‘I don’t think so, thank you,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘Look, I’m sorry about your kitchen. I’ll have a look through Lucy’s papers tomorrow, I promise, and see if I can find anything about insurance. If not, I’ll talk to John Burnand. He said he would be able to advance some money from the estate, if I needed it.’
At the unmistakable signal that I wanted him to go, Drew got up, brushing the issue of the food damage with a gesture. ‘I’m more concerned about you than the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you should be alone. Why don’t you sleep in Sophie’s room tonight?’
I hesitated. Drew’s house was warm and light and safe, but I couldn’t run round there every time I felt wobbly. I’m independent, I had told him. I didn’t like needing anybody else for anything.
‘That’s kind of you, but you’ve done enough for me tonight, I think,’ I said. ‘I’ve spoiled your evening as it is. I’ll be fine.’
‘You say that a lot too,’ said Drew.
‘What?’
‘That you’re fine.’
‘I am fine.’
‘Sarah – that’s my psychiatrist friend – has a theory about the word “fine”,’ he said. ‘She thinks it stands for fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional.’
I bared my teeth at him. ‘Okay, I’ll be “all right”. Is that better?’
Oddly enough, I was all right. I slept dreamlessly and, when I woke up, the bruises on my face had subsided. A brisk wind had pushed the rain away overnight and left a bright, blowy day behind it. I was still getting used to the way the weather changed from one day to the next. Only the day before it had been hot and humid, but now I was glad of the jacket I’d bought for Lucy’s funeral.
I had plenty to do, but I was too restless to settle to my lesson plans. I set off to walk along the river, but the closer I got to it, the more reluctant I felt to see where Lucy had died and where Hawise had drowned. In the end I turned away before I got there, and wandered around the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey instead. The breeze blew my hair around my face, and I had to take my hands out of my pockets to pull away the strands that kept sticking to my mouth. There was a strange razor edge to the light. Every zingy green leaf, every brick, every person I passed jumped out at me in startling detail, while billowing clouds skated across the sky and sent deep blocks of shadow sweeping over me.
I sat for a while on a bench and watched some Australian tourists videoing a grey squirrel. I hadn’t been to the Museum Gardens before, but they were obviously popular. Students lay sprawled on the grass, careless of the damp, while small children ran around chasing pigeons, and teenagers huddled in groups and texted on their mobiles. An elderly couple rested on the bench next to mine. Families wandered by eating ice creams, and tour guides hustled their groups around the ruins. Everyone looked so normal.
The elderly couple smiled at me as they got up to go, and I smiled back, pathetically grateful to realize that they thought I was normal too. I didn’t look crazy. I just felt it.
I touched my lip where Francis’s ring had struck, disturbed by the idea that I might have beaten myself. Before he left, Drew had again offered to put me in touch with his psychiatrist friend, but I loathed the thought of anyone rummaging around in my subconscious. I had coped with a tsunami, for God’s sake. Surely I could cope with this? Maybe Hawise was just a figment of my imagination. That was the rational explanation, and as long as I understood that, I would be fine. Yes, fine – whatever Drew might think it meant.
I couldn’t see that I needed to visit a psychiatrist. What would be the point? I didn’t need help, I decided. I just needed to sell Lucy’s house, leave York and get back to normality.
The first step in that was to finish clearing the house. Reassured, I headed briskly back. I was wondering about the cheapest way to redecorate when I found myself walking past a gate leading into a quiet churchyard tucked away behind Goodramgate, and my steps slowed.
And I knew that rationality hadn’t won after all. There was a rushing around my heart, pulling me back, pulling me along the path towards the church. I couldn’t have walked past if I had tried. This was Holy Trinity, Hawise’s parish church. I knew it in my bones.
To my twenty-first-century eyes it was a humble, higgledy-piggledy building, a cottage of a church in comparison with the bulk of the Minster that soared behind it, but at the same time I saw it as sanctuary, as certainty. The churchyard was a tiny oasis in the centre of the city. There were three or four gravestones leaning in the grass, and a cherry tree bursting with blossom. Two Japanese tourists were sitting on a bench, heads bent over their digital camera, but they smiled and nodded as I walked up to the porch. Somehow I managed a smile back.
