She has stopped screaming. She is perfect, with a tiny nose, a tiny bud of a mouth and eyes that stare unblinkingly back into mine. ‘My Bess.’ I will do anything to keep her safe, I vow silently, to keep her happy.
Anything.
The stench of rotting fruit clogged my nose, making me gasp and gag – and I woke up, still retching. For a while I just lay there, drawing shuddering breaths as I adjusted to the fact that my arms were empty. I was empty and sore and close to tears, and I ached for Bess.
She wasn’t there. She would never be there for me.
Wretched, I rolled over to clutch the pillow next to me for comfort, and my fingers closed over a soggy, sagging apple.
I didn’t stop to think. Jackknifing out of the bed, I stumbled away from it in horror and leant back against the chest of drawers, my pulse thundering and my stomach heaving. It was several minutes before I could bring myself to pick up the apple and throw it out of the window.
It left a repulsive stain on the pillow. I stripped off the pillowcase and tossed it into the laundry basket with a shudder. Only then could I flop back into bed, turn my face into the mattress and weep for the baby I had never had.
Much later, when the misery had subsided to lethargy and I was listlessly watching the shadows shift over the ceiling, I remembered Drew.
My hand went instinctively to my neck. The jade pendant was still there, nestled in the hollow of my throat, but the amulet Vivien had given me was gone. I had taken it off the night before, I remembered. It was lumpy and awkward and it kept getting in the way, bumping between Drew and me, frustrating our frantic attempts to press skin against skin. I had been too giddy with lust to remember what Vivien had said about not taking it off. I had taken everything off, except the pendant, which was so unobtrusive I barely noticed it any more.
In spite of myself, my mouth curved at the memory. It had been so good to give in to desire, to let my mind spin away and my body take over. Drew might be dry and precise in the way he thought, but his hands were sure and his mouth was wickedly warm. It had been a long time since I had felt that heat, that rush, that breathless excitement, and afterwards I had sprawled languid and sated beside him, my body cheering.
But it had been a mistake.
Drew fell asleep, and I dozed for a while, but couldn’t settle. His arm was hot and heavy over me, and the familiar sense of suffocation began to steal over me. What was I doing, getting involved with a man like Drew? I knew instinctively that he wasn’t a guy who would be interested in a casual relationship, and I couldn’t offer him more than that.
Disentangling myself from him, I slid out of bed and dressed without waking him. Quietly I let myself out and into Lucy’s house next door, to dream not of loving, but of giving birth.
Now I lay in bed and churned with confusion, memories tumbling over each other, blurring and fragmenting until I couldn’t tell one from the other. The warmth of the hand sliding over my skin: had that been Drew’s hand, or Ned’s? Had those been my sighs and soft gasps, or Hawise’s? Who had I shared the night’s shattering pleasure with?
The memories beat at me, intercut with the intense emotions of giving birth. My breasts ached, my heart ached. Was this what it was like to lose a child? I wondered. To go through the pain and the overwhelming joy, only to wake to emptiness and loss? Grief rose up, overwhelming me, and I wept again: for Bess, for Hawise, for myself.
I hated crying – it smacked too much of losing control – and I struggled to pull myself together, scrubbing the tears furiously from my face. Bess was gone.
My body felt battered and I had to move very carefully, but I showered, washed my hair and put on a summer dress, hoping to lift my mood. I had left Vivien’s amulet at Drew’s; I would have to go and get it, and apologize to him while I was at it.
But when I knocked on his door there was no answer.
Somehow I got through the day. I had two classes that afternoon and, as I walked into the school, I couldn’t believe how many babies I passed. I’d peer into prams, racked with longing, or watch yearningly as a mother held a baby strapped to her front. And all the time the need to hold Bess again beat at me. I didn’t need that chilling whisper to remind me any more.
On the edge of King’s Square I paused to watch a young mother bending over a pram. Her baby was crying, the thin, high wail of a newborn, and when I felt wetness at my breasts I started to tremble. I had to pad my bra with tissues when I got to the school. I went into the Ladies and shut myself in a stall, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes. I was producing milk for a baby that I knew didn’t exist, but I ached and ached for her anyway.
