Time's Echo

by Pamela Hartshorne

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay here.’

  Drew dropped his battered briefcase on the breakfast bar and kissed the side of my neck as I stood at the cooker.

  ‘I found something interesting when I was looking at probate inventories yesterday,’ he said.

  His research leave was over, and he spent two nights every week in London, teaching and lecturing. When he had the time he worked on his book, poking around in the archives for evidence of neighbourliness. Quite how that had taken him to wills and probate inventories I wasn’t sure, but he seemed to think it was useful. He was always coming home with little bits of information that he’d found interesting, so I didn’t take much notice at first.

  ‘Oh?’ I blew on a spoonful of the sauce I was making and tested it. It needed more salt.

  ‘I think I found Bess.’

  The wooden spoon clattered into the pan. ‘Bess?’

  Nearly a year had passed since that terrible night by the river.

  I had had my ticket booked, so I went to Mexico as planned, and I had a good time with Mel, but I came back. I missed Drew. He sold his house in the Groves and we bought one together on the other side of the city. I got my old job back teaching English as a foreign language. It wasn’t always easy, but I was learning to talk about what I felt, instead of booking myself on the first plane out of the country.

  Sophie drifted in and out as it suited her. She never again mentioned Ash or the Temple of the Waters. Instead she put her hair in dreadlocks, became a vegan and joined an animal-rights group. It made mealtimes a bit of a challenge when she was staying, and Drew grumbled about the number of nut roasts that he had to eat, but otherwise he was just glad to have her there.

  We didn’t talk about that night much. As far as Sophie was concerned, it was something to be forgotten, and for Drew too, I thought, it was over. I pretended it was for me as well, but I knew that it wasn’t, not completely. I never slipped back into Hawise’s life again, but every now and then I would catch the smell of rotting apples, or Bess’s name like a sigh in the air.

  Now I wiped my hands on a tea towel. ‘What about Bess?’ I demanded. All at once my heart was pounding.

  Drew rifled through his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of lined paper. ‘I was looking through wills, to see how many friends and neighbours are mentioned, and I came across this.’

  He handed me the paper. It was covered with pencilled notes made in his neat handwriting.

  ‘St Botolph’s parish,’ I read. I skimmed the notes, but they all ran into each other. ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘Here.’ Drew pointed. ‘The last will and testament of Jane Haxby, 1619.’

  ‘Haxby . . . ’ I said slowly. ‘That was Rob’s surname.’

  ‘And Haxby is a York name. That’s why it caught my eye.’ Drew took the notes back. ‘Jane left a valuable silver dish to one Elizabeth Turner, who, it seems, wasn’t a relative.’

  My mouth was dry, my pulse booming in my ears. I wanted so badly to believe that it was true. ‘Elizabeth wasn’t exactly an uncommon name at the time, and Turner doesn’t tell us anything.’

  ‘No.’ Drew nodded as he rummaged in his briefcase for another piece of paper. ‘Where is it now . . . ? Ah!’ He pulled it out. ‘Now, look at this. I looked up Elizabeth Turner to see if she had made a will of her own, and she did. She had three sons, and a daughter. Do you want to guess what she called her?’

  I stared at him. ‘Hawise?’ I whispered, and he smiled.

  ‘Hawise. And that isn’t a common name at that time. It isn’t conclusive proof,’ he warned. ‘At the most it’s suggestive, but it’s interesting, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes. Interesting.’ My heart was soaring. Drew could talk all he liked about evidence, but I knew straight away what had happened. Bess had made it to London. She had survived. And that meant Francis and Agnes hadn’t found her.

  ‘Jane and Rob must have taken her to London,’ I said excitedly. ‘They must have been on their way before Agnes and Francis got back from the river.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Drew. ‘We’ll never know.’

  I imagined them bursting into the house and finding it empty. Jane was canny. As soon as she saw Hawise being prodded to the river, she must have known what would happen. She knew Hawise wanted her to save Bess, and she had. She would have found the coins, and Rob had a head for business. They had enough to start and make a success of their lives, and they had cared for Bess.

  Perhaps Francis had been left with the house in Coney Street, but it would have been a hollow victory. Cheated of Bess, the object of his future obsession, he was left bereft. I didn’t think it would have been long before he turned on Agnes and blamed her for Hawise’s death. Or perhaps she turned on him, when she realized that getting rid of Hawise made little difference to his feelings for her. Either way, I thought with satisfaction, there could have been little happiness for either of them.

  Drew was watching my face. ‘And there’s another thing you might like,’ he said. ‘Bess’s daughter Hawise married in her turn. Do you want to know what her husband’s name was?’

  ‘What?’ I was still fizzing with the certainty that Bess had got away. The fear that she had spent her life as the object of Francis’s perverted obsession had haunted me nearly as much as it had Hawise.

  ‘His name was Trewe,’ said Drew. ‘John Trewe.’

  I stared at him. ‘That’s my name,’ I said, as if he didn’t know, and he nodded.

  ‘Any idea where your family come from?’

  I licked my dry lips. ‘London, I think,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure. Do you think . . . ?’

  Drew held up a hand. ‘I’m an historian, remember. I like evidence. So I’m not thinking anything. I’ll admit that it’s a coincidence, that’s all.’

  A coincidence. I smiled at him. It was enough for me.