I didn’t want to go in, and yet when I pushed open the door and stepped down into the nave, it felt like coming home after a long journey.
Inside, age had buckled the church out of shape. The flagstones, worn smooth by generations of feet, dipped and sagged, the stone arches were squashed and slightly askew. My pulse boomed as I walked down the central aisle towards the altar. Those high wooden box pews dominating the nave shouldn’t be there, I thought, but when I laid my palm against one of the sturdy pillars, the stone seemed to thrum.
Hawise was right beside me now. I could feel her – part of me, and yet separate for once. I stood very still, watching the meagre sunlight that slanted through a window, briefly striping the flagstone beneath my feet.
Yes. Yes.
The words rang in my head, and approval settled like a hand on my shoulder. Yes. At last. Now, remember how it was . . .
After a week of rain, the sun has come out for my wedding day. It pours through the stained-glass windows and makes puddles of colour on the stone floor. They look so pretty that I try not to stand in them.
I am married. I stood with Ned Hilliard in the church porch and we exchanged the vows that made us man and wife, and then we came inside for the nuptial mass. Now Meg is pouring hippocras for all our guests, and Agnes is handing around the cakes with a martyred air. She said she was too tired to go out with Meg and the other girls to gather flowers this morning. She said it was just a tradition, and that there was no point in throwing flowers in the street. They would just get trampled into the mud.
I would have collected armfuls of flowers if this was Agnes’s wedding. I know she thinks that I have been unfairly fortunate, and I dare say it is true, but I would be happy to change places with her if I could. Does she think I want to marry a widower, a stranger? But Agnes sees only that she has been unlucky again. I wish my sister could be happy, I wish it as much as I wish happiness for myself, but I am afraid that she doesn’t know how to feel joy. I am afraid that if we could change places, so that she was the bride and I her maid, she would still be discontented and envious.
Perhaps the flowers are trampled now, but the street looked like a meadow when we set out in procession from my master’s house. Dick, Mr Beckwith’s apprentice, held the bride-cup aloft and the ribbons fluttered gaily in the breeze as we followed behind the waits. No expense had been spared. There were fiddlers and drummers and trumpeters and pipers, and we laughed and smiled and clapped our hands in time to the music and the passers-by all stopped to watch us, craning their necks to see me in my bridal finery. My maids walked with me, carrying the great wedding cakes that will be broken at the bridal feast later, each with a sprig of rosemary tied to their arm. Meg is going to put hers under her pillow tonight and dream of her future husband. I did the same when I was a bride’s maid.
But I never dreamt of Ned Hilliard.
Now I slide a glance at him under my lashes. He is standing beside me, wearing a handsome silk-damask doublet and hose with a brown velvet jerkin, but he still manages to look austere. I try to remember what he looks like when he smiles. I know it is surprising, but it happens so rarely that I have forgotten. I wish I knew what he was thinking, but I know no more of him now than I did when I used to serve him wine as my master’s guest. I still have no idea why h
e would wish to marry me.
He didn’t have to woo me – we both knew that – but he did. He brought me gifts, tokens of his love, he said, and I accepted them, so that everyone knew we were betrothed. He brought me gloves embroidered with butterflies, and a gold ring. A pair of green silk garters, and a purse. A length of scarlet kersey. An orange that he peeled with deft fingers. Its sweetness stung my lips and trickled down my chin. Ned licked his thumb and dabbed it off. He didn’t smile, but my eyes tangled with his like a deer in the briars, and all at once my heart began to pound.
And once he brought me a seashell and held it to my ear, and I heard the rush and roar of the ocean. He did smile then, watching my expression. I remember that now.
He has given me a beautiful new gown as a wedding gift. It is made of the finest, softest wool, dyed blue, and is trimmed with silver buttons that flash in the sunlight that is slanting through the windows. I smooth it down, still scarcely able to believe that it is real, that I am wed, that the man standing next to me is my husband, till death do us part.
