Drew opted for honesty. ‘I was hoping it was a phase you’d grow out of.’
He told me later that Sophie bombarded him with questions about his mother all evening after I’d gone, which I think must have been quite difficult for him, but Sophie certainly seemed a lot happier for a while. I’d given her Lucy’s jewellery, but this was special. It was a link to her own family, and she was delighted with it.
I kept my word and went to see Vivien about Sophie, too. She noticed straight away that I wasn’t wearing the amulet.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘It’s over. I’m chalking it up as an amazing experience.’
Vivien studied me, a frown touching her eyes. ‘Over? Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s happened for weeks now.’
‘I don’t think you should let down your guard,’ she said. ‘Your aura is still very cloudy. Hawise is with you still.’
‘Well, if she is, I’ve got her under control,’ I said lightly.
‘That’s what Lucy said. And Lucy died.’
Something – a lift of breeze? a breath? – touched the back of my neck. I felt it all the way down my spine, but I shook the sudden chill aside.
‘I’m not Lucy,’ I said. ‘Besides, I’ll be leaving soon.’
In the meantime there was no hurry. The house still needed a bit of work before I could put it on the market. I liked my job, and with new courses running all the time, it was flexible enough for me to stay, but leave whenever I needed. As summer slid into September and I stayed resolutely in the present, I let myself relax and enjoy myself. Sometimes, it’s true, I missed Hawise and wondered about her story, but I never again tried to regress deliberately. It had to be the right moment, I’d realized. Somehow on each occasion there had been a sharing of some sensation or feeling, and there was no way I could know what might trigger a slip into the past.
Besides, I didn’t want to. I’d had enough of being dragged backwards and forwards through time. Vivien could say what she wanted about it being a privilege, but I’d hated that feeling that Hawise was controlling me, that she could take over at any point and make me wild with lust, or long for a baby. I wanted to be my own person again.
So I did exactly what Drew said I always did. I papered over the cracks and told myself that life was back to normal. Once when Drew and I were out we bumped into Sarah with, I was glad to see, her boyfriend, and we all went out for a drink together, but it was awkward. I wished I hadn’t had to tell her about the tsunami. I didn’t like her knowing what had happened, and when she asked me how I was, I brushed her concern aside.
‘I’m absolutely fine now,’ I said.
And for a while I was.
It was early September before I put the house on the market, and I had the first offer barely two weeks later. I don’t know what I had been expecting, but I hadn’t thought it would come so soon. Didn’t it take months to sell a house?
‘Congratulations,’ said Drew when I knocked on his door to tell him the news. ‘So you’ll be leaving soon?’
‘I . . . well, yes . . . ’ I said, brought up short. ‘Yes, I suppose I will.’
Leaving. Leaving would mean never seeing Drew again, which would be fine, of course, but I’d sort of got used to his dry voice and the way everything felt steadier and safer when he was near.
But what was the alternative? To stay in York? Stay with Drew? And if I did, how long would we be happy to stay just friends? And if we weren’t friends, we’d be lovers, and he would expect me to talk about how I felt and everything else that went along with having a ‘relationship’. The thought of all that emotional intimacy opened up a yawning chasm in front of me and instinctively I backed away from it.
‘I was thinking it was time that I was moving on anyway,’ I said. ‘Mel’s having a great time in Mexico, and she says there are plenty of jobs there. I’ll probably go and join her.’
And that’s when I heard it, for the first time in weeks.
Bess. It sounded feebler than before, a last desperate gurgle before Hawise’s lungs filled with water.
‘What?’ said Drew as I froze.
‘Nothing.’
The familiar dread was uncoiling in the pit of my belly. ‘It’s over,’ I had told Vivien, and it was over. I was selling the house and leaving York. I wasn’t going to get sucked into the past again.
‘In fact I’m going to see if Mel can fix me up with a job right now,’ I said to Drew, but the defiance in my voice was meant for Hawise.
‘Sounds like a plan,’ he said.
Not: Don’t go. Not: Please stay. Not: I’ll miss you.
