by M. J. Logue
"Do you mind if I -"
No, he didn't mind, he didn't mind at all, and the intent look on her face as she examined him nearly undid him altogether. He said nothing. Oh, but he didn't need to, because that serious and intent look was giving way to a dawning delight at what exactly she could do to him. "Do you like that, Thankful?"
"I do. But - Zee - I don't want to hurt you, my tibber," he muttered, scowling fiercely into his lap.
"Hurt me?" Thomazine looked at her husband blankly. "Why would you -"
He lifted a shoulder in an awkward shrug. "Um. because it does. Um. Apparently. So I am, uh, told. By people who know about these, uh, things. Kind of thing."
"But Thankful -" She went and sat closer to him, and he edged away as if she might burn him. "What's the matter?"
Out of the corner of his eye, he gave her a wry look. "Oh, nothing, lass. Just a funny prejudice against, you know, causing my wife distress."
"It's our wedding night, Thankful, and you don't want to be anywhere near me. That causes me distress." She wriggled her fingers under his arm and poked him in the ribs. "Hey. Thankful-for-his-Deliverance." Which got a small smile out of him. "I love you, you big silly. I don't mind if you hurt me a little bit."
"I do!" He gave a great sigh. "Oh, Zee. What are we to do?"
"I could give you a cuddle," she said, sounding so much like her mother that he had to laugh. A practical wench, to the tips of her fingers, and one much given to a belief in the therapeutic properties of fondness and good feeding. With another sigh, he rested his head on her shoulder, closed his eyes. He was contented. Happy. He didn't need to - well. He didn't. He was a man, not a beast.
He could feel the curve of her collarbone against his cheek, and her skin smelt of sunshine and cleanliness. She was warm to the touch - warm, and breathing, and soft, and alive, and he wanted to hold her so tight he'd never let her go, and at the same time he was terrified that he'd hurt her, break her, in his ardency. What he did not need at that point was Thomazine putting her hand on his back, in all innocence, and stroking him like a fractious horse. Suffice it to say that it was not soothing him. Not at all. "Are you cold?" she said curiously, and he shut his eyes very tight and held his breath and said nothing.
"Thankful? Are you cold? It's not the fever come back, is it? Do you want to get into bed?" And she put her hand on his forehead, which was nice and comforting and which brought certain of the softer parts of her anatomy into rather closer contact than he was entirely comfortable with, right now.
"Yes," he said honestly, "yes I do, very much, but -"
"Oh, look. Mam left us a jug of ale in the hearth. Oh, bless her." And thank the Lord, Thomazine had pushed herself free of him and was scooting across the bed to the fireplace, squatting on her heels on the hearth to test the warmth of the jug with the flat of her hand. "Still warm, too. "
He was, it had to be said. He was very warm indeed. Especially when she grinned up at him over her shoulder, with the firelight rendering her shift all but transparent. "Shall I pour you some?" she said.
"Please." It might help. It might be somewhat anaesthetic, because he couldn't keep putting it off, and at some point he was going to have to get undressed and lie beside her. In just her shift. And he knew Thomazine, and she wasn't one to just lie there like a stick of wood. She was bright, and brave, and curious, and loving. And she liked kissing him, he knew that much, she'd enjoyed that part, she'd wanted more, and it was only by God's grace and the fortunate arrival of a groom in the stables on more than one occasion that had brought her innocent to her bridal bed. Innocent-ish. There had been a degree of familiarity between them - a shocking degree of familiarity - he pulled a pillow into his lap again.
"Can you help me with my laces? I should have a maid, you know...."
"I imagine that I may act as a personal maidservant. With direction," he added. He had some knowledge of her intimate garments. He wouldn't have called himself confident, but he knew where the laces went. Came out. She'd managed to untie the lacing of her gown, but that was as far as she'd got. "Oh, come here, wench," he said with a sigh. "You're all adrift."
