He is dead.’

  She should have known the moment he stopped breathing, Nell thought. The world should have cleaved open with grief. But outside the window the city was going about its business, uncaring. In the street below Christopher Willoughby was cursing a drayman whose cart had struck the edge of his stall. Two goodwives were having a raucous conversation outside the tailor’s shop across the road. One of them was Marjorie Hodgson. Nell recognized her laugh. She honked like a goose.

  And Hugh lay lifeless on her lap, his absence a dead weight in her arms.

  Eliza buried her face in her apron. ‘Oh, Mistress, he were such a sweet boy!’

  Moving stiffly, Nell got to her feet and lay Hugh on the bed. She stroked the still damp hair from his forehead and kissed his little mouth one last time.

  Then she went to tell her husband.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Dead?’ echoed Ralph. ‘He cannot be dead.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Nell, stony faced, stony hearted. ‘It is God’s will.’

  Ralph did not believe in God’s will any more than she did,
but he sat with her to watch over Hugh all night. Nell washed her son and wound him in a sheet with flowers and herbs from her garden, and then she laid him in the great hall, where she and Ralph sat side by side, dully watching the candle flames leaping and lurching until dawn.

  Ralph’s face was buckled with grief as he carried Hugh to church the next day in his arms. Nell and Meg walked behind, and they were followed by their servants and neighbours and the poor who had gathered at the door when they heard the bell tolling the night before, all carrying the sprigs of rosemary that a weeping Eliza had handed out.

  Nell looked down at hers uncomprehendingly as the minister met them at the stile and led them over to the tiny grave. What was she doing, standing there with this rosemary in her hand? It was as if she had never seen rosemary before. Its narrow green leaves were faintly speckled with grey and the flowers had lost their blue bloom, but when she rubbed it between her fingers the familiar scent filled her nose and mingled with the smell of the earth that lay in a pitiful pile by the grave.

  The toll of the bell thudded in Nell’s head as the sun poured mockingly down around them. Ralph was sobbing, and beside her, Meg stood with tears running unheeded down her face, as the minister intoned the words Nell supposed were meant to comfort. ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ he declared. ‘In sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life.’ They made no sense to Nell. She cared nothing for ashes or dust, nothing for eternal life. She cared only that Hugh was not there to tug at her skirts and beg to be lifted up in her arms and swung round and round and round until he was giddy with laughter.

  But when the minister nodded gravely at her, she stepped forward obediently. She looked down into the grave and saw the crumpled sheet. That could not be Hugh down there.

  ‘The rosemary, Mamma.’ Meg leant closer and Nell nodded slowly. She lifted the sprig to her nose one last time and then she dropped it into the grave on top of her dead son and turned away.

  Afterwards, they served wine boiled with sugar and cinnamon for the mourners. Nell didn’t drink hers. Her throat was too tight to swallow and she was still holding her cup when everyone else had gone and she was left alone with Ralph. His grief had taken her by surprise. She hadn’t known that he cared so much for his son.

  ‘I am sorry for your grief, husband,’ she said, wondering if it was possible that they could at least share this, but Ralph’s ravaged expression held no warmth as he turned on her.

  ‘Sorry? And so you should be! This is your fault, wife,’ he snarled at her. God had punished her by taking his son, he told Nell. If she had been a better wife, a better mother, Hugh would not have died.

  So Ralph said and Nell did not even try to turn her face away as he lifted his arm. The back of his hand smacked into her cheek and the blow lifted her off her feet. It was as if she were outside herself, watching as she fell in slow motion, and when her head struck the floor she welcomed the darkness that rushed to meet her like an old friend.

  ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ There was an insistent tugging, a voice wobbling with fear. ‘Wake up, Mummy!’

  ‘Oscar, leave Mummy a moment.’ Another voice, brisk and capable. ‘This man’s like a doctor. He’s going to have a look at her. Let him have some room.’

  ‘No!’ A small body threw himself across her with a wail, and she coughed at the impact.

  ‘Oh, thank God! She’s coming round.’

  ‘Mummy!’

  She opened her eyes to see a small boy staring at her, his face crumpled with the effort of not crying. When he saw that she was awake, he latched his arms around her neck and buried his head against her chest.

  This wasn’t Hugh. For one awful moment, Tess wanted to push the boy away, but even as she stiffened, her memory slotted back into place with jarring impact.

  ‘Oh, God, Oscar . . .’ Her arms went round him and she held him tightly even as grief for Hugh still choked her.

  ‘Come along, Oscar.’ Vanessa moved forward, taking charge. ‘You can see Mummy’s all right now. Let this nice man have a look at her.’

  For the first time Tess became aware that she was lying on the grass and that there were people gathered around, all staring at her curiously. With difficulty, she struggled up, Oscar still clamped onto her, and put one hand to her head.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You collapsed again.’ Vanessa wrenched Oscar off her at last. ‘Fortunately, someone said they’d seen a paramedic pushing his bike past, so they rushed after him, and Nick here came back to have a look at you.’

