Time's Echo

by Pamela Hartshorne

  Her eyes have taken on an eerie blankness, just as they did that day Elizabeth and I met her. ‘Go back,’ she says tonelessly. ‘Go back while you still can.’

  I look down at her in confusion. ‘I don’t understand. Go back where?’

  ‘Back the way you came,’ she says. ‘Or take a different path.’

  I bite my lip. I am late as it is. What is the point of taking a different path?

  ‘Go back!’ The urgency in the widow’s voice makes the fine hairs at the back of my neck stand up.

  Frightened, I step back from her and click my fingers for Hap. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I have to go.’

  Picking up my skirts, I run along the path, to the ash tree and to Francis, with Hap at my heels.

  I choose not to go back. I go on.

  I am nearly there when I stumble over a twisted root and pitch forwards.

  I jerked awake, heart slamming from the fall, and found myself staring blankly at my computer where the screensaver circled remorselessly. How long had I been asleep? Dry-mouthed, I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes.

  I wanted to tell myself that it had been no more than a dream, but how could it have been? I might have been sleeping, but a story was unfolding that was too vivid and too coherent for a dream.

  Hawise’s story, not mine.

  I lowered my hands, not quite steadily, and stared at them. I could remember the roughness of the Widow’s cloak under my fingers, how fragile she had felt as I helped her up. I remembered the smell of the midden by the door, the dull gleam of the pewter in the Beckwiths’ hall. I churned still with a jumble of guilt and fear and anticipation.

  And frustration.

  I wanted to know if Francis had waited, whether the assignation had been as sweet and thrilling as I had longed for it to be.

  As I had longed for it to be? I caught myself up. I hadn’t been running through the crofts. I was Grace Trewe, fixed firmly in the twenty-first century. There was no way I had been in sixteenth-century York. But if I accepted that it had been more than a dream, that meant that Hawise was in my head . . . and what did that mean?

  Possession. The thought of someone else in my head, someone else controlling me, was terrifying. My mind veered away from the idea, and I clutched at my theory about Hawise’s story circling in some cybertime instead. It allowed me to be fascinated and intrigued by what was happening while keeping the experience firmly at arm’s length. I couldn’t believe in ghosts and clamorous spirits, but a pseudo-scientific explanation suited me fine.

  I was going to stick with that.

  Putting the computer off my lap, I swung my legs to the floor and stood up.

  ‘Bess . . . ’

  I jerked round at the whisper, and the room skittered back in alarm.

  I had forgotten Bess. She didn’t fit into my nice, safe theory. Her name made the air clench with grief and fear and I didn’t like it.

  ‘Stop it,’ I said out loud, and I didn’t let myself think about whether I was talking to myself or the room.

  Or to Hawise.

  Unable to move, I stared at myself in the dim mirror over the mantelpiece. My face was white and strained, my expression stark.

  ‘It’s in my head,’ I said out loud. ‘It isn’t real.’

  ‘Bess . . . ’ The whisper came again, but it was fainter now and I drew an unsteady breath. It was all in my mind. As long as I remembered that, I would be fine.

  But when I turned round to pick up my laptop, there was an apple half-hidden under a cushion, rotting beside it. Its skin was browning and beginning to pucker with mould.

  I looked at that apple for a long time. I didn’t want to pick it up. I knew I was being ridiculous. I knew, logically, that it couldn’t be the apple I thought I’d thrown away the night before, because that had been a figment of my imagination. There had been no trace of it that morning, which meant that I’d dreamt it.

  I wasn’t dreaming now.

  And that meant it was just an apple, I told myself. Lucy must have put it there (under a cushion?) and forgotten about it. Of course it would start to rot. My skin crawled at the thought that I had been sitting right next to it. I would only have had to move a little and I would have squashed it like a slug. I felt my gorge rise and I clutched my arms together, fighting down the revulsion.

  I had to get a carrier bag and use a knife to manoeuvre the apple into it. Irrational or not, I couldn’t bear to touch it. I took it outside and threw it in the wheelie bin, and when I went back inside it seemed to me that the air was lighter. The misery had dissipated, the room was empty, and in my head Hawise had gone.

