House of Shadows

by Pamela Hartshorne

  Edmund, pouring the wine, handing me a goblet. I remember the taste of it, tart on my tongue, as I looked around the hall and took in its grandeur for the first time. It was built in the new fashion with a fine plaster ceiling, panelled walls hung with brilliantly coloured tapestries and a tiled floor. The magnificent staircase made my jaw drop. I was used to the narrow steps at Crabbersett, where the great hall was rude and dark and old in comparison, but I felt a pang of homesickness for it all the same.

  Edmund and I had been married three days earlier. The marriage negotiations were not straightforward, for all the allure of my fortune. Edmund’s father died suddenly, barely a month after Edmund and I had raced out over the moor, and that upset my uncle’s calculations, which had in any case been thrown into disarray by Lord Vavasour’s disgust at my unruly behaviour, as my uncle never failed to remind me.

  He was furious with me for taking his horse, and deservedly so, I had to concede. I was beaten and confined to the house for weeks afterwards, allowed only to walk with Judith around the knot garden. I hated it. So many little hedges, directing you one way or the other down trammelled paths, no space to run or to ride. I fretted and fumed and kicked at the gravel, but deep down I knew that the wild, golden ride with Edmund had been worth it.

  Our marriage would be delayed, but I was certain that Edmund would come back for me. My uncle was more cautious. Lord Vavasour’s death meant shifting alliances. My cousin Lawrence, who had been in service with Lord Vavasour, was sent for to come home, while my uncle looked to his own interests. He was too canny to commit my fortune until he was sure of Edmund’s worth.

  ‘Edmund is young yet,’ he told my aunt, while Judith sat quietly sewing. ‘Let us see what he is made of before we bind up Isabel’s inheritance with the Vavasours.’

  When Judith told me that, I imagined my money and myself, trussed in canvas like a bolt of cloth, ready to be handed over to the highest bidder. I thought of my mother, bound to her bed, her mouth open in a soundless scream, and I shuddered.

  But what choice did I have? Judith pointed out. ‘You must marry,’ she said. ‘Else you will spend your life here, doing as your aunt tells you, being grateful for your food and board.’

  That was her fate, as we both knew. She was right. And if I had to have a husband, I wanted it to be Edmund.

  He was Lord Vavasour now, I reasoned. He could do what he liked. Why then did he not come for me?

  Chapter Ten

  My uncle grunted whenever Edmund’s name came up. ‘I dare say he’s looking around for a more biddable bride,’ he said, fixing me with an unforgiving eye.

  The thought of Edmund with another bride stung like salt in a wound, but as the months passed and he did not come, I put up my chin and pretended that I did not care. I was too proud to ask Lawrence what he knew of Edmund’s plans, though he must have known him as well as anyone. Nothing had been said. No promises had been made. What did I care? If he wanted a milksop maid to wife, he was welcome to her, I told Judith, who just smiled and shook her head.

  So when my uncle announced out of the blue that a settlement was agreed and that Edmund would be coming to Crabbersett for the handfasting, I was furious. How dared they discuss me and hand me over like a sack of wool without even consulting me? But Judith was right: I had nowhere else to go.

  Simmering with resentment, I barely sketched Edmund a curtsey when I was summoned to the great hall, and my mouth was pressed into a line so tight my lips disappeared. I could see my aunt gesturing frantically at me to smile, but I wouldn’t. Why should I smile at Edmund when clearly he cared nothing for me? We had ridden together once, but that meant nothing. He could not want me, with my snarled hair and bitten nails, with my big nose and pockmarked cheeks and fierce brows. He was interested only in my fortune, that much I understood. Why else would he want to marry me?

  So I held myself aloof, and if Edmund noticed my coldness he gave no sign of it. When we were handfasted, he laid his lips on mine to seal our betrothal and I hated the way my heart kicked, hated the clutch of excitement at the base of my spine. I could not be myself with him, the way I had been when I stole my uncle’s horse and rode out beside him. Instead I felt as if a layer of me rubbed off in his presence, as if he peeled me like an onion, and I was left raw and exposed.