‘How does it feel?’ Meg asked me last night. She was sitting up in the bed we share – the bed I used to share with Elizabeth – and hugging her knees as she watched me brush out my hair. ‘Tomorrow you will be married.’
In truth, I wasn’t sure how it felt. I’m still not sure, but I am resolved to make the best of things. I have learnt my lesson. I will not risk my reputation with a stranger again. I will accept Ned Hilliard as a husband and be glad.
I was afraid when I came back from Paynley’s Crofts that day. I told my mistress that I had fallen over a branch to explain my cuts and bruises, but she knew. She sent Meg off on an errand and climbed up to find me, lying curled in a tight ball on the bed with Hap – Hap who had known Francis for what he was right from the start.
‘Hawise.’ She sat heavily on the edge of the bed. Normally she would have ordered Hap back to the kitchen, but that night she pretended she didn’t see him. ‘Who did this to you?’
I shook my head. I was too ashamed to tell her the truth and I was frightened of Francis, of what he might say to the neighbours and how easily he could still hurt me. You led me on, he had said. What if it was true? What if it was all my fault? I clutched Hap to me, and he endured it without so much as a squirm of protest.
‘Are you still a maid?’
‘Yes.’ My voice was barely a thread, and Mistress Beckwith put a hand on my shoulder. I flinched at the feel of it.
‘Do you swear?’
‘I swear.’
‘Very well.’ She took her hand away. ‘Stay in bed this evening. I will say you are unwell.’
The bed groaned as she pushed herself upright. I heard the squeak of floorboards underfoot, the rattle of the latch. I didn’t lift my face from Hap’s velvety ear, but I knew my mistress had paused at the door and was looking back at me.
‘This marriage is a great chance for you, Hawise,’ she said. ‘You will not get another such. You must be more careful. Your reputation is all you have.’ She hesitated, weighing her words. ‘Ned Hilliard is a good man and he has a fondness for you, that much is clear, but you are not married yet. There will be those who call themselves his friends who will think he could find a more suitable wife. A man must listen to his friends. They will be urging him to break the betrothal, telling him that you will do him no honour. You must give them no reason to think that they were right all along. You understand?’
I still couldn’t look at her, but I nodded into Hap’s fur. I did understand.
The next day I went back to my duties, but for a week or so after that my belly knotted with fear every time I stepped out of the house, in case I came face-to-face with Francis.
I was anxious, too, when the banns were read here in Holy Trinity, Goodramgate and in St Martin’s, Coney Street, which is Ned’s parish church – and mine now, I suppose – but Francis didn’t appear and speak up to say that I was promised to him, and after the last banns were read I began to relax. I didn’t want to ask the neighbours about him, but only a few days ago I overheard Mistress Rogers telling Thomas Barker’s wife that Francis has gone back to London with his master, and it feels as if a great weight has been lifted from my heart.
He has gone.
He has gone, and the relief has made me light-headed. Oh, yes, I have learnt my lesson. I know how lucky I am that things did not go a lot worse for me. From now on, I vow, I will be grateful for what I have. Perhaps I would have liked a younger bridegroom, or a smiling one, but I will try to be happy.
And, in truth, it’s not hard to be happy when you are a bride and everyone makes a fuss of you. Agnes offers me one of the cakes that have been blessed. I thank her, and she manages a wan smile in return. Poor Agnes. To my sister it must seem as if I have everything, and I cannot tell her that it is not so – not when she has to go back to our father’s house in Hungate, with little to look forward to other than for her head to stop aching.
The church is filled with the chatter and laughter of our guests. Everyone loves a wedding. Ned has no kin here in York, but he has invited his neighbours, and my father is here with Agnes, and the Beckwiths of course, and their friends and neighbours. Between them all, Ned and I haven’t had a chance to exchange a word privately, but as I sneak another glance at my husband, he catches my eye and smiles one of his unexpected smiles.
Ah, yes, now I remember. He looks younger, less severe. Less daunting. Without thinking, I smile back at him, and something blazes in his eyes. I don’t know what it is, but it makes me feel as if the butterflies on my gloves have taken flight and are fluttering frantically around inside me.