Which was exactly why I had been sensible not to get involved with him.
‘Want to have a drink tonight to celebrate the sale?’ I said, determinedly cheerful, but he shook his head.
‘Can’t, I’m afraid. I’m going to a conference in London tomorrow and I still haven’t finished my paper. Can we celebrate when I get back?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Let’s do that.’
I knew that when I went back into Lucy’s house there would be an apple waiting for me – and there was, right next to the kettle where I couldn’t miss it.
My lips tightened and I set my jaw in what Drew called my pig-headed look. ‘I’m going,’ I insisted out loud.
My laptop had been working fine over the summer, but now when I logged on to the Internet the screen kept going blank.
Bess. Bess.
The whisper curdled the air, and I felt Hawise’s anguish settle on my skin like a fine web. I scrubbed my hands over my face as if I could brush it away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said into the empty air. ‘I’m sorry you drowned, but I can’t do anything about it. I don’t know how it all went wrong. I can’t help you. I’m sorry.’
Bess. It was faint, but implacable. Hawise was as stubborn as I.
I gritted my teeth. ‘I’m leaving,’ I said and closed the laptop with a snap. ‘You can’t stop me.’
Outside, a dreary mizzle was falling as I marched into the library near the Minster. I was all riled up, and ready for a fight. Drew hadn’t begged me to stay, which was just as well, as I wasn’t going to; and now Hawise was trying to get into my head again. I wasn’t having it.
I found a computer and logged on to email.
Mel, I typed, making the keyboard rattle. Have sold house, which means will be buying my ticket any day now. Can you suss out job situation? Am thinking
The screen went dead before I could finish.
‘That’s odd,’ said the assistant when I asked for help. ‘I’ve never seen that before. Try one of the other computers.’
I did, but that crashed too, and the one after that. The assistant was looking at me strangely, as if it was all my fault. ‘Weird,’ he said.
‘Must be a problem with the server,’ I said.
‘All the other computers are working.’
‘Oh, well, maybe it’s me.’ I rolled my eyes to show that I was joking. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll try somewhere else.’
I found an Internet cafe and bought myself a coffee. I had a wild idea that the coffee would somehow fool Hawise into thinking I wasn’t trying to contact Mel at all. It didn’t work, anyway. I could google to my heart’s content, but the moment I logged onto email and tried to send a message, the screen went blank again.
In the end, I gave up. Which wasn’t the same as giving in. The thought was aimed at Hawise. I was very conscious of her lurking in my mind. It felt as if it had become a battle of wills between the two of us. This time I wasn’t frightened at the idea of her. I was cross, and it was all bound up with feeling edgy about Drew and the house sale, and with myself for not being as delighted at the prospect of moving on as I ought to be. I’d been perfectly happy all summer, and now everything was changing.
It was partly my own fault, I knew. I had let my guard down, just as Vivien had warned. I had let myself relax and Hawise had snuck back, but this time I wouldn’t let her take over. I
would put on my amulet as soon as I got home.
It was raining properly when I walked home. I’d forgotten my umbrella and the wind-tunnel effect on the south side of the Minster blew the rain right into my eyes. Preoccupied by my thoughts, I turned up my collar and screwed up my face, glad when the wind dropped away as I reached Goodramgate. I paused there, wiping the worst of the wet from my face with the back of my hand.
I was careless. I’d grown used to not needing that guard on my mind, and I didn’t stop to wonder why, instead of turning left to Monk Bar, I looked right, down to where the Beckwiths’ house once stood. The street shimmered through the rain and a sense of foreboding crept over me, so strong that I caught my breath and my hand went to my mouth. Frantically I blinked to fix myself in the present, but it was too late.
‘They say there’s sickness in Selby.’ Isobel is back from the market and is unloading vegetables from her basket onto the table while Margery checks them, lips pursed.
