Time's Echo (10 page)

I push my way out of Monk Bar and through the crowd of vagrants who hang around by the cluster of carts and wagons and ramshackle booths. A woman hardly older than I sticks close beside me, her
hand held out. Her other arm holds a baby whose head lolls listlessly, and I dig a coin from my purse while the Minster bell strikes six o’clock.

‘God bless you, Mistress!’ she cries as she catches the penny and bites it, then slips back into the crowd.

I said I would meet Francis at the stile by the ash tree in Shooter Lane. My father has a garth there, an orchard really, but he never goes there. The last time I saw it, the old apple tree was
bent under the weight of apples that were never gathered, and the grass grew thick and rank with nettles where there could have been a crop. No one will see us there. For all my bravado at agreeing
to meet Francis, I am nervous. I don’t want my mistress to find out, so I am sticking to the back paths that criss-cross Paynley’s Crofts as far as I can, with Hap snuffing ahead of
me.

The long grass almost covers the path in parts. It is tangled with daisies and lady’s bedstraw, with willowherb and wild carrot and the soft blue of meadow cranesbill. My skirts brush
against the feathery tops of the grass and pick up the cuckoo spit that clings to their stems, but I have no time to stop and brush it off. I am late.

What if Francis has given up waiting for me already? Or what if he has forgotten? It is three days since we arranged to meet. He might have met any number of maids far prettier than I since
then.

At the crossroads by a cluster of thorn bushes I hesitate. I can hear boys shouting and jeering, and when I look along the path that crosses mine, I see them standing around a dark shape at the
ground and pelting it with stones. It is a dog, I think, a dog like Hap, and anger propels me forward before I have a chance to think.

‘Stop it!’ I cry. ‘Stop! How can you be so cruel? Shame on you!’

They are not very big boys and they jerk back at my cry, their faces pinched and defensive.

‘She’s a witch,’ the bravest of them flings back at me.

The others nod vigorously. ‘Mildewed Mr Bolt’s corn, she did.’

‘Aye, and turned me mam’s milk.’

And now I see it is not a dog at all. It is an old woman crumpled on the ground, an arm flung over her head to protect herself. It is Sybil Dent. In spite of myself I recoil, but then I am
ashamed. What harm has Widow Dent ever done me?

I whistle for Hap. These boys will turn their ignorance on him if I am not careful. But Hap is cowering against the hedge and won’t come any closer.

‘She’s allus forspeaking the cattle on the common.’ The boys are eyeing me warily, and I wonder if they know who I am, if they have heard about my strange eyes and my crippled
dog.

‘That’s nonsense,’ I say as firmly as I can.

‘It’s true. Mr Weddell’s man saw the Devil fly out of her eye!’

On the ground Sybil Dent groans and stirs, as if at the word ‘Devil’, and we all take a hasty step back.

I swallow. ‘He was blethering – probably drunk,’ I say. ‘She’s just an old beldam. Leave her alone now. Be off with you!’ I make shooing motions with my
hands.

For an instant they hold their ground. Hap chooses that moment to come slinking to my heel, and their eyes go round at the sight of his blackness and his poor withered paw.

‘It’s the Devil’s dog,’ the biggest boy whispers, backing away, looking from Hap to me in horror. I have a sudden urge to bare my teeth and jump at them, to shout
‘Boo!’ and watch them run away, but their nerve has already broken and they are taking to their heels, running down the path as if the Devil himself is behind them.

I am left alone with Widow Dent. I crouch down to her. ‘Are you hurt? Can you walk?’

I have forgotten how old she is. Her mouth is sunken into a seamed face, but her eyes, when she opens them, are fathomless pools that dry the breath on my tongue.

‘I can, if you will help me up,’ she says.

I put a hand under her arm and lift her to her feet. She weighs no more than a bundle of twigs, and her bones feel as thin and as fragile. Bent as she is, she barely reaches my shoulder as she
stands and looks around her.

