Time's Echo

by Pamela Hartshorne

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘All right. I’ll nurse him. I promise.’

  Francis is arching on the bed when I go back to him. A few minutes and the fever has taken a firmer hold of him. In truth, I wouldn’t leave a dog in this state, so I collect my cloths and my bowl of lavender and sage. I go through the motions of rubbing Sybil’s ointment on his chest, hating the feel of him. I even put the little magic bag around his neck, although much good it has done any of the others.

  I wait for him to die and wonder how I am going to persuade Agnes to open the door. Once I leave Francis to find some food in the kitchen. It is crowded with the ghosts of my little maids, and my chest is so tight I can hardly breathe, but I fix my thoughts on Bess. As long as she is alive, I can endure.

  ‘Leave the food,’ Agnes orders through the door. ‘I cannot risk the sickness getting into the room.’

  I can hear Bess talking in her own special language behind Agnes. She sounds cross, but not distressed, so I leave the tray on the floor outside the door and go back to Francis, who lies naked and writhing under the sheet.

  I have lost track of time by now. How long is it since we could go outside to the market without thinking about it? Since we could laugh and talk and not imagine that, at the end of the day, half of us will be dead? Sometimes I think about the life I had – about waking with Ned, my face pressed against the warm skin of his shoulder, about laughing in the kitchen with Margery and the maids, and Bess on my hip – and it seems like an impossibly distant dream, another world entirely, not something that happened to me.

  My life now is just sponging and cleaning up mess. Francis is pathetic. His sly swagger is all gone, and he grasps at my hand and cries out for me in his delirium. Occasionally I think it is just as well that Agnes is not here to hear him. My flesh would creep, if I had the energy to be horrified. For now I close my mind to it.

  I breathe through my mouth as that makes the stench easier to bear, and the sound of my breath is all that breaks the silence that has been thrown over the household like a coverlet on a table.

  In one way at least, nursing Francis is easier than the others. At least this time I don’t care. I treat him as I would any living creature, but when I see him suffering I don’t feel as if my heart is being ripped out of my body.

  And perhaps because I don’t care, Francis lives.

  When I realize that the fever has broken and he is going to survive, bitterness against God swells up inside me and clogs my throat, so that I can hardly breathe with it. Why him? Why Francis and not Ned? All those good folk who have died, and Francis – sly and malevolent Francis – lives. It is bitter as wormwood on my tongue.

  ‘Thirsty,’ Francis croaks.

  Burning with resentment, I help him lift his head and sip some ale. I don’t like touching him.

  ‘I’m so hot,’ he says as he lies down, and I want to wipe my hands on my skirts to get rid of the feel of him.

  Wearily I fetch more water and wring out my cloth once more, but when I begin to sponge the sweat from his naked body, his thing stirs and stiffens. Snatching my cloth away in disgust, I find Francis watching me between slitted lids, and his expression makes me shudder.

  ‘I will fetch your wife to you,’ I say coldly.

  ‘But I like it when you touch me,’ he says.

  I make to step away, but he grabs my hand and pulls me down into his rankness and tries to kiss me. He takes me by surprise, so that I almost fall on top of him. I struggle frantically, retching with disgust, and finally manage to disentangle myself from him, thanking God that he is still so weak.

  ‘Don’t touch me again,’ I warn him, wiping the back of my hand shakily across my mouth. ‘I will pretend that you are delirious still, so this stays between us, but if you touch me again, I will go to Agnes, I swear it.’

  ‘Ned is dead.’ His eyes are feverish – or are they mad? ‘We’ll get married.’

  I back away from him. ‘Agnes is not dead,’ I say clearly.

  ‘If she were,’ says Francis, and I remember what he said about his master. I will see to it. Will he see to my sister, too?

  I had not thought it possible to feel any greater horror, but I feel cold as I look at him. He is a madman, and my sister is bound to him. I need to keep her safe. I have lost too many of those I care for already.

  ‘You are brain-sick,’ I tell him, shaking. ‘Even if my sister were a hundred times dead, I would never marry you, Francis Bewley! Never! I would rather rut with a pig. Now, I will go and get your wife for you.’

