Time's Echo

by Pamela Hartshorne

  It is the least I can do for my sister, I think guiltily. I am terribly afraid for her, but Agnes herself is ecstatic. She is besotted with Francis and watches him hungrily. I watch him too, waiting for him to show himself, but he is unctuous in his dealings with her and never less than courteous, I have to admit. So I try to tell myself that I am wrong about the way he looks at me. I tell myself that I am imagining it and that his obsession with me is over.

  I want to believe that it will be all right.

  Agnes and Francis sit together in triumph on high table, presiding over the feast. Afterwards there is dancing. I supervise the clearing away of the tables, while Ned moves among the guests, making sure everyone has had enough to eat, clapping one on the shoulder, beckoning for more wine for another.

  I watch him under my lashes. He is so solid, so steady, the calm centre around which the rest of the room swings giddily, and I feel the heat spilling along my veins and pooling in the pit of my belly. I want to go to him, to my cool, contained husband, wrap my arms around his waist and press my face into his throat. I am not the enchantress, whatever the neighbours think. It is Ned who has enchanted me, with the touch of his hands and the feel of his mouth.

  Across the hall Ned glances up and sees me watching him. My hunger must show in my face, because he smiles slightly. I smile back. A promise. Later, his eyes say, and I smile again and nod, suddenly giddy with happiness. Later. Later we will lie together between the curtains, and I will forget Agnes and Francis and the distrustful servants and the neighbours who take Ned for a fool. There will just be the two of us, and the heat and the rush and the certainty that nothing and nobody else matters.

  I am in love with my own husband. Agnes is right: I have everything.

  I am glowing as I turn away.

  ‘Dance with me, Sister.’

  Francis’s voice is a snail trailing stickily over a perfect rose. All day, in spite of my attempts to convince myself that it will be all right, I have avoided him, and now he is there, standing too close, and my happiness leaks out of me.

  I have been fooling myself. I have been dancing in the dark. Francis has not forgotten me. It is not over.

  It will not be all right.

  I force a smile while every piece of me screams to step away from him. But it is his wedding, and Agnes’s wedding, and people will be watching.

  I glance at Agnes, who is watching us from the table. Beside her, Mistress Beckwith is trying to make conversation with her, but Agnes has no eyes for anyone but Francis.

  ‘You should dance with your wife,’ I say coldly.

  ‘I want to dance with you.’

  ‘But Agnes—’

  ‘Agnes wants what I want. You cannot refuse me,’ he says.

  The waits are all set to play and dancers are taking to the floor. I can make a scene at my sister’s wedding, or I can take Francis’s hand and dance with him. What can he do to me in front of everyone, after all?

  Swallowing my revulsion, I nod tightly and let him take my hand and lead me into the middle of the floor, but my flesh shrinks from his touch. We join a circle and I marvel that the others cannot see the sickliness of my smile.

  The music starts. We hold hands, dance to one side and then the other. We turn to our partners, press our palms together. Francis leans towards me and murmurs close to my ear.

  ‘I’ll think of you every time I fuck her.’

  It is as if he has slapped me. I jerk my head back, unable to believe that he actually said that. I want to believe that I made it up, but I know I didn’t. Francis is smiling. His red mouth is shiny between his beard and his hands are hot and moist, and I am sick with loathing.

  And with fear. Because there is a wrongness in Francis’s eyes that curdles my stomach, a heat and a hunger that raise the tiny hairs on the back of my neck.

  ‘How dare you say such a thing to me in my husband’s house,’ I whisper fiercely. ‘You are vile!’

  Francis continues to smile. He is enjoying my fear and my loathing. ‘I can say what I like to you, Hawise. You won’t tell.’

  ‘Do not push me!’

  The dance sends us out and around in a circle, back again.

  ‘No,’ he carries on musingly, ‘you won’t say anything. You’re too afraid of upsetting your little sister. Strange how you crave her approval,’ he muses. ‘Why is that? Why do you try and make her like you? You feel you must pay for being beautiful while she is plain, don’t you? For being clever while she is stupid, for being rich while she is poor.’

  ‘Agnes is your wife,’ I say tautly. ‘How can you speak of her like that?’

