For today I am going to meet Francis Bewley in my father’s orchard.
He insisted on walking me back to the house after I’d made my purchases that day in the market, even though Hap went for his boot the moment I put him down. I thought I saw a flash of something ugly in Francis’s face as he shook Hap off, but the next moment he was smiling again and congratulating me on my fierce guard dog, so I must have been mistaken. I hope I was.
Francis even carried my basket for me, although it wasn’t heavy: a dozen eggs, brown and shit-spattered, some green peas, a large pat of butter, that was all. I pleated my fingers in my skirts because I didn’t know what to do with my hands.
He told me about his master, Mr Phillips, about how the Lord President had sent for him especially, and how much his master valued him. There was something pompous about the way Francis spoke. I told myself it was just his southern accent. I wanted to like him, but I couldn’t help noticing how pleased with himself he seemed, and then I chided myself for being critical. Who was I to expect perfection, after all? And Francis was a Londoner, I reminded myself as we walked back that day. There was a sheen to him that the young men of York lacked. It made it all the stranger that he would want to be with me.
‘Tell me about London,’ I said when the conversation flagged.
‘York is but a village in comparison,’ he told me. ‘London is bigger and noisier and crueller. Folk walk more quickly there. There is a hastiness to everything they do. You would not want to go there, Mistress Hawise.’
I opened my mouth to contradict him, to tell him how many times I had dreamt of going to London, but remembered just in time that I mustn’t be different. I must be quiet and agree and forget my strange ideas.
Truth to tell, I was shy of him. Something about him made me uneasy, but at the same time I was intrigued. Francis Bewley was so different from anyone I had met before, and when he suggested that we meet again, of course I was tempted.
I felt restless and reckless that day, I remember that. I wanted to know what everyone but me seemed to know. I wanted to be like Alice and have a sweetheart of my own. Perhaps if I hadn’t been envious of her, I wouldn’t have agreed to meet Francis outside the bar walls today. I would have remembered everything Mistress Beckwith had to say about modesty, and my master’s distrust of southerners. I would have thought about Hap baring his teeth, and the shiny reflection of Francis’s eyes, and I would have shaken my head and stayed at home.
But I was jealous and I was curious, and I agreed.
I fold up the cloth. The best damask today, because Mr Hilliard is here. He is a wealthy merchant, and no doubt has fine cloths of his own, but he is a widower, and perhaps is lonely in that big house of his in Coney Street, for he comes to dine with us often. His wife died in childbirth, I heard, and after that he came to York from somewhere in the east. It seems he is in no hurry to marry again, although his friends are no doubt in search of a suitable bride for him. It shouldn’t be too hard. He is a stranger still, with no kin in the city, and his neighbours think him outlandish, I’ve heard, but what does that matter when he is rich? A man as wealthy as Ned Hilliard will need a wife to give him a son, else what good is all his gold?
I like Mr Hilliard. He does not seem odd to me. He is a quiet man, and not well favoured with his pox-pitted cheeks, but he has good teeth and he looks at you when he talks to you. There is a stillness to him that is surprising when you think how far he has travelled. He has stood on the quaysides of Rouen and Lübeck and Venice, bargaining for bags of pepper and saffron, filling his ships with ginger and nutmeg and sugar, with oils and almonds and exotic dyes. Sometimes when we have finished our chores, Meg and I sit on stools and listen to him talking with Mr Beckwith and our mistress, and it is the next best thing to going myself.
Why am I thinking about Mr Hilliard? I catch myself up. I should be thinking about Francis. But the truth is that I am nervous. My mistress is right. I have been clumsy and fidgety all day.
I, Hawise Aske, am going to meet a young man, and the idea is both thrilling and unsettling. I know my mistress wouldn’t approve, and I know why. I shouldn’t be risking my reputation with a stranger, but how can I give up my very first chance to be like everyone else? So I feel guilty, but excited too.
I wish I could remember better what Francis looks like. He won’t really be my sweetheart, of course, and he’ll be going back to London soon, so what harm will it do to pretend, for today? If not today, when? There may never be another young man who will ask me to meet him in the crofts. Perhaps I will like him better this time.