Her gaze falls on Hap, who whines and cowers into the hedge. ‘Oh, don’t bother yourself,’ she says to the dog, ‘I’m only looking for my stick.’

A smooth piece of ash is lying a yard or so away, and I bend to pick it up. ‘Here,’ I say, handing it back to the widow.

‘I thank you.’

With the stick to steady her, she seems stronger, even powerful. My heart is beating fast, and all at once I understand why folk are so afeared of her. Then she lifts a shaky hand to touch the
blood trickling from her temple, where a stone caught her, and I feel ashamed again.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say helplessly.

Sybil’s eyes rest on my face and I find myself shifting from foot to foot, convinced that she can look deep inside me. Does she see my vanity, my deceit? Does she know that I am churning
with nervousness and excitement, with anticipation and fear for my reputation? With pity for her, and a deep unease?

‘’Tisn’t your fault,’ she says. ‘You didn’t throw stones.’

I glance up the path. I am thinking about Francis, waiting for me by the stile. ‘Can you get home from here?’

‘Aye, it’s not far.’

‘Good. Well, then . . . ’ I draw a breath. ‘I should go,’ I say.

I begin to turn away, but Widow Dent lays a hand on my sleeve. It is gnarled and knotted and mottled with age, but there is strength to it too, which stops me in my tracks, and Hap whimpers.

‘Go back,’ says the widow.

Her eyes have taken on an eerie blankness, just as they did that day Elizabeth and I met her. ‘Go back,’ she says tonelessly. ‘Go back while you still can.’

I look down at her in confusion. ‘I don’t understand. Go back where?’

‘Back the way you came,’ she says. ‘Or take a different path.’

I bite my lip. I am late as it is. What is the point of taking a different path?

‘
Go back!
’ The urgency in the widow’s voice makes the fine hairs at the back of my neck stand up.

Frightened, I step back from her and click my fingers for Hap. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I have to go.’

Picking up my skirts, I run along the path, to the ash tree and to Francis, with Hap at my heels.

I choose not to go back. I go on.

I am nearly there when I stumble over a twisted root and pitch forwards.

I jerked awake, heart slamming from the fall, and found myself staring blankly at my computer where the screensaver circled remorselessly. How long had I been asleep?
Dry-mouthed, I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes.

I wanted to tell myself that it had been no more than a dream, but how could it have been? I might have been sleeping, but a story was unfolding that was too vivid and too coherent for a
dream.

Hawise’s story, not mine.

I lowered my hands, not quite steadily, and stared at them. I could remember the roughness of the Widow’s cloak under my fingers, how fragile she had felt as I helped her up. I remembered
the smell of the midden by the door, the dull gleam of the pewter in the Beckwiths’ hall. I churned still with a jumble of guilt and fear and anticipation.

And frustration.

I wanted to know if Francis had waited, whether the assignation had been as sweet and thrilling as I had longed for it to be.

As
I
had longed for it to be? I caught myself up.
I
hadn’t been running through the crofts. I was Grace Trewe, fixed firmly in the twenty-first century. There was no way
I had been in sixteenth-century York. But if I accepted that it had been more than a dream, that meant that Hawise was in my head . . . and what did
that
mean?

Possession
. The thought of someone else in my head, someone else controlling me, was terrifying. My mind veered away from the idea, and I clutched at my theory about Hawise’s
story circling in some cybertime instead. It allowed me to be fascinated and intrigued by what was happening while keeping the experience firmly at arm’s length. I couldn’t believe in
ghosts and clamorous spirits, but a pseudo-scientific explanation suited me fine.

I was going to stick with that.

Putting the computer off my lap, I swung my legs to the floor and stood up.

‘
Bess . . .
’

I jerked round at the whisper, and the room skittered back in alarm.

I had forgotten Bess. She didn’t fit into my nice, safe theory. Her name made the air clench with grief and fear and I didn’t like it.

‘Stop it,’ I said out loud, and I didn’t let myself think about whether I was talking to myself or the room.

Or to Hawise.

