The Memory of Midnight Read Online Free

well, he could go on a ship, just as he had always wanted to do.
    And she would be left alone.
    Nell couldn’t remember a time when Tom wasn’t there. They knew the back ways into each other’s houses, how to slip in and out without being seen and given a job to do.
Together, they had run out through the bar or over the crumbling city walls to the crofts and the common beyond. They had jumped over gutters and splashed in the river and listened wide-eyed to the
stories of the mariners down on the staithes. To Nell, they had played and fought together forever, and even though Tom was a stupid boy at times, she could not conceive of life without him.
    But now, it seemed, she must.
    Everything was changing, she thought, scuffing her shoes miserably against the cobbles and earning herself a cuff of reprimand from Anne. After her mother’s death, her father had been too
stricken with grief to care what she did and Nell had got used to running free. But a year ago, he remarried, and her stepmother made it her business to take both her husband and his daughter in
hand. Nell had no objection to her stepmother as such, except that Anne was set on curbing her freedoms. She talked endlessly of proper behaviour, and reputation. She wanted Nell to sit still and
silent, not run and jump as she was wont to do with Tom.
    Now Anne was increasing. Her father hoped for a son, and Nell hoped that it would take her stepmother’s mind off her, but today she had succeeded in capturing her attention once more.
    ‘Your father has been too indulgent with you,’ Anne chided as they crossed the street. Stonegate was divided into blocks of light and shade, with a narrow strip of sunlight laid
between the gutters. When Nell looked up, she could see a thin slice of fierce blue between the jostling gables, and she screwed up her eyes, blinded by the contrast of dazzling light and the deep
shade beneath the overhanging jetties. Normally the shade would be cool, but it had been hot for so long that the heat had crept into the darkest corners and there was no relief anywhere.
    Splatters of horse dung had dried to crisp trenchers on the street. Clouds of flies hovered over a dead pigeon and, without rain for so long, the gutters were clogged with weeds and dead leaves,
with nettles and filthy straw and other ramell that rotted with the rubbish, their combined stench mingling with the stink of the festering cesspits. The inhabitants of Stonegate prided themselves
on their street, but the heat had been so wearisome for so long that each complained about the state of their neighbours’ doors without rousing themselves to clear their own.
    ‘Something should be done about it.’ Nell had heard her stepmother grumbling to her father. ‘You must speak to the chamberlains again. What if the sickness comes?’
    Nell didn’t care about the pestilence or about the smell. She wished only to be out of her stiff skirts and scratchy cap. If only she could strip down to her shift and paddle in the river
the way Tom did sometimes.
    The thought of Tom reminded her of that day’s news and her heart sank. Her stepmother was still talking, her hands spread against her hips to support her swollen belly.
    ‘He has let you run wild like a heathen, and what is the result? Mr Maskewe is angered, who must be kept sweet. Your father already owes him too much,’ Anne fretted, pushing Nell
before her, past the shop with its stall and tattered pentice and down the narrow passage to the yard.
    ‘I will be confined soon, and there will be no one to mind you again. You will have to help with your new brother or sister, and then you will go into service like Tom. Your father will
find a family where you can learn how to go on when I do not have the time to teach you.’
    Nell brightened. ‘Can I go to Mr Todd’s too and be in service with Tom?’ She wouldn’t mind that.
    Anne sighed. ‘You must learn to live without Tom, Eleanor.’
    ‘But he is my