We are in the kitchen. I am showing Joan how to make an infusion to calm the stomach, and trying to ignore the sweatiness that is making my ruff itch and my hair stick to my scalp beneath my cap. Alison is plucking a chicken and Bess is on the floor, grasping at the tiny feathers as they drift in the sunlight through the open door. It is July, and the days are long and remorselessly hot. It hasn’t rained for weeks. The streets are baked hard and the flies are thick around the middens. The gutters are dry, the Ouse shrunken and sluggish, and the smell of the privies hangs heavy in the air.
‘There’s always sickness in Selby,’ Margery snaps. She holds up a cucumber so limp that it bends at one end, and waves it at Isobel. ‘What do you call this?’
There is a pause while we all look at the cucumber, then as one we break into helpless giggles. Even Bess joins in, not understanding how lewd the cucumber looks, just laughing delightedly because we are laughing, and for a moment I forget the heat and the stickiness and the discomfort. There is just a kitchen full of sunlight and laughter. I should reprove the maids for their silliness, but I don’t want to. I want to hold onto this moment forever, I think.
‘It’s a . . . c-cucumber,’ Isobel manages, wiping her eyes, as the rest of us try to stifle our giggles.
‘Oh, you girls!’ Margery tsks and shakes her head, and it pleases me that I am obviously included with the maids. I can see that she is only pretending to disapprove anyway. A smile is tugging at the corner of her mouth in spite of herself.
‘Could do with a codpiece, couldn’t it?’ she says, and we all burst into laughter again, until Joan gets hiccups and throws her apron over her head, which just makes us laugh even more.
At last we subside, apart from a few hiccups from Joan, and Margery goes back to grumbling about the state of the vegetables.
‘It was the best they had,’ Isobel protests. ‘There’s nowt decent in the market right now.’
‘They’re closing the bars,’ she adds, when Margery simply sniffs and starts to pick over the strawberries that she has bought. ‘No one from Selby way is allowed into the city. Lucky the master got back in time, in’t it?’
It is. Ned only returned from Hull yesterday. Rob is still there, overseeing the unloading of the ships from the Baltic and negotiating with the keelmen who will bring the goods up the river to York. Ned didn’t come back on the Selby road, it is true, but when rumours of sickness start, the Lord Mayor is quick to shut the city gates to strangers. It happens most summers and it interferes with business, but we don’t fret overmuch. It is a long time since the plague hit York hard – since before I was born anyway. A few people die every summer, but it is never as bad as the older people tell.
So when Margery reports a couple of days later that the baker Stephen Robson is dead, we cross ourselves, but are not afraid. In life we are in death. The next day there is news of another death in the parish – Elizabeth Lamb, the innkeeper’s wife – and the next day there are two more: the widow Catherine Bowman, and William Young’s servant, Ralf.
It starts slowly and then, without warning, it is out of control. One day we are at the market, waving the flies from our faces and complaining about the heat. The next the streets are empty and the air is sour with fear. I wake up one morning expecting it to be a normal day. I am thinking about the tasks I will set Isobel and Alison and Joan, about whether it is too hot to clear out the larder. It is so hot that we have been sleeping with the windows wide open, and still we cannot sleep.
The bells are tolling. Ned goes out and comes home, his face grave. The sickness is spreading. Already two of the aldermen are dead, who yesterday were going about their business.
‘What should we do?’
‘Stay home. Take care of our own. Do we have food?’
‘Enough,’ I say. It is hard to believe that it will affect us. Others perhaps, but not us. We are lucky.
The news of the sickness is spreading as fast as the plague. Alison and Joan have heard it from Isobel, who had it from Mistress Richardson across the street. It is not the sweating sickness, it is the dreaded pestilence – the one Mistress Beckwith told us about, and which ravaged London some twelve years ago. I was just a child then, but I remember the hushed way folk spoke of what was happening to the southerners. The maids are whispering of boils and black skin, of buboes that split and ooze blood and pus, and a stench like no other. It sounds horrible, but it cannot really happen, not to us.
