The Memory of Midnight (23 page)

Chew, sip, smile. Chew, sip, smile. Smile, smile, smile. Never had smiling been so hard. The muscles in her cheeks were aching with the effort.

‘You are not eating.’ Ralph took a partridge wing and held it out to her when she decided she had made enough of a show of enjoying the food. His fingers were slippery and slick and
she pressed her lips together against another heave of revulsion.

Even then, she kept her smile in place. ‘I thank you, but I have had enough.’

‘Eat it,’ he said, and though his mouth was stretched in an answering smile, there was an implacable note in his voice. At last Nell’s own smile faltered. There were just the
two of them, marooned in a pool of silence while the feast chortled around them. ‘You want your father’s debt paid, do you not?’ said the devoted bridegroom.

Nell took the wing from him. Her gorge rose but she managed a tiny bite and forced it down. The gamey texture of the flesh stuck to the roof of her mouth and sauce thickened with bread clung
unpleasantly to her tongue. She tasted ginger, vinegar, despair.

‘Eat it all,’ said Ralph.

Somehow Nell made her way through it all. When she finally judged that she could lay the bones down, Ralph took them and sucked them between his teeth, on and on and on. The sound made sweat
break out on her forehead.

I must not be sick. I must not be sick
.

I must not think of Tom.

‘You’re so lucky,’ Alice had sighed as she helped Nell dress earlier. ‘I wish William would give me a kirtle like this!’ She fingered the fine worsted enviously.
Alice had done what no other maid could do. She had penned William Carter’s wandering eye, she had pinned him down, and now they were betrothed. Nell thought privately that William himself
was not quite sure how it had happened, but Alice was happy and she was glad for her friend.

Happy she might be, but Alice was hard-headed enough to know that lust alone was not enough to make a marriage. She knew how Nell felt about Tom, but she approved of her decision to marry Ralph
instead. ‘Ralph Maskewe is a fine-looking gentleman, and rich too. He is a man of substance and good reputation. William says he will be alderman long before anyone else his age.’

Nell smiled faintly, but only because she had heard a lot about what William said since Alice’s betrothal. He seemed to have an opinion on every subject.

‘And he dotes on you, Nell. You will have everything you want.’

Nell didn’t answer.
Not everything
, she wanted to say.
I cannot have Tom, and if I cannot have Tom, I do not want anything.
But what would be the point?

It was the way of the world.
We cannot always have what we want
, Nell told herself.
We do what we must and we endure.
There was no point in telling everyone her heart was
breaking. It would not make any difference, and it would just make them feel bad. Already her father’s shame-faced gratitude was more than she could bear.

And now she was dancing with Ralph, his hands pressed against hers, his teeth glinting in the candlelight. Nell went through the motions, her smile still pinned to her face, while their guests
put their heads to one side and smiled indulgently at the newly-weds. Couldn’t they see? Nell marvelled. Couldn’t they tell just how wrong this was?

She was dreading the night to come, so much so that now she was impatient to get it over with. At least she did not have to try and pretend that she was still a maid. She had been honest with
Ralph. He couldn’t accuse her of being untrue.

After Ralph, she danced every dance. Her bridelaces fluttered blue and green from her golden headdress and she could smell the posies of rosemary pinned to the hair that today fell loose down
her back. The wild hair that Tom used to love to twine his hands in.
I see gold and bronze and copper . . . I see flames, hot and red.
And then he would rub his face in it.
I smell
gillyflowers.

Nell kept smiling. Oh, she was the perfect bride. Let no one say she was not playing her part. But her eyes were blank and she didn’t notice who she was dancing with except when she danced
with her brother, gentle Harry, who minded his steps carefully and whose eyes were troubled.

‘Nell,’ he said. ‘Will you be happy?’

He was the only one who had asked, the only one, it seemed, who cared.

For a moment, Nell could not answer him. She looked away, her throat too tight to speak, and then the dance separated them. She turned, clapped, smiled, and when they came back together again
she was able to look into his face.

‘I will try,’ she said.

She had lost Tom, but she had saved Harry. That was something, and when the dance ended, she embraced him, this brother who was so dear to her heart.

