Time's Echo

by Pamela Hartshorne

  ‘I was saved by God,’ he says, and I clench my hands in my skirts.

  ‘It was not God who nursed you!’

  ‘Careful, Sister,’ he warns, still smiling. ‘You come too close to blasphemy. Are you really suggesting that it was you, rather than our Lord, who saved me? We are all in God’s hands, you know that.’

  ‘Tell them to stop the rumours,’ I say, my face stony.

  ‘Well, that is easily done,’ he agrees. ‘All you need to do is let us back into your house. Who would believe the rumours, when you have your sister and I to lend you countenance and guide you away from the darkness onto God’s true path?’

  ‘No,’ I say flatly. The thought of sharing my house with him makes my skin creep with disgust.

  Francis shrugs. ‘Then I fear I cannot help you.’

  ‘You’re punishing me,’ I say slowly. Why did I not realize it before? ‘I am the only one who sees you for what you really are, Francis Bewley, and you cannot bear that. I’m the only one who knows that you are not pious, that you are no God-fearing man, but a brute who would defile a young girl.’

  ‘You wanted it.’ There is something wrong with his smile. It is too wide, too fixed, and when he comes closer I find myself backing away from him. ‘Come, Hawise. Surely you remember what it was like? You know I want you. I have always wanted you, and you wanted me too.’

  ‘No.’ I have come up against a table and cannot go any further. I put my hands out to ward him off, but he brushes them aside and grabs my breasts, squeezing them painfully.

  ‘Yes, you did. You know you did. You bewitched me, you led me on, you made me want you.’ All at once he is panting, and his face is red and glazed.

  ‘No, no.’ I am squirming to get free of his grasp, beating at him with my hands, but he is bigger and more solid than I have remembered.

  ‘Let me touch you, Hawise.’ He is pushing his crotch against me, grunting and panting, while the back of my thighs are digging into the table. ‘I’ve got to have you. You’re mine, you’ve always been mine. I think of you every night when I lie with your sister.’

  My mouth opens to scream for Charity, but even now, as I fight desperately to stave him off, I don’t want my sister to know that Francis wants me like this, so I close it again and concentrate on shoving at his bulk. Besides, Charity is sly and deaf, and Francis is her master. She might choose not to hear.

  Francis’s tongue is thick and wet as it pushes against my mouth. He is dragging me away from the table, grappling with my skirts, and I am afraid now, while before I was just repulsed. He is stronger than me, and if he chooses he can take me here on the floor of his hall, where there will be no Sybil to rescue me.

  Then, quite suddenly, he pushes me away. Gasping, I stagger back against the table. My sleeves are torn, my bodice gaping, my cap askew.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Agnes! Oh, thank God!’ I start to stumble towards her, but her look of disgust freezes me on the spot.

  ‘I see you are up to your old tricks again,’ she says.

  ‘Tricks? No! What tricks?’

  Ostentatiously Francis straightens his doublet and comes to take Agnes’s hand. ‘I am sorry, my dear. I had hoped to reason with her, but she is beyond reason. It is moon-madness with her, I fear.’

  ‘What are you saying? Agnes, no, please – it’s not like that. I’m sorry, but Francis is obsessed with me.’

  They exchange a significant look. ‘Just as you told me,’ Agnes said to him.

  ‘You must not blame her too much. A woman like your sister has powerful needs that only a man can satisfy, and now that she has lost her husband . . . ’ He trails off meaningfully.

  ‘Well, she cannot have mine,’ says Agnes tartly. She turns on me, her pale eyes as cold as a January dawn. ‘Be off with you,’ she says. ‘You have caused nothing but trouble. You cannot come between my husband and me. We are too strong for you. How dare you come here and seduce my husband?’

  ‘Seduce?’ My laugh is too wild. I see them look at each other again. ‘It is your husband who makes the trouble, Agnes. Ask him how my bodice is torn like this! Ask him why my sleeves are hanging from my shoulders.’ I gesture wildly at myself. ‘Do you think I did this?’

  ‘You come here and throw yourself at him,’ she says stonily. ‘I saw him push you away. And you were not screaming for help, were you?’

  ‘That’s because—’ I stop. What is the point of trying to explain that I was thinking of her? She will not believe me. She is so under Francis’s influence that she will believe whatever he tells her to. ‘You’re not going to listen, are you?’