  ‘I can speak of her however I like,’ says Francis. ‘She is my wife, as you say.’

  Nobody else can hear our conversation over the music. They are all laughing and talking, as if they are in a different world.

  ‘Don’t hurt Agnes,’ I say, my voice shaking with hatred. ‘You will regret it if you do. I promise you that.’

  ‘That is up to you,’ says Francis. ‘If you are kind to me, I will be kind to your sister. That is fair exchange, is it not?’

  I stare at him with such disgust that he clicks his tongue. ‘Come, come, Hawise,’ he chides me gently. ‘Smile. You don’t want to spoil Agnes’s wedding day, do you? Everyone will see you quarrelling with your new brother and wonder what is between us. You know how little it will take for the gossips to cry Ned a cuckold, and Agnes is already suspicious of your love for me.’

  ‘Love!’ I am revolted by him, but I do smile. I know it will hurt Agnes if I expose Francis for what he is, and Ned has risked enough by taking me as a wife. ‘You know nothing of love,’ I say. ‘You are hateful.’

  His smile flickers and something shifts in the shiny eyes as he spins me round in the dance and our hands clap together, but the next moment that insolent smile is back in place.

  ‘Is that any way to talk to your brother, hmm? You will never be rid of me, Hawise,’ he says and, when he runs his tongue over his lips, I close my eyes at the glee in his face. ‘I am family now.’

  When I opened my eyes, my stomach tilted in shock to find myself sitting in a garden instead of dancing. The relief of not seeing Francis’s face was countered by a vicious headache that skewered my brain, and the jarring effect of being jolted through time had the breath whistling in my throat.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Vivien’s calm voice. ‘You’re safe.’

  How could I be safe when Francis was always there, stalking me like a cat with its prey?

  ‘God, I hate him!’ I buried my face in my hands, rage and revulsion still surging through me. ‘I hate him! Why can’t he leave me alone?’

  ‘Tell me what happened this time,’ said Vivien, and listened, fascinated, while I told her of my horror at the way Francis was using my sister.

  ‘Hawise’s sister, not mine,’ I corrected myself hastily. I didn’t have a sister. I was getting increasingly confused between Hawise’s life and my own. ‘It’s horrible,’ I said. ‘Francis isn’t doing anything – he’s just looking – but if you could see how he wets his lips and smiles at me . . . at her—’ I broke off with a shudder.

  Vivien studied my face with concern. ‘Perhaps it was a mistake to deliberately try and regress yourself. You don’t need to go on with this if you don’t want to, Grace.’

  I thought of how easily Hawise could take over my mind. She had been there, just waiting for the slightest opportunity to slip in. ‘I’m not sure I’m going to have a choice.’

  ‘There’s always a choice,’ said Vivien.

  We were silent for a while. Absently I fingered my pendant, thinking about Hawise, and the desperation I felt to relive her story. About her frustration, her love for Ned and her loathing for Francis. There was still so much I didn’t understand.

  ‘I can’t help feeling that there’s something I should be doing,’ I said at last. ‘Something in the here and now.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I lifted my ha
nds helplessly and let them fall. ‘Like finding something in the records, perhaps. Sometimes, in Lucy’s house, I can hear Hawise calling for Bess.’

  ‘That’s her daughter?’

  ‘I know that from the nightmare,’ I told Vivien. ‘I dreamt that I was Hawise drowning, and she was desperate because she’d abandoned Bess. That’s what is driving her, I can feel it, but I don’t know what to do about it. I did ask Drew Dyer,’ I went on, annoyed to feel my face heat at the sound of his name. ‘He’s a historian, and he said it would be almost impossible to find someone like Hawise, let alone track down her daughter. But maybe Hawise wants me to try harder.’

  To hide my ridiculous blush I got up and began brushing the earth back into the hole that I – Hawise – had dug for Hap. ‘I just feel that I have to do something,’ I said. ‘I can’t sit and wait for Hawise to take me over again, can I? It’s so passive, for a start, and what about my own life? I can’t get on with that when I’ve got no idea when I might find myself in the sixteenth century. One way or another, I need to see this through,’ I decided.

