Time's Echo (17 page)

‘I don’t think so, thank you,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘Look, I’m sorry about your kitchen. I’ll have a look through Lucy’s papers tomorrow, I
promise, and see if I can find anything about insurance. If not, I’ll talk to John Burnand. He said he would be able to advance some money from the estate, if I needed it.’

At the unmistakable signal that I wanted him to go, Drew got up, brushing the issue of the food damage with a gesture. ‘I’m more concerned about you than the kitchen,’ he said.
‘I don’t think you should be alone. Why don’t you sleep in Sophie’s room tonight?’

I hesitated. Drew’s house was warm and light and safe, but I couldn’t run round there every time I felt wobbly. I’m independent, I had told him. I didn’t like needing
anybody else for anything.

‘That’s kind of you, but you’ve done enough for me tonight, I think,’ I said. ‘I’ve spoiled your evening as it is. I’ll be fine.’

‘You say that a lot too,’ said Drew.

‘What?’

‘That you’re fine.’

‘I
am fine
.’

‘Sarah – that’s my psychiatrist friend – has a theory about the word “fine”,’ he said. ‘She thinks it stands for fucked up, insecure, neurotic and
emotional.’

I bared my teeth at him. ‘Okay, I’ll be “all right”. Is that better?’

Oddly enough, I
was
all right. I slept dreamlessly and, when I woke up, the bruises on my face had subsided. A brisk wind had pushed the rain away overnight and left a bright, blowy day
behind it. I was still getting used to the way the weather changed from one day to the next. Only the day before it had been hot and humid, but now I was glad of the jacket I’d bought for
Lucy’s funeral.

I had plenty to do, but I was too restless to settle to my lesson plans. I set off to walk along the river, but the closer I got to it, the more reluctant I felt to see where Lucy had died and
where Hawise had drowned. In the end I turned away before I got there, and wandered around the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey instead. The breeze blew my hair around my face, and I had to take my
hands out of my pockets to pull away the strands that kept sticking to my mouth. There was a strange razor edge to the light. Every zingy green leaf, every brick, every person I passed jumped out
at me in startling detail, while billowing clouds skated across the sky and sent deep blocks of shadow sweeping over me.

I sat for a while on a bench and watched some Australian tourists videoing a grey squirrel. I hadn’t been to the Museum Gardens before, but they were obviously popular. Students lay
sprawled on the grass, careless of the damp, while small children ran around chasing pigeons, and teenagers huddled in groups and texted on their mobiles. An elderly couple rested on the bench next
to mine. Families wandered by eating ice creams, and tour guides hustled their groups around the ruins. Everyone looked so normal.

The elderly couple smiled at me as they got up to go, and I smiled back, pathetically grateful to realize that they thought I was normal too. I didn’t look crazy. I just felt it.

I touched my lip where Francis’s ring had struck, disturbed by the idea that I might have beaten myself. Before he left, Drew had again offered to put me in touch with his psychiatrist
friend, but I loathed the thought of anyone rummaging around in my subconscious. I had coped with a tsunami, for God’s sake. Surely I could cope with this? Maybe Hawise
was
just a
figment of my imagination. That was the rational explanation, and as long as I understood that, I would be fine. Yes, fine – whatever Drew might think it meant.

I couldn’t see that I needed to visit a psychiatrist. What would be the point? I didn’t need help, I decided. I just needed to sell Lucy’s house, leave York and get back to
normality.

The first step in that was to finish clearing the house. Reassured, I headed briskly back. I was wondering about the cheapest way to redecorate when I found myself walking past a gate leading
into a quiet churchyard tucked away behind Goodramgate, and my steps slowed.

And I knew that rationality hadn’t won after all. There was a rushing around my heart, pulling me back, pulling me along the path towards the church. I couldn’t have walked past if I
had tried. This was Holy Trinity, Hawise’s parish church. I knew it in my bones.