  ‘Interesting ceremony,’ said Drew with a sidelong glance at me as I joined him by the window.

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ I tipped my head from side to side, stretching out the kinks.

  It had been a busy few days. I was feeling a lot more in control by then. My imagination finally seemed to have settled down, and there had been no more dreams of Tudor York.

  I’d convinced myself that Hawise was no more than a bizarre crossed line, a blip in time. I chose not to examine why I was being so careful to keep my mind firmly fixed in the present, or why I was so afraid of succumbing to the twitch at the back of my brain. I did what I always do when I don’t want to face something. I just shut down part of my mind and pretended it wasn’t happening. I’d always been good at compartmentalizing.

  I kept myself occupied. I found myself a part-time job at a language school and began to tackle the worst of the clutter in Lucy’s house. I folded up her clothes and carried bags of them along to the charity shops in Goodramgate. According to John Burnand, the house was ‘eminently sellable’, but I planned to have a good clear-out and slap on a coat of fresh paint before I put it on the market. There was a lot to do, but I didn’t mind. As long as I was busy I wasn’t thinking about Hawise.

  ‘I might have known Lucy wouldn’t go for a straightforward funeral,’ I said to Drew, breaking off a tiny piece of cake from the plate he had put down beside him. ‘I suppose I should think myself lucky I didn’t have to sacrifice a chicken, or collect up newts’ eyes and toads’ toes.’

  At least Lucy had left detailed instructions, so I hadn’t had to do anything but get in touch with Vivien Price, the priestess who had performed the ceremony, and invite everyone back for poppy-seed cake and nettle tea afterwards. The menu had been decided after consultation with Sophie. I could have done with something stronger than tea myself, but Sophie seemed glad to be involved and even offered to make the cake.

  ‘It was nice of you to come too,’ I said to Drew. As non-believers, he and I had been relegated to observers at the back, and I had been glad of his company. ‘I know you don’t have much time for all that alternative stuff.’

  ‘Lucy was a neighbour,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Where else would I get to hear such wonderful chanting?’

  I laughed. I liked Drew’s dryness, and the way his eyes crinkled when he was amused. He was a bit older than most of my fellow teachers, but I always felt very comfortable with him. I wasn’t planning on staying in York any longer than I had to, but if I had been, I thought he could have been a friend.

  ‘The chanting was pretty dire, wasn’t it? But Lucy would have loved it, and it’s what she wanted, so I guess that’s what’s important. To be honest, there were bits of the ceremony that I found sort of moving too,’ I confessed. ‘You’ve got to admit that Vivien has presence.’

  ‘The priestess?’ Drew looked across the room to where Vivien was talking to Sophie, and his expression was unfriendly. ‘She’s got a certain charisma, I grant you, but I don’t trust people like that, whatever beliefs they’re peddling. They’re experts at manipulating weaker minds.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything sinister about it,’ I said doubtfully, pushing my hair behind my ears. ‘It’s just all a bit silly.’

  ‘It starts out silly, but it can turn nasty. My mother was like Sophie,’ said Drew. ‘She
started off dancing around trees and ended up joining a cult.’

  Drew’s mother had been in a cult? I almost choked on my nettle tea.

  ‘Really? How old were you?’

  ‘Six,’ he said briefly.

  Six. Lucas had been about six. I wondered what Drew had been like as a small boy. ‘Did she take you with her?’

  ‘No, the whole business of looking after a child wasn’t mystical enough for my mother.’ Drew’s expression didn’t change, but there was an undercurrent of bitterness to his voice. ‘I stayed with my father, who remarried a sensible woman a couple of years later. My stepmother brought me up, and she’s still the person I think of as my mother.’

  I was still trying to get used to the idea of Drew having a mother who was into alternative living. ‘What happened to your real mother?’

  ‘She got herself to the States – God knows how – and joined some community in the middle of nowhere. She died when they all took a suicide pact.’

  ‘That’s . . . terrible,’ I said inadequately.

  I was shocked, but Drew simply shrugged. ‘It was a stupid waste, but that was my mother for you. You can see why it worries me to watch Sophie drifting down the same path. Everyone says she’ll grow out of it, but my mother didn’t.’

