Time's Echo

by Pamela Hartshorne

  ‘Stop! Stop it!’ I scream, but it is too late for that too.

  Francis is breathing hard, his hand clapped to his leg, and Hap lies boneless and still in the mud. He isn’t whimpering, he isn’t crying. He’s just lying there while a terrible silence closes around us.

  I fall to my knees beside him. ‘Hap! Hap!’ I gather him up, but the little body is limp. I stare up at Francis. ‘You’ve killed him,’ I say, blank with disbelief.

  He wipes his knife on the grass. ‘No loss,’ he sneers. ‘It was but a runt, and a misbegotten fend at that.’

  I surge to my feet, Hap in my arms, my rage and my grief so great I can hardly speak.

  ‘You are the fend, Francis Bewley! You talk of God, but you are the Devil. I wish Widow Dent were a witch. I would ask her to curse you for what you have done today.’

  ‘I would advise you not to talk about curses, Mistress,’ he snarls. ‘You already walk too close to the dark side. Bewitching a rich merchant, consorting with witches, grieving for a deformed cur that everyone can see is the spawn of Satan?’

  ‘I will tell my husband what you have done,’ I say, but my voice shakes and Francis pounces on my weakness.

  ‘But you will not, because what if he were to ask me if it were true? Then I would have to tell him that we were lovers long before he had you.’

  ‘It is not true! He knows that I was a maid when I wed him.’

  ‘There are plenty of tricks to fool a doting husband, and if Mr Hilliard should ask for proof – well, what if I were to tell him about that mark you have on your shoulder, hmm? Will he recognize that? How would I have seen that, if we had not been lovers?’

  ‘You tried to defile me,’ I say stonily.

  He purses his lips. ‘And yet there are plenty who would swear they had seen you come into the Groves to meet me. I can find witnesses if need be. You came willingly, Hawise.’ He smiles, and the breath curdles in my throat at the look in his eyes. ‘It does not need to be force now.’

  ‘It would always be force,’ I say, Hap limp in my arms. ‘I would never lie with you willingly. Never. And do you know why?’ I push my face into his, mine contorted with hate. ‘You disgust me. I would rather couple with a toad! Do you never lay a finger on me again, Francis Bewley, or I swear I will curse you to Hell and back.’

  Then I push past him with Hap in my arms, and I run back the way I had come. I cannot go home. Ned is away, and even if he were not, how can I explain what has happened to Hap? Francis is right, I cannot tell him. I think Ned would believe me, but I cannot be sure. I would have to admit what a fool I was, how careless of my reputation. I did smile at Francis. I did meet him in the crofts. I cannot deny that. That was my mistake, and I am paying for it now. I want to be a good wife to Ned, but how will he believe that if he knows how foolish, how reckless I was? I don’t want him to think less of me. I remember how his eyes warmed, how he compared me to a flame. My husband, a poet. I can’t bear the thought of his expression cooling with disgust and disappointment.

  My mistress warned me to be careful of my reputation. ‘Now, more than ever, you must take care,’ she told me. ‘Ned Hilliard is pleased with you, but others will deplore his choice. You must give them no reason to suggest that they are right and he was wrong.’ If I claim now that Francis defiled me, there will be a scandal and doubts. The neighbours will shake their heads and say: No smoke without fire. My reputation, and Ned’s, will never be the same.

  So I go back to the Widow Dent. She is waiting outside her cottage as if she knows I am coming. I can’t talk, but Sybil knows what has happened.

  ‘Come,’ she says. ‘We’ll find him a place to lie in the sun.’

  Old as she is, the widow digs him a grave in a clearing, at the edge of the shade of an old ash, where the sun will warm the ground and sift through the leaves in summer. I hold Hap in my lap, stroking his wiry head, his velvety ears, feeling him grow stiff and cold. My throat is so tight I can hardly swallow. I wish I could rewind time, decide to leave him behind. I think, if I close my eyes tight enough, I will feel him breathing once more, feel his warm snuffle in my palm, the wriggle of his stumpy tail.

  Sybil comes for him. She holds out her hands. ‘Let him go now,’ she says. ‘It is time.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘No.’

  But she shakes her head. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Let me take him.’

  ‘I will do it.’

