‘Is it truly you, gentle brother?’ she whispered. ‘Or are you just a figment of my disordered brain?’
He said nothing but only smiled his lovely smile in answer and lifted a hand to smooth her hair behind her temple. His touch sent a shadow passing through her that chilled her to her soul, leaving her in no doubt he truly was a spirit from the dead. Questions clustered in her thoughts, but he placed a finger on her lips with a small shake of his head to silence her before she could begin to ask him anything. So she searched in his eyes for some understanding, and all she saw were dark and unknowable depths. With a sudden awareness she had glimpsed into realms of the dead, a shiver of fear rippled through her.
He smiled again as if to reassure her, then lowered his mouth to hers, and all fear, all thought, all reason, all grief were swept away in the transcendence of his kiss: if this was death, she wanted nothing more, the cold of the tomb that suffused her embraced and welcome.
A choice between life and death. A loveless life, or a loving death.
As he moved his body over hers, lifting her shift to enter her, she made her choice, surrendering all that she was to him, her mortal life as nothing compared to the bliss of this union with spirit.
Afterwards he stayed to hold her until the dream faded away into peaceful sleep, and in the morning when she woke, at first she couldn’t say if she had merely dreamed him into life, an apparition born of a grief-stricken brain. But when she moved to get up and felt the stickiness between her legs, she understood he had truly come to her. Smiling to herself that she had not entirely lost him after all and sure that he would come to her again, she swung herself out of the bed she had shared with him in the night and got ready to meet the waking day with a lighter heart.
Within days she knew she was carrying his child. She could feel the life quickening inside her, a small gift of hope to light the darkness of her grief, and she knew without question it was his, sure of the night it was conceived – their last night together in the waking world.
As soon as she was certain, she sought out her mother in the garden behind the house, where she was tending the herbs she used to ease the trials of childbirth. A clear, light sunshine broke through the bright scudding strips of cloud, a water-blue sky behind them. Sarah’s eyes wandered across the rows of budding greenery – motherwort and witch hazel, partridge berry and chamomile – and she fingered the leaves with a new and expectant curiosity. She would need them for herself very soon, but the thought didn’t frighten her as once it might have. The child was Tom’s parting gift to her, a piece of himself to love, and she had no cause to be afraid.
At Sarah’s approach Elizabeth rose stiffly from her knees and wiped her forehead with the back of one hand, fingers dark with the dirt of her labour, cheeks flushed with the warmth of the changing season. The two women stood side by side in the warm afternoon and surveyed the garden. It was verdant and bright with new spring growth, and a pair of swallowtail butterflies flitted back and forth between the leaves in a complex dance of courtship. Sarah watched them for a moment, her gaze caught by the luminescent colours. Then she turned to her mother, who was observing her carefully with stern, shrewd eyes.
‘You are with child.’ Her mother spoke in barely more than a whisper even though they were sure they were alone. ‘Tom’s child.’
‘Yes,’ she replied. It never crossed her mind to wonder how her mother knew.
Elizabeth sighed and rubbed at her forehead again, smearing crumbs of earth across it. Sarah smiled and reached an instinctive hand to wipe the dirt away with the tips of her fingers.
‘Then you must marry Simon after all,’ her mother said. ‘The child will need a father.’
She shrugged. With Tom gone she no longer cared. She must marry a man, any man, to keep her and her child, as her mother had married her father. It was her fate as a woman.
‘We must work quickly,’ her mother said. ‘So the world believes Simon is the father.’
She nodded, recalling the words of the dream that had begun it all: Wife thou shalt be, loving mother of children, though none of mine. All of it would come to pass in the end.
Leaning forward, Elizabeth laid her hand on Sarah’s arm. ‘I will speak to your father tonight and tell him you’re willing. It has long been his dearest wish for you to marry Simon – I see no impediment on our path.’
Sarah was silent. She would accept all that was arranged and become a dutiful wife. Except for Tom and his child, she cared about nothing. Sliding her eyes away from her mother’s scrutiny, she wished, not for the first time, that she possessed some of Tom’s skill to dissemble.
Her mother said, ‘Does he come to you, in your dreams?’
She sighed. There was no point in lying. ‘He comes to me most nights,’ she whispered, ‘as restless in death as in life.’ And as real as day, she thought, to lie with her again and still her grief with his silent caress. Lying with his spirit in the night was all that mattered to her now. His touch, his body, his breath, his smile – these were the forces that sustained her, and the nights were all she lived for: she had no interest in the day.
‘You must let him go, Sarah,’ Elizabeth said. ‘He comes because you call him, because he wants to ease your sorrow. Let him go. Let him go to his rest and give your love to the child. His child.’
She turned her head away, biting her lip, blinking back the tears.
‘He loved you well,’ Elizabeth said, and at the unexpected gentleness in her mother’s tone, she slid her eyes back to meet her mother’s look. ‘And he left you a gift of himself. But the wheel has turned and we must turn with it. Let him go. Let him be at peace.’
She nodded, admitting her mother’s wisdom. But her spirit was less easy to convince than her head, clinging fiercely to her desire to go to him and be with him again.