For the first time it occurred to her that she might have children of her own. Ralph would never be Tom, but they might come to an understanding. Perhaps it would not be too bad.

Only it felt very bad when Ralph beckoned her. ‘It is time for us to retire,’ he said. ‘Make yourself ready, my dear.’

Stifling giggles, Nell’s maids led her to the great bedchamber overlooking the street. A tall bed draped in red damask nearly filled the room. In the light of the candles one of the maids
set on a table, Nell could see the great curtains, embroidered with bees and flowers on the outside, pulled back and looped to the bedposts with twisted golden cords. There was a turned chair by
the window, with a tasselled cushion, and a huge chest that made memories freeze like ice in her belly.

She averted her eyes from it as her maids helped her out of her gown. They took the posies of rosemary from her hair, rolled up the bridelaces and brushed out her hair, whispering advice and
encouragement. Nell had already had an awkward conversation with her stepmother, who advised her to lie still and let her husband do what he wanted, and it would soon be over. For a second, she
allowed herself to remember Tom and how easily they had moved together. She had never been able to lie still, had never wanted it to end.

But she couldn’t think of Tom, not now.

She had been smiling so long, her face felt fixed in a grimace. Nell let them help her into the great bed. Tonight she would lie still; tonight she would wait for it to be over. She could smell
rosemary on the sheets, in her hair from the posies.

Rosemary for fidelity. Rosemary for remembrance.

But she had not been faithful to Tom, and remembrance was the last thing she needed then.

Her maids left and for one blessed moment Nell was alone and could let the smile drop from her face like a stone. She lay and looked up at the canopy over the bed. She was used to sleeping with
Alice in the little chamber in the Harrisons’ attic. This bed on its own was almost as big as that chamber, but the heavy curtains made it seem close and dark in the guttering
candlelight.

What if Ralph wanted to close them? A new dread swamped Nell, twisting her stomach and clogging her throat and ringing in her ears. They would be shut in the thick darkness and she would not be
able to breathe. It would be like being closed in the chest again, but this time it would be worse.

Ralph would be with her.

Nell’s breath raced to catch up with her accelerating heart. If he closed the curtains, if he closed them . . . what would she do?

Perhaps he wouldn’t. She latched onto the thought. The cords and tassels were very grand. Perhaps they were just for show. Perhaps Ralph, too, felt stifled when the heavy silk fell down
and cut the bed off from the rest of the room. With an effort, Nell slowed her shallow breathing. She could endure this. She must.

She would have to be careful not to offend Ralph. He must not guess the terror that awaited her if he tried to close her in. So she would put her smile back and speak fair words and hope that he
would want her enough to treat her kindly.

She had no more time to think in any case. There was boisterous laughter outside, then Ralph came in. Laughingly, he pushed out the men who pretended they would crowd into the chamber to help
him. They left at last, jeering advice and encouragement.

Ralph and Nell were alone.

Nell’s heart was thudding slowly and painfully in her chest, as if it would smash her ribs and burst out of her body. The beat of it was deafening in her ears, so loud that she was sure
Ralph must hear it.

‘So,’ Ralph said. He began to unbutton his doublet, his eyes on Nell, his expression unreadable. She wondered if he expected her to get up and help him undress, but it felt false to
her so she stayed where she was. No doubt he would tell her what he wanted.

In the hall along the passage, their guests were still drinking, and dancing had begun again after the bride and groom had been delivered to their wedding bed. The waits spent the break making
the most of the liberal supplies of spiced wine, and now the music was getting more raucous, but in the chamber there was only raw silence.

It went on so long that Nell lost her nerve. She cleared her throat. ‘The feast seemed to go well enough,’ she said at last.

‘It did,’ Ralph agreed pleasantly, ‘had it not been for the fact that you acted the harlot.’

Nell thought she had misheard. ‘Acted the what?’

‘Do not act the innocent with me, mistress. We had an agreement. You are my wife now.’

‘I am not like to forget it,’ she said bitterly, forgetting that she had meant to give him soft words and smiles, to make him forget how the bed curtains could close around them like
a shroud.

‘I saw you.’ He stripped off his doublet, his hose, until he was down to his linen undershirt. There was a tautness to him, like a pinner’s wire stretched tighter and tighter
and tighter until with a final twist it would snap. ‘I saw you flirt with every man you danced with.’