  It is the last thing I can do for him. I get stiffly to my feet and carry Hap over to the hole in the ground. I kiss his nose one last time. ‘Goodbye, dear friend,’ I say and lay him tenderly down. And then, before I can change my mind, I push the earth over him with my hands, scrabbling frantically to cover him, as if I could cover the memories of him pressing by my side, greeting me with a squirm of his body, his lip lifted in that silly dog grin of his. He was only a dog, but I loved him as I loved Elizabeth, and now both are gone.

  I drew a shuddering gasp, but the tears wouldn’t stop. I rocked forward over the earth, my body clenched with misery.

  ‘Grace . . . ’ Vivien laid a hand on my back. ‘Grace, can you hear me?’

  ‘He was just a dog,’ I sobbed. ‘Why did he have to kill him?’

  ‘It’s over, Grace,’ she said, but I wasn’t listening. I was still crouched over the grave of my little dog.

  ‘I can’t bear it. Hap . . . ’

  ‘Grace.’ Vivien’s voice firmed as mine rose. ‘Get up now.’

  Groggy with grief, I lifted my head, to find myself looking at an utterly strange woman, but even as I wondered, the past was fading and I remembered where I was. Who I was.

  I was kneeling half-in, half-out of one of Vivien’s pretty flowerbeds, and my hands were filthy from scrabbling in the earth. I’d ripped up a whole clump of pinks in my frenzy to bury Hap.

  I felt sick.

  ‘Vivien . . . I’m so sorry,’ I stumbled through the words, appalled. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Come.’ She helped me up. ‘Come and wash your hands – we’ll have that tea, and then we’ll talk.’

  Shakily I knuckled the tears from my cheeks. ‘Sorry,’ I said again, but she shushed me and led me inside to a sink. I scrubbed the earth from my hands and splashed cold water over my face, and began to feel a bit better.

  ‘Your poor garden,’ I said guiltily as I sat back beside Vivien on the bench.

  ‘The garden will grow again,’ she said. ‘Here, I made some fresh tea. Drink it.’

  I sipped obediently, although I would have sold my soul right then for something stronger. It was tasteless, but after a few moments, calmness stole over me.

  ‘Is this just nettles?’

  ‘Among other things,’ said Vivien.

  ‘Drugs?’ I paused with the mug halfway to my lips.

  She smiled and shook her head. ‘Just a little kitchen magic.’

  What was a little magic, in the strangeness of my life right then? I took another sip and put the mug down on the arm of the bench.

  ‘How long was I . . . like that?’

  ‘Not long. I saw you fade out, so I took the mug away in case you burnt yourself. You just sat and stared ahead. I could tell you weren’t here. I sat beside you until you started to cry and began scrabbling at the ground over there.’

  ‘That’s where I buried Hap.’ I ached with the memory. I looked at Vivien’s calm profile. Anyone else would have been running for a doctor, but she just sat there, and she knew. Was she Sybil? ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or that I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Do you believe you’ve lived before?’

  ‘Many times,’ she said simply.

  I could hardly believe I was having this conversation on a bright Monday morning. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me,’ I said. ‘I was just sitting here, looking at that tree . . . ’ My voice trailed off as I realized the tree had gone. In its place was a lilac bush, covered in butterflies.

  ‘Tell me,�
� said Vivien.

  I told her everything, and in that charming little garden with the drone of bees loud in the air, it didn’t sound as bizarre as it had done when I told Drew.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked when I had stopped.

  Vivien eyed me thoughtfully. ‘I think you’re fortunate to have been given the chance to re-experience the past so vividly.’

  ‘I don’t feel fortunate,’ I grumbled. There was earth under my fingernails and, kitchen magic or no kitchen magic, I was still churning with reaction. ‘I feel . . . I feel as if I’m being used.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said Vivien composedly. ‘Hawise seems to be using you to tell her story.’

  ‘But why? And why me? There’s nothing special about me.’

  ‘Isn’t that what Hawise thinks too?’

  ‘Yes.’ I nodded slowly as I thought about it. ‘I mean, she’s a bit different, but she tries to fit in. It’s not like she’s trying to be unconventional. That’s more about the way other people think of her than about anything she does.’

  ‘Isn’t that true of all unconventional people?’ Vivien’s smile was wry, and I shifted on the bench, remembering how easily I had always dismissed Lucy’s unconventional ideas. ‘From what you’ve told me, Hawise doesn’t understand that befriending a deformed dog or a woman suspected of being a witch makes her not only different, but dangerous in the eyes of her neighbours.’