‘Let him go, Sarah. Promise me. For your sake as well as his.’
She was silent, her heart in shreds and impatient for the night, to have him love her again.
‘Sarah?’
She shook her head lightly, sniffing back her tears. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I cannot give him up.’
Her mother said nothing, but her thoughts were clear on her face. Sarah waited, hoping for some word of understanding, some small offer of hope, but her mother simply turned away and knelt once more before the herbs, digging at the dark earth with the trowel. She watched her for a moment, still hoping, but when she understood her mother had no more to say to her she backed away toward the house. There was sewing for her to do, a shift for a local merchant’s wife, and she took up her seat at the window in the first-floor chamber where the light was best. Then she picked up the linen and with a mind filled with nothing, started to make the stitches.
The morning of the wedding dawned with a blackened sky and a wind that chased the rain sideways so that it seemed as though the world had tilted.
‘What have you done?’ her mother asked as she helped her daughter dress for her marriage.
‘Nothing,’ Sarah answered.
‘You did not let him go.’ It was not a question, and her mother’s hands stopped working at the ties of Sarah’s sleeves. ‘He still comes to you.’’
Sarah nodded.
Her mother moved to face her, taking Sarah’s chin in her fingers, examining her daughter’s face. ‘You must give him up,’ she whispered. ‘The life is already leaving you. Do you think I haven’t seen? That I haven’t been watching as you pale and fade?’
Sarah swallowed but was silent. She understood the bargain she had made.
‘He wants you to join him,’ her mother said.
‘It was my choice. And the shewstone foretold it.’
‘He should not have offered it to you. He gave his life to save you. Honour that sacrifice. Use the life he paid for.’
‘In a life with Simon? What kind of life is that?’
‘A life like mine,’ her mother answered. ‘What of your child, Sarah? I took the life with your father for your
brother’s sake – I made a sacrifice, a bargain if you like, of my happiness for the well-being of my child. And what of yours?’ she asked again. ‘Will you not do the same for him? For the gift that Tom gave you?’
‘Why did he give it to me?’ She still could not understand, and he did not answer in the nights when she asked him. ‘What does he want from me?’
‘I cannot say. I was never able to read Tom’s heart as I can read yours. But perhaps,’ she said, ‘it was to give you a reason not to follow him, a way to turn your promised fate aside.’
Her father’s footsteps in the passage outside her door stopped their conversation, and her mother finished tying the sleeves in silence and set to dressing Sarah’s hair. But she had no interest in any of it, her mind turning instead on the fate of her child and her life to come. When she was finally dressed and ready, she stood up and turned to her mother.
‘We should scry,’ she said softly.
‘Sometimes,’ her mother replied, ‘it’s better not to know.’ Then, ‘Ready?’
‘Ready.’
Together, they left the house and walked to the Puritan church of her father for the wedding.
Marriage to Simon wasn’t hard. As her mother had promised, he was a kind husband, and in return she was a dutiful wife. Lying beneath him each night in their marriage bed in the room behind the shop, she let him fumble inexpertly to climax, patient with his efforts, unmoved. It was a world away from the passion she had known with Nick and with Tom, but she did not mind. He was gentle, afraid of hurting her, and she saved her rapture for the nights when Tom’s ghost came to her while her husband slept. Only now and then she regretted her deception: he was an honest man and she had used him badly, though she was sure he would never suspect.
One morning close to midsummer, she answered a knock at the door to see Nick on the doorstep. She stared, startled. She rarely thought of him now, her world revolving instead around her child and husband, and the nights she spent with Tom. The playhouse seemed a different realm, an illusion she had dreamed of once upon a time.
‘Goodwife Chyrche.’ He bowed and she dropped him an answering curtsey.
He looked no different, she thought, the same reluctant smile and sad eyes, the same full lips. His beard was a little longer, and there was a weariness about him she had not seen before, but otherwise he had not changed. Only she could no longer see in him what she used to see, all desire for him faded out of memory.
‘Please. Come in.’ She stepped back to allow him to enter, and wondered what had brought him to her door. He followed her upstairs into the stuffy warmth of the main chamber and she poured him a cup of ale. He took it with a small smile of thanks, and with the smile his eyes glittered and crinkled and she remembered why she had loved him. She folded her hands before her skirts and waited.
‘I’m sorry about your brother,’ he said finally, when the silence had begun to grow heavy. ‘I know you must have grieved for him sorely.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And congratulations on your wedding. And …?’ He tilted his head, a small gesture towards her belly.
‘Yes,’ she answered the unspoken question. ‘I am with child.’
He looked away into the bottom of his ale and she knew he was wondering if the child were his. ‘It is my husband’s child,’ she told him. ‘Of that I am sure.’
He lifted his eyes with a smile. ‘Of course,’ he answered quickly. ‘I understand.’ Then, ‘And you are happy?’
At that she slid her eyes away. There were some things she could not mask entirely, and he would have noticed already her pallor and the gauntness of her cheek, her light dimming even as she tried to keep it bright.
She shrugged. ‘Are you?’
He answered with a wry smile and a half-shrug of his own.
