Time's Echo

by Pamela Hartshorne

  There is a salad of herbs with cucumbers and hard eggs, which I like, and I take some of that instead, and some spiced custard. Ned urges me to try trout baked in a pie with eels, so I do. But the rest of the feast is a blur – a seemingly endless parade of roast meat, from rib of beef to pig, from goose to lark, and all manner of sauces. There are stuffed cabbages and fruit tarts, and fricassées and trifles, and almond custards and oyster chewets. The sugar deceits are very clever. They are made to look like dishes, and we break them and eat our plates at the end of the feast, although I am almost too tired by now to enjoy the sweetness.

  I sound like Agnes.

  The voices and laughter grow ever louder over the sound of the fiddles. Beside me, Ned is as unreadable as ever, and I am finding it hard to keep smiling. The ring that he put on my finger in the church porch keeps catching my eye, and I can’t get used to the sight of it glinting on my hand. My life has changed now. I have stepped through a door. I am no longer Hawise Aske; I am Mistress Hilliard, and after tonight I will be a maid no more.

  I have tried so hard not to think about Francis, but I can’t help remembering how it was in the orchard, and I shudder. Is that how it will be with Ned? Will he push his tongue in my mouth like that? Will he heave and shove? Will he hurt me?

  I bite my lip as I glance at him under my lashes. He is my husband now. He can do what he likes.

  The feast seems to go on forever, and I am grateful when the wedding cakes are broken and shared at last and I can retire. Agnes left to lie down long ago, but the other women laugh and make suggestive comments as they help me take off my dress and brush my hair. I climb into the big bed in my shift, wishing they would all go away and leave me alone, but as soon as they do, I want to call them back, because the men are loud and boisterous outside and are pushing Ned into the room. They bang the door behind him, bellowing crude advice, until they grow tired (or thirsty, more like) and clatter back down the stairs to rejoin the feast.

  Ned and I are left alone. He seems bigger than I had remembered, more male, and the pulse in my throat flutters like a trapped bird.

  I don’t know what I had expected – that he would throw himself on me and push into me perhaps, or lie down beside me and kiss me, but Ned does neither. He walks over to the chest and pours wine into a goblet, then sits on the side of the bed and offers it to me.

  ‘Drink, Hawise,’ he says. ‘There is no hurry.’

  My fingers are shaking as I take the cup. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Here, in our bedchamber, I hope you will call me Ned, as my friends do.’

  I have never called him that to his face before. ‘Ned.’ I try it on my tongue and he almost smiles.

  ‘Are you nervous?’ he asks.

  I moisten my lips. ‘A little,’ I confess.

  ‘I will try not to hurt you.’

  ‘I know my duty,’ I say quickly. ‘I am your wife now.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he says, ‘I do not want your duty.’

  There is a note in his voice that I do not understand. I shift uneasily. The sheet has been scattered with rosemary and, as I move, the fragrance stirs the air, reminding me of the water the Widow Dent used to bathe my face and hands after Francis tried to force me. Today the rosemary is for faithfulness, but it is always for remembrance too.

  I try to push the memory away. I don’t want to remember Francis. I should be thinking about my husband now, but my tongue is cleaved to the top of my mouth. We have never talked like this before. We have never been this intimate before. He is very close, and shyness overwhelms me.

  ‘I am yours now,’ I manage to say after a moment, and he lets out a long breath as he reaches out to stroke my hair.

  ‘Yes, you are mine,’ he agrees. ‘What more could I want?’

  His hand drifts from my hair to brush along my jaw, very gently, and he traces the outline of my mouth with his thumb. My skin tingles beneath his touch. ‘You are very beautiful, little wife.’

  ‘I?’ My mouth drops open and his eyes crinkle. It’s as if he is smiling and not smiling at the same time.

  ‘Yes, you.’

  ‘But I am plain!’ I am so surprised I almost spill my wine.

  Ned shakes his head. ‘Perhaps there are other maids who have golden hair and rosebud mouths, and who like to think they are pretty, but they look pale and colourless next to you. You are like a candle flame, Hawise,’ he says, his voice deepening as he strokes his thumb very gently down my neck so that I shiver, but not with fear. ‘You bring warmth and light with you wherever you go.’