  ‘It’s so stupid the way they think,’ I said angrily. ‘Why can’t they see that Hap was just a dog?’ My heart clenched like a fist at the memory of him, of that terrible squeal as Francis’s knife slashed through the light.

  ‘You think the way Hawise does,’ said Vivien, and then she paused. ‘Or perhaps it’s the other way round. Have you considered that you might be possessing Hawise?’

  The strangeness of the idea had me gawping at her. ‘Me? I’m not the one who’s dead!’

  Unperturbed, Vivien sipped her tea. ‘Time doesn’t always work the way we think it does. We like to think that if something has happened in the past, it’s finished, but how do we draw a line and say “Now this is over” or “This started then”?’

  Drew Dyer had said something similar, I remembered.

  ‘I’ve often thought that time is a circle, not a straight line,’ Vivien went on, watching a butterfly dip and dart around the lilac. ‘And if that’s the case, who came first: you or Hawise?’

  ‘I’ve got no reason to haunt anyone,’ I said, hardly able to believe I was actually having this conversation.

  ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘No! The whole idea is ridiculous!’

  Vivien just shrugged. ‘Perhaps,’ she said.

  ‘Besides, no one is obsessed with me the way Francis is obsessed with Hawise,’ I argued as if she had insisted that she was right. ‘I feel so sorry for Hawise,’ I said. ‘She has so few options. She can’t leave York. She can’t run away and start a new life. She can’t take out a restraining order. And Francis . . . he’s so creepy.’ I shuddered, remembering the redness of his mouth and the blankness of his eyes. Those eyes that were so like Ash’s eyes. I thought about Sophie’s expression as she gazed after him, and disquiet trembled at the edges of my mind. I’d been so taken up with my grief over Hap that I’d forgotten about Sophie.

  But what could I do? I couldn’t do anything about the darkness that I sensed in Ash, any more than Hawise could do anything about Francis.

  ‘There’s a slipperiness about him,’ I tried to explain to Vivien, and I wasn’t sure myself whether I was talking about Ash or Francis at that point. ‘It’s like trying to pick up wet soap. He just slides through your fingers. You can’t catch him out. And he’s shiny. He reflects back what people want to see, I think, and no one looks past that to what he’s really like. No one sees him except me.’

  I stopped, realizing that I was rattling on, sounding more than a little obsessive myself. And why was I talking in the present tense? I hardly knew Ash. I was thinking about Francis, and he was Hawise’s problem.

  ‘Why won’t he leave her alone?’ I said. ‘It’s almost as if he loves her and hates her at the same time.’

  Vivien nodded. ‘He’s obsessed with her. It’s a form of delusion. Modern medicine would call it de Clérambault’s syndrome, I suspect.’

  ‘What would you call it?’

  ‘It sounds to me as if Francis is possessed, just as you are.’

  ‘Unless I’ve got a syndrome too,’ I said, thinking about Sarah and what she had told me about post-traumatic stress disorder.

  ‘Which would you rather have?’

  ‘Neither.’ Edgily I got to my feet. ‘I don’t like this,’ I said, hugging my arms together. ‘I’m not mad!’

  ‘I didn’t say you were.’

  ‘Some of it fits with post-traumatic stress disorder,’ I said. ‘There’s a smell or a sound – something that tips me back – but I’m not re-experiencing the tsunami, I’m reliving Hawise’s life. She’s too real for me to make her up.’

  ‘And the idea of being possessed scares you,’ said Vivien.

  ‘Of course it does!’ I snapped. ‘I mean, I’m drawn to Hawise in lots of ways,’ I said more calmly. ‘Part of me wants to know what happens to her, part of me wants to go back, but I don’t like the way she seems to be able to control me.’

  ‘So it’s the idea of losing control that scares you, more than the idea that another spirit is sharing your mind?’

  ‘Yes . . . no . . . ’ I dropped back onto the bench, defeated. ‘I don’t know.’

  Vivien sat quietly beside me as I stared unseeingly at the garden, at the mess of earth where I had scrabbled to bury Hap.

  Where Hawise had buried Hap. I had to keep her separate from me, but it was hard when her memories seemed to be my own.

