The Memory of Midnight (14 page)

‘I don’t want an enemy,’ she said valiantly. ‘I only want to marry Tom.’

‘Have you not yet learnt that we cannot always have what we want?’ said Ralph. ‘Now come, lower your chin and let us dance.’ He lifted his hand to her again, imperative.
‘You should be kind to me, Eleanor,’ he said. ‘If you are wise, you will try to get me on your side.’

He was right, Nell knew. She should be cleverer than she was. But still the thought of putting her hand in his made her skin shrink. She had no choice, though, she knew that. Tom was half turned
away, nodding at something his master was saying. He could not come and rescue her, and why would he? Ralph was his brother. Ralph’s father was godfather to her brother. She had no reason not
to dance with him.

Setting her mouth in a smile, she laid her fingers against his cool palm. It wasn’t clammy, it wasn’t rank with sweat or dirt, but she couldn’t stop the tiny flinch of
revulsion, and Ralph knew it. He smiled as he led her into the dance.

‘You look very fine tonight, Eleanor,’ he said after a moment, his voice a caress that made her skin crawl more than his sneer.

‘I thought I was a hoyden?’

‘A beautiful hoyden.’

She didn’t want Ralph to think she was beautiful. She had dressed for Tom, and she was pleased when she and Alice had finished lacing each other up. Her bodice was embroidered, her skirts
sat stiffly over the padded roll at her hips and swished satisfyingly when she danced. In honour of Yule, a red ribbon was threaded around the edge of her smock and she had ruffs at her wrists and
at her collar.

‘You look beautiful,’ Alice had said, twitching her skirts into place.

Nell liked it when Alice said she was beautiful, but in Ralph’s mouth the word was tinged with something slimy and unpleasant.

She wished she was dancing with Peter again. The dance was slower, more stately, but the other dancers soon turned it into a romp. Not Nell and Ralph. They circled, bowed, pressed their palms
together as they turned, and Nell looked everywhere but at Ralph.

The music played, the dancers turned. In a gap through heads and shoulders, Nell caught a glimpse of Tom. Mr Todd had turned to Mr Maskewe and Tom was watching the dancing now. Watching for her.
His expression was set, determined.

The dance moved Nell round, and she craned her neck to catch Tom’s eye. This time he saw her, and as always when they saw each other there was a little jump in the air, a sense of
everything slotting into place, the way a good joiner slid a joist into a beam so that it fitted perfectly. And as always, they smiled. They couldn’t help themselves.

The next moment, the smile was wiped from Nell’s face and she gasped as Ralph’s fingers closed around hers in a vicious grip. It only lasted an instant, long enough for him to turn
her round in the dance, and then he dropped it again.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, smiling at her expression. ‘Did I hold you too tight?’

Nell moistened her lips. Her hand was throbbing, and disquiet stirred in her belly at the queer gleam behind Ralph’s smile. He was angry, she realized. ‘It is nothing,’ she
said after a moment but she was careful not to look at Tom again.

The music seemed to last forever but at last the waits put down their instruments as ale was carried over to them. Nell curtseyed to Ralph, her eyes lowered.

‘I thank you for the dance,’ she said.

‘Nell!’ Tom grabbed her hand as she murmured an excuse and hurried away from Ralph, not knowing where she was going, only that she had to get away from him.

‘Oh, Tom!’ She clutched him gratefully. ‘Where were you? I have had to dance with your brother.’

‘I saw. You didn’t look as if you were enjoying it much.’

‘He makes me uneasy,’ Nell confessed.

‘He’s a cold fish, but there is no harm to him,’ said Tom, the way he always did. The truth was that he didn’t know his brother well, and he didn’t understand why
Nell disliked him so much. She had never told him of her conviction that it was Ralph who shut her in the chest that day, and she didn’t tell him now about that savage twist of his fingers
around hers. Even if he believed her, what could Tom do?

All at once the hall seemed stifling. The heat and the noise were beating at her.

‘It’s so hot in here,’ she said. ‘Let’s go outside.’

They slipped down to the yard, ignoring the couple hard at work in the shadows below the stairs, their muffled gasps and grunts and the rustle of skirts hauled to the waist not quite silenced by
the sound of the feast spilling down the staircase.

Outside, the frost riming the roof tiles glittered in the starlight, and the air was blade sharp and so cold it set Nell’s teeth on edge.