Stiffened and boned like a cuirassier's breastplate, and he knew how it felt, but he finally pulled the last lace through the eyelet and freed her from that dreadful instrument of torture, dropping it on the floor. Rubbing her poor pinched little waist, where the linen of her shift was all creased and crumpled where it had been rucked up against her skin, and then remembering what he was doing just slightly too late as he forgot how to breathe. So did she, and she took his hand and held it against her flank, and the pair of them stood like a pair of holy fools, not quite touching, her face turned up to his. She swallowed. "Thankful, I think you’re going to have to kiss me."
"Think I must, tibber," he agreed, because he thought he did or die in the wanting of it. Meaning to be careful, and gentle, and in the end being none of it.
6
He was still lying there at gone midnight, flat on his back with his hair fallen in his eyes and a silly grin on his face, watching the moonlight move in squares across the clean scrubbed boards of Thomazine's own.
(- she snored, a little, and he liked it. Liked her snuffling, whistling breathing, and the way she growled in her sleep when he might have taken more of the coverlets than she thought he was entitled to, and the way she was holding him as tight as if he might take it into his head to disappear in the night. He felt -
He felt married. And the thought of it gave him an odd feeling about his heart again, and he put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her in ardent silence, and she muttered something incomprehensible and buried her face in her armpit.)
He was loved. Loved, and loving. He had a place. It was, currently, a grace and favour place in the Babbitt household - his old commander's son-in-law, by God, who'd have ever thought it? - till there was a roof on the house at Four Ashes again, and the place wasn't falling to bits about his ears. But that was in the future, and for the first time since he'd been a passionate boy in the New Model Army, there was a future. There would be children at Four Ashes again, and laughter, and joy. He would make it so. He would make it a home again, for this bright girl and the bright babies they would fill it with, one day. And no child of his would ever know imposed fear, or humiliation, or darkness, not the way he had known it as his sister's hands.
She had been a monster, and he was not sorry she was dead. A cruel, unloving, vicious, inventive bitch, and the Lord be thanked she had never whelped children of her own, for she would have twisted them worse than she had managed to twist him. She had almost managed to break him of his faith, but he still had a God, and he prayed to Him, nightly, that her black and rotten soul might be brought to look on what she had done to her little brother in the name of godly zeal. And he couldn't forgive her, though a good man should do so.
He had not visited her grave, and they could make of that what they would at Four Ashes. And nor would he, unless it was with a stake and a rowan-tree, to make sure that the bloodless bitch stayed buried.
Thomazine stirred, and pushed her knee against his, and her hand tightened on his backside in a proprietorial fashion, which was startling, but nice.
He wanted to take her home as soon as may be. Their home. He closed his eyes, and snuffed the clean scent of her hair, and thought of Four Ashes. Not as it had been, a stark ruin black against a scarlet dawn, with burned rafters sticking up into the sky and a thin grey rain falling. Even almost six months after the fire, when he had first seen it: the house black and ashen, yet with the first pale shoots of new grass starting to poke through the fallen wreckage of the western side of the house. Still smelling like the ruins of a city under siege, which had made him gag, imagining the greasy taste of burned meat at the back of his throat.
The whole west wing had gone down, and he had stood knee-deep in charred timbers and shattered stone, the dawn gleaming wet and red on shards of broken glass where the windows had burst through in the blaze. It
was not a thing he could help: he'd been a supply officer, and a good one. He was trained to assess what needed to be done, and how to do it as efficiently as possible. He’d looked at it, thinking of the bright girl he'd left half-promised behind him, and for possibly the first time in his life his head had counted the cost of making Four Ashes right, but his heart had accounted how he might make it good: more than a shelter, a home.
It had been an odd thing, to even dare to dream of the future. At first he had considered good plain furnishings for a house that didn’t yet exist, fitting for a middle-aged retired soldier of quiet tastes. And then, given free rein, he had discovered rapidly that his tastes in furnishings were neither subdued nor quiet, but inclined somewhat shockingly towards the magpie. Standing in warehouses in Wapping, up and down the stinking river docks, stroking silks and holding trinkets up to the light, talking of his impending marriage casually. Of a young bride who might care for fashionable blue and white china from the Low Countries, or who might prefer porcelain of China, and so, unable to decide, he thought she might like a little of both. A Turkey carpet. A bolt of green-gold silk, the colour of her eyes. Pearls. (She had liked the pearls. She'd pretended not to - she'd called him fond and foolish and said he'd spent far too much money on her - but she had liked them. He would have covered her bed with pearls and precious rubies, if she'd asked it of him.)
