The Memory of Midnight

by Pamela Hartshorne

  A quaver of fear rippled through his voice, and she rejoiced in it.

  ‘Are you frightened?’ she asked, stepping towards him, holding her ruined hands up before her so that he could see the blood. ‘Is your belly turning to water?’ she asked as he backed away before her. ‘Is terror squirming up your throat?’

  ‘Theresa, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Good,’ she said, smiling. ‘Now you begin to learn what it is like for your victims.’

  ‘I don’t have any victims! This has gone on long enough.’ Gathering himself, Martin advanced on her, pure aggression, and caught her across the cheek with the back of his hand. The impact slammed Tess back into her body, and she doubled over, disorientated by the blow and the realization of who she was.

  Martin stood over her, satisfied to be back in control. ‘You asked for it,’ he told her as if she had objected. ‘I’ve wanted to do that for years, and I should have done it sooner. Now, what the fuck is going on here, Theresa?’

  ‘You tell me, Martin,’ she said, straightening again with difficulty. Tentatively, she dabbed at her cheek, but she looked him straight in the eye. She had died, survived the worst horror imaginable. There was nothing he could do to her now. ‘What’s that strapped to your chest?’

  He was clearly taken aback by her change of tone. He didn’t like her looking at him like that. The bomb had done its work up to then. It had kept her conciliatory, eager to please, but now she was defiant again. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my family together,’ he blustered.

  ‘Including threatening to kill your own child?’ Her own anger was feeding off Nell’s. She despised herself for giving in to Martin’s bullying for so long. She had put Oscar in danger.

  ‘What’s got into you, Theresa?’

  ‘What’s got into me? You’ve terrified my son and threatened to blow all of us to kingdom come and you ask me what’s got into me?’ Her eyes blazed, and she balled her fists as she stepped nose-to-nose with him so that she could jab her finger into the padding above the switch.

  Martin flinched. ‘Be careful, woman,’ he said holding out his hands, palms upstretched to keep her off as he backed away, but Tess followed him.

  ‘No, I won’t be careful. I’ve been careful for years, tiptoeing around your obsessions, terrified of provoking you, not realizing that you can’t be careful with someone whose mind is so small and warped and scared that he can’t function without someone to control so he can feel big!’

  ‘Theresa, I’m warning you, this thing will go off!’ Martin was practically in the fireplace, and the tremor was back in his voice.

  Tess ignored him. ‘You’re pathetic,’ she said contemptuously. ‘A strong man isn’t afraid to talk and to listen, but you’re too weak to do that. You decide to strap a bomb to your chest and threaten to blow everyone up instead. You know what?’ she said, still jabbing at him. ‘You go ahead!’

  ‘You’re crazy!’

  His face was morphing, sliding grotesquely into Ralph’s, and as his teeth grew and his lips thickened and the angle of his jaw changed, Tess felt Nell surge back into her. She was swirling in disgust and horror and hate. The air was thick and viscous with it.

  She jabbed at him again and again until he stumbled back against the chest that filled most of the fireplace. His eyes were wild with terror at the strange voice coming out of her lips and the stranger looking out of her eyes. The air was pressing around them, like the suffocating darkness in the priest hole.

  ‘Do it,’ she said. ‘Pull the switch and die.’

  ‘You’ll die too, you mad bitch.’

  ‘I’ve died before, I can die again,’ she told him. ‘And I’ll see you in Hell.’

  Martin was scrabbling at the front of the device in terror. He was panicked now, beyond thinking, and there was a moment when everything went very still. Nell was sucked back into the past, and Tess found herself staring at the switch on the front of the device as Martin’s finger moved inexorably towards it.

  It was green, she thought in a strange detached way. That was all wrong. It should be red, surely?

  And then she thought: I need to run.

  It was hopeless. The knowledge that she was too late exploded in her brain, but she turned anyway. She flung herself round in slow motion and then there was a roaring in her ears and a great bang and she was falling, falling into smoke and darkness.

  A great weight was pinning her head down. She was being crushed like Margaret Clitherow and panic fluttered behind her eyelids as she struggled to breathe.

