‘And you think I am a witch?’ The widow seems amused.
I don’t answer directly. The truth is that I am not sure. ‘I fear for you. There are folk who think any cunning woman is a witch.’
‘I don’t bother them.’
‘I know, it’s just . . . ’ I don’t know how to explain to Sybil the fever that has caught hold in the streets. Suddenly every old woman is suspect, every tiny problem blamed on witchcraft. How can she know about that, out here? ‘I don’t think you should go into the town at the moment. There is something . . . not right . . . in the air.’
‘Don’t you worry about me,’ says Sybil. ‘Look to yourself, that’s all you can do.’
‘Grace? Where are you going?’
‘Home,’ I said. ‘I must go home.’
‘Home’s this way.’ There was a shifting, a sliding in the air, and Drew’s face slipped into focus. He was watching me with a slight frown. Beside us, people were crossing the road as the light turned green, but I had turned and was facing back to Monk Bar.
Back to Coney Street, back to the past.
I was getting better at adjusting. The shift from past to present had been so subtle that I had barely more than a moment’s disorientation. It was enough for the green man to turn red.
‘Sorry,’ I said to Drew. ‘I thought I’d forgotten something. It doesn’t matter, though.’
I’d forgotten quite how acute his eyes could be. Had he noticed the blankness in my face? I wondered. Had he sensed that, for a few moments, I had been somewhere else? Sometime else? Someone else?
I hoped not. I didn’t want to answer any questions. I didn’t want to lie to him, and I didn’t want to tell the truth, either. He wouldn’t understand – wouldn’t want to understand – how I could be aching still with the loss of the baby that Hawise had longed for.
Drew was still studying my face. He had a way of looking at you, as if he could see right inside you. It was very disconcerting.
Sliding my gaze from his, I made a big deal of shifting my bag from one shoulder to another and tried to think of a way to distract him.
‘What are you seeing tomorrow?’ It was the best I could do, but at least I had the satisfaction of catching him unawares for once.
‘Tomorrow?’
‘You said you were going to the cinema.’
‘Oh . . . yes.’ He told me the title, but I didn’t recognize it. Something Italian, with subtitles. Not my kind of thing at all.
‘Are you going with Sophie?’
All right, I was fishing, but it worked. ‘No, actually I’m going with Sarah.’
His voice was a shade too casual, and in spite of myself my lips tightened, sure that it meant he and Sarah were seeing each other. I felt a fool, remembering the lust that had gripped me, until Hawise had dragged me back to the past.
‘Oh.’
‘We’re just friends,’ said Drew.
Our eyes collided and veered away, and I stared at the red man, mortified to find that I was blushing.
‘Oh,’ I said again, but I was glad.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Drew wiggled the mouse to bring the desktop’s screen back to life. ‘A lot of the material is very repetitive. I’m not sure it’ll mean anything to you.’
‘Yes,’ I said, although the truth was that I wasn’t sure. Did I want proof or not? If none of the people I knew as Hawise had ever existed, then I would be forced to conclude that it was all in my mind, and I didn’t like the idea of having such a vivid fantasy life. It smacked of mental illness to me, and that felt as bad as the idea of being possessed. Either way, it meant I had lost control of myself.
But now I was doing something to take back control, I reminded myself. ‘I’d like to try anyway,’ I told Drew.
‘Okay.’ Standing, he clicked around the screen until a database appeared, and motioned me to the chair. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘You might as well make yourself comfortable.’
The screen was divided into columns. ‘This is the manuscript reference,’ said Drew, pointing. ‘Date, ward, first name, surname, occupation, and so on. I’ve included the category of offence and the fine, as well as the location, if known, and there’s a final field for a transcription of any particularly interesting entries.’
‘Right,’ I said, peering at the screen. The type was so small it was hard to make out any details. There were clearly pages and pages of entries. ‘How do we find an individual?’ I was eager to get started by then. ‘I presume you can search the database somehow?’