  Agnes, persuaded that Francis has survived, throws herself on him, thanking God and praising Him, and I can’t help thinking that she should rather be thanking me. Poor Agnes, married to a man with a warped mind.

  All I can do is pretend that he was delirious. I bury the knowledge of his lust and his madness and close the door on it, because I cannot face it, not now that I am alone. I hold my daughter close, rocking her in my arms and breathing in her sweet smell, and her warmth is all that keeps me from the blackness of utter despair.

  I was in the sitting room, clutching a cushion to my chest, crooning softly as I rocked backwards and forwards. As in the street, it wasn’t a jarring return to the present this time, but a gradual awareness that I couldn’t smell Bess’s hair any more, that my cheek was pressed against the tufty fringe of the cushion instead of the top of her head.

  And that an apple lay rotting on the coffee table in front of me.

  Very slowly I let the cushion fall onto my lap and sat staring ahead, my bones aching with an old, old grief. I felt empty and very lonely, and I wanted Drew.

  But when I called him, I could hear the phone next door ringing on and on unanswered. The more it rang, the sadder I felt and the more I wanted to talk to Drew. I knew he hated talking on his mobile in public, but I tried it anyway, and to my relief he answered.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m on a train,’ he said, lowering his voice so furtively that I couldn’t help smiling. It always amused me how shifty he sounded on his mobile. Sophie did a wonderful imitation of him.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘That conference I told you about.’

  ‘Oh . . . yes. I forgot about that.’

  There was a pause. I could hear the train guard in the background, making some announcement about the buffet bar.

  ‘Did you want something?’ Drew asked after a moment.

  I thought about telling him that I’d just wanted to hear his voice, but decided against it. It would just make me seem needy. ‘I just wondered if you were around for a drink, that’s all.’

  ‘I won’t be back until Sunday night, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, okay.’ The bitterness of my disappointment caught me unawares.

  ‘Is everything all right, Grace?’

  ‘Fine.’ I forced brightness into my voice. I could hardly tell him I was distressed by the scenes of sickness and death I had just endured. Drew had never accepted that Hawise was real, I knew, and he certainly wouldn’t want to talk me out of my depression about the plague that had hit York four hundred years earlier, while he was sitting on a train.

  ‘Why do I even bother asking?’ he sighed. ‘It’s always fine with you.’

  ‘Well, it is.’ My eye fell on the apple that was still sitting on the table, and I looked away.

  ‘What are you going to be doing this weekend, since you’re feeling so fine?’

  I hadn’t thought about it. The truth was that I was used to him being around, and I’d fallen into the habit of seeing him most evenings. I didn’t like the idea of spending it on my own, especially not now that Hawise was creeping back into my mind and there would be no Drew to keep my attention firmly fixed on the present. There was no fascination in the past this time, just a wrenching grief. I didn’t want to know any more. I already knew too much.

  ‘I might go away,’ I said slowly, the idea forming in my mind along with the words. As soon as I said it, I knew that was just
what I needed. Why hadn’t I thought about it before? I might not be in a position to go travelling just yet, but there was no reason I shouldn’t spend a weekend away. It would be good for me.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Drew. ‘Where are you thinking of going?’

  ‘The school’s running a weekend trip to Edinburgh. I’ll tag along with them. I’m sure they’d be glad of another teacher.’

  Sure enough, Jan, who organized the trips, was delighted when I told her that I’d like to go. ‘We’re meeting at the station at nine-thirty on Saturday morning. I’ve made a block booking, so don’t be late.’

  Overnight rain had been blown away to leave a bright morning when I set off for Edinburgh that Saturday. A brisk wind chivvied billowy, bruised-looking clouds across the sky. Every now and then the sun would burst valiantly out, and I had to screw up my eyes against the brightness, but the moment I pulled out my sunglasses, it would be blotted out once more.

  I was relieved to have got through the night without dreaming of Hawise’s anguish, and the thought of getting away lightened my steps. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t thought of it before.

