How to Stop Time(60)

One day at the market a man claiming to be a witchhunter came up to Marion and told her she was the child of a witch, a witch who kept her husband young for her own pleasure. And then the man told Marion that she too, as the progeny of a witch, must be a demon.

Marion had held her head high and arguably made things worse by telling the man that ‘a monster who meets a miracle would see a monster’. Which wasn’t quite Montaigne, but was certainly influenced by him. But shortly after the man had gone Marion cried her eyes out and she remained mute for the rest of the day.

Rose was almost sick with fear, her voice trembling, as she told me of the incident that evening, after Marion had woken from a nightmare and fallen back asleep.

‘Why can’t these maggots leave us alone? I’m so worried for her. For all of us.’

She had a tear in her eye, even as her face hardened. She had made a decision. It was a terrifying one.

‘We must go back to London.’

‘But we fled from there.’

‘It was a mistake. We will go. All of us . . . all of us . . . all of us.’ She kept saying those words, as if she was scared of the words that would come after, though they eventually came.

The tears streamed now. I held her and she held me back and I kissed the top of her head.

‘You and Marion will be for ever in danger so long as I am with you.’

‘There must be a way—’

‘There is no way.’

Rose smoothed her skirt and stared down at it. She closed her eyes and wiped them and inhaled courage. A cart rattled by on the road outside. She looked at me and didn’t say anything but the silence was its own message.

‘You aren’t safe with us, Tom.’

She didn’t say the other half of this. That they weren’t safe with me, but I knew she knew that too, and the knowledge was near enough to kill me. To be the danger I wanted to protect them from.

I said nothing. What could I say? I knew Rose could survive without me. I knew, in fact, it was more likely without me.

She was now able to look at me in the face. ‘It is not for myself. I am not scared for myself. I will not be truly alive without you. I will be a ghost that breathes.’

And that was it. That was the moment all hope disappeared.

Marion knew I was going away. It hurt her. I could see it in her eyes. But, as she tended to do with things that troubled her, she kept it inside.

‘You will be safe, my angel. People won’t ask questions any more. No one will mark your door. No one will spit at your mother. Nothing terrible will happen. I have to go away.’

‘Will you return?’ she asked, almost formally, as if I was already at a distance from her. ‘Will you come and live with us?’

The truth would have broken both our hearts, and so I didn’t offer it. I did what you sometimes have to do as a parent. I told a lie. ‘Yes, I will return.’

She frowned darkly, and then she disappeared into her room. A moment later she returned, clutching something in her fist.

‘Open your hand.’

I opened it and a penny dropped onto my palm.

‘My lucky coin,’ she explained. ‘You must keep it with you always, and, wherever you are, you must think of me.’

We decided to leave for London, unseen, at night. Coach travel from Canterbury to London was available to anyone with money, and we managed to find a coachman with good horses who could take us there for a little less than two shillings.

And later that night, Marion, the only child I have ever had, fell asleep on my shoulder in the coach. My arm was around her. Rose stared at me, her eyes glistening with tears in the dark, as I clutched the coin Marion had given me.

It was so hard, in the years after that. I thought of all the days we’d had together as a family, all jammed close like plums in a basket. I wish I could have taken those days and spread them out for ever. One afternoon with them a month for the rest of my life. I could cope if it was just one day a year, so long as there was a time with Rose and Marion in front of me. But the trouble with life was that it had to be lived consecutively.

I fell into a nocturnal existence.

My lute and fresh face were a big hit in inns, particularly the Mermaid Tavern where fresh faces were an exotic rarity. I began to lose myself in the pleasures of alcohol and whorehouses. The city was becoming more and more crowded, and yet it just made me feel lonelier and lonelier. All those people who stubbornly were not Rose and were not Marion. I knew they lived in Shoreditch, or at least that Shoreditch had been their plan, so I sometimes went there but could never see them.

Then, one day, in one of the plague years – 1623 – I saw someone I vaguely recognised walking by the river. A woman in her thirties, holding a sleeping baby boy in her arms. (Walking by the river was a popular pastime whenever the plague struck, as the river air was seen as plague-free, bizarrely, given all the corpses that ended up there.) It took me a moment to realise it was Grace, though of course it took her no time at all to recognise me.

She looked sad and lost; the fierce life force of the girl I had once known seemed now blunted.

She stared at me for a while. ‘You still look the same, and look at me, an old woman!’

‘You are not an old woman, Grace.’ And she wasn’t. Not in age. Not in skin. Yet, still, the sadness and weight in her voice made me feel like it was a lie. And then I heard a reason for this.