  ‘It’s all right. It’s over now.’ A voice she recognized, but couldn’t put a name to. A voice she trusted. A warm hand around her wrist.

  Its grip was all that kept her from being dragged back down into the dark. She wanted to cling to it but there was something wrong with her hands. They were wrapped in bandages and she couldn’t bend her fingers.

  When she swallowed, her throat felt as if it were lined with sandpaper, and her tongue stuck horribly to the roof of her mouth. Forcing her eyes open, she saw a man sitting beside her and holding her hand. Above his beaky nose, his brows were drawn together and in spite of the steadiness of his grip, she sensed a churn of anger and fear.

  Luke. The name spread like a drop of cool water over her mind.

  She wanted to ask why he was so afraid, but it was too hard to string the words together.

  ‘Thirsty,’ she managed instead.

  His expression cleared at her cracked whisper, and a smile that started right at the backs of his eyes slowly spread over his face, dissolving the fear.

  ‘You’re back.’ He filled a plastic cup of water and helped guide a straw between her lips so that she could drink without lifting her head.

  Back? Tess’s head was pounding. A sense of horror was prowling around the edges of her consciousness, but she wouldn’t go there, not yet. As it was, her mind was swirling and stumbling occasionally over odd clumps of memory: Martin’s eyes widening in terror; his fingers moving towards the switch; rage pulsating along her veins; Oscar’s expression as he hesitated at the door at the bottom of the stairs.

  The thought of her son brought her fully awake. ‘Oscar?’ she croaked.

  ‘He’s fine. He’s with your mum.’

  It was an effort to focus, and Tess still couldn’t lift her head. Her eyes slid around as she sucked gratefully at the water. She was lying high in a complicated steel bed and attached to a drip. Bandages swathed both hands which lay on the cellular blanket. A bank of machines stood ready beside her and a curtain was pulled around, isolating her and Luke from the room beyond. It was the smell that made the connection first, though: an unmistakable scent of antiseptic and tension.

  ‘I’m in hospital.’

  The corner of Luke’s mouth lifted as he took the cup away. ‘There’s no getting anything past you, Sherlock. You had a nasty blow to the head and your hands are pretty torn up but otherwise they seem to think you’re going to be fine.’

  He hesitated. ‘Not sure if I should be asking you this yet, but what do you remember?’

  Her mind was sludgy, a dark, ominous river where memories lurked. Tess frowned with the effort of grasping at them. ‘Martin was there . . .’ Her eyes widened as she tugged one to the surface. She tried to struggle up but she couldn’t use her hands and Luke pressed her back onto the pillow.

  ‘Hey, just lie still,’ he said.

  ‘Oh my God, the bomb! The bomb went off!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I saw him pull the switch! I thought I was going to die. What . . . what happened?’

  ‘I think the police were hoping you could tell them that,’ said Luke. ‘We all heard a God-almighty bang outside and we just froze. It came out of nowhere. I thought that bastard had done it too. I thought he’d blown you both up.’

  Luke’s face worked and his fingers tightened around Tess’s wrist. ‘I thought I’d lost you all over again, Tess. I was first up the stairs, with the police shouting at me to stop
, and I saw you lying on the floor in your bedroom with a sodding great block of masonry nearby, but I could feel a pulse and I felt . . .’

  His expression cracked and he tipped forward to rest his forehead on the sheet beside her. He drew in a breath, let it out.

  ‘I felt so fucking useless,’ he muttered without looking up. ‘Standing outside, knowing you were in there with him on your own, nothing to do but hold onto Oscar.’

  Very gently, Tess lifted her poor, bandaged hand and touched his hair. She wished she could feel it, stroke it for comfort, the way she did with Oscar sometimes.

  ‘You weren’t useless,’ she said.

  ‘I couldn’t do anything to help you!’ The words were wrenched out of him, flung at her almost accusingly.

  ‘You did help,’ said Tess. ‘I needed to know that you were there for me, and you were. I needed to know you would keep Oscar safe, and you did.’

