Time's Echo (13 page)

‘Say I wanted to find out if someone existed in the past,’ I said to Drew, carefully casual. ‘How would I go about it?’

My bare feet were tucked up beneath me as I balanced a glass of Pinot Grigio on the arm of a chair in his study. We had met at our front gates. I was laden with books, he with Sainsbury’s
bags.

‘You look tired,’ Drew said.

‘I teach until seven on Tuesdays. It’s always a long day.’

I didn’t tell him how badly I was sleeping. I was tense when I went to bed, afraid that if I gave up consciousness, Hawise would be back. I kept dropping off, then jerking myself awake,
heart pounding with relief to find myself still in the twenty-first century.

I hadn’t . . . what was the word? slipped? tipped? . . . plunged back into Hawise’s life since I stood there gaping at Ned Hilliard’s marriage proposal, but I could feel her
tugging at my mind, desperate to draw me back. I didn’t want to go. I might be intrigued by her story, and fascinated by seeing Elizabethan life through her eyes, but I was frightened too by
the sheer intensity of the experience.

I clung still to Drew’s idea of recovered memory, but it was wearing thin. It was increasingly hard to accept that a random memory could account for the frightening intensity of my
experiences as Hawise. When I thought about films I had seen or books I had read, I remembered atmosphere. I remembered the story, the
feel
of it. I didn’t know how thin and sour the
wine tasted. I didn’t smell the freshly woven rush mats on the floor, the way their sweetness drifted on the air as I crushed them beneath my feet and mingled with the scent of camomile and
fleabane strewn among them. I didn’t feel the slight bump in the glaze of the jug’s handle. I might have remembered the clang of the church bells that punctuated the day, and I could
easily have remembered what a gown looked like on the screen, but taste and smell and feel . . . how could I remember those in such startling detail from having watched a film?

But I was resisting the alternative. I didn’t want to be possessed. The very word made me sweat. Possession meant control, and the thought of anyone playing around with the mind I kept so
carefully guarded was horrific. I couldn’t bear it when boyfriends tried to get too close, let alone a girl who had been dead for a good four hundred years – if she had ever existed at
all.

‘Come and have a drink,’ Drew had said, shifting all his bags into one hand so that he could manoeuvre the key into the lock. ‘I could do with one.’

It was the opportunity I had been waiting for. I was tired of Hawise probing relentlessly at my mind the moment I let my guard down. It was fine when I was teaching, but sometimes when I walked
along the streets the air would waver and the thin veil between this time and that would billow seductively. I learnt to steel myself, to fix my attention on the present: something plastic,
something electronic.

It was time to take back control, I’d decided. I would approach the problem rationally, and the first thing was to establish whether or not Hawise was real. If there was no evidence that
any of the story unfolding in my head was true, then I would have to accept that she was a figment of my imagination. I wasn’t sure which I wanted her to be: a ghost, or a symptom that I was
losing my grip on reality. Either way, I would know what I was dealing with.

I’d googled what I could about Elizabethan York, but that didn’t get me very far. The library was my next step, but it seemed ridiculous not to make use of a specialist on my
doorstep before that, especially when I didn’t understand enough to know what I was looking for. I’d broached the subject carefully, knowing already that Drew wouldn’t have any
time for wild tales of ghosts or time-travelling.

‘It depends on the period, for a start.’ Drew pushed up his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose as he considered my question. He looked tired too. ‘It depends on where
you are, and it depends on what kind of someone you’re talking about.’

‘A girl,’ I said. I kept my eyes on my wine, running a finger round and round the rim of the glass. ‘A servant.’ I thought about the clothes Hawise wore, about Francis
Bewley sweeping a bow as if to the Queen’s Majesty herself. I couldn’t remember if there had been anything to indicate a specific date. ‘Say in Elizabethan York.’ It felt
right. Beyond that, I couldn’t say.

‘It wouldn’t be easy,’ said Drew. ‘Not all the records for that period survive. You’d have to be very lucky to be able to trace an individual, especially a
girl.’

‘Why? Because servants weren’t important?’