No, he wanted her to see Four Ashes, and she would, and they would be happy. And Fly-Fornication's joyless spirit would turn in its grave, and there was a little of malice in it too, that his sister would have gibbered in godly fury at his vanity and vainglory.
Roses, he thought drowsily. He would fill their garden with roses, with the most fragrant roses his pocket might command, that Thomazine might always have rose petals beneath her feet. Well, might fill one of those rather nice Chinese porcelain jars with them, to scent the air with summer all the year round, because lovely though they were he could see damn-all use to the things else. They had been too pretty to leave in a warehouse on the rancid Thames, though it had cost him most of an afternoon drinking very nasty coloured water that claimed to be China tea with the merchant, being flattered into parting with a scandalous sum of money. Wondered what Thomazine would make of tea. He thought it was horrible, actually, no matter what the great and the good might think, and it deserved to be kept in its elaborate gilt cabinet with the locked doors. Nobody in their right minds would want to drink the damnable stuff, and he had promptly slipped off back to his shabby lodgings in Aldgate for a mutton pie and a sensible mug of ale that tasted of something. And had not been asked back into polite society twice, which had not troubled him.
A future filled with warmth, and joy, and sunlight, and a place in the world. And a girl who loved him, and - he moved her hand, carefully, from her possessive grip on his backside - for some unfathomable reason of her own, desired him.
What more could a man wish for?
He was almost asleep, and thinking of nothing more useful than the comfort of the soft breathing weight of her in his arms, when he heard the first scream.
7
He came bolt upright with a scream of his own, and Thomazine came upright with him though she was barely awake, and he could smell smoke -
"Fire," he said, no more than that, with every hair standing up on his neck and the flesh cringing on his bones. "Tibber," and he took her by the shoulders and he shook her till her head lolled on her shoulders and her eyelashes fluttered and she would not wake, she murmured and blinked but she did not wake, and he could smell smoke, smell meat roasting, hear the crackle of flames and the warm orange glow of firelight under the door, he could hear raised voices and running feet on the stairs, the roar of the flames and the first splintering crash as the windows -
"Wha'?" she said drowsily, and he was half out of bed and pulling her with him, dragging her by the arm across the crumpled sheets -
"Fire!"
The wench was heavier than she looked, deadweight, and she pulled her arm free and blinked at him sleepily, "What?"
"There's - fire!"
The ragged muscle in his cheek gone stiff and twitching with panic, even now, and he could barely speak so that she could understand, but it didn’t matter because she was a little more awake, shaking her head and pushing her hair out of her eyes, yawning.
"Russell, what?"
"No. Time!"
And she resisted, she would go nowhere, and it was all he could do now not to drag her by main force across the bed and throw her over his shoulder -
"Smoke!"
"There's no smoke," she said, perfectly calmly. "Russell, you're dreaming."
"I heard -"
“It’s all right,” she said, and he half-believed her, and she shook his arm until he looked at her. “Thankful. It is all right. It’s –“
Well, it wasn’t all right, clearly it wasn’t all right, whatever it was, as another yowl of bloodcurdling ferocity split the air and Thomazine’s eyebrows rose. “Well, it’s just noisy, then,” she said firmly. She opened the door a crack as a further set of footsteps went thumping down the landing. “See? Mama? What’s amiss?”
The sight of Het Babbitt on the shadowy landing, as plump and four-square as a little hedgehog in her stout flannel nightgown, was oddly comforting. “Nothing, dear,” she said blithely. “There have been babies a-plenty born under this roof before, and I imagine there will be plenty more to come. Everything proceeds as it should. And really, Thankful, to be so squalmish – I recall you standing in that very doorway when Joyeux was born, dear, you are no stranger to childbirth.”