Tom stamped his feet. ‘Should have brought a cloak,’ he said.

‘I don’t mind the cold,’ said Nell, although it was biting her face and stinging her eyes. Their breath puffed out and hung in frozen clouds of vapour between them. ‘I
haven’t seen you all evening.’

‘I know.’ Tom drew a breath, then let it out. ‘I am to go back to Hamburg in the spring,’ he said abruptly. ‘Mr Todd spoke to my father today. It is
agreed.’

The numbness in Nell’s toes crept higher, towards her heart. ‘For how long?’

‘A year or two, maybe longer.’

‘Two years!’ she said, stricken.

‘It is part of my apprenticeship. You know how it is, Nell.’

Yes, she knew. She had always known. Tom had been learning to merchant. Now he was to manage his master’s business overseas and complete his training. Not all young men were as lucky. She
should be glad for him.

‘We knew it would happen,’ Tom ploughed on doggedly. He had been avoiding Nell until he had found the courage to tell her.

‘I know. It’s just . . .’ Nell couldn’t finish. It was all very well knowing that something would happen, but now that it was there, the news clanged through her like a
tolling bell.

She was not a fool. Neither she nor Tom had the means to marry, but while they could steal away for a few hours every now and then, or snatch a kiss in a hidden alleyway, Nell had refused to
look to the future. They had been as careful as they could, and in truth had done their share of field work and wall work. Nell had slipped out to old Mother Dent, the wise woman who lived on the
common. She was not the first maid who had been to her, and she would not be the last. In exchange for a penny and a lump of cheese, Mother Dent showed her where to find the square stalks of
hoarhound, with its rough crumpled leaves; how to mix the juice with honey or dry the leaves to make a concoction. She and Tom were careful, and they were lucky, but it was not a secret. Everyone
knew she and Tom were sweethearts.

‘How will I bear it without you?’ she said.

Tom reached for her then. He didn’t say anything, but he pressed his face into her hair as he held her tightly against him. His hands gripped her, nearly as tight as Ralph had squeezed her
earlier, but this time Nell welcomed the hurt of it. When Tom’s fingers dug through her bodice she couldn’t feel her heart cracking. She clung to his waist with the same desperation,
careless of who might see them now. The knowledge that Tom would go had been bobbing at the back of her mind ever since that day by the Foss. She had done her best to push it down and out of sight,
but now it was back on the surface and she couldn’t ignore it any more.

‘I will miss you,’ Tom said, muffled against her hair. Her velvet cap had slid to the back of her head and was in danger of slithering off her hair altogether.

‘I will wait for you,’ Nell promised desperately. ‘You are my betrothed, whatever our fathers may say.’ Pulling slightly away, she showed him the ring on her finger,
although he put it there himself. ‘This was your gift to me,’ she said with a fierce look. ‘I know what it means. There will be no one else,’ she said. ‘I have
promised.’

She pressed herself back into the solid warmth of him. ‘Perhaps it will not be so bad.’ She was trying to make the best of it but her voice lacked conviction. ‘At least when it
is over, you will be free. Your father will support you, and when you are a merchant yourself you will be able to do as you please. We will be married then. We always knew that we would have to
wait.’

Her feet were numb with cold, but she couldn’t bear to move from Tom’s arms. She could feel his heart beating through his padded doublet. He didn’t want to leave her, she
believed that, but she knew that he was excited too. He longed to be gone, to brace his feet on a plunging deck and lean into the wind, to feel the spray on his face and taste the sea on his lips.
He would like being in Hamburg. Perhaps he would have to sit at his master’s accounts, but he would also be able to plunge his hands into sacks of cloves, and unwrap bales of ginger. He would
hold jugs up to the light to check for cracks and smooth his hand over furs. He would listen to the creak and groan of the ships and the curses of the mariners and he would be part of a wider
world.

And she would stay in York.

Nell seethed at the unfairness of it. Yes, it would be hard for Tom, but how much harder for her. She had nothing to do but wait.

But so it had ever been for women, she reminded herself, and she made herself tip her head back and show Tom a smiling face.

‘Let’s not be too sad too soon,’ she said. ‘It is not spring yet. We should make the most of the time we have.’