It was what he would expect me to say, but Drew didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Actually, at that period service was a part of almost everyone’s life. Even noble families sent their
children to be servants in other households. Servants were part of the family,’ he said. ‘That was the way young people learnt how to behave, how they learnt a trade, how they made
connections that would stand them in good stead later in life. A girl in service in a well-to-do urban household would learn how to run a household, how to cook, how to sew, how to treat everyday
ailments. She worked
with
her mistress, rather than
for
her.’

I nodded, remembering Mistress Beckwith, and the firmness with which she had run her household. My mistress –
Hawise’s
mistress – had worked just as hard as anyone
else. She would have been agog at the notion that she might sit and eat sweetmeats while her servants waited on her hand and foot. So at least my sense of Hawise’s role in the
Beckwiths’ house was consistent with historical fact, but it didn’t get me any closer to proving whether or not Hawise herself had really existed.

‘Why do you want to know all this anyway?’ asked Drew, eyes narrowed, and I looked away.

‘Oh . . . ’ I said vaguely. ‘I was just wondering what you would do if you wanted to find out about someone who wasn’t famous, that’s all.’

I could tell he was still puzzled. ‘It would help to know the parish where she died, whether or not she married, that kind of thing. You might be lucky and find a will in which she’s
mentioned. Members of the civic elite are more likely to be in the council records – those do survive – but you usually only come across other individuals if they break the law in some
way. The records I’m working on at the moment are an exception to that.’

I made one of those noises that mean ‘Go on, I’m listening’. I taught a range of noises like that to my students. If you can use your ums and ers correctly, you sound much more
fluent.

‘The wardmote courts were local courts that enforced environmental regulation,’ he said, unconsciously slipping into lecture mode. ‘They were held twice a year, around Easter
and Michaelmas, and they dealt with ordinary people and ordinary concerns: who’s mending the streets, who’s not disposing of their waste correctly, who’s a noisy neighbour, and so
on. Householders are listed, along with an order to, say, pave the street in front of their doors, or clean the gutter; and they would have to pay a fine if they hadn’t complied by the
following court – although most of them did.’

‘So what are you saying?’ I leant forward, frowning with concentration. ‘Do you think I might be able to find . . . my servant girl . . . in your records?’

‘Very doubtful,’ said Drew. ‘For a start, only a decade or so of these records survive, so unless you’ve got a very specific date in mind, you’d have to be very
lucky to find one individual. The vast majority of those mentioned are men too. There were some female householders – usually widows – but the few women mentioned are either presented
for antisocial behaviour of some kind or for breaking petty market regulations. Even then, they’re usually referred to as someone’s wife. If your servant girl is respectable, you
won’t find her in these records.’

I was disappointed. It didn’t sound as if Drew could help me after all. I sat, chewing the edge of my thumb, wondering if I could at least ask him to search his records for Mr Beckwith or
Ned Hilliard, but I didn’t know how to do that without telling him about Hawise, and I had no idea how to do
that
without sounding completely mad.

Drew’s unnervingly keen eyes were still fixed on my face. ‘What’s all this about, Grace?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘At least . . . No, nothing.’ Of course I couldn’t tell him. Drew was a
historian
. He was sane, he was rational. He didn’t believe
in ghosts or reincarnation or regression.

And neither did I. Not really.

‘Where’s Sophie?’ I decided it was time to change the subject before Drew started asking too many searching questions that I wasn’t ready to answer. That I
couldn’t
answer.

‘God knows,’ said Drew with a sigh. ‘She stomped off earlier. Apparently I am selfish, controlling, completely extra – whatever that means, but it’s not good
– stupid, uncaring and . . . I forget the other thing. Basically, I’m a bad father.’

‘Oh, dear,’ I said. ‘What did you do?’

‘Asked her where she was going. More fool me.’

He sounded so defeated, I had to fight an absurd urge to put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

‘Is she still with that group she talked about?’

‘The Temple of the Waters.’ Taking off his glasses, Drew nodded and rubbed his hand wearily over his face. ‘She spends all her spare time with them now – at least when
she’s supposed to be with me. It’s harder when she’s staying with her mother out in the village, but Karen says she’s always down by the river, performing little ceremonies.
She’s worried about Sophie too, but what can we do? Sophie’s fifteen. We can’t lock her in her room.’