And for a day or two it seems that it is so. The streets are quiet, the country people stay away from the markets, and the workshops fall silent one by one. It is as if we are all waiting, holding our breaths and keeping very still, so that the sickness won’t see us crouching in our houses as it prowls the city like a fox around the henhouse. If we do not move, perhaps it will pass us by, the way it always has before.
It takes a long time before we realize that it will not go away, that it has settled in like a dog with a bone. The maids are frightened, and even Margery looks grim, so I try and keep up a semblance of normality. I am worried about the Beckwiths, though.
Ned doesn’t like the idea of me going to see them. ‘Better everyone stays close to home at the moment,’ he says.
But I was part of the Beckwiths’ family for many years. ‘I will go straight there,’ I promise. ‘I just want to see they’re all right.’
‘What about your sister?’
As always with Agnes, I feel guilty. I should have thought of her first. But going to her house means I might meet Francis.
‘Could you go?’ I ask Ned. ‘Tell her I’m thinking of her. Promise her anything that she needs.’
The streets are eerily quiet as I walk through Thursday Market and up Goodramgate. A lot of the shops have their windows shut up, and the workshops are silent. There are no women sitting at the doors, no children playing in the street. A dog slinks along the gutter, skittering away at my approach. The few people who are out scurry along, hunched as if the pestilence is stalking behind them, waiting to tap them on the shoulder. Ordinarily I would linger outside, but not today. I feel as if I have walked into a different world.
The Beckwiths’ shop is shuttered, and the door is closed. My gut tightens with fear at the sight of it and I pound frantically at the door. It seems a long time before it is opened. My mistress stands there, and her face is so ravaged that I take a step back.
‘No,’ I say before she has said anything. ‘No.’
‘You shouldn’t be here, Hawise.’
My mouth trembles. This was my home, my refuge. The Beckwiths have been constants in my life. They are good, decent people who saved me from my father. ‘Who?’ is all I can manage.
‘Your master. Dick. And now Meg has the headache.’ Her voice is leached of all emotion. She looks exhausted.
I can’t take it in. My master, with his beefy face and his bluster, cannot be dead. And Dick, who teased Elizabeth and me, had almost finished his apprenticeship. He should be making his masterpiece, joining the tailors’ guild, not lying in a grave.
&
nbsp; ‘The carters came last night,’ my mistress says. ‘They have taken them away.’
There are already too many dead for proper burials. There is just a pit. My master will not lie in the fine tomb he had planned. He will be tossed into a pit next to his apprentice, who never had the chance to plan his own tomb.
‘What can I do?’ I ask, my throat so tight I can hardly speak.
‘Go home,’ says my mistress. ‘Keep safe.’
I can’t just leave her here with poor, sick Meg. I take a step forward without thinking. ‘You need help. Let me come in.’
‘No.’ She bars the door. ‘You have a child to think of.’
The thought of Bess makes me hesitate. ‘But—’
‘No, Hawise, it is too dangerous,’ she says as firmly as her exhaustion allows. ‘I’m surprised your husband let you come at all.’ Seeing my expression, she guesses the truth and shakes her head. ‘You always were wilful, but you’re a good girl. You look after that daughter of yours.’
She makes to close the door and I can’t bear the thought that this may be the last I see of her. ‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ I insist. ‘I’ll bring you food at least.’
But when I go back, there is no answer. The door stays shut. I knock and knock and no one comes.
This time there was no jarring, no dislocation. The edges of time were blurred, and all I did was blink to slip between one world and the other, a sideways step rather than the precipitous fall it had been before.
My face was wet as I stared at where the house had been. The facade was changed now beyond all recognition, but the memories of the place resonated beneath the tarmac and the concrete, layer upon layer of events and actions and feelings that had settled into a thick crust. It seemed solid and stable, but it could shift with no warning, just as the Earth’s crust had slipped beneath the Indian Ocean.
Leaden with grief, I turned and walked back out through the bar to Lucy’s house – the house I kept forgetting not to call home. Mistress Beckwith had been a fine person, much cleverer than her husband and sensible enough not to let him know it. She was the closest Hawise had to a mother, and I knew what it was like to lose a mother.
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