I have to stay in the room for three days. Usually I would rail at the confinement, but I am sleepy and sluggish and happy just to watch my daughter. Ned is allowed into the room to see me and Bess. He looks drawn, and I remember that he has already had a wife and child who died. My confinement hasn’t been easy on him, either.
Ned picks Bess up and smiles first at her and then at me, and I wonder how I could ever have thought of him as homely.
‘She is a beauty,’ he says. ‘Like her mother.’ And when he kisses me, my heart soars at my good fortune.
‘We should give some thought to her godparents,’ he said. ‘Your sister, as she is a girl, and the midwife, but what about your sister’s husband too?’
‘No!’ I say instinctively, pulling myself up against the pillows in a panic. I don’t want Francis anywhere near my daughter. ‘No, Ned. Please. You haven’t asked him yet, have you?’
He looks puzzled. ‘Not yet, no. Why, what is it that distresses you so, Hawise?’
‘Nothing.’ There is no point in trying to explain. He won’t understand. ‘It’s just . . . Francis will be no benefit to her,’ I argue in a rush. ‘Can we not ask Mr Beckwith if he would stand as godfather to her, Ned? He is a man of good repute.’
‘As is your sister’s husband,’ Ned points out.
‘Mr Beckwith has better connections,’ I say with an edge of desperation. ‘And Agnes is already godmother. We do not need Francis too.’
‘Very well,’ says Ned, obviously prepared to indulge me. ‘It shall be as you wish.’
I let out a long breath that I haven’t realized I have been holding until then, and smile brilliantly at him. Francis is Agnes’s husband and I cannot keep him from seeing Bess, but at least now he will have no claim on her. He should have little interest in a girl child, but still, I will keep her out of his way as much as I can. I do not trust him.
The neighbours come to see Bess and to keep me company. Having a child has made me one of them. I am not different any more. I am a mother who suffers in childbirth, just like they do; who feeds her baby at her breast as they do. It is as if I have passed an unwritten test and stepped from one world into another. There was my life before Bess, and now there is this life, with Bess at its heart. It feels strange to me sometimes. All my life I have been the odd one, the one folk eye askance. I have never felt as if I belong. But now, suddenly, I have a place. I can be just like everyone else. I am bound into the neighbourhood by the miracle of childbirth.
Little Bess is a source of wonder to me. She is so tiny, so perfect, I cannot believe that she is mine. I lay my hand on her to check that she is breathing, and the feel of her small chest rising and falling is like a fist around my heart. And although I am pleased that the women have taken me as one of their own, I long to be alone with my baby too, just to marvel at her.
I am tired as well, and at last the women do leave, shooed out by Margery, who has decreed that I need my sleep. Bess lies in a cradle near the bed. I lie on my side so that I can watch it. I am scared to sleep, because if I sleep, who will watch Bess? How can I guard her from harm if I am asleep? I am determined to stay awake, but my eyelids close anyway.
I’m not sure what makes me stir, but I open my eyes to see Agnes bending over the cradle. I can’t see her expression, but there is a tension about her shoulders, a stiffness to her arms, th
at makes me think something is wrong.
Instantly I am wide awake. ‘Agnes?’ I haul myself up onto the pillows as she spins round, her face shocked. ‘What is it?’ I say sharply. ‘Why do you look so? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong.’ The startled look is smoothed from her face and now it is blank and unreadable.
‘Are you sure? Is it the baby?’ Fear sharpens my voice.
‘The baby is well.’
I am throwing back the coverlet, trying to struggle up. Something about Agnes’s lack of expression makes me afraid. ‘I want to see her!’
‘Be calm, Sister.’ Irritation feathers her voice and she lifts Bess from the cradle and hands her to me. ‘You see?’
Frantically I check Bess, whose face is screwed up in sleep. She is breathing! She seems fine. I hold her tight, wondering how long I am going to have to live with this terror that something might happen to her. Childhood is a dangerous time, we all know that.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say to Agnes. I can sense that she is exasperated by my fancies. ‘I was just . . . it was the way you looked.’