  Agnes looks away. I think she knows the truth, but won’t face it. Just as, deep down, I have known the truth that my sister dislikes me and haven’t faced that.

  ‘Agnes, you have to know this. Your husband lies.’ My voice is thin and rising with frustration. ‘Before I was wed, he tried to defile me. He tore at my clothes. He shoved his hand in my private parts. He tried to put his thing inside me!’ I shout when she claps her hands over her ears. ‘That is the truth, and I think you know it.’

  ‘Get out of here!’ she says, her voice shaking.

  ‘Gladly,’ I say. ‘Just keep him away from me,’ I go on, with a venomous look at Francis, and I push past them, reaching for the door before he can think of a reason to stop me.

  My hand closed around the door handle, and it felt so wrong that I almost jerked it back – it was round, not a latch – but I didn’t have time to think about it. I had to get out. Wrenching the door open, I ran through it, but the wooden stairs leading down to the hall had gone and I found myself outside, with the rain pelting into my face and the wind grabbing at my hair.

  I gasped at the shock of it, and my hands went to my midriff as the jarring impact of my return to the present sent me doubling over. My mind reeled, but the certainty that something was terribly wrong shouted at the edges of my consciousness. I had to concentrate.

  I pushed my wet hair back from my face and held it in my hands as I tried to focus on where I was. The wind snatched my breath and wrestled with the dark, tossing the rain around savagely. Terraced houses. Street lamps. I stared at them as if I had never seen such things before. A car drove slowly past, its windscreen wipers slapping furiously from side to side, and its tyres sent the puddles spraying outwards. It reminded me of the taxis in Jakarta, cruising through the downpours . . .

  I was drifting. Fear hammered at the back of my mind and I yanked myself into the present. I was in York. I was Grace and—

  Sophie! I spun around as the memory hit me, and received a faceful of rain that made me gasp and splutter again. I had to find Sophie! Frantically I looked up and down the empty street, blinking through the rain, but there was no sign of her. I remembered her storming out of the house, but then I had been rubbing my arm as I waited for Agnes to come back. I had no idea how long I had been standing with my hand on the door knob.

  Now Sophie might be anywhere. The thought of her out with Ash made my blood congeal with fear. She was in danger, and I had told Drew that I would stay with her. I had promised him that she would be safe with me.

  Panic welled up inside me as I stood there in the rain, being buffeted by the wind, while the old guilt crawled around my lungs and squeezed the air from them. If only I hadn’t slipped . . . I should have been more careful. I should have been ready. Instead I had wasted precious time in the past while Sophie ran headlong out to meet Ash. She was in danger, I knew it, and I had to find her.

  ‘Think, think, think . . . ’ My teeth chattered as I swiped the rain from my face once more. I couldn’t go tamely back inside and tell Drew that I had let Sophie go, without trying to find her. I had no idea where Ash held his gatherings. Vivien might know, I realized, but she had no phone. I would have to go there first.

  That’s when I remembered Sophie’s muttered conversation with Ash on the phone. ‘Millennium Bridge?’ she had echoed. Of course that’s where she was. I ran into the h
ouse and scrabbled frantically around for my phone and Drew’s key. I had never been to the bridge – it was too close to the river for me – but I knew where it was. It spanned the Ouse downstream of the city. There had been no bridge there in Hawise’s day, just the fields where the laundresses set their tubs and washed and scrubbed the city’s linen.

  The fields that I had seen in my nightmare.

  I was cold to the core at the thought of going there, but I couldn’t stop to think. It would take too long to call a taxi. By the time it had arrived and negotiated York’s one-way system, I could be halfway there.

  I didn’t bother with a coat – I was so wet, it wouldn’t make any difference – but ran out of the house, banging the door shut behind me. I set off at a jog, fumbling with the phone with slippery hands. I squinted at it to check the time and was shocked to see that it was almost ten. Sophie had left before eight, which meant that I had been trapped uselessly in the past for more than two hours.

  I had to slow down to dial Drew’s mobile, but I picked up speed as soon as it started ringing, and cursed as it went straight through to voicemail. He must be at the conference dinner. I’d insisted that he went to that too. ‘I’ll look after Sophie,’ I had said.