I take the cloth back inside. My mistress has said that once my chores are done I can have the rest of the afternoon to visit my sister, Agnes. I just need to tidy the hall after the meal, and then I can go.
The afternoon sunlight slants through the high window into the hall, and I watch the dust drifting lazily across each beam as I put the pewter dishes in the buttery and straighten the carpet on the chest. Maybe it’s because I’m anxious to leave before I lose my nerve, but time seems suddenly languid, as if it is gathering itself for a leap into the unknown.
Or perhaps it is I – not time – that is poised on the edge of change. The thought makes me shiver with excitement. I am longing for change, for something to happen. Perhaps, I think, I will look back on this moment, on this last hour before I met Francis, and realize that nothing was ever quite the same again.
I stand in the hall, the crimson velvet cushion embroidered with flowers of green clutched to my chest, and all at once I am conscious of how familiar everything is. Meg and I put down fresh rushes the day before yesterday, and their sweetness mingles with the scent of the onions and garlic stacked in the corner, and the smell of the last bacon hanging from the ceiling. The windows are open, and I can hear wood pigeons burbling on the roof. Dick is whistling in the yard, my mistress is scolding Meg in the kitchen. Brushing crumbs from his doublet with a napkin, my master has taken Mr Hilliard into his closet and they are talking business over a cup of wine.
And I am going to meet Francis.
I set the cushion back on the turned chair by the fireside and draw a breath. I am stepping away, growing up, becoming a woman at last.
My hands shake a little as I untie my apron up in the chamber that I now share with Meg. I don’t dare change into my best gown – my mistress would be bound to notice – but I brush down my kirtle, shake out my gown and straighten my cap. I am hoping to slip out quietly through the back gate, but Mistress Beckwith is in the yard, and she raises her brows when she sees me.
‘I am going to visit my sister, Mistress. You said that I might,’ I remind her, and when she nods I bob a curtsey and sidle towards the gate. I have my hand on the latch when she calls me.
‘Hawise?’
I turn. ‘Yes, Mistress?’
‘Be careful.’
I bite my lip. My mistress has a nasty habit of seeing more than I want her to, but I do indeed visit Agnes. That much is true.
As usual my sister is abed, and the air in the chamber at the top of the steep staircase is tired and stale.
‘It’s a lovely day,’ I say. ‘Shall I open the shutters?’
‘No! I can’t bear the noise, and the light makes my head ache so.’ Agnes leans back and lays her arm over her eyes. She is peevish and out-of-sorts today.
I sit on the edge of the bed, guilty as always for being the lucky one. I am scrawny, but I am strong, unlike Agnes, who has been sickly since she was a child. We are almost exactly the same age. Her mother was a widow when my father married her after he came back to York. I think I have a memory of him throwing me up into the air and laughing at my squeals of delight, but perhaps I have made it up. After he married Agnes’s mother, there was little laughter, that is for certain. My father began to spend more time in the alehouse than his workshop, and her mother’s temper – never sweet to begin with – soured even further, so I was glad to get away when the Beckwiths offered me a place in service.
> I was twelve then, and it was Elizabeth I grew up with, Elizabeth I giggled and whispered with, Elizabeth whose loss I mourn still as if she were in truth my sister.
Since her death I have tried to get to know Agnes better. The sickness carried her mother off two years since, and now she is alone with my father and Jennet, the sour old widow who cooks and cleans. It is too much for Agnes to keep house, she says.
It is not much of a house, either.
Mr Beckwith’s house has twelve rooms as well as a shop, and it is richly decorated. My father’s has only six, and there is a slatternly air to everything. I look around the room. In the dim light coming through the shutters, it is dreary. The curtains around Agnes’s bed are silk, but they are tatty and worn. There is no silver on my father’s table, no cushions in his hall. Once he was a merchant and adventured across the seas, but his fortunes have dwindled to naught, squandered on dice and cards in the alehouses of York. He is a member still of the mystery of mercers, but he is no merchant, no mercer. He is barely a chapman, eking out a living from his friends and his former reputation.