‘I was just admiring my goddaughter,’ she says, but she doesn’t sound as if she admires Bess. She has kept her distance from the baby until now. I think this must be the first time Agnes has touched her in fact, and she handed her over to me as if she were a bolt of cloth, as if she didn’t like touching her.
But it must be hard for Agnes, I realize, ready to feel sorry for anyone who isn’t me and who doesn’t have my beautiful Bess as their daughter. There is no sign that Agnes has conceived. She cannot feel my happiness. My poor sister, married to Francis Bewley and without the joy of a child of her own.
‘A new mother’s fancies,’ I apologize.
Agnes and Eliza Skelton take Bess to be baptized, and I fret all the time they are at the church. I haven’t been churched yet, and must stay at home. Ned and Margery will be there, I reason, and Mistress Beckwith, who has had children of her own. She knows how to hold a baby. Agnes just needs to stand there and make her promises. There is no need to feel unease.
But I don’t like the fact that Francis has announced that he will attend the baptism. I have seen little of him for the past few weeks. It was one of the best things about my confinement, and now I am to stay in my chamber until I am churched. This will be the first time Francis sees Bess. I don’t want him to touch her.
He cannot do anything to Bess in church, surely? I wish Agnes hadn’t told me that he was going. I don’t relax until Bess is back in my arms. I have to keep Francis away from her. As soon as I am churched I will be able to watch her all the time, but until then, I want my baby safely with me, where he cannot even look at her.
‘You look terrible,’ said Drew when he opened the door.
‘Silver-tongued devil, aren’t you?’ My hand went to my pendant and I drew a breath. ‘Have you got a minute?’
‘Sure.’ He stood back and held open the door. ‘Want a cup of tea? Or something stronger?’ His voice was pleasant, but cool.
I probably didn’t deserve even that.
‘Tea would be good. Thanks.’
I followed him into the kitchen and was glad to sit down when he gestured me to a stool at the tiny breakfast bar. Drew filled the kettle, clicked it on and then leant back against the worktop while he waited for it to boil, studying me with a crease between his brows. I was drawn and pasty-skinned, and the hair tucked behind my ears was lank, I knew. I’d seen myself in the mirror and been appalled by the lines of strain bracketing my mouth, and the anguish in my eyes. Drew wouldn’t think I was exciting now, that was for sure.
‘You really do look rough,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you well?’
‘I’m—’
‘Fine, I know,’ he interrupted me, exasperated.
‘I am fine. I just didn’t sleep very well, that’s all.’
Then I wished I hadn’t said that. The memory of the night before twanged in the air between us. I looked away. Better to get it out of the way. It was why I was there, after all.
‘Drew, about last night . . . ’
But he stopped me again, holding up a hand. ‘You don’t need to say anything, Grace. I got the point when you left without saying goodbye.’ His voice was even, but I flinched as if it had been a whip.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, shame-faced. ‘I really am. I just . . . I’m not very good at intimacy,’ I stumbled on when he raised his brows. ‘I mean, the sex was great – really it was. It’s nothing to do with you.’
‘Oh, wait. Is this the whole “It’s not you” speech?’ he said. ‘I love that one.’
At the kettle’s frantic whistle he turned to pour boiling water over the teabags and I looked helplessly at his back.
‘It isn’t you,’ I said. ‘It’s me.’
There was a silence. ‘Is there someone else?’ Drew asked without turning round.
‘No. At least . . . ’ I thought of Ned, of how easy it was to confuse my feelings for the two men. ‘No, not really. It’s not that.’
I wanted what Hawise had with Ned, I realized, but I couldn’t imagine ever getting close enough to anyone to get married. I would have to let down my guard and make myself vulnerable, and that felt too dangerous.
Hawise hadn’t had a choice. If she’d had one, would she have married Ned? I didn’t think so, and that meant she would never have known what it was like to love him.
