Remembering the look of awe and delight in those Vavasour blue eyes as he lifted his head to smile at me, pain rips through me so savagely that I catch my breath and fist a hand to my heart to stop it being wrenched right out of my chest. Michael. My eyes fill with tears again, just as they did then.
‘I’m so happy,’ I said, my fingers twined in his hair. I had never been loved like that before, never known the joy of loving back. We fitted together perfectly, and now we were having a child together. I could not believe that I could ever be happier than I was at that moment.
The two memories merge and blur. There is Edmund and there is Michael, two very different men, with the same dark blue eyes, the same ability to make me feel treasured, to make me shimmer with happiness, to send the blood dancing along my veins. They are different and they are the same – and they are both gone.
Loneliness crashes over me, and I lean back against the pillows and press my hands against my eyes. I have to stop crying. I have to be strong for my son. I have to do this on my own.
But I wasn’t always happy. It’s easy to forget that. After lunch with Felix and Angie, who continues to watch me with a worried expression that frays my nerves, I am tired but too consumed by memories to sit still. I wander around the house instead, mingling with the visitors, who crane their necks to admire the plasterwork ceiling that Edmund’s father installed, and murmur respectfully about the age and beauty of the Hall. They point at the ornately carved and polished furniture, at the exquisite tapestries and the gleaming silver. They stand in the windows and ooh and aah at the gardens and wonder what it must be like to live in such a house, where the past seems to spangle with the dust motes in the sunlight slanting through the windows.
Or perhaps it is just me who feels as if those wavering fragments of the past might suddenly coalesce and take shape before my eyes? Perhaps the visitors don’t keep turning their heads, expecting to see someone standing there in a kirtle and apron. Perhaps their ears aren’t straining to hear a familiar shout or a laugh or the clatter of horses’ hooves in the courtyard the way mine are.
I stand in the long gallery and feel the memories shimmering in the air around me. I remember how much I loved Edmund, yes, but as the birth approached, I was anxious and fearful, too. I longed for the baby to be born and to be free of the great weight that bore down on me, but I dreaded the birth itself. I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother, of how she died pinioned in that dark room.
As my time drew near, Judith ordered the servants to prepare the chamber. They would close the shutters and build up the fire, even though it was high summer, and the heat was thick and soupy and the sweat made us change our smocks twice a day and sometimes more. I couldn’t bear the thought of being shut up in the darkness. I would not be able to breathe.
‘It is how it is done,’ Judith said when I insisted I would not have it so. ‘It is for your own good, Isabel – yours and the babe’s. You have been so careful for so long now. You do not want to risk the child now.’
Of course I didn’t, but as the babe kicked to be free, the thought of surrendering to that stifling room made it hard to breathe. I would go mad, like my mother. I was sure of it.
‘You are not your mother.’ Judith tried to soothe me, but the more she said it the more fearful I became. What if I was like my mother? According to my aunt, I was exactly like her, Judith herself had told me so. What if I too would end up screaming and wrestling with the bonds at my wrists?
My waters broke when I was walking with Judith in the long gallery, lumbering up and down like a great sow in farrow. ‘It is time,’ she said, and I dug my fingers into her arm as she helped me to my chamber.
‘Judith,’ I pleaded with her. ‘Judith, do not let them close the shutters.’
‘But Isabel—’
‘Open the window. I want to be able to see the sky.’
‘Isabel, you sleep with the shutters closed every night.’
‘This is different.’ I couldn’t explain that at night I could get up if I wanted and open the shutters. I could go to the door and walk out. But giving birth, I would not be able to leave. I was trapped by the babe who would be born, by the women attending. Panic surged through me in waves. I did not want to die like my mother.
Remembering, I join a group of visitors who are shuffling into the great chamber. The curtains are partly drawn to keep the sun from damaging the fabrics, and it does not look so very different from the way it did that day. The guide recognizes me and smiles, but says nothing as I drift over to the bed. It is roped off now so that no one is tempted to finger the fabrics or test the softness of the mattress as Judith once did.