  I stare at him. Can this be Mr Hilliard, this man with the voice so deep it reverberates down my spine? I thought I had married a cool, calculating merchant, and instead I have a lover with a poet’s tongue. I am amazed.

  Ned can read my expression easily enough. ‘Why do you think I married you, Hawise?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say honestly. ‘My mistress . . . ’ I stop. I have no mistress now. I am the mistress. ‘Mistress Beckwith says that your friends don’t like this marriage.’

  ‘Perhaps they do not,’ says Ned, ‘but I have not married my friends. It is true, when first I wed, I took the views of my family and friends into account. I thought more carefully about the advantages of the match, the connections it would bring. But I was younger then, and had more to prove.’

  His touch is tugging at something inside me. It’s as if there is a cord deep in my belly, tightening slowly with every stroke of his thumb, and I can feel myself begin to quiver with the tension of it.

  ‘I was not unhappy,’ he goes on, his eyes never leaving my face. ‘We do what we must. But when my wife died, God rest her soul, and the child with her, I saw a chance to start anew. I came to York, I thought perhaps . . . perhaps I could please myself, and so I have. I’ve wanted you since I first saw you at William Beckwith’s, Hawise. You were so bright, so curious, but you were so very young. And now I have what I want, is it greedy of me to wish to please you too?’

  My mouth is dry. He is still sitting on the side of the bed, facing me, and he is very solid and very close – so close I feel hazy with it. His hands feel nice. They are warm and dry and capable, gentling down my arm, lifting my hand from the cover to press a kiss into my palm, and at the feel of his lips I hiss in a breath.

  Ned raises his head to look at me, and the candlelight throws his face into relief, making the ordinary features seem stronger, more definite. He has a quiet mouth, with no angry spittle.

  Our fingers entwine and on impulse I lean forward and press my lips to his before I lose my nerve and pull back. I am suddenly afraid that Ned will think me wanton, as Francis did.

  I wish I hadn’t thought about Francis.

  Ned isn’t angry, but he shifts closer. His nearness is suffocating, but he doesn’t try to kiss my mouth. Instead he lets his lips travel down my throat to the neck of my shift, and I shiver again. My heart is stuttering, my pulse booming in my ears. I want him to stop. I want him to go on.

  He nuzzles my shift aside to kiss his way along my clavicle, but pauses when he reaches the mark above my breast, and I remember how Francis had recoiled from it. A harlot’s mark, he had called it.

  ‘I was born with it,’ I say.

  Ned leans up on one elbow to that he can trace the outline of the mark with his finger. ‘A little hand,’ he says, smiling. ‘Sweet, like my wife.’ And he bends back to kiss it.

  He doesn’t mind. He thinks I am sweet. He thinks I am beautiful. The touch of his mouth is making me tremble.

  ‘Ned,’ I say shakily, and he looks up. He sees the cup, takes it from me and sets it aside. Then he pulls back the cover and I shift over in the bed so that he can lie down beside me.

  I don’t look as he slips off his robe and blows out the candle. The bed dips and creaks under his weight, and the fragrance of rosemary fills the air. In the darkness he turns to me, his fingers feeling for my face. Then he kisses my mouth, very gently at first. I am taut, but he murmurs low, as if he were so
othing a skittish horse, and I feel his lips on my throat, his hand sliding under my shift, hot and hard on my skin. That cord inside me is twisting and tugging again and my blood shivers in my veins and I find myself arching beneath his touch.

  ‘Does it feel good?’ he whispers, his mouth at my breast.

  ‘Yes,’ I sigh. ‘Yes.’

  He is naked, solid, warm. I smooth my hands over his shoulders, feeling his muscles flex beneath my fingers, and he makes a sound that is almost a groan. Dragging himself up, he covers me, and through my fine linen shift I feel him hard and insistent and suddenly panic grips me. He is too heavy. I am suffocating beneath his weight, but I can’t move now. My legs are spread wide and he is pushing into me.