‘Both of us unhappily married then,’ she murmured. ‘Both of us bound.’
There was another pause. Then she said, ‘Why have you come here, Master Tooley? What is it you would tell me?’
She saw him swallow and glance down into the empty cup in his hand. She stepped forward and took the jug from the sideboard to refill it. His eyes followed her movements, and when she had finished he lifted the cup to his lips and drank. He took a deep breath.
‘John died in prison this morning.’
‘Poor mad John,’ she breathed. She had barely thought of him of late but the news saddened her nonetheless. He had been undone by his own desire, the fear of his own sin. His was a delicate spirit, too fragile for the demands of his faith.
‘He never regained his wits after the trial,’ Nick said. ‘So they kept him in prison, afraid he was still possessed by whatever evil spirit your brother had conjured.’
‘You know it wasn’t so,’ Sarah said. ‘No one ever bewitched him. ’Twas his own fear that undid him.’
And the words of the play, she thought, the curse she had foreseen in the shewstone. But she didn’t ask how John died – she did not want to imagine it. She had spent dark days in prison, her own thoughts coloured with fear and desperate imaginings; she knew it would be easy to die in such a place.
Nick shrugged. ‘It no longer matters one way or the other,’ he said. ‘But I thought you would want to know.’
‘Thank you. I’m grateful.’ Then, ‘How goes the playacting business?’
‘We are playing a comedy this afternoon. An old one. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Master Burbage is back.’
‘No witches,’ she said.
‘Just faeries.’
They shared a smile, a little of the old understanding passing between them. They would have made each other happy, she thought, if the Fates had been kinder.
‘I should go,’ he said. ‘A performance to attend.’ He placed the cup on the tray on the sideboard and stepped to the door. Then he turned back. ‘If I can ever be of service, Sarah, please, do not hesitate to call on me. You know where you can find me.’
‘Thank you.’ She knew the offer was genuine and that she would never take it up.
She stood at the door and watched him stride away, back towards his life at the playhouse, his gait well known and familiar. Then she turned back inside to return to her sweeping and closed the door behind her.
Chapter Twenty-Six
A Blessed Time
As summer ripened and her belly grew round, Simon began to leave her alone in bed, in awe of her and afraid to touch. She welcomed his reluctance, and they lived together as quiet and courteous friends. It was a life that seemed unreal to her, hours of pretend to endure in the daytime until the dark hours fell and she could be with her brother again in the only life that mattered.
But gradually, Tom came to her less often, missing a night here and there at first, then longer spaces in between, until at last the weeks went by and he did not come. Impatient for him to take her with him, she did not understand. Why had he left her? She had made her choice the first night that he came to her, her spirit fading and drawn towards the darkness, Tom’s love awaiting her in death. The decision had seemed so simple: to die and be with Tom or to live without him. There had been no hesitation, not even for a moment. Tom was everything to her – without him she was incomplete, her life a half-life barely lived, and it seemed to be no sacrifice to leave it.
But without his presence to sustain her, her spirit began to falter, caught between two worlds. And as the life within began to kick sometimes and press against her organs, a reluctant joy began to bud in her forming child, love growing unlooked for and a reviving urge to life. Torn between her mother-love and her desire for Tom, she felt that she would drown beneath so much uncertainty.
When she was six months gone with child and had all but given up hope that Tom would ever come to her again, he spoke to her at last one night in the space between sleep and waking.
‘Meet me at the Grove,’ he whispered, and his breath was cool against her ear. ‘At the next full moon.’
She snapped open her eyes to see him and to hold him again, but
he had already disappeared, and she lay sleepless for the rest of the night. The days till the next full moon seemed to stretch endlessly before her.
It was easy to slip out of the house. Simon had no cause to suspect her, and her father no longer took an interest. He had given her to Simon and washed his hands of her – her sins were no longer his concern but a burden for her husband. Besides, Simon slept like the dead after long days in the shop, the familiar snuffle and snore, the narrow mouth hanging open. So different from the beauty of her brother when he slept in his pale and peaceful stillness.
With the whole household asleep, she took the front door, and in the street she breathed deeply. The London night had become an unfamiliar place to her now she was a respectable housewife and heavy with child, and she was wary of it: the confidence with which she had once slid through the night-time streets seemed to belong to a different person, a different time. Now she moved heavily and with caution, but as her steps led her closer to the Grove, closer to Tom, her pace quickened and she found her way through the trees without mistake. But always the question circled in her mind: had he come this time to collect her, to take her from her waking world into his realm of the dead? She could think of no other purpose, and the blood shivered in her veins at the thought of it, excitement stirred with dread.
When she reached the Grove it was bathed in moonlight: leaves that in the daytime were tinged red and gold with the oncoming autumn flickered silver and ash with the breeze. An owl called somewhere in the trees, unseen. Hecate, she thought, come as psychopomp to accompany her into the dark. Wrapping her cloak around her against the chill of the September night, she lowered herself carefully to sit on the cool, damp grass, and settled down to wait. She did not doubt that he would come as promised, and her heartbeat quivered with nerves and pleasure.
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