I feel sorry for Agnes, stuck here with little chance of marriage, either. Like me, she has no dowry, and like me, she is plain, but otherwise we are the contrary of each other. Where I am dark, everything about my sister is pale. She has pallid skin and hair so fine it seems almost colourless. Discontent tugs at the corners of her pale mouth. Agnes is very devout, while I attend divine service and let my mind wander outside the walls, where I used to run when I was a girl. She is sickly and I am sturdier than I look. I want to be friends with her, but she is not like Elizabeth.
Still, I try.
I tuck my feet beneath me. ‘Agnes,’ I say, lowering my voice so that Jennet won’t hear. ‘I think I may be in love.’
I can’t remember exactly what Francis looks like, but I like the idea of being in love. I want to be.
Agnes drops her arm and pulls herself up on her pillow, her eyes sharpening. ‘In love? Who with?’
‘His name is Francis. He is from London.’
‘London! Who vouches for him?’
When my gaze slides away from hers, she purses her lips in disapproval. ‘Hawise, you cannot be so foolish! Where did you meet this man?’
‘In the market.’ I know where this is going. Who are his friends? Who are his kin? Do the Beckwiths know? ‘I just want to meet someone who’s been further than Fulford Cross. I want to talk about something different. Is that so bad?’
‘Not if talking is really all you’ll be doing.’
For someone so pious, Agnes’s mind can dip surprisingly close to the gutter at times. I flush.
‘I just want to talk to him,’ I say, sulkily pleating my skirts. Elizabeth would have been excited for me. She would have understood.
‘Consider your reputation, Sister,’ says Agnes. ‘Do not go. Stay and pray with me instead.’
The room is stifling. I cannot breathe in here. Jumping up, I go over to the window and open the shutters in spite of Agnes’s protests, so that I can lean out. The street below is potholed and flies swarm around the midden outside the door, but if I lift my eyes the sky is a beckoning blue, while a soft breeze stirs the leaves of the overgrown trees in the old friary garden.
‘Oh, Agnes, it’s such a beautiful day,’ I cry, swinging round. ‘Don’t you ever want to escape? I know!’ Seized by the idea, I run over to the bed and grab her hands, though she shrinks back into the pillow. ‘Why don’t you come with me? How long is it since you went out of the house? It will be cool out in the crofts and the air will be fresher. It wouldn’t be improper for me to meet Francis if you were with me, would it?’
‘Hawise, please, you’re giving me the headache!’ Agnes sags back into the pillows.
‘I’m sure you’d feel better if you got up,’ I try and coax her. ‘You never have any fun, Agnes. I’m sure you’d enjoy it if you came with me. Please come!’
‘I’m too tired.’ She turns her face away. ‘If you have so little care for your reputation, you go. I will pray for you.’
So I leave her there, guilty at how relieved I feel to be out of that chamber with its stale, sluggish air. Hap scampers ahead of me along the street. Agnes doesn’t approve of him, and he knows now to lurk outside the house and wait for me. He is a clever dog.
I push my way out of Monk Bar and through the crowd of vagrants who hang around by the cluster of carts and wagons and ramshackle booths. A woman hardly older than I sticks close beside me, her hand held out. Her other arm holds a baby whose head lolls listlessly, and I dig a coin from my purse while the Minster bell strikes six o’clock.
‘God bless you, Mistress!’ she cries as she catches the penny and bites it, then slips back into the crowd.
I said I would meet Francis at the stile by the ash tree in Shooter Lane. My father has a garth there, an orchard really, but he never goes there. The last time I saw it, the old apple tree was bent under the weight of apples that were never gathered, and the grass grew thick and rank with nettles where there could have been a crop. No one will see us there. For all my bravado at agreeing to meet Francis, I am nervous. I don’t want my mistress to find out, so I am sticking to the back paths that criss-cross Paynley’s Crofts as far as I can, with Hap snuffing ahead of me.
The long grass almost covers the path in parts. It is tangled with daisies and lady’s bedstraw, with willowherb and wild carrot and the soft blue of meadow cranesbill. My skirts brush against the feathery tops of the grass and pick up the cuckoo spit that clings to their stems, but I have no time to stop and brush it off. I am late.