  Because you didn’t want to leave Drew? I scowled, embarrassed by the very idea. It was high time I moved on.

  It was always so windy around the Minster that I didn’t take much notice at first when my walking became laboured, as if I was heading into a gale. I was thinking about the station and hoping I had left enough time to get there, and it was a while before I realized that something was wrong.

  The wind was too strong and the light, once I started to notice it, was crystalline with menace. I paused for breath outside the south transept, and when I glanced uneasily up, the gargoyles seemed to jump out at me, leering and jeering. I could have sworn they had turned their heads to watch me as I passed.

  There was a dragging feeling in my head too, like fingers digging into my brain, pulling me back, back, back. I set my teeth when I realized what was happening. I wasn’t going to give in to Hawise on this one. I was going to Edinburgh.

  Doggedly I leant forward, pushing my way through the air, which had grown gluey and padded with resistance. Every step was a huge effort. I started to feel dizzy with it.

  I made it past the Red House and across at the lights. My legs were trembling by the time I passed the library, and when I got to the entrance to Museum Gardens I had to lean against the wall to rest, my breath coming in jerky puffs. The station seemed impossibly distant on the other side of the river.

  The river where Lucy had drowned. Where Hawise had drowned. Where I would drown too, if I couldn’t shake her hold on me, I realized with a burst of horror.

  I had to get away, but the recent rain had left the Ouse swollen and sullen under the bridge, and the thought of crossing it filled me with terror. I made myself leave the safety of the wall and face the river while my mind screamed: No! No!

  I took a hesitant step forward, then another, but the conviction that I was stepping out over the edge of a cliff was so strong that I stopped again in the middle of the pavement, my skin clammy with dread. This was all wrong. There was no bridge. I should be going down to the ferry, not walking out high into the air as if I had wings.

  That was Hawise thinking. I struggled to push her from my mind. There was no ferry any more. Instead there was a perfectly good bridge. I hadn’t crossed the river once since I had arrived in York, I realized. Subconsciously I had been avoiding it, but there was no other way to get to the station.

  It was ridiculous to think that I couldn’t cross the river, I reminded myself fiercely. Of course I could. The bridge was real. It was concrete and tarmac and stone. All I had to do was put one foot in front of the other and not look at the water.

  Tourists and day-trippers were flooding up from the station, walking three and sometimes four abreast across the bridge with its narrow pavement. They weren’t tumbling through the air, down into the cold, brown clutch of the river. The bridge was real enough.

  I took a deep breath and made myself walk on, but the morning had taken on a nightmarish quality. I couldn’t shake the conviction that I was walking along a tightrope, suspended high over the water. I didn’t know what was real any more.

  There were too many people. They pushed towards me like cattle, their faces terrifyingly blank, bearing me back towards the Minster. I couldn’t get past, and icy panic gripped my guts. It was as if the world had turned against me, and I was alone amongst aliens. If I fell, I was sure they would simply have marched over me.

  As it was, the crowds broke around me as I faltered in the middle of the pavement, but there were always more people behind. An army of tourists, marching on up to Betty’s and the Shambles and the Minster. They just kept on coming, many of them wearing little more than their shifts. They were grotesque: their heads were uncovered, the women’s often polled short, their legs bare or encased in strange hose – a great, intimidating troop of shameless vagrants flaunting their nakedness, jostling past each other without courtesy.

  I blinked, and they were once more just ordinary people, but Hawise’s horrified reaction at the amount of flesh on display lingered and I averted my eyes in disgust. My heart was banging against my ribs, my blood rushing in my ears. There were so many of them that I couldn’t get past.

  Go back! Go back! You can’t do this!

  Ignoring Hawise, I gathered the last of my courage and tried to dodge out off the kerb to get past the advancing hordes, but a bicycle almost ran me down. The cyclist swore at me as he swerved and shot past, and then I looked up in terror to see a monstrous, roaring wagon bearing down on me, but there were no horses and the sound of it filled my head so that I could only gape at it, paralysed by fear.

  ‘Watch it!’ Just in time, someone grabbed my arm and yanked me back onto the pavement as the bus swept past with a blare of its horn.