‘Of course, but the more information you can provide, the better. If you just have a first name like Thomas, John or William, you’re going to get thousands of matches. Bear in mind, too, that there was no standardized spelling at this period, least of all when it came to surnames, so you need to do a search that will bring up all possible variations. If you know an occupation, or where the individual lived – even if it’s only a ward – you can narrow down your search.’
‘Okay.’ I drew a breath. ‘Let’s try.’
But Drew wasn’t finished yet. ‘The database includes all individuals who appear in the wardmote-court records between 1575 and 1586, so it’s a narrow window, but even then, it doesn’t really prove anything one way or another,’ he warned. ‘All the men in the ward were invited to the court, but only those chosen to be jurors had their name recorded; or if they were officials of some kind – a churchwarden, say, or a constable, or an alderman presiding over the court, of course. Or they might appear if they were presented for some offence, but they could just as easily slip through and not appear in any of the records at all.’
‘I understand.’ I was finding it hard to contain my impatience. ‘We could have a go, couldn’t we?’
Resigned, Drew pulled up another chair and sat down next to me. ‘What name did you have in mind?’
I drew a breath, let it out carefully. ‘Ned Hilliard,’ I said, and his name felt plump and sweet and right in my mouth.
‘Ned as in Edward?’
‘Yes.’
Drew filled out some complicated filter, typing in Hilliard, Hilyard, Hillyard, Hiliarde.
‘Any idea where this “Edward Hilliard” lived?’
‘Bootham ward,’ I said without thinking, and then, when Drew looked at me, ‘Coney Street.’
‘As it happens, Coney Street was in Bootham ward in the late sixteenth century,’ he said.
I said nothing.
‘Occupation?’
‘Merchant.’
I was very aware of Drew’s jean-clad thigh close to mine, of his fingers on the keyboard, and I wondered how they would feel against my skin. The thought made me shift uncomfortably in my chair. I felt guilty, as if I had been caught ogling another man in front of my husband.
But of course Ned wasn’t my husband. He was dead. He’d been dead for more than four hundred years, if he had ever lived at all.
‘Okay.’ Drew clicked on ‘apply filter’, and the answer popped up in a fraction of a second.
No match found.
I stared at the screen, shaken by the bitterness of my disappointment. Only then did I realize how much I had wanted Ned to be real.
I gnawed at my thumb. ‘Try . . . try Francis Bewley.’ Just saying his name sent a wave of loathing through me.
A William Bewley popped up, but no Francis.
Drew was carefully not saying ‘I told you so’.
‘Do you mind trying one more?’ I asked him. I could feel Hawise in my head, urging me on. Look harder, look further.
Drew opened his mouth and I was sure he was going to point out that I was wasting my time, but in the end he just put his fingers to the keyboard. ‘Name?’
I thought of my master, and how he had grumbled about the streets. Surely there would be some record of him? I remembered him so vividly: a brash, bluff man who rarely realized how cleverly his much more interesting wife managed him. He had to have been real.
‘William Beckwith,’ I said, leaning f
orward, tense. ‘He lives in Goodramgate. Lived,’ I amended quickly at Drew’s look. ‘Maybe.’
‘Monk ward then.’ He pulled up another database and filled out the filter fields: name, surname, location.
And there he was on the screen: William Beckwith, mercer, Goodramgate.
I hissed in a breath that was part-shock, part-satisfaction.
‘It’s not an uncommon name,’ said Drew, watching my face. ‘It doesn’t prove anything.’
‘I know,’ I said, but it did for me. I knew that William Beckwith, and no amount of psychoanalysis by his friend Sarah would tell me otherwise.
‘Is this all you have?’ I asked Drew. ‘Just this database?’
‘No, the records are transcribed. I’m not sure they’d mean much to you. They’re very repetitive.’
‘Can I look at them anyway?’
With an air of resignation, Drew got out a folder of closely typed pages and handed them over to me. I sat at his kitchen table. The entries were laid out in a strange way, and I didn’t understand all the symbols. Although they were mostly in English, the spelling made it hard to read, but if I said it out loud I could make sense of it, and the phrasing rang like a bell inside me.