  And it hurts. It hurts. I want to struggle, to push him off me, out of me, but I can’t breathe. The sprigs of rosemary are digging into my back and buttocks, their fragrance drowned out by the stench of rotting apples. I am back in the orchard, the blackness roaring in my mind, and this time there is no Sybil Dent to rescue me. There is no Ned any more, either. There is just a man, shoving into me, and I have to lie there and take it. I have forgotten that only moments ago I liked the feel of his mouth. Now I turn my head on the pillow. I concentrate on taking small breaths and I endure it, because there is nothing else I can do.

  My face was tight, my jaw clenched, and when I raised a shaky hand to my mouth, I felt the trail of a slow tear. Ned’s weight was no longer crushing me. I could breathe. I was sitting rigidly in one of the box pews in the church. God only knew how I had got in there, or how long I had been staring blankly ahead. Long enough for dark clouds to swallow the brightness of the morning, anyway. The puddles of sunlight on stone had vanished, and the light was gloomy and oppressive.

  Shivering, still churning with Hawise’s distress, I leant forward and put my head in my hands. I pressed my fingertips against my forehead and slowed my jerky breathing. I needed help. I couldn’t deny it any longer, and I found myself thinking about Drew Dyer. Drew with his cool eyes and cool mouth. Not like Ned at all, and yet somehow just the same.

  That was even more disturbing.

  Stiffly I got to my feet, wincing at the raw, bruised feeling inside me, and walked back to Lucy’s house. I didn’t go in, but rang the doorbell next door instead. When Drew opened the door, I found I couldn’t meet his eyes.

  ‘I think I need to see your friend, the shrink,’ I said.

  I peered at the intercom. Sarah Wilson lived in the shadow of the Minster, in a flat hidden away behind a nondescript door off the street. When she buzzed to let me in, I followed a short alleyway and found myself in a courtyard of contemporary houses, their glass and wood and metal striking in contrast to the medieval cathedral looming behind them.

  Sarah’s apartment was cool and calm and uncluttered, a perfect metaphor for analysis. She laughed when I told her that. ‘It’s interesting that you should think of it that way.’

  Immediately I was on the defensive. Why was that interesting? Didn’t everyone think that? I’d never talked to a psychiatrist before, and I was nervous. Drew had persuaded me that I needed help, and I knew he was right, but I was frightened that I would end up shut in a mental ward, or at the very least labelled as mentally ill. I hugged my arms together as I prowled around Sarah’s sitting room. It was intimidatingly tidy. Three perfectly aligned books on a shelf. A contemporary sculpture. Cream sofas. Not a speck of dust anywhere. How could anyone who lived in this kind of order understand what was happening to me?

  Sarah made tea, chatting to put me at my ease, but I couldn’t relax. I could feel Hawise lurking in my head. She didn’t want me to be there, I could feel it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be there. But Sarah was gesturing me to a chair, pouring me a mug of tea.

  I sat reluctantly. ‘It’s good of you to see me at home.’

  ‘Drew’s a good friend,’ she said. ‘I know he wouldn’t have asked if it hadn’t been important.’

  How good a friend? I found myself wondering. Sarah was an attractive woman of about Drew’s age, as coolly poised and carefully groomed as her house. I could see how they might be friends. They both gave the impression of being capable and in control of their lives. When I thought about my own – drifting around the world and now apparently between times, unable to control anything – I felt depression closing in on me.

  ‘This isn’t a clinical interview, we need to be clear about that,’ said Sarah as she handed me the tea. ‘But I’m very happy to have a chat. Do you want to tell me what’s worrying you?’

  ‘Well . . . ’ I took a breath, opened my mouth and shut it again, overwhelmed by the impossibility of explaining to someone as calm and rational as Sarah. I cleared my throat. ‘Well, I know it sounds strange, but ever since I arrived in York, I’ve been . . . I don’t know how to explain it. Time-travelling, I suppose.’

  ‘Time-travelling?’