  ‘Th-thank you,’ I stammered, but my saviour had already moved on.

  I fought my way across the pavement to the wall and leant against it, pushing my palms against the stone to reassure myself that it was real. It felt real, but I was no longer sure any more. My head was ringing with resistance and I was sweating.

  My phone bleeped. A text from Jan. R u coming???

  Shaking, I pressed back into the wall. Sorry, sick, I texted back. Can’t make it.

  As soon as I turned back, that horrific drag in my head lessened. I pretended that I was waiting for the Park-and-Ride bus so that I could lean against the railings and rest my shaky legs. My heart was galloping frantically around in my chest. People were looking human again. I listened to snatches of conversation from passers-by and it all seemed so normal that I began to wonder if I had imagined that terrifying press of inhumanity blocking the bridge. When my knees felt steadier I decided to test it once more. I had missed the train, but surely I couldn’t be trapped here?

  The moment I stood up and turned to the bridge, the sick feeling was back, rolling over me in waves. I couldn’t even make it as far as the bridge this time. The tightness in my head was unendurable. I thought my brain was going to explode. Sick and giddy, I stumbled back in the direction of the Minster, and instantly the feeling subsided.

  So much for my imagination. I was frightened by the intensity of Hawise’s hold on me, and resentful of her power. I hadn’t realized until then that I was trapped. I’ve always hated that feeling.

  At the junction I could see passengers queuing to get on a local bus. I might not get to the station, but what was to stop me getting on a bus and leaving the city that way? Defiantly I joined the queue, but the closer I got to the door, the deeper the pain dug into my head. By the time I got there I couldn’t even lift my foot to put it on the step, and I had to hang onto the bus for support.

  ‘You getting on or not, love?’

  I looked up at the bus driver’s face. He looked mildly concerned and impatient, obviously keen to stick to his schedule, but unwilling to encourage me on if I was going to be sick all over his bus, which was proba
bly what I looked like.

  Slowly, I shook my pounding head. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m staying here.’

  I didn’t even bother trying a taxi. I knew getting in a car would drive the pain in my head past endurance.

  Always in the past I had simply packed my bags and moved on when things got difficult, but now I couldn’t even do that. I wondered what would happen if I asked Drew to put me in a car and drive me to an airport. Just thinking about it had those fingers digging agonizingly into my mind. I had a nasty feeling I’d be in such a state they’d never let me on a plane, even if I could get as far as a check-in desk.

  I watched the bus drive away, and then I turned and walked back the way I had come.

  Without quite knowing what I was doing, I found myself at the west front of the Minster, looking up at the soaring stone. I’d been inside before, wandering incuriously around, more out of a sense of obligation than anything else, but now something in the great building beckoned. I was exhausted and shaky, close to tears, and I wanted nothing more than to sit quietly somewhere peaceful and have my head to myself again. It was awful, that feeling as if I had a succubus in my brain, but as I made my way round to the south-transept entrance, Hawise unlatched herself from my mind and faded, leaving me shakier than ever.

  I had forgotten there was an entrance charge. ‘I just want to sit,’ I said, as I fumbled in my purse, even the small act of finding money suddenly too much for me. My desperation must have shown in my face, because the volunteer on the admissions desk told me not to worry about the money.

  ‘The Zouche Chapel is reserved for prayer,’ she said, pointing. ‘It’ll be quiet in there.’

  The nave and choir were full of tour groups. It wasn’t exactly noisy, but even the muted buzz of reverence jangled in my ears, and when I unlatched the old oak door and stepped down the worn steps into the chapel, I was grateful to find that I was alone.

  I’d never been a churchgoer. Weddings and Christmas, my mother’s funeral . . . I didn’t know what to do with myself in a church. I eyed the altar and fought the impulse to kneel in front of it. I didn’t believe in God and, anyway, I didn’t know how to pray. I wandered fretfully around the chapel instead, peering at the fragments of old stained glass in one of the windows. A fierce wren pecking at a spider. Monkeys carrying banners. A windmill. Some fish. These would have been old images, long before Hawise was born.