What if Francis has given up waiting for me already? Or what if he has forgotten? It is three days since we arranged to meet. He might have met any number of maids far prettier than I since then.
At the crossroads by a cluster of thorn bushes I hesitate. I can hear boys shouting and jeering, and when I look along the path that crosses mine, I see them standing around a dark shape at the ground and pelting it with stones. It is a dog, I think, a dog like Hap, and anger propels me forward before I have a chance to think.
‘Stop it!’ I cry. ‘Stop! How can you be so cruel? Shame on you!’
They are not very big boys and they jerk back at my cry, their faces pinched and defensive.
‘She’s a witch,’ the bravest of them flings back at me.
The others nod vigorously. ‘Mildewed Mr Bolt’s corn, she did.’
‘Aye, and turned me mam’s milk.’
And now I see it is not a dog at all. It is an old woman crumpled on the ground, an arm flung over her head to protect herself. It is Sybil Dent. In spite of myself I recoil, but then I am ashamed. What harm has Widow Dent ever done me?
I whistle for Hap. These boys will turn their ignorance on him if I am not careful. But Hap is cowering against the hedge and won’t come any closer.
‘She’s allus forspeaking the cattle on the common.’ The boys are eyeing me warily, and I wonder if they know who I am, if they have heard about my strange eyes and my crippled dog.
‘That’s nonsense,’ I say as firmly as I can.
‘It’s true. Mr Weddell’s man saw the Devil fly out of her eye!’
On the ground Sybil Dent groans and stirs, as if at the word ‘Devil’, and we all take a hasty step back.
I swallow. ‘He was blethering – probably drunk,’ I say. ‘She’s just an old beldam. Leave her alone now. Be off with you!’ I make shooing motions with my hands.
For an instant they hold their ground. Hap chooses that moment to come slinking to my heel, and their eyes go round at the sight of his blackness and his poor withered paw.
‘It’s the Devil’s dog,’ the biggest boy whispers, backing away, looking from Hap to me in horror. I have a sudden urge to bare my teeth and jump at them, to shout ‘Boo!’ and watch them run away, but their nerve has already broken and they are taking to their heels, running down the path as if the Devil himself is behind them.
I am left alone with Widow
Dent. I crouch down to her. ‘Are you hurt? Can you walk?’
I have forgotten how old she is. Her mouth is sunken into a seamed face, but her eyes, when she opens them, are fathomless pools that dry the breath on my tongue.
‘I can, if you will help me up,’ she says.
I put a hand under her arm and lift her to her feet. She weighs no more than a bundle of twigs, and her bones feel as thin and as fragile. Bent as she is, she barely reaches my shoulder as she stands and looks around her.
Her gaze falls on Hap, who whines and cowers into the hedge. ‘Oh, don’t bother yourself,’ she says to the dog, ‘I’m only looking for my stick.’
A smooth piece of ash is lying a yard or so away, and I bend to pick it up. ‘Here,’ I say, handing it back to the widow.
‘I thank you.’
With the stick to steady her, she seems stronger, even powerful. My heart is beating fast, and all at once I understand why folk are so afeared of her. Then she lifts a shaky hand to touch the blood trickling from her temple, where a stone caught her, and I feel ashamed again.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say helplessly.
Sybil’s eyes rest on my face and I find myself shifting from foot to foot, convinced that she can look deep inside me. Does she see my vanity, my deceit? Does she know that I am churning with nervousness and excitement, with anticipation and fear for my reputation? With pity for her, and a deep unease?
‘’Tisn’t your fault,’ she says. ‘You didn’t throw stones.’
I glance up the path. I am thinking about Francis, waiting for me by the stile. ‘Can you get home from here?’
‘Aye, it’s not far.’
‘Good. Well, then . . . ’ I draw a breath. ‘I should go,’ I say.
I begin to turn away, but Widow Dent lays a hand on my sleeve. It is gnarled and knotted and mottled with age, but there is strength to it too, which stops me in my tracks, and Hap whimpers.
‘Go back,’ says the widow.
Time's Echo Page 7