  ‘What can I do?’ I asked Vivien at last. ‘The obvious thing is to leave York, but that feels like running away. Besides, I can’t go yet. I’ve got students who need to finish their course, quite apart from the fact that I won’t be able to buy a ticket to Mexico until I’ve sold the house. I have to stay for a while longer, but I can’t keep on like this, never knowing if I’m going to suddenly find myself back in Elizabethan York. What if I’d been walking along a road just now, instead of sitting in your garden? I might just have walked into the traffic!’

  ‘Yes, there are dangers,’ said Vivien. ‘You must be careful. Hawise is clearly very strong.’

  Stronger than me. I didn’t like that. I was used to being the strong one.

  ‘Can you make her go away?’

  ‘Is that what you really want?’

  I didn’t answer immediately. ‘I’m not sure,’ I admitted. ‘I’ve got this feeling that I need to know what happened to Hawise. Something must have happened, mustn’t it? Or why would she be so determined to make me relive her life?’

  Vivien nodded. ‘Yes, clearly she is not at peace.’

  ‘So I think I’d feel as if I were letting her down somehow, if I shut her out completely,’ I said. ‘I know it sounds stupid, but yes, it feels as if she’s part of me, and I’d be closing off something in myself. Oh, I can’t explain what it’s like.’ I shook my head in frustration. ‘I just hate this feeling that Hawise is controlling me.’

  ‘Then you must learn to control her,’ Vivien said. ‘You must find out what she needs in order to rest, but first you must be able to contain her. Can you summon her at will?’

  ‘I’ve never tried.’

  ‘Try now. You’ll be safe if I’m here.’

  I hesitated. ‘How?’

  ‘Close your eyes,’ said Vivien. ‘Empty your mind. I think Hawise will come.’

  I felt a bit silly, but I did as she said. I tried not to think about anything, but my mind wouldn’t stay still. It bounced around between Francis and Vivien and Hap and Sybil Dent, only to veer off inexplicably to Lucas, then Drew Dyer, and the look on Sophie’s face as she gazed up at Ash.

  My eyes snapped open. ‘It’s not working.�
�

  ‘You’re trying too hard. Close your eyes again and tell me what you can hear.’

  Biting my lip, I squeezed my eyes shut once more and strained to listen. ‘I can hear a flutter of wings,’ I said slowly. ‘It’s a bird, a pigeon perhaps, or a blackbird, settling on a branch. And I can hear a bee . . . that’s odd.’ I frowned. ‘There shouldn’t be a bee around in the middle of winter.’

  A tiny pause. ‘What else can you hear?’

  My clogs on the cobbles. I’m trying to keep up with Ned’s easy stride. His legs are much longer than mine, and I’m puffing out breaths that hang in the cold air.

  Henry Judd’s apprentices are working late, unloading casks of wax from a cart and rolling them up planks into his workshop. I can hear the crunch of the casks as the apprentices dump them on the gravel, the chink of the iron bands against stone when they tip them over, and then the rumble of the casks on the wooden slope.

  Thomas West and his wife are arguing as usual in the chamber above their shop. You can hear their quarrel halfway down the street, but no one is taking much notice. Robert Wharfe’s dog is barking, but no one takes much notice of that, either. The sound of barking reminds me of Hap, and my heart twists as it always does when I think of him.

  There is laughter spilling out of the alehouse, the jingle of harness as a stable boy leads a horse into the courtyard of the Bull Inn, and now the Minster bell is bonging in the chill air. It is six of the clock on a dank November evening, and the street is still full of noise.

  We are on our way to my father’s house in Hungate. I am not looking forward to it. I am ashamed of myself for being ashamed of my family, but my father is raucous when he is in his cups, and Agnes is pale and trembling, and Jennet is a terrible cook. It will not be a comfortable evening for Ned or for me.

  We must go, of course. I cannot naysay my family. I have chosen my dress carefully. It has to be fine enough to do them honour, but not so fine it makes Agnes look shabby. In the end I chose a blue damask gown with puffed sleeves and a pleated skirt. I have to hold it up to step over the gutters as I walk with Ned, who is looking not handsome, no, but steady and solid. Every now and then I peep a glance at him under my lashes and remember the night before, when he pulled the curtains around the bed and drew me to him with a smile.