  ‘In that case, you need protection.’ Vivien got to her feet, matter-of-fact. ‘I will cast a spell for you.’ My scepticism must have shown in my face. ‘You don’t believe in magic, do you?’

  ‘Well . . . ’

  ‘Like you didn’t believe in ghosts?’

  I didn’t answer. I just brushed the dirt from my hands and looked back at her, and she smiled and went inside to fetch a knife.

  ‘What’s that for?’ I asked a little nervously when she came back.

  ‘I’m going to cast a circle.’ She swept the knife over the patio bricks. ‘Step inside,’ she said to me.

  Feeling self-conscious, I stepped over the imaginary line. Vivien turned me briskly until she was happy with the way I was facing, and then she tapped the ground with the knife.

  ‘Guardians of the watchtowers of the west, I invoke thee,’ she chanted. ‘Protect your servant Grace from harm. Guide her through the darkness that threatens her, and keep her safe. As I ask, so mote it be.’

  In one fluid movement she moved round the imaginary circle. ‘Guardians of the watchtowers of the north, I invoke thee,’ she began again, and went through the same chant.

  I stood in the circle, holding onto my jade pendant as she moved to the east and then the south. Perhaps I should have felt foolish, standing in the middle of a suburban garden in broad daylight while a witch chanted around me, but something about the place held me still and silent. There was a power in Vivien’s voice that made the air thrum and the blood beat in my veins. My headache was gone.

  ‘As I ask, so mote it be.’ Vivien made a final gesture in the air with her knife and fell silent.

  ‘That’s it?’ I said uncertainly, and she smiled slightly.

  ‘That’s it. Except ’ – she pulled a pendant from her throat and lifted it over her head – ‘wear this,’ she said.

  It was very simple, just a clear stone on a cord. The stone was still warm from her skin. ‘But this is yours,’ I stammered.

  ‘I made it for you.’

  ‘But . . . you didn’t know I was coming,’ I said, lifting my eyes from the pendant.

  ‘Didn’t I?’ Vivien took the pendant back and slipped it over my head. ‘This will protect you. Don’t take it off. And make sure it lies against your skin, over your heart.’ She adjusted the length so that the pendant fell between my breasts. ‘There, like that.’

  I couldn’t settle. Vivien’s pendant felt heavy, almost hot, on my skin as I tried to concentrate on my lesson plans, and in the end I gave up and went downstairs to make myself some lunch. I wasn’t teaching until three that afternoon, so I fiddled around in the kitchen, making myself a Spanish omelette while I churned with Hawise’s sense of frustration, and my own. She was trapped by him; and I, it seemed, was trapped by her.

  Usually I find cooking soothing, but chopping and slicing didn’t help that day. I didn’t like the feeling of helplessness. All I had wanted was to do right by my godmother and then move on, I remembered. I could have left everything to John Burnand, but instead there I was in York, ricocheting between the past and the present, trying to coax a surly adolescent into conversation and having spells cast over me.

  And feeling resentful and sorry for myself, to boot. I caught myself up guiltily. I had to stop that.

  I had meant what I said about trying harder to track down Hawise and Bess, but in the meantime, was it so bad to want to be normal for a while? I wished I could talk to Mel. I wanted a gossip. I wanted to have a conversation with someone who didn’t know anything about York or the sixteenth century, and who didn’t care; someone who didn’t believe in ghosts or spells, and who would laugh at the idea that the stone lying against my heart could be pulsing with heat.

  But Mel was in Mexico, and it was too early to Skype her. I sent her an email instead and checked out her page on Facebook. She’d put up new photos, of her and some friends in a bar. They were mugging for the camera, tipping their beer bottles, sucking in their cheekbones. Mel on some guy’s lap, laughing. Having a great time. Living for the moment, not obsessed with the past.

  The way I should be.

  That was my life – not this strange half-and-half existence between past and present, protected by a crystal. I touched the stone where it nestled next to the jade pendant. I had thought about taking Matt’s necklace off, but somehow that felt like a betrayal. I didn’t know why, but I’d worn it ever since the tsunami, and taking it off felt like a big thing. There was no reason I shouldn’t wear two pendants, I reasoned. Neither of them was obtrusive.