Unable to move, I stared at myself in the dim mirror over the mantelpiece. My face was white and strained, my expression stark.

‘It’s in my head,’ I said out loud. ‘It isn’t real.’

‘
Bess . . .
’ The whisper came again, but it was fainter now and I drew an unsteady breath. It was all in my mind. As long as I remembered that, I would be fine.

But when I turned round to pick up my laptop, there was an apple half-hidden under a cushion, rotting beside it. Its skin was browning and beginning to pucker with mould.

I looked at that apple for a long time. I didn’t want to pick it up. I knew I was being ridiculous. I knew, logically, that it couldn’t be the apple I thought I’d thrown away
the night before, because that had been a figment of my imagination. There had been no trace of it that morning, which meant that I’d dreamt it.

I wasn’t dreaming now.

And that meant it was just an apple, I told myself. Lucy must have put it there (
under a cushion?
) and forgotten about it. Of course it would start to rot. My skin crawled at the
thought that I had been sitting right next to it. I would only have had to move a little and I would have squashed it like a slug. I felt my gorge rise and I clutched my arms together, fighting
down the revulsion.

I had to get a carrier bag and use a knife to manoeuvre the apple into it. Irrational or not, I couldn’t bear to touch it. I took it outside and threw it in the wheelie bin, and when I
went back inside it seemed to me that the air was lighter. The misery had dissipated, the room was empty, and in my head Hawise had gone.

‘Interesting ceremony,’ said Drew with a sidelong glance at me as I joined him by the window.

‘Wasn’t it?’ I tipped my head from side to side, stretching out the kinks.

It had been a busy few days. I was feeling a lot more in control by then. My imagination finally seemed to have settled down, and there had been no more dreams of Tudor York.

I’d convinced myself that Hawise was no more than a bizarre crossed line, a blip in time. I chose not to examine why I was being so careful to keep my mind firmly fixed in the present, or
why I was so afraid of succumbing to the twitch at the back of my brain. I did what I always do when I don’t want to face something. I just shut down part of my mind and pretended it
wasn’t happening. I’d always been good at compartmentalizing.

I kept myself occupied. I found myself a part-time job at a language school and began to tackle the worst of the clutter in Lucy’s house. I folded up her clothes and carried bags of them
along to the charity shops in Goodramgate. According to John Burnand, the house was ‘eminently sellable’, but I planned to have a good clear-out and slap on a coat of fresh paint before
I put it on the market. There was a lot to do, but I didn’t mind. As long as I was busy I wasn’t thinking about Hawise.

‘I might have known Lucy wouldn’t go for a straightforward funeral,’ I said to Drew, breaking off a tiny piece of cake from the plate he had put down beside him. ‘I
suppose I should think myself lucky I didn’t have to sacrifice a chicken, or collect up newts’ eyes and toads’ toes.’

At least Lucy had left detailed instructions, so I hadn’t had to do anything but get in touch with Vivien Price, the priestess who had performed the ceremony, and invite everyone back for
poppy-seed cake and nettle tea afterwards. The menu had been decided after consultation with Sophie. I could have done with something stronger than tea myself, but Sophie seemed glad to be involved
and even offered to make the cake.

‘It was nice of you to come too,’ I said to Drew. As non-believers, he and I had been relegated to observers at the back, and I had been glad of his company. ‘I know you
don’t have much time for all that alternative stuff.’

‘Lucy was a neighbour,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Where else would I get to hear such wonderful chanting?’

I laughed. I liked Drew’s dryness, and the way his eyes crinkled when he was amused. He was a bit older than most of my fellow teachers, but I always felt very comfortable with him. I
wasn’t planning on staying in York any longer than I had to, but if I had been, I thought he could have been a friend.

‘The chanting was pretty dire, wasn’t it? But Lucy would have loved it, and it’s what she wanted, so I guess that’s what’s important. To be honest, there were bits
of the ceremony that I found sort of moving too,’ I confessed. ‘You’ve got to admit that Vivien has presence.’