Nell puffed out a laugh at the absurdity of it, but that was the wrong thing to do. His face darkened. ‘It amuses you, to shame me in front of our guests?’

‘I was not flirting,’ she said honestly. ‘I barely knew who I was dancing with.’

‘So you do not know who you embrace?’

She was puzzled at first. ‘You cannot mean Harry?’ As far as she remembered, that was the only moment of affection in the whole day. Ralph just looked grimly at her, and she looked
back in disbelief. ‘Ralph, he is my brother!’

‘And you kept all your embraces for him. Do you never do that to me again, wife,’ Ralph said and the expression in his eyes made her shrink back onto the pillows. ‘You are my
wife now, do you understand me?’

‘You’re being absurd—’ she began, but his hands lashed out without warning and grabbed her arms so hard that she cried out.

‘Do not dare call me absurd,’ he ground out savagely. ‘You are
mine
now. You are not to embrace anyone but me. Do. You. Understand?’ He shook her between each
word, and his fingers bit agonizingly into her flesh.

‘Yes,’ she gasped. Anything to be free of the pain of his grip. ‘Yes, I understand.’

He let her go so suddenly she toppled back against the pillows, shaken by this brush with violence. He hadn’t touched the curtains, that was all she could think. She could cope with
anything as long as she wasn’t shut in the dark.

She hoped that would be the end to his roughness, but it seemed Ralph was just beginning. He climbed over her, bigger than Tom, broader and heavier, and his expression was feral, glinting with
such menace that Nell caught her breath.

‘You . . . do not need to force me,’ she managed.

‘Oh, but I do. I know you are thinking of him,’ he snarled. ‘You have been thinking of him all day, haven’t you?’

Nell knew who he meant. ‘No,’ she said in a level voice. ‘I cannot bear to think of him.’

‘Do not lie to me!’ He pinched her breast so hard that she yelped. Immediately, he clapped a hand over her mouth.

‘Be quiet!’

‘You’re hurting me,’ she gasped, struggling to free herself from his hand.

‘You deserve to be hurt. Don’t you?’ he added, when she stared up at him, aghast at the man unravelling before her eyes. He pinched her again, and this time she managed not to
cry out. ‘Don’t you? No sooner married than unfaithful in thought. Do you think to make a cuckold of me so easily? Do you?
Do you?
’ He was twisting her flesh, hurting
her, pinning her down with the brutal weight of his body as she tried to wriggle out from beneath him.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘In God’s name, Ralph! You are
hurting
me!’ she tried again, but he was panting, his eyes fevered with excitement, and he wouldn’t let her go.

‘I’ve dreamt of this, dreamt of you, and you’re spoiling it,’ he told her through clenched teeth, pulling her back by her hair until she whimpered with pain.

‘That’s better,’ he said, his voice clotted with satisfaction, and she realized in a cold wash of horror that he wanted her to feel pain. He needed it.

‘What is wrong with you?’ she whispered.

‘There is nothing wrong with me!’ His face changed and he punched her with brutal efficiency under her ribs, and he kept on punching as she curled up protectively. ‘Nothing!
Nothing! It is you who are wrong, you little slut, lying with my own brother, fornicating in the hedges, like a common whore. Did you think I did not know every time you were busy at your stair
work and your trunk work and your field work? Did you really think you needed to
tell
me?’

He kept hissing vile words in her ear as he turned her onto her front and forced himself into her, driven frantically on by the violence spewing out of him. To Nell, lost in a red mist of pain,
the horror seemed to go on and on, but at last he cried out and slumped over her.

When he finally pulled away and crawled off her, she hauled herself to the side of the great bed and clung there, fighting down nausea and forcing herself to breathe through the pain.
At
least he didn’t close the curtains
, that was all she could think.
At least he didn’t do that.

All she could hear was the rasp of Ralph’s breathing. ‘I thought it would be better than that,’ he said peevishly into the darkness at last. ‘I’ve dreamed of
bedding you for so long. Nell Appleby, a little nobody who only ever looked at me as if I were an earwig scuttling out from under a stone – I, Ralph Maskewe!’