She gave a fond, reproving shake of the head. “Now, young lady, I am needed elsewhere, for I very much suspect you will be an auntie again by dawn. Go back to bed,” and she smiled, “the both of you. Your father is gone for the midwife, Zee, so I am sure there will be much commotion shortly, and if I know your father he will have the house about its ears on his return. He has never been one to panic quietly, the dear man."
She smiled again, and evidently dismissed her new-married daughter, who stood in no want of assistance, from her immediate thoughts, as she pottered down the landing towards the stairs. Thomazine closed the door again, firmly.
“There, now, you see? We are not besieged, the house is not falling – “
She was laughing, and he was not. In his head, he knew that he was in a place of safety, with the woman he loved, and that all was well. In his heart –
- a woman screaming, the sound of hoofbeats crashing on the stone flags of the yard, the leap and flare of firelight –
“Russell?”
He shook his head. “Come back to bed,” she said gently, “you are shaking with cold, lamb.”
Not cold, but fear, and he hated it, all the more for knowing it was not real, that he was afraid of a phantom in his own head.
His mouth was very dry, and his marred cheek stiff as wood, but he choked down the bile in his throat and said, “My. Sis. Ter.”
And his voice was slurred, odd, and she glanced at him with a look of understanding. And crossed the room again, barefoot and tall and slight and radiant as a white candle, to squat on her haunches in front of the dying fire and shake the jug of spiced ale that had been left there, and to pour the last of it and offer it to him wordlessly.
He didn’t taste it, but the warmth of it eased his cheek a little, and eased the shivering cold in his bones, and he swallowed it gratefully.
Thomazine set the jug back in the ashes, though it was all but empty now, and perched herself on the bed, cross-legged as a tailor.
He was awake, now. He could not see Thomazine with her skirts blazing around her, or her loose hair burning like the tail of a comet. He could not smell roasting meat, or imagine the shattering roar as the roof fell in to obliterate her dear body under a ruin of charred wood and broken glass. “Four Ashes burned,” he said softly, his voice under control again, now. “That much, you know. Well. My sister burned with it. She was in the house.”
>
She nodded encouragingly.
“I. Dream of it, sometimes.” And thought, but did not say, that sometimes it was not Fly he saw in his dreams, but other people, the people he loved. Burning. Always burning, and begging to be saved, and he was always standing outside. Standing in the thin rain of a Buckinghamshire winter night, with the heat on his face, and the whirling sparks like scarlet snow, and the roar and whoosh of collapsing timbers.
Thomazine touched his hand, and he snatched at her fingers and held them, hard, and in his head he was pulling her free from the falling timbers. Too hard, he thought, for her level brows drew together in a tiny wince. He was sorry for it.
“Yes,” she said. No more than that. “I imagine you would.”
And then, after a little pause, she freed her hand and linked her fingers through his, that he might not squeeze them quite so hard any more. “I’m sorry, Russell. I don’t think I have said that before. I am truly sorry.”
And he was tired, and his head was beginning to ache with lack of sleep, and so he was honest, and he said, “I’m not, tibber.”
He thought she might be shocked. She took a little sharp breath, but then she glanced up and looked both sad and angry at once. “I am sorry for you, love. Not her.”
“No one deserves to die so,” he said softly, and it was the first time he had said as much, aloud, and the closest he had yet come to forgiveness. “No matter how vile a sinner they may be. No one deserves that death. I am sorry she died so hard. I am not sorry she died, and I cannot find it in my heart to mourn her.”
Thomazine’s gilded russet lashes dipped, and she said nothing. The house was still again, so still that you could hear the murmur of voices, in the room at the end of the landing, and the creak of floorboards where Frannie Pettitt was walking to and fro to ease the pain of bringing a new life into the world. (Or perhaps it was her husband, for Luce had ever been an anxious young man, and not grown less so with middle age.)