  Her brows shot up, and I flushed. Clearly Drew hadn’t passed on what I’d told him. Sitting in that ordered room, my story sounded absurd.

  Immediately I started to backtrack. ‘Not literally, obviously,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘But it feels like there’s this other person from the past in my head, and sometimes I . . . sometimes it’s like I’m her . . . I’m sorry, I’m not explaining this very well.’

  I stumbled to a halt. Sarah took a sip of tea and put her mug down. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you start by telling me a bit about yourself?’

  So I told her about where I grew up and the fact that I was an only child, and of course it took her no time at all to find out about my mother dying. I was expecting that. I might choose not to dwell on it, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that her death had had an effect on me. Not as much as some ex-boyfriends had claimed, mind you. I was never the most sweet-natured of children and, for all I know, I might have been just as prickly if Mum had never had cancer.

  ‘So what brought you to York?’ Sarah asked when we’d been through all that.

  I told her about Lucy, and how I had been working in Indonesia, but then she wanted to know what happened before that, and before that. Turning points, she called them.

  She had a habit of stroking her chin and nodding thoughtfully. It began to irritate me. I didn’t see what working overseas had to do with what was happening to me in York, either. Any minute now she was going to get to Khao Lak, and I didn’t want to talk about what had happened there. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I could refuse, couldn’t I?

  But there was something implacable about Sarah’s patience. She went back and back – why was I there? what was I doing? – until, sure enough, we ended up in Thailand.

  I shifted in my chair, fiddled with the piping around the arms. This wasn’t what I had expected. Shouldn’t we be talking about Hawise, about now, not then? Thailand wasn’t the problem. York was.

  ‘You seem uncomfortable,’ Sarah commented.

  I snatched my hand back from the piping as if she had slapped me, which is probably what she felt like doing. ‘It just feels all wrong to be sitting here talking about myself. It’s not like a proper conversation. I feel as if I should be asking you questions. I don’t know anything about you.’ I knew I sounded sulky, but I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘What would you like to know?’

  I really wanted to know how well she knew Drew, but I couldn’t think of a way to ask that without sounding as if I was interested in him, which I wasn’t. Not really. I was just . . . curious.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It feels awkward, that’s all.’

  ‘I get the feeling you don’t want to talk about Thailand.’

  She was right, I didn’t, but if I admitted that, it would imply there was a problem.

  ‘I’m fine about it.’ I shrugged, wincing inwardly as I heard that ‘fine’. ‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with what’s happening now, that’s all.’

  ‘You said you were teaching English in Bangkok. How did you end up there?’

  I s
ighed. ‘I went with my boyfriend. Matt was a teacher too.’

  ‘You’re not with Matt now?’

  ‘No.’ I looked back at the rain smearing the big window. ‘We split up.’

  ‘Whose decision was that?’

  ‘Mine.’

  Sarah nodded slowly, as if that was precisely what she had expected me to say. ‘And why did you decide that?’

  ‘I just felt the relationship had run its course.’ I could hear myself sounding defensive and forced myself to sound relaxed. ‘These things happen.’

  ‘How long were you together?’ Sarah asked, and I relaxed some more. I didn’t mind talking about Matt.

  ‘Five years or so. We met as students, and then we travelled together. I always had itchy feet, and when I got a job teaching English in Bangkok, Matt came with me and got a job at the same school. We had a great time,’ I remembered a little wistfully.

  ‘Sounds like you knew each other very well.’

  ‘We did. Matt’s lovely,’ I told her. ‘We’re still friends, although we haven’t seen each other for ages.’

  ‘So if you got on well, what made you decide to end the relationship?’

  ‘I told you, it was over.’ I was a snail, horns shrinking back into my shell as Sarah trod closer. ‘There doesn’t have to be a reason, does there?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘but when a couple really like each other and get on well, there usually is.’

  ‘We wanted different things, that’s all.’ I knew I was sounding hostile, but I couldn’t help myself. ‘Matt’s married now and lives in London. He’s got a mortgage and a good job. I never wanted any of that,’ I told her. ‘The whole idea of settling down makes me twitchy. I think I’d suffocate.’