The midwife pursed her lips and muttered when I told her I wanted air. It was dangerous, she said, and would be a risk to the child. She told Judith that my husband should rule me, but Edmund knew me in a way they never could.
‘She will do better if she can breathe,’ he told Judith, who told the midwife, who eyed me askance and muttered some more. She would tell everyone that I had lost my reason, but I didn’t care, not then. Grumbling, she bade one of the maids bring her fresh butter and smeared it over her hands while I was made to lie on the bed, a pillow under my head and another under my buttocks, my knees spread and my heels braced against a board.
I gritted my teeth and thought of my husband and the child that was to be born, and how, once we were free of each other, I would be able to walk and ride again. I wanted the babe, yes, but I longed to feel myself again, too.
But first I had to endure the birth. The fire was stoked higher and the older women of the household gathered around, patting my shoulder comfortingly and doling out cheery advice that I barely heard. The midwife snapped out orders, sending maids running for sweet almond oil or mugwort boiled to a syrup with white wine and sugar, for a poached egg when she learnt I had not eaten, and some cinnamon water. I ate what I was told, swallowed when a spoon was put to my mouth, until the pains started in earnest and I lost track of the hours.
My body took me over, and did what it would with me, tugging and twisting and wrenching until I yelled: hoarse, guttural screams that must have made Edmund wince as he paced in his closet. But I had no thought for him then. I was an animal, bellowing and grunting and sweating, and my world narrowed until there was just me and the thing inside me that was desperate to get out.
When my son slithered into the world at last, I was too weary and battered to feel anything for him. The love and wonder I had hoped for and expected were lost in a grey fog of exhaustion. The midwife put him to my breast, but the effort of holding him was almost too much. I felt disconnected from the bloody, squalling creature on me and I was glad when the women took him away to clean him and swaddle him, while my belly was anointed with oil of St John’s wort and I was swathed in linen. They lay warm cloths on my breasts and forbade me to sleep. Instead I was given a warm gruel, spicy and sweet, to drink, and some bread and butter to eat.
Edmund was allowed to come in then and inspect his son. He peered into the cradle and touched a finger to the baby’s cheek. ‘He is a fine boy,’ he said to me. ‘What say you to Christopher for a name? After my father?’
‘As you wish.’ I was still sore and too tired to care by then. Where was the elation I had been told I would feel?
‘Christopher.’ Edmund gazed proudly down at his son. ‘It is too big a name for such a small child. We will call him Kit for short.’ He turned to me. ‘You have done well, wife.’
‘I am glad you are pleased,’ I said, but I sounded so disgruntled that Edmund came to sit on the edge of the bed.
‘Was it very bad?’ he asked, a smile lurking in his eyes.
I sighed. ‘They tell me it is our lot as women to suffer. We have our grandmother Eve to thank for that.’ Or so Judith had told me. As an unmarried woman she had no place in the birthing chamber, but she had tiptoed in to see me with the gruel the midwife had ordered. ‘Still, it is over now. I will sleep for a week, I think.’
As long as yo
u are well,’ Edmund said. He leant forward to kiss my mouth gently. ‘I will leave you to rest, sweeting.’
He got to his feet, and I caught at his doublet as I realized that he was going to leave me alone, and the fears that had been banished by the pain of birthing bubbled back. ‘Edmund, you won’t let them bind me, will you? Whatever happens?’
‘No, I won’t let that happen.’ Edmund laid a cool hand on my forehead. ‘Sleep now, my bird. No one will bind you, I promise.’
I slept at last and when I woke, Edmund had kept his word. The chamber was full of sunshine and my mind was clear. I was not tormented by visions or raving, and a deep thankfulness coursed through me.
Still, the lying-in was not a success. I remember that the ladies from thereabout came to sit with me, but they were scandalized by the cool chamber and the windows left open to let in the soft summer air. For thirty days I had to lie there, and I was quickly bored. The women all clucked at my restlessness and told me that I should enjoy the peace, but I couldn’t wait to be up and outside again. I was soon sick of drinking wine and eating cakes and listening to my neighbours complain of their husbands and servants. Judith told me to shush when I grumbled. She said they would think me strange if I did not try harder to be like them, but I was wild to leave the chamber, wild to get out of this house and to run free once more.