  Luke lifted his head at that. With a twisted smile, he drew a tender finger down her cheek. ‘I wanted to do more than that. I wanted to be a hero and save you, but you saved yourself.’

  Her memory was coming back, fished up from the river piece by piece. She lay back against her pillows, glad of the quiet, of Luke’s warm touch. It would hurt too much to shake her head. ‘Nell saved me,’ she said.

  Luke gave her some more water.

  ‘Go on,’ she said after she’d drunk. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Then the paramedics were there, shoving me out of the way, and the police bundled me downstairs, so I didn’t get a chance to see much else, but I’ve taken pictures after bombs have gone off, and it doesn’t look like that.’

  ‘You mean it wasn’t a real bomb?’

  ‘Apparently it was but for some reason the detonator didn’t work.’

  Tess stared at him, wishing that she could rub her aching forehead. ‘Then what exploded?’

  ‘Nothing. It seems that the noise came from part of the fireplace collapsing. You were hit by a piece of it, but most of it fell on top of Martin. He’s dead, Tess.’

  Martin was dead. Tess looked at the curtain. It was a pale, listless green. Her husband was dead. She ought to feel something, surely?

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said uncertainly at last. It felt all wrong, but when she tested the notion for shock or horror or grief, all she could find was relief. ‘Yes, I’m glad.’

  ‘At first the police thought the collapse had been triggered by the bomb detonating, but now it seems that didn’t happen, so no one can explain it.

  ‘There’s something else you need to know, Tess,’ Luke said after a moment. ‘When they inspected the fireplace, they found a skeleton of a body that had been wedged in a hole. They’re going to do a post-mortem examination but it seems like it’s very old.’

  ‘Nell . . .’ Tess let out a long breath as the swirling in her head juddered to a halt and the last terrible memories slotted back into place.

  Luke leant forward, lowering his voice. ‘What happened in there, Tess?’

  He listened, grim-faced, as she told him about Nell’s horrific end. When she had finished, the tears were streaming down her face and she was struggling to get out of bed again.

  ‘I’ve got to tell the police to look behind the wall in the corner! They need to find Meg!’

  ‘Whoa! Wait!’ Luke tried to ease her back against the pillows as a nurse pulled open the curtain and frowned at the scene. ‘The police want to interview you,’ he said, ‘so you can tell them then.’

  ‘Now, what’s all this?’ said the nurse, bustling forward to take over from Luke. ‘Get back into bed, Tess,’ she said firmly. ‘You’ve had concussion and you need to lie still for a bit.’

  ‘I’ve got to get up! I need to talk to the police.’

  ‘The police can wait until the doctor’s seen you. And as for you,’ said the nurse turning a stern look on Luke, ‘what are you thinking of, getting her all upset?’

  ‘Sorry.’ He began to back away but Tess held out a bandaged hand to him. ‘Please, Luke, you have to tell them! Make them look right now!’

  He grimaced. ‘Tess, what can I say? There’s no damage to that part of the room.’

  ‘I don’t care. Tell them something. Anything! But make them look. Ralph said . . .’ She gulped back the horror that still stuck in her throat at the memory. ‘He said they would put her body in the secret stairway, but he was going to have the exit bricked up. She’s still there, Luke.’ Tess’s eyes filled with tears of grief and rage. ‘She was barely eleven, and she died in terror and alone. They have to find her! You have to make them!’

  ‘All right,’ said Luke, unable to bear the look on her face. ‘I’ll tell them,’ he promised. ‘We’ll find Meg.’

  A glassy, glittery frost lay over the ground and rimed the trees as they lowered the coffin carefully into the grave. The chill bit at her cheeks and Tess huddled into her coat, squinting into the bright winter light. Even in gloves, her hands holding the small sprig of rosemary were numb with cold. Her fingers, so raw when they had pulled her from the rubble, had healed miraculously by the time they unwrapped the bandages. The doctors couldn’t explain it.

  They had found Meg exactly where Tess had said she would be. Tess had wept when she heard.