I turned the pages, and my back prickled with the uncanny sensation of Hawise leaning over my shoulder. I recognized so many of the names. John Standeven, Robert Cook, Mr Frankland . . . I – she – knew them all. John Harper. I could picture him exactly, with his carnal mouth and the lazily insolent way that he undressed with his eyes every woman who passed. And my eye snagged on an Andrew Trewe, although I didn’t think Hawise could have known him well, for the name felt only vaguely familiar. It was strange to look down at my own surname, written so casually and so long ago, and to wonder if he might have been some distant ancestor.
Nicholas Ellis. The name jumped out at me and I grew very still as I reread the entry, until only my eyes were moving, flicking backwards and forwards over the lines. We present Myles Fell mylner for kepinge a mastis bytche unmossyllid whiche dyd bytt Nicholas Ellis legge.
My mouth was dry as I showed the entry to Drew. ‘What’s this mastis bytche unmoss-whatever?’
‘Miles Fell was a miller,’ he said, and I didn’t tell him I knew that already. ‘He’s presented here for not muzzling his dog, a mastiff bitch, which obviously bit this Nicholas Ellis on the leg. All the bigger dogs were supposed to be muzzled in the street. It seems to have been quite a problem.’
I wasn’t listening. I was remembering the miller and his brutish dog, the fury on Nick Ellis’s face. If it hadn’t been for that commotion, Hawise might never have met Francis Bewley.
‘You okay?’
Drew was watching me. I tried to keep my expression neutral, but I was certain now. Ned might not be there; Hawise wasn’t there; but their neighbours were. There was no point in trying to convince Drew of that, though.
Moistening my lips, I closed the file at last. ‘You’re right, it must just be coincidence,’ I said.
‘It’s not proof, Grace.’ I didn’t like the way he seemed to be able to read my mind. I just hoped he hadn’t been able to read it earlier.
‘I know.’
In a way, Drew’s insistence on a rational explanation for everything was comforting. When everything I had ever believed to be true was shifting and crumbling, his steadiness was something I could hold onto. ‘I know, I do,’ I said and, without thinking, I reached out and laid my hand over his.
Perhaps I meant it as reassurance. Or perhaps I just wanted to touch him.
Drew looked at my hand and then he looked at me, and when his fingers curled around mine, I wondered if he could feel the pulse running erratically beneath my skin, twitching and jumping and shivering in anticipation.
Yes – touch, I thought, as I turned my palm up to meet his. I needed the here and now, not the there and then. I needed to forget about Hawise and Francis Bewley, and lose myself in the present, in touch and in taste, in the slow build-up of sensation and the urgent glittery rush.
‘Do you want to search for another name?’ Drew asked me, and I shook my head slowly, letting out a long breath.
‘No.’
He smiled then, a smile that blew the smouldering embers inside me into a flame. ‘Then why don’t you come here instead?’ he said, and my final thought for a very long while was: Thank God, thank God, at last.
Pain. Wave after wave of it, wrenching and twisting and tearing me apart. My knuckles are white, my throat arches tautly back as I scream. The straight back of the birthing chair presses into me.
‘No,’ I said when they brought it in. ‘I’m not ready. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want a baby after all.’
But Eliza Skelton, the midwife, only laughed – not unkindly – and bustled around closing the shutters and directing Alison to stoke up the fire while, trapped by my unwieldy body, I lay on the bed, my eyes swivelling in fear like a skittish horse.
The air is suffocatingly sweet with the smell of the almond oil they have rubbed into my swollen belly. The linens are all clean. The midwife has laid out her knife and her binders. Below, in his study, Ned is praying. Everything is ready.
Everything except me. I am not ready for this pain that devours me, and I scream for it to end.
Sweat pours off the women who have gathered. Agnes is here and Margery, who the moment she knew that I was carrying Ned’s child became brusquely protective. She might not approve of me, but she will do anything for the child, and I am glad she is here. Or I was. Now I can’t think of anyone or anything but the agony that consumes me. I hurl abuse at Eliza, who doesn’t seem to understand that I am dying from it.