  ‘It’s me,’ I gabbled into the phone. ‘I’m sorry . . . so sorry . . . Sophie’s gone.’ I gulped some air and slowed down again so that I could speak more clearly through my heaving breaths. ‘I don’t trust Agnes, and I’m afraid of what Francis will do—’

  I broke off. That wasn’t right. I was getting confused. ‘I mean, what Ash will do,’ I said. There was no time to explain further. ‘I think . . . I think Sophie’s at the Millennium Bridge. I’m going there now. I don’t know what else to do. Please come as soon as you get this, Drew. I think she’ll need you.’ I paused just as I was about to cut the connection. ‘I’ll need you,’ I added, still breathless, but more quietly. ‘Please come.’

  Shoving the phone into the pocket of my jeans, I began to run again. It was hard going against the wind, which was driving the rain in almost horizontal sheets. I’d never noticed that the car park was on a slope, either, and as I laboured up it I had an incongruous flash of memory, of running up this same path with Elizabeth, laughing in the sunlight, with the certainty that our whole lives lay ahead of us.

  But that was Hawise’s memory, not mine, I reminded myself fiercely. I was desperately unfit, and my chest was heaving, my side aching with a stitch that made me wince with every step. My jeans and top were sodden and clung, cold and clammy, to my skin while the rain streamed over my face and down my neck. My suede boots splashed through the puddles and pinched my toes.

  The trick-and-treaters were long gone and the streets were virtually deserted. The pubs were open, and as I ran limping past I caught a fleeting glimpse of people laughing and talking, oblivious to the darkness and the danger of the night outside. I fought the conviction that I was running between two worlds, two times, and that if they looked out of the window they wouldn’t even see me.

  Certainly the few people I passed didn’t seem to notice me. They kept their heads bent beneath their umbrellas and didn’t pause to ask why I was staggering wildly through the streets.

  At the bottom of Goodramgate I had to stop. I put my hands on my thighs and bent over, dragging the air into my screaming lungs. I was terribly afraid for Sophie, so I couldn’t let myself rest, but pushed on, not letting myself wonder how I knew the shortest way to the river. Not letting myself listen to the voice in my head that was shrieking at me to turn back, to run away from the river, not towards it.

  I had to keep going. I couldn’t leave Sophie there. I couldn’t fail another child.

  The gale redoubled its onslaught as I staggered along Jubbergate. All I had to do was get to the end of the street, turn left and then right, and I would be at the river. No, no, no! screamed the voice in my head, but I ignored it. I would follow the river along to the bridge and I would find Sophie and . . . I wasn’t sure what I would do then, but I had to find her first.

  Blinking the rain desperately from my eyes so that I could see where I was going, I paused at the end of Jubbergate.

  I blink the rain from my eyes as I hesitate at the end of Jubbergate. Perhaps this is not a good idea. Agnes will always take Francis’s side. What is the point of trying to persuade her of my innocence? But I have to try. We cannot continue as we are. I cannot bear the thought that she believes I desire her husband, that I would act on it. Why would I do such a thing to my own sister? All I ask is to live quietly with my daughter, for my servants to go about their business unhindered. Jane’s face is still bruised, and this morning Rob found a dead cat left at our door. Agnes could put a stop to all of this. I have to ask her one more time.

  Francis is on some business with the Council of the North. I heard him say so, and the bad weather is no excuse not to wait on my Lord President, so I will find Agnes on her own and remind her that we are sisters.

  ‘You sure?’ Jane looked sceptical when I told her where I was going.

  ‘I have to try,’ I said. ‘I have to try for Bess.’

  Bess wanted to look at the book that Ned gave me when we were betrothed, and her small face was thunderous when I told her I was going out. I tucked my daughter’s hair back under her cap and bent to kiss her as I buttoned my gown.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ I promised. ‘I’ll read to you when I come back.’

  Mog was meowing and rubbing herself against my skirts. ‘As for you,’ I said, pointing at her, ‘you stay here.’ And I slipped out and shut the door behind me before she could follow.

  It is All Hallows’ Eve, and the sky is so dark with the storm that it might be night. The wind tugs at my cap and my gown is sodden. The shopkeepers have put up their shutters and retreated inside. The whole street seems to be sulking. Doors are left ajar to let in the meagre light, and candles flicker in the dim interiors.