  The next day I picked some rosemary from the bush I’d planted in the little courtyard garden and walked down to the Millennium Bridge. I still didn’t like the Ouse much, but it was a crisp, clear day and the river was quiet. The merest ripples disturbed its surface and made the reflected sunlight glitter.

  I stood on the bridge and waited until no one was round. Then I lifted the rosemary to my nose and breathed in the smell of it, just as Hawise had done so often.

  ‘Rosemary for remembrance,’ I said, and I dropped it into the water, twig by twig. ‘She was safe,’ I promised Hawise. ‘Your Bess was safe and she was happy, I think. She never forgot you, and she never blamed you. You can rest now.’

  I put my hand on my belly and felt the first flutter of life there. I’d told Drew, but we hadn’t broken the news to Sophie yet. ‘If it’s a girl, I’ll call her Elizabeth,’ I said out loud. ‘I’ll look after her, I promise.’

  There was a flash in the water – it might have been a bird – and then a ripple in the air like a sigh of relief behind me. I turned quickly, but the sun was in my eyes and I couldn’t see.

  ‘Hawise?’

  But there was no one there. Only the dazzling light and the sound of children playing in the field on the far side of the bridge, and after a moment I turned and walked away from the river.

  The idea for this book grew out of my research on the wardmote-court returns of early modern York. In the late sixteenth century these courts dealt primarily with nuisances – petty offences that affected the quality of life for the neighbourhood as a whole: noisy neighbours, blocked sewers, potholed streets and broken fences. The entries are brief, repetitive and confusing in many places, but they offer an intriguing glimpse into everyday life in the Elizabethan city. The individuals who appear in these records were not powerful nobles or the destitute, nor were they criminals or sinners. They were just ordinary people living ordinary lives, and they were concerned with many of the issues that still concern us today.

  Writing Time’s Echo, I’ve been torn between my training as a historian and my instincts as a writer, for whom it is impossible not to wonder and
speculate about the stories behind some of the unrevealing entries in the records. There really was a mercer called William Beckwith, although we don’t know if he lived in Goodramgate or not. John Harper, a Scottish tailor of questionable reputation, had a stall in Stonegate, while Christopher Milner, Anne Ampleforth and other incidental characters did indeed live in York in the late sixteenth century. Miles Fell was a miller – clearly an unpopular one – whose dog really did bite Nicholas Ellis on the leg.

  However, this is a work of fiction. Hawise (pronounced Ha-wees-e), Ned Hilliard, Francis Bewley and the other main characters exist only in the imagination. Like other historical novelists, I have aimed to create a world that is convincing and as authentic as I can make it, but Hawise’s world is just that: hers, and hers alone. It does not pretend to be an accurate historical account of ‘how it was’, and so I have taken liberties with the evidence on occasions. There was no plague in York in the 1570s or ’80s, for instance. The city suffered from outbreaks of plague, ‘pestilence’ and the sweating sickness in the first half of the century, but after 1558 York was free of major epidemics for nearly fifty years until a terrible outbreak of plague in 1604. Whether this was due to luck or to measures taken by the authorities is a matter for discussion, but the disease was certainly a very real threat at the time, and other cities and their inhabitants suffered in the way Hawise and her neighbours do in the novel. There will always be a tension between the storyteller and the historian, but in a novel the balance inevitably tips towards the needs of the story.

  Writing is popularly supposed to be a solitary activity, but for me Time’s Echo has been a shared enterprise from the start, and I am delighted now to be able to acknowledge and thank those who have made it possible. I could not have done it without the support and encouragement of many friends, most especially Diana Nelson, Julia Pokora, Stella Hobbs and Dr Isabel Davis, and John Harding, who (inadvertently!) set the whole process of writing this book in motion. Dr Ailsa Mainman and Barbara Hannay took the time to read drafts at various stages and offer perceptive comments. My greatest debt, however, is to Dr Richard Rowland, whose knowledge of writing in general, and the sixteenth century in particular, has been invaluable, and whose sofa and wine supplies saw me through many crises of confidence. I cannot thank any of them enough.

  Stephanie Moon-Smith kindly shared her experience of the Boxing Day tsunami with me, and many others were generous with their time and expertise. I would like to take this opportunity to thank particularly the City of York Council, Dr Jeremy Goldberg, Professor Neil Greenberg, Dr Jane Grenville, Steve Hodgson, Claire Rugg, Dr Tony Rugg, Dr Sethina Watson and the Reverend Canon Glyn Webster. Needless to say, any mistakes, deliberate or otherwise, are entirely my own.

  Finally, it is a pleasure to be able to thank my agent, Caroline Sheldon, for setting Time’s Echo on its way; and, of course, Wayne Brookes and the team at Pan Macmillan, for the enthusiasm and expertise that have seen it through to the end.

  After a varied career including stints as a foreign-news desk secretary, cook on an outback cattle station, production assistant and expedition interpreter, Pamela stumbled into writing as a way of funding a PhD in Medieval Studies. For the past twenty years she has been able to combine her historical research with an award-winning career as a romance writer, and is now also a writing tutor and freelance project editor. She lives in York.

  Follow Pamela on Twitter @PamHartshorne

  First published 2012 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London n1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-230-76602-0 EPUB

  Copyright © Pamela Hartshorne 2012

  Map artwork © Fred van Deelen

  The right of Pamela Hartshorne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Dedication page

  Map

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Author biography

  Copyright page