  Nick, dressed in cycling shorts and a neon yellow top, smiled encouragingly. ‘I’m with the Cycle Response Unit,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to see you’re awake. Why don’t I give you a quick check over since I’m here?’

  ‘I’m all right now,’ said Tess, but it seemed easier to let him take her pulse and check her pupils while Vanessa shooed the onlookers away and made Rosie hold Oscar’s hand.

  Over Nick’s shoulder, Tess saw her son press his lips together in a fierce line to stop them wobbling, and her heart cracked all over again.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she mouthed at him.

  Nick sat back on his heels. ‘Well, all seems to be normal. How long is it since you last ate?’

  ‘I had some fruit for breakfast.’

  ‘And last night?’

  She hadn’t been hungry the night before. ‘I had a yoghurt, I think.’

  ‘Hmm, well, maybe your blood sugars are low. That ice cream would have been a good idea,’ he said, looking down to where the cone lay forlornly in a puddle of melted ice cream.

  There was no point in telling him that it was the sight of Hugh that had made her collapse. Tess smiled weakly. ‘I’ll go and eat something,’ she promised. She wanted them all to go away. Her head was pounding. She wanted to be alone so that she could cry her heart out for Hugh, her dearest boykin. She felt wretched, speared by grief, and ripped between Hugh and Oscar, who was already running around with Sam, his panic at the sight of his mother collapsed on the grass forgotten.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said to Nick, who was getting to his feet. ‘I’m fine now. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’

  ‘No trouble,’ he said. He eyed her critically. ‘Are you sure you feel okay? You look very pale.’

  ‘Really,’ she said. ‘I just need to sit quietly for a bit.’

  ‘Well, take it easy,’ he advised.

  ‘Who’s Hugh?’ Vanessa asked when he had gone.

  Tess drew up her knees and rested her head on them. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘This is your “ghost” again, isn’t it?’

  ‘I saw him,’ said Tess into her knees, muffled. ‘He was there.’

  ‘Who was?’ Vanessa’s voice held an edge of impatience.

  ‘Hugh,’ said Tess. ‘My son.’

  A long silence. Tess kept her face hidden but she could practically hear Vanessa marshalling her arguments. She was already regretting saying anything. Vanessa wouldn’t believe her. Suddenly, fiercely, she wanted Luke. He would understand. He would make Vanessa go away, say something to keep her quiet. He would hold Tess and he wouldn’t try to persuade her that she was imagining things and she wouldn’t feel so alone, so afraid.

  Her hands were agony, on fire, but she welcomed the pain. It helped her focus and distracted her from thoughts of Hugh.

  ‘Tess, this has gone on long enough.’ Vanessa was carefully kind, carefully patient. ‘I really think it’s time you saw a doctor. Whatever you saw just now, it wasn’t a ghost. Maybe there was a little boy there, but he ran off when you stared at him like that. I don’t blame him! I was totally freaked out.’

  There was no point in arguing with her. ‘Yes, that must have been it,’ said Tess dully.

  ‘I know, why don’t you and Oscar come back with me and the kids, and I’ll make us all some lunch? Nick said you needed to eat something. Then you can make an appointment with your GP. I’ll drop you off if you like, and take the kids swimming – or maybe y
ou’d like your mum to go with you?’

  ‘I don’t need to see a doctor, Vanessa. Please don’t mention this to Mum.’

  ‘Tess, you must see that we’re concerned!’ Vanessa shook her head worriedly. ‘I hate to see you like this.’

  Tess lifted her head. ‘Like what?’

  ‘You know like what. Passing out, claiming to have babies who don’t exist, little boys nobody else can see . . .’ She laid a soothing hand on Tess’s shoulder. ‘I just think the strain of moving into that flat on your own has got too much for you. There’s no shame in admitting you need some help.’

  ‘I’m not having a breakdown!’ Tess shook off Vanessa’s hand angrily and Vanessa clicked her tongue.

  ‘You’re not yourself, Tess. You must see that.’

  Rubbing her temples, Tess made herself take a steadying breath. ‘I know how it looks, Van, but I promise you, going to see a doctor isn’t going to help.’

  ‘But you can’t just ignore these episodes!’ Vanessa protested.

  ‘I’m not ignoring them.’ Oh, God, why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? She should never have told Vanessa about the baby that day, but her misery had been so overwhelming that she hadn’t been thinking clearly. And now, with Hugh dying . . . grief struck her anew, a blow to the heart that would have had her buckling if she hadn’t been sitting down. She wanted to lie down, to curl on the grass and howl and howl.

  Nell hadn’t been able to do that. Nell had had to carry on, and she would too. The thought made Tess straighten. With an effort, she pushed her hair back from her face and forced herself to concentrate. Vanessa would keep badgering her, on and on, unless she said that she was doing something. ‘As it happens, I’ve been to see a therapist, but I’d rather you didn’t tell Mum that.’

  Vanessa was instantly suspicious. ‘What kind of therapist?’

  ‘One who specializes in regression.’ She didn’t want to lie outright. ‘That’s what I was doing when I went to Lincoln with Luke.’