  Both bodies were sent for forensic examination, and when all the tests were done, Tess had lobbied for them to be buried together, with the garnet ring that had been found with Nell’s skeleton. She had paid for the funeral. It was the least she could do for Nell, who had saved her from Martin.

  Since that dreadful day, Tess had stayed firmly in the present, although it seemed to her that the past still echoed sometimes in the air. Every now and then she thought she caught a glimpse of a familiar face in the shadows. Out of the corner of her eye she would see the whisk of a skirt disappearing down an alley, but no matter how swiftly she turned to look more closely, it would be gone. Some days she would swear that the breeze carried the sounds and smells of the streets Nell had known. Then Tess would stop and strain her senses, but it was like trying to grasp the mist in her hand, and the next moment the wind would change and blow them away again.

  She chose the sonorous words of the Order for the Burial of the Dead from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer for Nell and Meg: Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower. Tess let the words resonate through her. Nell had had her share of misery, but she had had her joys too.

  Deliberately, Tess let herself remember Nell’s happiest times. Walking alongside Tom eating hot pies. Hoisting her skirts to wade into the Foss and dig her toes into the soft mud. Lying in the long grass, cocooned in warmth and ease, her heart beating in time with Tom’s. Holding Meg in her arms for the first time; spinning Hugh until he squealed with laughter. Sitting in her garden; dancing at Yule; laughing in the market.

  Good times, ordinary times, side by side with the horror that was Ralph. Tess looked down at the rosemary in her hands and her throat ached for Nell’s courage, for the way she had seized what joy she could from her life.

  Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sisters here departed, we therefore commit their bodies to the ground.

  Luke stepped forward and dropped a sprig of rosemary onto the coffin.

  When they asked her how she had known where to find the second body, Tess had demurred. ‘Just a feeling,’ she had said, and no one had pressed too hard.

  There was still no explanation for why the fireplace had collapsed when it did. Tess thought she knew. Past and present had collided in the back room that day, and the huge burst of energy that had resulted had released Nell from her dreadful prison at last. When Tess came out of hospital, Luke had arranged for Pat French to conduct a service of deliverance in the ruined bedroom. For Tess, expecting drama and horror, it had been a quiet and unexpectedly moving ceremony.

  The coroner’s inquest into Martin’s death had been thoro
ugh, but in the absence of any other evidence, he had had no choice but to return an open verdict.

  Aghast at the damage to his flat, Richard had returned to York to oversee repairs and comfort Ashrafar who he persisted in believing was traumatized, although Tess had seen little sign of it. The cat had seemed perfectly normal to her, but Oscar had had nightmares when she tried to re-establish a routine, and she wasn’t sorry to leave the memories behind when Richard announced that he was coming back. His academic interest had been roused by the skeletons in the priest holes and he was planning a whole new section for his chapter on murder in his book on Tudor crime. Tess was going to let him make what he would of the evidence. His story would not be hers.

  She and Oscar had spent a few weeks with her chastened mother, who was horrified at what Martin had done, and once Tess had been granted probate on Martin’s estate she had been able to rent a cottage in one of the villages outside York. Oscar went to the local school and had stopped asking to see Sam and Rosie now. For a while Vanessa had tried to pretend that nothing had happened, but Tess found it hard to forgive her for handing Oscar over to Martin, and once she had moved, Vanessa stopped calling.

  Luke spent a lot of time at the cottage with them. Oscar missed him when he wasn’t there, and Tess did too, but she baulked at asking him to move in permanently. After being tied to Martin and Ralph, she couldn’t stomach the thought of linking her fate to another man.

  Once or twice they had discussed it. ‘I’m just not ready,’ she had said.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Luke said easily. ‘There’s no hurry. I’m happy to go on as we are. It’s fine, Tess.’

  Now at the graveside, Tess looked at him. A scattering of people had come: the forensic pathologist who had examined Nell and Meg’s remains, the archaeologists who were interested in the few artefacts found in the priest holes. Ambrose was there, and Richard, out of very different professional interests.

  Luke was there for her. Luke who had believed her, who had been there when she needed him. Who still was.