Chapter Twenty-three
In the great chamber, I am aware of the people around me, of the murmur of lowered voices, but I am in the past too, remembering how glad I had been to be left alone one day. I can still feel the weight of the bedcovers as I pushed them back and got out of bed. Today the floorboards are smooth and polished with age, but then there was rush matting beneath my bare feet. I went over to the window and lifted my face to the sun.
Still wrapped in the memory of that day, I cross to the window as I did once before and look out over the knot garden to the park beyond and the moors where they rise in rolling, golden glory up to the sky. I remember wishing I could run out, out through the sweet summer grass and down to the river, where it paused at a bend under the trees, silvery and still, before it rippled onwards. I wonder if it is still there.
The water there was deep and so clear that you could see every pebble, and sometimes you would catch the flash of a trout turning, the glint of its scales in the sunlight. I leant at the window, just as I am doing now, and imagined sitting there with Edmund, just the two of us, letting the water cool my swollen feet.
A sound from the cradle made me look round. It wasn’t a cry, more like a small animal snuffling, and suddenly curious, I went over. My son was looking up at me with dark, serious eyes, and I had the strangest sense of the world tipping. It was as if I had never seen him before, as if he had suddenly appeared in the cradle. He was real, I remember thinking. He was not something kicking inside me. He was a child.
My child.
‘Oh.’ It was all that I said. I wanted to say, ‘Oh, it is you,’ but that would have made no sense. It was like meeting an old friend unexpectedly, that same feeling of surprise and recognition.
I knew Judith would tell me to leave him in his cradle where he was well swaddled and safe, but I picked him up and held him against my shoulder. I could feel his whiffly breath on my neck, feel the warm weight of him. He was more solid than I expected, more real.
I still wanted to go out, but now, I realized, I wanted to take him with me. If Edmund and I sat by the river we would be incomplete without him. As he squirmed in his swaddling against me, I lifted him away from me a little so that I could look at him properly. His face was scrunched up, his mouth a tiny pucker, his eyes dark and intent as he stared back at me.
‘Kit.’ I tried out the name and it felt right in my mouth. ‘Kit. My son.’
And then it came, the feeling I had been missing until then. It settled over me like a soft blanket, pouring like liquid sunlight along my veins.
Love.
I remember it so clearly that I turn and look again for the cradle, but it is long gone, replaced by a heavily carved chest. My throat is tight, the yearning for my son so intense that for a moment I cannot breathe with it.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Vavasour?’ the guide murmurs at my elbow. ‘You’re very white. Do you need to sit down?’
‘No, I’m . . . I’m fine,’ I manage. ‘I’ll just . . .’ I make a vague gesture, unable to think about what it is I will just do, knowing only that I must find my child. ‘I was just going,’ I say feebly.
I feel her curious eyes on my back as I take a firmer grip of my stick and limp to the door. Outside the chamber, I look around vaguely. My mind is full of Kit. This is what I have been trying to remember for so long. I must find him, I must see that he is safe.
The stairs are full of tourists coming up from the great hall below. I turn and lift the scarlet rope that marks off the private areas of the house and replace it behind me, catching the surprised looks of a couple just reaching the top of the stairs. With my stick and my short hair and my faded jeans I probably don’t look like the kind of person they expect to see living in a house like this. I smile at them, too delighted to have remembered my son at last to mind when they only look disapprovingly back at me. I am going to the nursery to find Kit.
I am halfway up the stairs when I realize that his face is beginning to blur in my mind again, and I clutch onto the wide banister in a panic. No! No, I cannot forget him again! But his features are fading inexorably and in my mind I see another baby, another boy. In my memory, I am holding him away from me so that I can inspect him, but he isn’t swaddled as Kit had been. He is wearing a soft white Babygro and his tiny hands are flexing and grasping at something only he can see.