To my twenty-first-century eyes it was a humble, higgledy-piggledy building, a cottage of a church in comparison with the bulk of the Minster that soared behind it, but at the same time I saw it
as sanctuary, as certainty. The churchyard was a tiny oasis in the centre of the city. There were three or four gravestones leaning in the grass, and a cherry tree bursting with blossom. Two
Japanese tourists were sitting on a bench, heads bent over their digital camera, but they smiled and nodded as I walked up to the porch. Somehow I managed a smile back.

I didn’t want to go in, and yet when I pushed open the door and stepped down into the nave, it felt like coming home after a long journey.

Inside, age had buckled the church out of shape. The flagstones, worn smooth by generations of feet, dipped and sagged, the stone arches were squashed and slightly askew. My pulse boomed as I
walked down the central aisle towards the altar. Those high wooden box pews dominating the nave shouldn’t be there, I thought, but when I laid my palm against one of the sturdy pillars, the
stone seemed to thrum.

Hawise was right beside me now. I could feel her – part of me, and yet separate for once. I stood very still, watching the meagre sunlight that slanted through a window, briefly striping
the flagstone beneath my feet.

Yes. Yes.

The words rang in my head, and approval settled like a hand on my shoulder.
Yes. At last. Now, remember how it was
. . .

After a week of rain, the sun has come out for my wedding day. It pours through the stained-glass windows and makes puddles of colour on the stone floor. They look so pretty
that I try not to stand in them.

I am married. I stood with Ned Hilliard in the church porch and we exchanged the vows that made us man and wife, and then we came inside for the nuptial mass. Now Meg is pouring hippocras for
all our guests, and Agnes is handing around the cakes with a martyred air. She said she was too tired to go out with Meg and the other girls to gather flowers this morning. She said it was just a
tradition, and that there was no point in throwing flowers in the street. They would just get trampled into the mud.

I would have collected armfuls of flowers if this was Agnes’s wedding. I know she thinks that I have been unfairly fortunate, and I dare say it is true, but I would be happy to change
places with her if I could. Does she think I want to marry a widower, a stranger? But Agnes sees only that she has been unlucky again. I wish my sister could be happy, I wish it as much as I wish
happiness for myself, but I am afraid that she doesn’t know how to feel joy. I am afraid that if we could change places, so that she was the bride and I her maid, she would still be
discontented and envious.

Perhaps the flowers
are
trampled now, but the street looked like a meadow when we set out in procession from my master’s house. Dick, Mr Beckwith’s apprentice, held the
bride-cup aloft and the ribbons fluttered gaily in the breeze as we followed behind the waits. No expense had been spared. There were fiddlers and drummers and trumpeters and pipers, and we laughed
and smiled and clapped our hands in time to the music and the passers-by all stopped to watch us, craning their necks to see me in my bridal finery. My maids walked with me, carrying the great
wedding cakes that will be broken at the bridal feast later, each with a sprig of rosemary tied to their arm. Meg is going to put hers under her pillow tonight and dream of her future husband. I
did the same when I was a bride’s maid.

But I never dreamt of Ned Hilliard.

Now I slide a glance at him under my lashes. He is standing beside me, wearing a handsome silk-damask doublet and hose with a brown velvet jerkin, but he still manages to look austere. I try to
remember what he looks like when he smiles. I know it is surprising, but it happens so rarely that I have forgotten. I wish I knew what he was thinking, but I know no more of him now than I did
when I used to serve him wine as my master’s guest. I still have no idea why he would wish to marry me.

He didn’t have to woo me – we both knew that – but he did. He brought me gifts, tokens of his love, he said, and I accepted them, so that everyone knew we were betrothed. He
brought me gloves embroidered with butterflies, and a gold ring. A pair of green silk garters, and a purse. A length of scarlet kersey. An orange that he peeled with deft fingers. Its sweetness
stung my lips and trickled down my chin. Ned licked his thumb and dabbed it off. He didn’t smile, but my eyes tangled with his like a deer in the briars, and all at once my heart began to
pound.