All at once I am filled with optimism. I will be mistress of my own home, a fine house in Coney Street. My husband is rich and sober and, when he smiles, he doesn’t seem so old. I think about the shell he brought me. He knows what will please me, while I – I have my virtue to offer him, which I so nearly lost. I am luckier than I deserve. I have my family and friends around me, and all is well.
No sooner have I thought it than a quake runs through me.
Ned looks down at me. ‘Are you cold?’
‘No.’ I shake off the strange feeling of unease and put on a bright smile. ‘Not at all.’
When the spiced wine is finished and the cakes have been eaten, we go out through the porch and my maids shower me with wheat, in token of fertility. Then the musicians strike up and the entire wedding party sets off again for Ned’s house in Coney Street, where we are to have the bridal feast. This time I walk with Ned. We make a quiet centre to the party, which is already buoyed up by the hippocras, and his arm is solid beneath my hand. I notice that, in spite of his stiff manner, my husband walks like a man easy in his own skin. I find myself remembering the warmth of his mouth when we exchanged a kiss in the church porch to seal our vows.
I should have told him about Francis perhaps, but what could I have said? I don’t want Ned to know that I am a fool. I want to be a good wife to him, to forget Francis and put the past behind me.
And then, as if the thought has conjured him out of the air, I see him, and my smile freezes.
Francis is standing at the edge of the street, watching as the procession passes. He is smiling, but when his gaze meets mine, it is so full of malevolence that my heart thuds sickeningly. I stumble and would fall, were it not for Ned catching my arm.
A ripple of concern goes through the watching crowd, and some mutter superstitiously about it being a bad omen for the bride to trip.
Ned’s hand is steady at my elbow. ‘More like a sign that the Chamberlains still haven’t mended the mid-part of the street,’ he says, raising his voice so that others can hear, and there is some laughter and nods of agreement.
When I look again, Francis is gone.
My eyes flicker from side to side. Did anyone see? Could they tell that he was watching me, the way a cat watches a mouse? Did they sense the malice in his gaze?
I have to swallow hard before I can answer Ned when
he asks if I am hurt.
‘No, it was just a stone,’ I say, but my fingers tighten on his arm.
Ned’s house is huge, bigger even than Mr Beckwith’s. The first time I saw it, my eyes widened like a little owl. The shop that fronts Coney Street is leased to Richard Lydon, apothecary. Inside, it is heady with the fragrances of the East. On the counter are sugar loaves and pitchers of wine, and glass jars filled with comfits and dried fruits, and wooden boxes of quince paste, while the back of the shop is lined with wooden drawers filled with the spices Ned buys in the great markets of the Low Countries: verdigris and wormwood, cinnamon and pepper and nutmeg, cloves and knobbly roots of ginger, precious saffron.
Behind the shop there is a fine hall, with its own entrance from the courtyard, and a parlour that Ned says I can make my own. There is a buttery and a closet, where Ned keeps his books. Further back, a great kitchen with larders and a bakehouse, and stables across the yard. The main chamber is above the hall, but there is another over the shop, where the linen is kept, and two more, plus chambers for the servants over the kitchen and under the eaves.
And of all this I am now mistress. I try not to look too daunted by it all.
The hall is lined with wainscot, and on the wall hang fine painted cloths that Ned has bought in Antwerp and Bruges. Today the hall is set up for the bridal feast. The trestle tables are arranged on three sides of the room and covered in linen cloths. Great jugs of spiced wine are set out at regular intervals. I sit with Ned at the table on the raised dais and am served the way I have served so many others in the past.
I make an effort to push Francis from my mind. It was a shock to see him like that, but what can he do, after all? I am married before God. It cannot be undone.
Still, my head is whirling with the look in Francis’s eyes and with the strangeness of finding myself suddenly a wife and mistress of this enormous house. Normally I have a hearty appetite, but I only pick at the feast before me. I nibble at a slice of roast swan. Its pungent taste clings to the top of my mouth. It makes me think of the Ouse when the tide is low, when its banks are sludgy and slimy, and all at once the thought of the river sends another ripple of unease through me. I put the slice down without finishing it.
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