  Crabbersett was thrown into a frenzy of preparations for the wedding. My uncle’s doubts about Edmund’s connections were forgotten, and all the neighbours thereabouts were invited to witness his triumph in securing such an influential alliance. My aunt, too, was determined to impress.

  ‘When will you stop growing?’ she tutted, pulling my best gown out of the chest and holding it against me.

  I was eighteen by then, and lanky with it, and I towered over her, careless that my skirts barely scraped my ankles. I had no interest in a wedding gown and if it had been up to me would have been married in my old blue kersey that draped easily over the saddle, and I fidgeted until my aunt snapped at me to stand still.

  There was a show to be made, and besides, she loved to finger bolts of cloth and could happily talk patterns and adornments for hours. She chose for me a warm red silk to fall over a farthingale. I had slashed sleeves and a frilled collar, and Judith embroidered a stomacher with wild flowers and butterflies and bees and, right down at the point, a wasp. Even I could see that it was beautiful.

  My old gown my aunt gave to Judith to furbish up as best she could. ‘Can she not have a new gown for my wedding?’ I asked my aunt when Judith was out of the room.

  She pursed her lips. ‘She will have your gown, and lucky she is to have that.’

  ‘But it is unfair,’ I protested. ‘Judith loves gowns more than I do, and we are as sisters. Why should she not have what I have?’

  ‘But you are not sisters,’ said my aunt. ‘Do not make the mistake of forgetting that, Isabel. You have your place in life, and Judith has hers. We have given her a home, and indeed we are happy to do so. She is a good girl, modest and dutiful, but she has bad blood and no money.

  ‘The world is the way it is,’ she said firmly. ‘Do not try and fight it. Your uncle manages your fortune for you, and he is a careful man. He has not wasted it on gowns for poor cousins. Judith is not even a cousin to you, other than through my marriage.’

  I set my mouth. I did not care to be told that I could do nothing. I picked up the silk. ‘This gown is paid for from my own money?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Why then can I not pay for another to be made for whom I choose?’

  ‘That is why you are a ward,’ said my aunt, taking the silk from me and folding it carefully before I creased it in my hands. ‘You are not fit to manage your money. Left to you, Isabel, you would give it all away, to Judith, to the laundress and the stable boy and the pedlar with his broken combs and tatty ribbons.’ She shook her head, exasperated. ‘Your uncle has kept your money safe, and when you are married, it will be for your husband to manage.’

  It seemed to me that I had precious little enjoyment of my fortune, and soon enough it would be Edmund’s anyway.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Judith later when I had to tell her that there would be no new gown for her.

  ‘Indeed I am very happy with this one.’ She indicated my old gown, which her clever fingers were already re-stitching. ‘How lucky I am that you are tall and I am not!’ she said, with her sweet smile. ‘If it had been the other way round, I would never have had anything so fine to wear.’

  ‘You are too good,’ I said, ashamed of the fact that I was always restless, always cross, while Judith, who had nothing, was always calm and sweet-tempered. ‘Oh, Judith, I will miss you so!’ I said impulsively.

  ‘And I you.’ She reached out and squeezed my hand. ‘But as long as you are happy, Isabel, I will be too. I am sure that you will be. You could not ask for a better husband than Edmund Vavasour.’

  I remember sniffing at that. I hadn’t forgiven him for taking so long to negotiate the marriage. It did not
seem to me that Edmund was over-eager to wed me.

  ‘He is all a woman could want,’ Judith went on. ‘Comely, clever, courteous – and wealthy, of course!’

  ‘You have him, then,’ I said, still aggrieved at Edmund’s failure to woo me anew.

  ‘I wish that I could,’ she said lightly, ‘but Edmund only has eyes for you, Isabel. I am like the moon to your sun. As long as you are standing in front of him, he will not even see me.’

  Of my wedding day itself, I remember little: motes of dust hanging lazily in the sunlight as it slanted through the chapel window; Edmund, pushing the ring onto my finger; the tightness of my lacing, the glow of my red skirts, the way they rustled against the floor. Fresh rushes had been laid in the great hall and were strewn with herbs. When we walked in for the feast it smelt sweet and welcoming.

