The Memory of Midnight (49 page)

This horrific case shines a light on the darker side of England under the Tudors, says Landrow. ‘Whoever they were, these two women died a horrible death that was most likely connected to
domestic abuse.’

Today we are often horrified by the level of abuse and cruelty reported by the media. ‘We tend to blame these on social changes and look back to a simpler and happier time,’ Landrow
says, ‘but the fact is that “merry England” could be a brutal place, marked by violence at every level of society.’

Elizabethan England might have been the ‘Golden Age’, but the society that produced Shakespeare was also one that would press a pregnant woman to death for her beliefs. (Margaret
Clitherow, a butcher’s wife who lived in the Shambles, was executed in 1586 and canonized in 1970 as St Margaret of York.)

According to Landrow, casual violence was common on the streets, and an argument or scuffle could quickly lead to daggers being drawn. Vagrants were treated with particular brutality if they
were caught begging in the city. They would be stripped naked, tied to the back of a cart (‘the cart’s arse’) and whipped through the streets before being banished out of one of
the city’s four main gates.

In the home, too, says Landrow, abuse was prevalent. It was common to send children into service in another household, where they were supposed to be treated as part of the family but where it
seems many endured brutal treatment, from beatings to worse. The suicide rate for children and adolescents in early modern England was far higher than today’s, in spite of the fact that
suicide was considered with a lack of compassion that seems to us shocking. Blamed for giving in to despair and the temptation of the Devil, the bodies of those who killed themselves were denied
burial in consecrated ground and were commonly buried ignominiously at crossroads, and the belief that their spirits would return to haunt the living often led to the macabre practice of driving an
iron-tipped stake through the heart of the corpse.

Leaving service to marry and train their own servants did not necessarily improve the lot of women. Wives had little recourse against abusive husbands. A man had the right to beat his wife, but
not to kill her. Landrow cites the case of Alice Clarke, who was subjected to her husband’s drunken assaults as well as to sadistic rituals when he would tie her to the bedpost and whip her.
For women like Alice, Landrow points out, murder must have seemed the only means of escape.

‘The poison of choice seems to have been ratsbane,’ says Landrow, who has made a study of surviving assize court records for the period. ‘In a world where there was no support
for victims of domestic abuse, and women literally had nowhere else to go, it’s surprising that there aren’t more cases of wives murdering their husbands.’

For others, like the women who lived and died so horribly in the house in Stonegate, there was no escape. We will never know who was responsible for their deaths. Tess Nicholson, whose husband
was killed in the explosion that led to the discovery of the bodies, thinks that they were victims of an evil and sadistic husband and father but admits that she has no proof. ‘It’s
just a feeling,’ she says. ‘There are countless individuals like these two females whose stories will never be told, but we should never forget that they were real. They lived and they
loved. They knew joy and sadness. They were bored and they had fun. In so many ways, they were just like us,’ she believes. ‘The records aren’t always reliable. They tell us the
stories that those who wrote them wanted us to hear, but it could be that the most interesting stories are those that never got told.’

Writing a book is a team effort. I am grateful as always to my agent, Caroline Sheldon, and to Louise Buckley, Wayne Brookes and the rest of the team at Pan Macmillan for their
enthusiasm and encouragement. I’d particularly like to mention the copy-editor, Lorraine Green, who read the text so carefully and who made such perceptive comments.

For their help with
The Memory of Midnight
special thanks are due to Diana Nelson, Lisa Liddy, Steve Hodgson, and Ailsa Mainman, and to Jeanette McMillan who shared her memories of
growing up in York.

Finally I need to thank all those friends who, as always, put up with the hair-tearing crises that accompany the writing of every book, and supply perspective, support or wine as required
– often all three at the same time – especially John Harding, Stella Hobbs, Mary Hodgson, Steve Hodgson, Diana Nelson, Julia Pokora, Richard Rowland and Paul Sparks. I rely on them all
more than they know.

After an earlier career spent working and travelling around the world, including stints as cook on an outback cattle station, interpreter on an expedition in Cameroon and
English teacher in Jakarta, Pamela stumbled into writing as a way of funding a PhD in Medieval Studies. Settling at last in York, for several years she combined academic research with a successful
career as a romance writer. Her thesis on the streets of later medieval and early modern York was finally completed in 2004 and she continues to work (very slowly) on a scholarly edition of the
wardmote court records that formed the basis of her research.
The Memory of Midnight
is her second novel based on her study of Elizabethan York and written under her real name.

For more about Pamela, please see her website www.pamelahartshorne.com, find her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter @PamHartshorne.

By Pamela Hartshorne

Time’s Echo

The Memory of Midnight

First published 2013 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2013 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-230-77128-4

Copyright © Pamela Hartshorne 2013

The right of Pamela Hartshorne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The Macmillan Group has no responsibility for the information provided by any author websites whose address you obtain from this book (‘author websites’). The
inclusion of author website addresses in this book does not constitute an endorsement by or association with us of such sites or the content, products, advertising or other materials presented on
such sites.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Visit
www.panmacmillan.com
to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author
interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.