8

Lying in the darkness, Rebecca Machyn wiped the tears from her face. She turned in the narrow bed. What have we done to deserve this?

She remembered Henry’s words, and his kisses. And his tears. And the emptiness of the words he had spoken—how his reassurances had sounded false and shallow, and yet how deeply distressed he had been.

She had done as he had said. Mistress Barker had been very good to her, as usual. She had let her have a chamber at the front so she could watch over her own house. Rebecca had heard people passing several times and knocking on the door. But if Henry had returned, he was not answering their calls.

She tried to remember happier times. The day she married Henry: it had been a bright January morning, nearly fifteen years ago. But every memory of that day led inexorably to the first terrible memory of her marriage. Mary lying there, eighteen months old, forever motionless in the cot. The stillness of death. It was as if, in dying, the child had become a cruel hoax played upon her by the Devil—as if the child had never really had life but only the appearance of it. And then Katherine at the same age. An object in the cot with its eyes open. No longer hers. No longer female or even human.

How good Henry had been to her then. How understanding.

The third time it had happened—three years ago—she had wanted to die herself. To be with her babies, to open the door to heaven for them. If it hadn’t been for Henry, I would have done it. I would have thrown myself off the bridge. Only he stopped me. Wise Henry. He knew. He had lost four of his five children by Joan, his first wife, and then Joan herself had died. My three girls were not even half of his sorrow. He still prays for her and for all seven of his dead children. He does not deserve even more grief.

Outside, men were talking in low voices. She turned again on the straw mattress, her cheek lying on the wet pillow.