So they tried, but the knowledge that it would soon be gone was always there. Nell clutched every moment that she had with Tom now. In the past, she had grumbled about winter. She didn’t
like waking in an icy chamber, or having to blow on her hands to warm them when she was in the market. She hated the rain that fell day after day, turning the streets to a quagmire, and spilling
out of blocked gutters. In the past, she had longed for spring to come, when she could escape out to Paynley’s Crofts. She had always liked it outside the walls best, where there was space
and she didn’t feel so shut in. She liked to help old Dick tend the vegetables in the Harrisons’ garden: onions, turnips, radishes, lettuce. They grew herbs too, in rows of rosemary and
lavender, sorrel and thyme, tansy, rue and valerian. When spring came, Nell would kneel and press her knuckles into the warm earth, clearing the weeds away so the green shoots could grow. Alice
couldn’t understand it, but for Nell spring meant escape from the narrow streets and clustered houses. She could take her basket and gather wildflowers to dry for the still room, and there
was always a chance of meeting Tom too.

Spring was her favourite time, but that year she dreaded its arrival. The winter passed too fast. It was Epiphany and then it was Lady Day and all at once it was Easter, and Tom’s master
went to Hull to arrange his passage to Hamburg, leaving Tom to say his farewells.

‘It will be soon,’ Tom told Nell. His gear was already packed in a canvas bag he could sling over his shoulder. ‘They will send word when the keelboat is ready to leave and I
will come and say goodbye.’

Almost, now, Nell wished the moment would come. She had been dreading it for so long. Inside she was rigid, braced against the time when she would have to let him go. Conversation, once so easy
between them, had dried into a lumpy gruel as the time of his departure approached. There was too much to say, and not enough. The sooner Tom went, Nell told herself, the sooner he would
return.

She thought that she was ready, but when the moment came it struck her like a blow to the stomach. It was a bright April day with a chill wind that made Nell’s eyes sting as she beat the
carpets in the Harrisons’ yard. There was still no word from the staithe, which meant another night to wait and wonder if this would be the last time she would see him, the last time she
would touch him, for two long years.

The dust swirled in the air and she was coughing and spluttering when a small boy came running into the yard. ‘You’re to come now,’ he told Nell breathlessly. ‘Master
Tom, he’s bout to get on’t boat. He told me to tell you to hurry.’

Nell didn’t wait to take off her apron. She didn’t ask permission of Mistress Harrison. She dropped the carpet beater, picked up her skirts and ran along Ousegate, careless of the
pursed lips of the goodwives sitting at their doors, heedless of the catcalls from apprentices. Dodging the piles of horse dung, jumping over the gutter, she narrowly avoided a collision with Henry
Judd, who was setting out his stall. He shook his fist after her, but Nell didn’t wait to apologize. She was gripped by a terrible conviction that she would be too late, and panic pushed her
on, stumbling over the cobbles until she reached the staithe, where she stopped to heave in a breath, a hand pressed to her waist.

‘Tom!’

They were loading the last bales of cloth onto the keelboat and Tom’s canvas bag was already stowed in the prow.

The sail was snapping and cracking in the wind, and the mariner’s man was hauling it up the mast, the mariner himself shouting on the quayside, impatient to get everyone on board, to catch
the tide.

‘Nell!’ Tom pulled her behind a stack of barrels. ‘I thought I’d have to go without seeing you! Ralph has kept me here all morning, and then he decided we’d have to
catch the tide . . .’ Desperately, he kissed her, and she clung to him. She had meant to be brave, to smile at him as he left, but she was overwhelmed by the knowledge that the time had come
and any minute now he would be gone.

‘I love you,’ she said unsteadily, pressing frantic kisses along his jaw, against his mouth. ‘I love you.’

She couldn’t believe that this was the last time that she would touch him for two years. The last time she would be able to press her face into his neck and smell his dear, familiar
smell.

‘It is not so long,’ Tom tried to comfort her. ‘It is not so far. The same moon will shine down on both of us, Nell, and when I am away, wherever I am, I will look up at it and
think of you.’

It was a comforting idea and Nell seized on it. ‘And you will know that I am looking up too, and dreaming of you and waiting for you to come home.’

Tom nodded, tried to smile. ‘The moon will be our messenger. Every time you look at it, it will remind you that I love you, that I will come back, that I have not forgotten you.’