‘Sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus . . . ’ I howl. ‘Help me, help me, you lardy sow!’
‘Hush now.’ A familiar firm voice cuts through my moans. They have called for Mistress Beckwith to quiet me, and when she lays a hand on my forehead I feel the pain’s terrible grip on me ease just a little.
‘Mistress,’ I choke out pitifully, clutching the chair until I think my fingers will dig into the wood. ‘Make it stop.’
‘You must be patient, Hawise,’ she chides me. ‘You must endure, as we all do. It is our lot.’
‘But why does it hurt so much?’ I am whimpering with it, my breath so jerky I can hardly speak.
‘We suffer for our grandmother Eve’s sin,’ says Mistress Beckwith. ‘She did eat the apple.’
Pain fastens its teeth into me and shakes me like a dog with a rat. ‘I wish it had choked her!’ I cry, and Mistress Beckwith tucks in the corners of her mouth so that she doesn’t laugh. ‘It’s not funny!’ I accuse her, and she does laugh then.
‘Come, it is not so bad. Not long now, and you will have a fine babe.’
I don’t want a baby any more. All I want is to lie quietly and feel that my body is my own, and not a plaything for pain to punch and pummel. But there is an irresistible force building in me, stretching, stretching, stretching me until there is nothing but the dreadful ripping and tearing inside me.
‘One more push.’
It might be Eliza’s voice, but it is faint and seems to come from miles away, from another world where there is no pain, no darkness.
‘I can’t . . . I can’t . . . ’
Why did I ever think I wanted a child? It is killing me. The pain is worse than I could ever have imagined.
‘Nearly there, lovey.’
Dimly I am aware of hands, of encouraging voices and purposeful movement, but my body is lifted up on a tide that bears me on and on, until there is a huge cry – a shout that rings in my ears – and I realize that it is mine, and suddenly everything has changed. The women are drawing the pain out of me and I slump in the chair, exhausted.
‘Just one more push . . . Ahhh, that’s it.’
There is a murmuring, a slap and a thin wail. I open my eyes. ‘My baby. Is the baby all right?’
‘A girl, but she seems healthy enough.’
‘Can I see her?’
‘
In a minute.’ The baby’s cries rise as Eliza cuts the cord and they wash her briskly and swaddle her in clean linen.
And then, at last, they put her in my arms, close to my heart.
Her face is red and scrunched up, and her mouth is open in a yell of fury at being wrenched from the comfort of my womb, and all I can do is stare at the miracle of her. She was inside me and now she is here at my breast, and the world has changed completely. The pain forgotten, swept away by a giddying rush of love so fierce it takes my breath away.
I am beaming with joy as I lift my head to thank Eliza for her care of me. ‘I’m sorry I was rude to you,’ I say and she nods. She has seen it all before. With one finger I stroke my baby’s cheek. ‘Isn’t she the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen?’
‘Aye, she’s a bonny one.’ Margery leans over to admire my daughter as the midwife is too busy clearing up. Perhaps every mother thinks her baby is beautiful? None can be as beautiful as mine, though.
I exchange a smile with Margery, her past rudenesses all forgotten now that we share the utter belief in the wonder of my child. As Margery coos, her slab-face softened, I glance over her shoulder and surprise a strange expression on my sister’s face. I can’t put a name to it, but it sends a sliver of unease into my happiness.
‘What are you going to call her?’ Margery asks, following my gaze. She expects me to say Agnes. Margery approves of Agnes, who is very devout.
I should say Agnes. She will be godmother, with Eliza, the midwife. The baby should be named for one of them, and it would do honour to my sister. But there is no joy in Agnes and, holding my daughter in my arms, I want so much for her to know only happiness. It is a foolish hope, I know, for what life can be purely happy? Still, it is what I want, and all at once I have a picture of Elizabeth, my friend, and the times we laughed together.
‘Elizabeth,’ I say, and I look down into my daughter’s face. Agnes doesn’t need to know that I have not named her for the midwife. ‘Her name is Elizabeth.’
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