  But my wedding night, ah! That I remember. I lean on my stick in the great hall at Askerby, where it feels sickeningly strange and achingly familiar at the same time. I am not listening to Fiona and Philippa, who are having a snippy mother-daughter exchange behind me, or to George’s ineffectual attempts to intervene. I am thinking about the great chamber at Crabbersett, how the sheets were scattered with rosemary and a fire was lit in the grate. I stood in my shift while Judith brushed and brushed my hair in a vain attempt to make it lie neat. She still had her bridelace tied to her arm.

  ‘That is the best I can do,’ she said, letting the brush fall at last. ‘My arm is aching!’

  I laughed and told her that she was released from her duties, but when she embraced me and said I looked beautiful, I clung to her for a long moment, perilously close to tears. Judith would always be my dear friend, but after that night when I would be married in truth to Edmund, nothing would be quite the same. I had hoped to take her with me to Askerby as my companion as we had planned, but my aunt did not think it was a good idea.

  ‘Judith is fair, and you are not,’ she said bluntly, ‘and Edmund is a young man. Establish yourself as mistress first and make sure of your husband before you invite her to live with him.’

  I was shocked. ‘Judith would not seduce my husband!’

  ‘I hope you are right and that we have taught her better than that,’ my aunt said. ‘I was thinking more about Edmund. You will learn to manage him, but you do not know him well yet.’

  My aunt’s warning was in my mind as I paced the chamber in my smock after Judith had left me alone. I remember the feel of the fine white linen brushing against my skin, the way my nerves fluttered. My aunt was right: what, truly, did I know of Edmund?

  I had seen enough around the Manor farms to understand what was going to happen that night and in her usual blunt way my aunt had made sure I knew what to expect. ‘You will get used to it,’ she said. ‘You may even find pleasure in it.’

  So I wasn’t nervous, or not exactly. But my heart was beating hard when Edmund came into the chamber, already undressed, with a velvet gown over his nightgown. Adroitly he dismissed his cheerful groomsmen.

  ‘I thought you would be abed,’ he said, unfastening the velvet gown without haste.

  ‘I have been to bed and slept and risen again waiting for you,’ I lied, as my breath shortened in spite of myself.

  ‘I thought to give you time to prepare,’ he said mildly.

  ‘Prepare? What am I, a joint of meat to be dressed for your pleasure?’

  A smile touched his mouth. ‘You do not need to do anything to give me pleasure, Isabel. You need only be yourself.’

  ‘Well, that will be no trouble to me,’ I said, unsure how to take his words.

  ‘I know.’ He came towards me, took my hands before I could put them behind me. ‘That is what I like about you. You are just yourself. You do not pretend to be anyone you are not.’

  I was puzzled by the idea. ‘Who would do that?’

  ‘Why, everyone. At court I pretend to be a man who knows how to intrigue. I pretend I know just how to step, which way to bend, to preserve my estate and keep the Queen benevolent. Your uncle does not admit to the doubts and uncertainties that plague all men. He pretends to be right about everything. Even your little cousin Judith pretends to be meeker than she is. She keeps her eyes downcast, but she misses nothing.’

  ‘I do not know what you mean,’ I said uncertainly, distracted by the feel of his thumbs rubbing over the backs of my hands.

  ‘I know,’ said Edmund, smiling. ‘That is why I love you.’ He said it as if it meant nothing, as if it scarcely needed to be said, and even though I was determined to stay aloof my fingers were twining around his as if they had a will of their own.

  ‘My uncle said you were minded to choose a more obliging bride,’ I said, and his smiled deepened.

  ‘I do not want obliging. Strange as it may be, I want a maid who looks at me as if I am no better than a stable boy.’

  ‘That is not how I look at you,’ I said involuntarily.

  ‘Is it not?’ Edmund stuck his nose high in the air and looked fiercely down it in imitation of me. The worst thing was that I recognized myself and, in spite of myself, I laughed.

  Edmund took the opportunity to move nearer. Flustered, I backed away until he had me pinned up against the great iron-bound chest where my aunt kept her best sheets. Only then did he release my hands to run his own up my arms. I could feel the warmth of his palms through the fine linen of my smock, and my blood began to boom in my ears.