  I was thinking about Matt and the pendant he had given me just as my eye caught his name and photo on Facebook, and I clicked without thinking onto his page to see what he was up to. We had stayed vaguely in touch since splitting up, but I hadn’t heard from him for ages. Or perhaps it was me who hadn’t been in touch. Matt was married, and I’d always thought that his wife, Emily, sounded unbearably twee. Still, Matt obviously adored her, and I was glad he was happy.

  And then there were three . . . He had posted next to a photo of the two of them beaming at the camera. We’re thrilled to announce that we’re expecting a baby in December. Emily is doing fine and only throwing up every other morning!

  So, Matt was going to be a father. I shook my head with a wry smile, trying to imagine it. Babies had been the last thing on his mind when we had been together. That had been something we’d had in common.

  Would Matt have wanted the whole marriage-and-family thing if it hadn’t been for the tsunami? I wondered. We had had a lot of fun together. Had he changed, or had I? Or had the tsunami just stripped us both back to the people we had been all along? If it hadn’t happened, we might still have been racketing around the world having a good time. Did Matt ever think about that?

  Still, he clearly had what he wanted now, and I was pleased for him. It wasn’t for me, but that was fine. As long as I didn’t have to change any nappies. I left a message congratulating them both, then shut down my computer and went out to teach.

  It was after seven by the time I finished my classes and had packed up, and I was still restless. When I was teaching I didn’t have time to think about Hawise or Francis, or anything other than what was happening in the classroom, but now that was over, I realized I didn’t want to go back to Lucy’s house, where the stench of the rank orchard still seeped through the rooms, no matter how carefully I cleaned them.

  Deliberately I made myself walk along Coney Street, testing myself against Hawise. I longed to be normal again, to see only chain stores and mobile-phone shops, but while there was nothing of the Tudor street left, recognition clamoured at the edges of my mind. There was an odd feeling in the soles of my feet, and my steps slowed until I stopped outside a lingerie shop.

  If I looked hard enough, I knew I would see the apothecary shop fronting the street, shutters open to show the blocks of sugar and the glass jars filled with comfits. Above was the je
ttied window where I sat turning the pages of my book, and behind it the chamber with its great bed, hung with curtains. The bed where I slept with Ned, where I leant over him and kissed his throat, his jaw. Where I slid my body down his, and made him smile. Made the heat pulse in us, between us.

  Wriggling my shoulders at the shudder of memory, I turned abruptly away and ran slap into Drew Dyer, and every cell in my body leapt at the sight of him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Drew lifted his brows at my tone. ‘Getting tickets for a film tomorrow night. What about you?’

  ‘Oh . . . ’ I let out a breath. I was scratchy, frustrated, and my blood was pumping with the thought of Ned and the wicked pleasure we had shared. ‘I’m just . . . oh, nothing.’

  ‘You sound like Sophie. How about a drink to make you feel better?’ he added when I smiled reluctantly. ‘The cinema has a decent bar overlooking the river.’

  ‘Not the river,’ I said quickly. Without being aware of it, I’d managed to avoid the Ouse since I’d arrived. It reminded me too much of Lucy, and of that dark, desperate dream of Hawise drowning. I smiled at Drew, in case he had picked up on my instinctive flare of alarm at the mention of the river. ‘But, yes, a drink would be nice.’

  We found a pub tucked away off Stonegate, right next to where John Harper put out his stall a whole foot further than anyone else. That was typical of him, of course. There was an insolence to everything he did. He wasn’t a handsome man, but something about the way he would watch me as I passed made my cheeks prickle with heat and feel as if I had walked out in my shift.

  Desperately I pushed the thought away. That was Hawise’s memory, not mine. I didn’t want her in my mind just then. What good was Vivien’s protective amulet if Hawise could still slide into my head without me knowing?

  The pub was quiet, with no frills. A bit like Drew Dyer in fact. He was real, present, and I concentrated on him so that there was no room for Hawise, but that turned out to be a mistake. I was excruciatingly aware of him as he sat next to me. I’d forgotten what a solid body he had, and his thigh was long and lean beside mine. I’d just need to shift an inch or two and I would be touching him.