Chris Nickson - The Broken Token

“Oh aye, old Ezekiel King. She had one of his places, did she? Poor lass. We had a room from him when I was a lad. Never pays for owt because he has light fingers when it comes to his tenants. I doubt he’s bought a piece of clothing in thirty years. That bastard’s so tight he can make a farthing scream for mercy. If there’s a bigger miser in the city, I don’t want to meet him.”

“Just keep an eye on him from time to time, will you? Let him know I haven’t forgotten our little chat this morning.”

Sedgwick grinned.

“My pleasure, boss. You never know, I might even find my dad’s old hose on his legs.”

The bodies had been taken from the jail, and a note from Cookson curtly announced that Pamela’s funeral would take place the following morning at nine. Nottingham sent a boy up to inform Meg and tell her that he’d call in ample time.

By nightfall they’d learned nothing more. Sedgwick was going around the inns once again, still trying to find someone who might have seen Morton on the night he died. As he walked home, the streets quieter now the working day was long over, Nottingham reflected on his deputy’s eagerness. He was ready to do anything; all he lacked was the education. Nottingham remembered having that energy himself, in the days when he’d started working for the Constable, and when he was courting Mary. But thinking back it was as if he was looking at another man, a good man, maybe a better man than he was now.

Sometimes he could barely remember himself at twenty. At other times he didn’t feel a day older, youthful and vital inside. That only lasted until he saw his reflection in a glass or looked at the girls. Even sullen Emily could spark with daunting energy at times.

He opened the door, expecting to hear Mary moving around in the kitchen and the girls in the room they shared. Instead the house was silent except for Emily, turning the page in a book, her face half-illuminated by the light on the table.

“Hello,” Nottingham said gently.

She looked up, startled, obviously absorbed in the words she’d been reading. He glanced at the title on the spine — Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe — and understood why she’d been so captured by the words. “Where’s everyone?”

“Mama and Rose are visiting Mrs Middleton.” She was an elderly widow who lived alone down the street.

“And what about you?”

Emily shrugged. “I just wanted a little time to myself, that’s all.” She closed the book and stood up, her gown rustling softly.

Nottingham was struck by how mature she looked, how poised, more a woman than a girl now. She carried an air about her, he thought, a kind of lingering sadness mixed with ill-formed bitterness, and he didn’t understand where it came from. Emily began to walk to her room.

“We’ve been at odds a bit, you and me,” he began tentatively, and she turned to face him, a small smile on her lips. “I don’t like it, you know.”

“Neither do I,” she replied sadly.

“Well, I’m pleased to hear that,” he laughed, relieved and surprised at her reaction. “I was beginning to think you hated us all.”

“Sometimes I do,” Emily said with the blunt, weary truthfulness of youth. She came back and sat on the chair, facing him. Her eyes were glistening as if tears were beginning to form. Nottingham reached across the table and put his hand of top of hers.

“We don’t like to see you unhappy.” It was the truth. He wanted everything for her. He just wondered if she could see that.

“Sometimes I just feel there has to be more to life than this.” She waved her hand around the house. “Do you know what I mean, Papa?”

“I’m not sure I do,” he answered honestly. All this seemed ample to him, everything he could have dreamed of and more.

“Well…” Emily took the time to be exact with her thoughts. “What’s going to happen to me? Maybe I’ll make a respectable marriage, the second son of a merchant or a farmer, perhaps? Or if not I’ll probably end up as governess to some awful child. That’s the way it works, isn’t it?”

“Something like that,” he agreed. At least she had a candid view of life, he thought.

“And if I marry I’ll have children and grow older and that will be my life.”

“But a life lived in comfort,” he pointed out.

“Comfort, charm and genteel surroundings.” She uttered the words as if they were vile.

“They’re a lot better than starving, believe you me,” Nottingham told her with complete conviction.

“I’m sure they are, Papa.” She caught the look in his eye and added, “Really, I do believe you. But what will I have done with my life in all that? Where will I be?”

“You’ll be at the centre of a family. People will love you and you’ll love them.”

“And I’ll take care of the household accounts, play with my children and supervise menus with the cook.”

“What’s wrong with that?” he asked in bewilderment. To most women he’d known, even to Mary, a life like that would seem to be paradise. But paradise, he knew, could be lost.

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” Emily said cautiously. “It’s fine if that’s what you want.” She tapped the book cover. “Do you know how many times I’ve read this?”

He shook his head, wondering why she’d changed the subject.

“Five. It’s my very favourite book. Do you want to know why?”

“Of course.” He was genuinely curious.

“Because he gets to build his own life. There’s no one to say he should be doing this or that and something needs to be done at such a time. He’s on a desert island but he’s free.”

“It’s just a book, Emily,” he told her.

“But books have ideas, Papa.” Her fists were clenched so tight that her knuckles were white. “When I’m reading it I’m on that island and I’m free, too. He gets to feel, he gets to be , and I want that!” A small tear leaked from her eye and she brushed it away with a quick, embarrassed gesture.

“You’re young still,” Nottingham started, but she cut him off.

“I’ll feel differently when I’m older? Maybe I will.” Her face was flushed with pinpoints of colour and she ran a hand through her hair in a gesture that reminded him eerily of himself. “All I know is that I’m young now and this doesn’t seem enough. I want love, I want some passion in my life.”

“And you’ll have it, I promise you,” he tried to reassure her. They’d never talked like this before. For the first time he started to believe he might understand her, and he felt closer to her than he had since she was tiny, in apron strings. “Things like that happen in their own time, Emily.”

“But that doesn’t help me now, does it?” she asked plaintively.

“No,” he admitted quietly, “it doesn’t.”

So now he knew why she hurt, but he had no idea what to do about it. She was right about her future, that was the way society worked, and there was no respectable place for women outside that — unless you were rich and titled. He looked at her sympathetically, but couldn’t find any honest, comforting words.

“I wish I’d been born a boy,” Emily said finally.

Nottingham gave a small smile at her innocence.

“Because boys have freedom?”

She nodded sharply.

“I’ll tell you something,” Nottingham confided. “It only looks that way.”

“What do you mean?” she wondered, her attention engaged.

“A man gets married, they have a child, often five or six,” he explained. “Who do you think has to earn the money to feed that family? Who has to find a job that pays enough? Aye, it’s the wife who’s looking after the children all day, but it’s the man who has to make the brass. That’s responsibility, not freedom.”