  I bit my lip. I’d said that too. ‘Well, I won’t tell you not to worry, but I don’t think Sophie is that otherworldly. We had a laugh when we were making the cake yesterday, and she was telling me about people at school. She’s a pretty good mimic, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she can be good company when she tries, or when she forgets that she’s supposed to be a surly teenager.’

  ‘I think she feels like she doesn’t fit in anywhere,’ I said. ‘I remember feeling like an odd duck too. I’m not saying Sophie doesn’t believe in all this stuff, but maybe she’s just trying to find somewhere she can be one of the crowd, and not the odd one out for a change.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  There was a strangely companionable silence as we stood in the window. I was thinking about Drew and the mother who had abandoned him, but Drew, it appeared, had more prosaic matters on his mind.

  ‘Do you fancy coming to supper tonight?’ he asked after a while. ‘I’m not much of a cook, so I can’t promise anything exciting, but I’ll open a bottle of red. I think we’ll both need it after this.’

  I brightened. ‘I’d love to,’ I said. I’d been missing my friends in Jakarta, and the thought of an evening away from Lucy’s house was very inviting. An evening not letting myself remember hurrying through the crofts. Not letting myself wonder if Francis had waited. Not letting myself listen for the anguished whisper, or sniff for the reek of rotten apples.

  ‘Can I bring anything?’ I asked. ‘Some poppy-seed cake perhaps? I can tell how much you’ve enjoyed it,’ I added, nodding down at his plate. Apart from the tiny piece I’d broken off, it was untouched.

  Drew smiled. Really smiled this time, not that tantalizing almost-smile, and just for a moment my breathing got all tangled up. ‘Delicious as it was, I couldn’t possibly deprive you of the leftovers,’ he said smoothly.

  ‘I’m going to be eating it for weeks,’ I grumbled, to disguise the fact that my lungs had momentarily forgotten how to function.

  ‘You could always try burying it under a full moon and see what comes up.’

  ‘Don’t joke. It might well come to that.’ I paused. I was reluctant to move on, but I still had to speak to a number of Lucy’s friends. ‘I’d better circulate. I’ll see you later then?’

  ‘About seven?’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  It wasn’t exactly a date. It was just dinner with a friend. Still, anticipation fizzed along my veins and I had that fluttery feeling beneath my skin that makes it impossible to settle to anything. That was how I had felt the day I went to meet Francis in the orchard, I remembered involuntarily, and I stumbled mentally at the thought, cursing myself.

  I’d been doing so well not thinking about Hawise, not thinking about the way the air in Lucy’s house seemed to pulse with frustration sometimes. That day the atmosphere was fractious, fretful, although none of the so-called witches seemed to notice anything amiss.

  I’d been on my own too long, I decided. I hadn’t been aware of the atmosphere when I was talking to Drew, but now it seemed to press in on me again. I looked across the room to where he stood, head bent towards a wheezing woman in a flowing blue robe. I recognized her from Lucy’s funeral rites. Her expression was intense as she talked, while Drew listened courteously, only a twitching muscle in his cheek betraying the impatience that I knew he felt.

  He was a nice man, I thought. It was good to feel such a sense of connection that wasn’t muddled up with physical attraction. I could just enjoy Drew as a friend without complicating things with sex. Absently I touched the pendant at my throat. Perfect.

  ‘That’s a beautiful necklace.’ I swung round to find Vivien Price watching me watching Drew, and to my annoyance I felt colour creeping up my throat. Vivien had penetrating blue eyes that reminded me uneasily of the Widow Dent. But there the similarity ended. I guessed Vivien to be in her forties, with smooth skin and dark, thick hair that fell almost to her waist. Although she was dressed no differently from any of the others in the room, she wore her simple robe with an air of authority.

  I forced a smile. ‘Thank you. Yes, it’s lovely, isn’t it? It was a Christmas present from a boyfriend a few years ago.’

  ‘May I see?’