I had a choice, but the responsibility felt huge, stifling. How could you possibly know that you were making the right decision? How could you know what it would be like to live with someone, day in, day out, knowing that you couldn’t – or shouldn’t – walk away whenever you wanted?
Drew turned at last. Handing me a mug, he pushed the milk across the breakfast bar. ‘If it’s not someone else, what is it?’
‘It’s just that I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment,’ I said weakly. ‘Everything’s so complicated right now.’
That at least was true. I was living Hawise’s life as well as my own – I had just had a baby, for God’s sake! – while teaching and trying to sort out Lucy’s affairs. I couldn’t be expected to embark on a relationship too.
‘Last night was a mistake,’ I said.
Drew wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easily. He was leaning against the kitchen units, ankles crossed, watching me with that unnervingly level gaze. ‘In what way?’
I turned the mug round and round between my hands, wondering how to explain. I could hardly tell Drew that I was possessed, that I feared that I had been aroused by memories of another man, of a man who had died hundreds of years earlier.
And I couldn’t blame it all on Hawise. I had known what I was doing. The memory of Drew’s mouth on me speared through my misery, quick and clean and hot. I hadn’t been making love with Ned. Drew smelt different, felt different. It had been him.
‘Look, the truth is, I’m not into a committed relationship,’ I said, knowing that I sounded bolshie, and Drew raised his brows.
‘I wasn’t planning on asking you to marry me,’ he said coolly. ‘Don’t you think you’re taking things a bit too seriously? It was just one night, but you’re right: it was good. It doesn’t have to be complicated.’
‘I’m just no good at the whole holding-each-other-afterwards and sleeping-together stuff.’ I stirred my tea, not looking at him. ‘That’s why I left last night. I should have said goodbye, I know, but I get all panicky . . . To be honest, I thought you might regret it this morning too.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, we’re so different, aren’t we? We want completely different things.’
Drew set his mug carefully on the worktop and gave me a level look. ‘How do you know what I want?’ he asked.
‘I know you’re a settled kind of guy,’ I said. ‘You’ve got your job, your house, your daughter, and I know they’re all important to you. I don’t want any of those things.’
‘Have you ever tried them?’
‘The closest I
got to it was with Matt, but it would have been a disaster for both of us,’ I said. ‘I can see that now. He’s happily married, and his wife is about as different from me as you could imagine. If we’d stayed together, one or other of us would have been fooling ourselves that we wanted something that we really didn’t. At least the tsunami made that clear.’
‘So what do you want, Grace?’
I didn’t look at him. Until the night before I would have been able to answer without hesitation. Now, I had given birth. I knew what it was like to hold my daughter in my arms. My breasts were still tender, my body churning with hormones, my mind swerving between the past and the present.
‘I want to know that I can pack up my case and move on whenever I feel like it,’ I said in the end. That had always been true, and there was no reason to change now. ‘I don’t want to need anybody or anything.’
Drew took off his glasses and began to polish them with the bottom of his shirt. ‘Are you afraid I’m going to trap you somehow?’
‘No . . . I don’t know . . . ’ I was horrified to find myself close to tears as I twisted the chain of my pendant round and round. ‘I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea.’
‘So what’s the right idea?’
I lifted my eyes at last and looked at Drew. His head was bent over his glasses, and he was solid, real, rock-steady in the middle of a world that seemed to be spinning ever more wildly out of my control. As I looked, the swirling seemed to still for a moment of extraordinary clarity and I saw him as if for the first time, in startling detail. The dent on the bridge of his nose, where his glasses pressed. The faint prickle of stubble along his jaw. The furrows of concern on his forehead. The firm angles of his face, the formidable line of his mouth. I knew what that mouth felt like, what it tasted like, and I stamped down on the heat that threatened to uncoil within me.
Only now did I realize how familiar he had become to me. How important.
I wished I could go over and lean against him, but I couldn’t afford to depend on him. Drew couldn’t sort out Hawise for me. I had to deal with that myself and, when I had, I would be leaving York. I didn’t want to feel that I needed him. I didn’t want to miss him when I had gone.
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