  ‘Lift your chin to me now,’ he said, his voice low, but I was overwhelmed with shyness and could not raise my eyes from his throat.

  ‘I cannot.’ My voice was shamefully unsteady.

  Edmund cupped my chin in his hand and lifted it for me. His eyes were very warm as they looked down into mine. Lowering his head, he touched his lips to mine, gently at first and then more firmly. His hands slid around me, pulled me close against him, and the hardness of his body was a shock that stopped the breath in my throat, but when his mouth left mine to drift persuasively down the curve of my neck, I shuddered with pleasure. Was this then what my aunt had meant?

  ‘Oh . . .’ I murmured and felt him smile against my shoulder where he had eased my smock aside.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I did not think it would feel like that,’ I confessed.

  ‘It will feel much better,’ Edmund promised me, and taking my hand, he drew me over to the bed. ‘Let me show you just how good it can feel.’

  ‘Kate?’

  George touches my arm and I start. For a moment I have forgotten them all, these strangers who stand in my hall, and talk as if they own it. I strain to remember more of Edmund, but he has gone, swallowed up into that chasm in my mind, leaving only the memory of thrumming pleasure.

  ‘Kate, you’re crying,’ says George, appalled. ‘Have you remembered something?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, George,’ says Philippa impatiently before I can stumble over an answer, ‘leave the woman alone. Anyone would cry finding that they live in this gloomy house with a family like the Vavasours! Come on, why are we standing around in the hall, anyway?’

  In spite of her brusque tone, I’m grateful to Philippa as I blot my cheeks with the heel of my hand. I don’t want to talk about what I’ve remembered. I don’t want to be told that I’m making it up, that my husband was called Michael. Not right now, when the memory of Edmund is so close, so dear.

  ‘I think perhaps Kate should have a rest,’ Fiona declares. She looks at her watch. ‘Philippa, can you tell Jo to put lunch back until quarter past one? That’ll give her time to lie down for an hour.’

  There is nothing I want more than to be on my own right now, but there is something I need to do first. The dull throb of fear for my son has been a constant for the long weeks I have been in hospital, and I cannot lose myself in my memories of Edmund until I have found my child and seen for myself that he is safe. They insist that Felix is my son, and I am counting on the fact that the moment I see him my memory will come rushing back. How could it not, faced with my own child? But I�
��m very nervous. I want to see him, but at the same time I don’t. I keep remembering how often I looked at the framed photograph of Felix in the hospital, how every time I thought: That’s not my son.

  I won’t know until I am face to face with him.

  ‘Where is Felix?’ I ask.

  There is a pause. I see the others exchange a look that I can’t interpret. ‘He’s with Angie,’ says Fiona after a moment. ‘He’ll be having lunch soon.’

  ‘I’d like to see him.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Fiona says. She has made her plans and doesn’t like to rearrange them. ‘You look very tired. Why don’t you lie down for a bit and meet him after lunch?’

  ‘I don’t want to lie down,’ I say, although I’m exhausted. ‘I want to see my son.’

  Fiona folds her lips. She is used to giving orders and having them obeyed. She doesn’t like objections, but after all, she is the one who keeps saying I am Felix’s mother. ‘If you insist,’ she said after a moment. ‘Philippa, perhaps you’d take Kate up to the nursery?’

  Philippa looks as if she’s about to protest, but in the end she just shrugs.

  ‘All right. But there are a lot of stairs.’

  There are. The flight of steps leading up from the great hall is wide and shallow, and I manage them easily enough, but still I have to stop and catch my breath at the top, holding onto the elaborately carved newel post.

  Through an open doorway ahead of me I can see a bay window stepped up from the floor. The sun is slanting through the leaded panes and throwing a hatched pattern across the polished floorboards. It picks out the glow of a crimson cushion, its tassels glinting gold, and the light shifts very slightly. A subtle eddy in the air, the scent of gillyflowers drifting through the door, a ripple of a laugh that has barely faded . . . I’m not sure how I know, but there is someone just out of sight, and I hold my breath, waiting for them to cross the doorway, to catch sight of me and turn, and hold out their hands in delight: There you are!