The Memory of Midnight by Pamela Hartshorne Page B

on King’s Staithe in the fog and telling Tom about Joan’s death? How did she know about Joan’s
buck teeth and the way her head hunched down between her shoulders as if cringing away from a blow?
    She
didn’t
remember, Tess reminded herself desperately. It had been a
dream
.
    There had to be an explanation for the coincidence of names. Perhaps she had glanced at the page when sorting the images into a folder and subconsciously registered the names? She knew enough
about sixteenth-century York to fill in other details. Tess clutched at the idea, refusing to give in to the objections clamouring at the back of her mind.
Yes, that must be it. Poor Joan
probably drowned accidentally.
    Trying not to notice that her hand wasn’t quite steady on the mouse, she read on. Various witnesses testified to the fact that Joan had been of good character, but that a week or so before
her death she had suffered a great heaviness of spirit. A neighbour, Margery Wrightson, who had seen Joan wandering by the river, opined that Joan had ‘fallen in fere of worldly shame’
and chosen to ‘rydde herself from lyf for werynes’. Joan, the court found, had killed herself.
    A strange wavery feeling rippled through Tess. She felt lightheaded and insubstantial, as if she had peered into a dizzying chasm, and, as if through a gauze, she saw Ashrafar flatten her ears
and jump off the desk, spitting in alarm. She was gripping the top of the desk, pressing the wood between her thumb and fingers until her flesh turned white. There was a chip in the varnished edge
of the table and she could feel the splintery unevenness pressing into her skin. The table was real;
she
was real. Tess tried to hold onto that, but the harder she gripped, the more she
felt herself receding. There was a strange, sucking sensation in her head, and she barely had time to feel frightened before her eyes blurred and the world seemed to tip away from her.
    She stepped out of the cool darkness of the barbican into the sunlight, and into a jostling press of vagrants. ‘A penny, sweet mistress!’ they begged, feral-eyed,
rank with dirt and desperation. ‘For charity!’
    ‘Ignore them,’ said Alice but Nell was already digging into the purse at her girdle for a coin. She couldn’t ignore them. There were too many of them, and they were too close,
too loud. She caught the eye of a girl about her own age with a gaunt face and bitter eyes, two small boys clinging to her skirts, and she threw the penny to her. Snatching it out of the air, the
girl ran away with the boys before the other vagrants surrounded her like a pack of snarling dogs.
    Nell watched her go. ‘Poor lass. Those boys can’t be much older than Harry and Peter. I wonder how I would fare if I had to care for my brothers? If I had to beg for a crust of bread
so they could eat?’
    ‘For pity’s sake, Nell.’ Alice clicked her tongue and took Nell firmly by the arm. ‘Now they will all want something. Come, walk quickly.’
    ‘Did you hear they found another girl down by the river?’ Nell shivered even though the sun struck warm across her shoulders. ‘They say she was so savagely beaten, none could
tell who she was or what she looked like. That is four now.’
    ‘Four what?’
    ‘Four vagrant girls who have been killed over the last year or so. Nobody seems to care.’
    Alice shrugged. ‘They are idle and shiftless,’ she pointed out. ‘They just make trouble. Nobody does care.’
    ‘But who would do such a thing?’
    ‘Nell, it is not for you to worry about these things,’ said Alice, rolling her eyes. ‘It is a holiday. Can you not think about something merrier?’
    Nell chewed her lip. It disturbed her that nobody worried about those girls whose bodies had been beaten so savagely and discarded so carelessly. The neighbourhood shrugged the way Alice did. It
was distasteful, yes, but no one cried for an inquest. The girls were harlots and vagrants – rough, idle sorts. They might as