  Agnes’s door is open too. A tallow candle burns on the chest and, in the guttering shadows, I don’t see her at first. Then I realize that she is crouched over some kind of jar.

  ‘Agnes?’

  She gasps and the jar slips from her hands as she leaps to her feet. I hear the crack as it hits the stone floor, where Charity is too lazy to lay rushes.

  ‘Hawise! What are you doing here?’ Her voice is tight with shock.

  ‘I didn’t mean to give you a fright.’

  I stoop to help pick up the pieces and the sour smell of piss hits me. ‘What on earth did you have in here?’ I sniff at a piece. It is unmistakable. I raise my brows. ‘Agnes?’

  ‘It is nothing to do with you!’ She snatches the pottery from me, but my eye is caught by the metal glinting in the dull candlelight.

  ‘Pins.’ I pick one up between forefinger and thumb. Suddenly I know what she has been doing. ‘You’re making a witch’s bottle.’

  Agnes sucks in her breath. ‘What if I am? It is All Hallows’ Eve. We do what we must to keep the evil forces away.’

  ‘And you think burying a bottle under your door will keep a witch away?’ I laugh. ‘That is just silly superstition, Agnes! And who are you trying to keep away? Your husband has had all the so-called witches hanged!’ My amusement fades bitterly as I remember Sybil hanging from the gibbet, tongue bulging and tiny feet twitching.

  ‘Not all,’ says Agnes and looks at me.

  There is a moment of stillness. The only sound is the rain drumming on the roof. I stare back at my sister and read the truth writ in her face.

  ‘You think I am a witch? Agnes, you cannot believe so.’

  ‘Can I not? Who else would flaunt their familiar so shamelessly?’ She points a shaking finger beside me, and there is Mog, gazing unblinkingly at Agnes.

  Mog, who I was so careful to shut in the kitchen.

  I swallow. ‘She is just a cat.’

  ‘No ordinary cat would follow you around so. Get it out of here!’ Agnes looks around wildly for a weapon and ends up throwing the broken pieces of pott
ery at Mog, who doesn’t even bother to move.

  I pick her up all the same. ‘Agnes, what are you thinking?’ I try to reason with her, but it is soon clear that she is beyond reason.

  ‘Francis told me of your spells at the time of the sickness,’ she says, panting. ‘He told me how it is with you. He knows you for what you are.’

  ‘And you believe him? We are sisters, Agnes!’

  ‘Are we? What do we know of you, after all? My father was bewitched by your mother, just as you bewitched Ned Hilliard. Who knows where she was from, or what she was?’

  ‘You never thought this before Francis suggested it to you,’ I protest.

  ‘Yes, I did. I never said it, because what was the point? You were always the favourite, always the one men looked at. I have spent my whole life in your shadow. No one ever looked at me while you were by.’

  ‘What matters it now? You have a husband of your own.’

  ‘Only because you did not want him!’

  ‘I thought he told you that I pursued him?’

  Confused, she puts a hand to her head. ‘You did! And when he refused you, you put a spell on him so that he cannot think of anyone but you.’ She shoves her face close to mine, careless of Mog’s warning hiss. ‘You unmanned him! In our bed he can do nothing for me unless I let him call me Hawise. A fine revenge you took on him!’

  I take a step back, hugging Mog to me. ‘Oh, Agnes . . . ’ I am sickened by the thought of it. I feel dirty knowing what Francis has put my sister through. ‘How do you bear it?’

  ‘What choice do I have? He is my husband, mine! He would love me if only you were gone,’ she says wildly.

  ‘Where can I go? I would if I could,’ I say bitterly. ‘We are both women, we have to stay where we are put.’

  ‘You are always lucky. It is always easy for you.’ Agnes hugs her arms to her and looks at me with hate-filled eyes. ‘Oh, you loved to vaunt your fortune over me, didn’t you? Your wealthy husband, your wealthy adoring husband. You couldn’t be like everyone else and make do. No, you have to have everything: a fine house in Coney Street, a moonstruck husband, a child. I tried to make sure you would not have that, at least, but you went out to that witch Sybil Dent, didn’t you?’