  Obligingly I held the pendant out from my neck. The jade was cut in a simple oblong and was the clear translucent green of a tropical lagoon. It hung from a braided silver chain and sat just below the hollow of my throat, as it had done since Khao Lak. I hadn’t taken it off once.

  ‘What a wonderfully intense colour.’ Vivien’s eyes lifted to mine. ‘He must have been a nice boyfriend to choose something so beautiful for you.’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ I said evenly.

  ‘Jade is of the heart chakra, did you know that? It’s worn to attract love.’

  I laughed. ‘That’s not why I wear it. I’m not looking for love.’

  ‘Your pendant says that you are.’

  ‘In that case, it’s lying,’ I said pleasantly. ‘I like to be able to move on whenever I need to. That doesn’t go too well with intense love affairs.’

  ‘You’re afraid to get too close to people,’ said Vivien. ‘You yearn for it and fear it at the same time.’

  ‘The only thing I’m afraid of is that I’ll be left with all that seed cake,’ I said lightly enough, but my jaw was tense, and when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, the tendons in my throat were standing out. ‘Do have some more.’

  ‘You’re afraid of this house too,’ said Vivien as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘You’re right to be.’ She looked around the sitting room. I’d got rid of the altar, much to Sophie’s horror, taken down the weird pictures and rubbed out the pentagrams Lucy had chalked at the windows and doors, but the room was still disturbing in a way that I couldn’t put my finger on. ‘I see what you have tried to do, but there is still violence here,’ she said. ‘Violence and hate and fear.’

  Violence. Hate. Fear. The words jangled in the air. I swallowed.

  ‘And here was me thinking everyone was getting on so well,’ I said flippantly to cover my unease.

  ‘You can feel it,’ Vivien continued, unperturbed. ‘You’re a sensitive.’

  ‘No,’ I said, taking an instinctive step back. ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You must take care. And you must be careful of Sophie.’

  ‘Sophie?’ I had been about to make an excuse and move away, but I stopped and looked at her sharply. ‘Why? What’s wrong with Sophie?’

  ‘She’s foundering around, looking for somewhere she can be accepted. That makes her . . . vulnerable.’

  ‘Vulnerable to what?’

  ‘She’s open to the spirits, she yearns for them in fact, but not all spi
rits are good spirits or safe spirits.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said uneasily.

  ‘Just look out for her,’ said Vivien.

  ‘Vivien, I hardly know Sophie,’ I protested and she fixed me with those far-seeing blue eyes.

  ‘You know her father.’

  Heat stung my cheeks. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Still, watch out for her. You’ll be better for her than Lucy. Your godmother was a fool,’ said Vivien calmly. ‘She dabbled in things she didn’t understand and strayed too far into the darker paths. Don’t let Sophie go the same way.’

  Drew was still cooking when I went round at seven. ‘It’s supposed to be a vegetable lasagne,’ he said, surveying the crowded worktop in dismay. ‘I always forget how long it takes to chop everything up. It’s not nearly ready.’

  ‘Let me do those.’ I nudged him aside with my hip and took over slicing aubergines, without thinking about how familiar I was being. Inappropriately familiar, I worried afterwards, but at the time it just seemed the natural thing to do. I hadn’t been cooking much for myself, and it felt good to be in a warm, light kitchen. Sophie had opened the door to me and was slouching on a stool at the tiny breakfast bar. I tossed her a couple of peppers. ‘You could chop those up, Sophie.’

  She fumbled the peppers, looking surprised, but got up to get a knife without objection. Drew looked at her and then at me. ‘I can’t invite you round for supper and let you make own meal.’

  ‘Pour me a glass of wine and we’ll be quits.’

  ‘That I can do.’ He had wrenched off the tie he had worn to the funeral, and with his shirt sleeves rolled above his wrists he looked relaxed and much younger than he had seemed that first night. There was a luxurious pop as the cork came out, and Drew lifted the bottle to his nose, grunting in satisfaction. ‘Opening a screwtop just isn’t the same,’ he said.

  He poured the wine into two glasses, and my hands stilled as I watched him. Time slowed and I braced myself against the tug of the past, but it turned into one of those intense, inexplicable moments when all your senses are heightened and everything seems to be happening in slow motion.