Weyward(69)

‘Would you care for some food?’ I asked.

She nodded, so I cut a slice of bread for her, and some cheese, and sat down opposite her. As she ate, her cap shifted, and I saw a dark shadow on her cheek. I thought perhaps it was cast by the flicker of the candle on the table. Still she did not say anything until she finished eating.

‘I heard about your mother,’ she said. ‘Now we are both orphans.’

‘You have your father,’ I said.

‘My father’, she said, ‘hasn’t looked at me properly since I was thirteen years old, though I kept house for him and brought up my brothers and sisters until I left home.’

‘Well, you have your husband.’

She laughed. It was a dry sound, like the crackling of flames. She did not laugh like this before, when we were children, I remember thinking. She’d had a sweet laugh then, sweeter than the hymns we sang in church, sweeter even than birdsong.

‘You will have to tell me what it’s like, sometime,’ I said. ‘Being a wife.’

‘I haven’t come here for idle talk,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m here on business. To purchase something from you.’

One small white hand went to the pocket of her kirtle, and I heard the clink of coins.

‘Oh,’ I said. My face flushed, and a tide of pain rose in my throat. I had been stupid to think she had wanted things to be as they were before, after all these years. After everything that had happened.

‘I am with child,’ she said, turning her head away. Her voice was very quiet; her face hidden by the cap.

‘What joyful tidings,’ I said. I remembered how much she had spoken of wanting to grow up and have a babe of her own when we were children. When I was very young, I had told her, horrified, of Daniel Kirkby’s birth: his mother grunting and glistening all over with sweat, the child sliding out of her in a rush of slime and blood. Grace, who had seen her brothers and sisters born, laughed at my ignorance. ‘That is just the way of things,’ she had said. ‘You’ll learn yourself one day.’

There had been rumours of a pregnancy around the village in the months after she married, and when I saw her in church, I had noticed a swell beneath her dress, a plumpness to her face. But no child ever came. I did not know if she had lost the baby, or if there had never been one. Either way, she must be very happy now, I thought, to be so blessed.

She did not say anything for a moment. When she spoke again, I was sure I must have misheard her.

‘I need something’, she said slowly, as if she were reluctant for the words to leave her mouth, ‘that will make it go away.’

‘Go away? Morning sickness, you mean? I can see to that. I can make a tonic with balm, to settle the stomach—’

‘You misunderstand me,’ she said. ‘I meant the child. I need … I need something to make the child go away.’

Her words hung heavy in the air. Neither of us spoke for a moment. I heard the pop and hiss of the fire, the drum of rain on the roof. These sounds swelled in my ears, as if they could take away what she had said.

‘Has the baby quickened?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Grace,’ I said. ‘Are you quite sure? What you are asking of me … it is a sin. And a crime. If anyone were to discover it …’

‘It will die anyway.’ She said this as coolly as if she were commenting on the yield of the harvest or the turn of the weather. ‘You would be doing it a kindness.’

‘Grace,’ I said. ‘Even if I knew how …’

‘You must know,’ she said. ‘Your mother would have known. Look through her things. There’s certain to have been a village girl or two who came to her for help after some indiscretion or other. Besides …’ She paused. ‘She was good at taking life, wasn’t she?’

The memory of that terrible night swam before me. Anna, still and lifeless while Grace sobbed.

‘Grace. Your mother would have died anyway, had we not come. She was too ill by then … the fever was so strong. And the leeches …’

Her head turned sharply back towards me. In the candlelight, her eyes were bright – with tears or fury, I did not know.

‘I do not wish to speak of it,’ she said. ‘Just tell me if you can help me or not. If you ever loved me as your friend … then you will do this thing for me. And you will ask me no more questions.’

All the moisture had gone from my mouth. I felt giddy, as though the room had lurched to one side and taken me with it.

‘I will try,’ I said softly. ‘But I cannot promise that it will work.’

‘Aye, then. I will return in one week. Will that give you enough time?’

‘Yes.’

She rose from the table. ‘I must be going. I have left John asleep. He does not normally wake until dawn, after so much ale. But I cannot risk him rousing to see that I am gone.’

I myself slept a poor night after she left. I thought for a long time, wondering what I had agreed to. All for the love of someone who – and I knew in my heart that this was true – still blamed me for her mother’s death. Still hated me.

How it pained me, to hear that hate in her voice. My mind ran over her speech, remembering the coldness of it, and my eyes burned with tears. As children, we had learned each other before we could speak. I had once known the meaning of her raised brow, the curve of her mouth, as though they were words in a book. Now she was a stranger.