I thought about Vivien’s warning.
Not all spirits are good spirits or safe spirits
, she had said. There was no point in telling Drew that. He was worried enough as it was.

‘It’s difficult,’ I said sympathetically. ‘I can see why you’re concerned. I don’t suppose there’s much I can do, but if I can help . . . ’ I
trailed off, feeling useless. What could
I
do, after all? When was I ever a help when it really mattered? Lucas’s face flashed into my mind, and I closed my eyes against it.

‘Actually, there
is
something,’ said Drew and my eyes snapped open. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask,’ he said, unusually hesitant, ‘but would you go out
with her sometime? Have coffee or go to a film or something?’

‘Me?’

‘Sophie likes you. She thinks you’re cool.’

I was fascinated by the way he could smile without curving his lips. I couldn’t decide whether his eyes were blue-grey or grey-blue, but they gleamed in a way that set a little tingle
tingling inside me, while the warmth spread outwards, deepening the creases in his face and hovering tantalizingly around his mouth.

I shifted self-consciously, aware all at once of the Toda earrings dangling against my neck and the jade pendant at my throat. I’d pulled back my hair and clipped it up with a beaded comb
before I went out to teach, but as always by that time of the day most of it was falling messily around my face.

I pushed it behind my ears as I glanced down at the crinkled silk tunic I’d bought from a charity shop for a couple of pounds. With it I wore a vintage waistcoat that had been an even
better bargain, at fifty pence, perhaps because it had two buttons missing. As an outfit, it was cheap and comfortable, but . . . cool?

‘I don’t feel very cool,’ I said.

‘To someone like Sophie, you’re exotic,’ Drew said.

I couldn’t help laughing. ‘You make me sound exciting!’

‘You
are
exciting,’ he said.

His voice was quite level, but when his eyes met mine, there was a sudden, perilous silence. I was the first to look away, uncomfortably aware that my cheeks were hot.

‘You’ve got a confidence that she can’t imagine having in a million years, right now,’ Drew said as if the moment had never happened. Had he even noticed? I wondered. Or
had I imagined it, like I was imagining so much else right now?

‘I just think that if you told her about your travels, about working in Indonesia, she’d be interested and flattered by your attention.’

‘I can hardly invite her in and then bore her to death by telling her about where I’ve been!’ I protested.

‘I can’t imagine you being boring,’ he said. He leant forward, fixing that acute gaze on my face. ‘Please, Grace,’ he said. ‘I’m at my wits’ end
with Sophie. Her mother and I are too conventional, and too close to her to have any influence at the moment. She’s lonely and she’s looking for a role model. I’d rather it was
you than Ash.’

‘Ash?’

‘Ash Vaughan.’ Drew sat back. ‘He was a student of mine once – one of those who are a little too clever for their own good. He dropped out in the end, and I for one
wasn’t sorry to see him go. But the next thing I heard of him, he was leading this cult that Sophie’s got herself tangled up in. The “Temple of the Waters”.’ Drew
practically spat out the name. ‘It’s a load of bollocks, but try telling Sophie that.’

I chewed my thumb. I’d offered to help, and I meant it, but I didn’t want Drew thinking that he could rely on me. I didn’t want to let him down, the way I had let Lucas down.
Guilt rolled through me as the memory spun in its familiar cracked groove.

Practical things – those I could do, but be a role model? Drew could hardly have picked on anyone less suited to the task!

Look out for Sophie.
Vivien’s words stopped the record that played so relentlessly in my head, and I thought again about what she had said about Drew’s daughter. I
didn’t like the idea of Sophie being led astray. She reminded me too much of myself at fifteen.

And Drew was sitting there, watching me with quiet desperation in his eyes. He wasn’t asking me to save Sophie, I realized, just spend a bit of time with her. A coffee, a film, that was
all. Neither was a great commitment, and I had offered to help.

‘I don’t think I’d be much of a role model,’ I said, ‘but I’ll try.’

Clouds brooded in the distance as I sat down to write my lesson plans for the following week. It was unseasonably warm for that early in May, and I had all the windows wide
open to air the house while I could. No matter how often I cleaned it, I couldn’t get rid of that faint whiff of rotting fruit.