Michael’s voice, thick with emotion. ‘I think we should call him Felix and hope that one day he is as happy as we are.’
And me, nearly as weepy as Michael. ‘Felix. I like that. Yes, let’s call him that.’
My own voice rings in my head and the rush of relief at remembering Felix at last is so great that my knees actually buckle and I have to grope to sit down on the stairs, my stick clattering down beside me. I drop my head onto my knees, my eyes stinging with emotion while love for two different children churns and swirls through me. I can feel Isabel’s yearning for Kit tugging at my head, but I won’t give in. I hold firmly onto the image of Felix and now that they have started, the memories come barrelling in, taking my breath away.
Felix, his first gummy smile.
Felix smeared in puree, rubbing his hands through his hair.
Lifting Felix to smell his nappy, handing him to Michael: ‘It’s your turn.’
Felix shrieking with laughter as he tumbled between us in bed.
Felix, blue eyes dark and puzzled, watching a coffin being lowered into the ground.
I cover my face with my hands and weep. I am crying for all the times I have forgotten until now, for Michael and the happiness that turned out to be so short, for Felix, left all alone while I lay in hospital, and for Isabel, whose son is lost. It is not Kit playing with a toy train in the nursery, it is Felix. My son, not hers.
I haven’t forgotten Kit, but for the first time I realize that I am not Isabel. She is in my head, but she is not me. Real or imaginary, I will have to decide what to do about her, but for now Felix comes first. I want to rush in and grab him to me, to hold him tight and breathe in his Felix smell, to cover him with kisses and promise never to go away again. But I know that would just frighten him. So I blow my nose and knuckle the tears from my cheeks. I retrieve my stick and haul myself to my feet, and I make myself walk quite slowly up the rest of the stairs and along to the nursery, where Fiona told me she and Felix would wait for me after walking the dogs.
Felix looks up when I go in. I wonder if he will see how I have changed, if he will somehow know that his mother is back, but the Vavasour eyes are wary still. Felix has looked up too many times in the hope of seeing me to let himself believe I am me again just yet.
‘Hello,’ I say,
amazed at how normal my voice sounds.
Felix grabs a book and runs over to me. ‘Story!’
‘Felix!’ Fiona chides. She is big on manners. ‘What do you say?’
‘Story, please.’
‘I’ll read you a story,’ I agree, although my smile wobbles a little when I see that it is the book Michael bought for him again. ‘Let’s sit on the sofa.’
Felix scrambles up beside me on the nursery sofa and sits with his legs sticking straight out ahead of him. As always, he keeps a little distance between us. I long to hug him to me, but I make myself open the book instead and start to read.
As I read, Felix looks at the pictures and turns the pages for me. He knows the story off by heart and knows exactly when to reach out and turn the page over. He inches a little closer and I feel his warmth. Gradually, he lets himself lean against me until at last he is pressed into my side. I lift my arm, very casually, and put it around him so that he can shift into a more comfortable position. He doesn’t stiffen or protest, and I feel my heart settle into a slow, steady beat. I cannot kiss him or cuddle him yet, but he is my son once more, and with my arm encircling his small, sturdy body, with his warm weight against me, for now that is enough.
The relief of having remembered Felix is enormous. The most important part of me has been restored and it feels like a blessing, but it’s hard knowing that he distrusts me still. He has been hurt, my boy. He knows I am not complete, not yet. Does he sense the otherness in me? When he looks at me, does he see Isabel? I think about what Angie told me, about how terrified he was, and I ache with guilt. She is right: I cannot put him through that again.
The iPad is still lying on the table beside my bed. I haven’t tried to get into it since my abortive attempts earlier. I sit on the window seat and hold its sleek shape on my lap, thinking, and then I open it up, sweep across the screen to unlock it and wait for the password prompt to appear. Kit was born on 7 August 1598. Without letting myself think about it, I type in: Kit07081598 and the screen miraculously clears.
House of Shadows Page 22