And once he brought me a seashell and held it to my ear, and I heard the rush and roar of the ocean. He did smile then, watching my expression. I remember that now.

He has given me a beautiful new gown as a wedding gift. It is made of the finest, softest wool, dyed blue, and is trimmed with silver buttons that flash in the sunlight that is slanting through
the windows. I smooth it down, still scarcely able to believe that it is real, that I am wed, that the man standing next to me is my husband, till death do us part.

‘How does it feel?’ Meg asked me last night. She was sitting up in the bed we share – the bed I used to share with Elizabeth – and hugging her knees as she watched me
brush out my hair. ‘Tomorrow you will be married.’

In truth, I wasn’t sure how it felt. I’m still not sure, but I am resolved to make the best of things. I have learnt my lesson. I will not risk my reputation with a stranger again. I
will accept Ned Hilliard as a husband and be glad.

I was afraid when I came back from Paynley’s Crofts that day. I told my mistress that I had fallen over a branch to explain my cuts and bruises, but she knew. She sent
Meg off on an errand and climbed up to find me, lying curled in a tight ball on the bed with Hap – Hap who had known Francis for what he was right from the start.

‘Hawise.’ She sat heavily on the edge of the bed. Normally she would have ordered Hap back to the kitchen, but that night she pretended she didn’t see him. ‘Who did this
to you?’

I shook my head. I was too ashamed to tell her the truth and I was frightened of Francis, of what he might say to the neighbours and how easily he could still hurt me.
You led me on
, he
had said. What if it was true? What if it was all my fault? I clutched Hap to me, and he endured it without so much as a squirm of protest.

‘Are you still a maid?’

‘Yes.’ My voice was barely a thread, and Mistress Beckwith put a hand on my shoulder. I flinched at the feel of it.

‘Do you swear?’

‘I swear.’

‘Very well.’ She took her hand away. ‘Stay in bed this evening. I will say you are unwell.’

The bed groaned as she pushed herself upright. I heard the squeak of floorboards underfoot, the rattle of the latch. I didn’t lift my face from Hap’s velvety ear, but I knew my
mistress had paused at the door and was looking back at me.

‘This marriage is a great chance for you, Hawise,’ she said. ‘You will not get another such. You must be more careful. Your reputation is all you have.’ She hesitated,
weighing her words. ‘Ned Hilliard is a good man and he has a fondness for you, that much is clear, but you are not married yet. There will be those who call themselves his friends who will
think he could find a more suitable wife. A man must listen to his friends. They will be urging him to break the betrothal, telling him that you will do him no honour. You must give them no reason
to think that they were right all along. You understand?’

I still couldn’t look at her, but I nodded into Hap’s fur. I did understand.

The next day I went back to my duties, but for a week or so after that my belly knotted with fear every time I stepped out of the house, in case I came face-to-face with Francis.

I was anxious, too, when the banns were read here in Holy Trinity, Goodramgate and in St Martin’s, Coney Street, which is Ned’s parish church – and mine now, I suppose –
but Francis didn’t appear and speak up to say that I was promised to him, and after the last banns were read I began to relax. I didn’t want to ask the neighbours about him, but only a
few days ago I overheard Mistress Rogers telling Thomas Barker’s wife that Francis has gone back to London with his master, and it feels as if a great weight has been lifted from my
heart.

He has gone.

He has gone, and the relief has made me light-headed. Oh, yes, I have learnt my lesson. I know how lucky I am that things did not go a lot worse for me. From now on, I vow, I will be grateful
for what I have. Perhaps I would have liked a younger bridegroom, or a smiling one, but I will try to be happy.

And, in truth, it’s not hard to be happy when you are a bride and everyone makes a fuss of you. Agnes offers me one of the cakes that have been blessed. I thank her, and she manages a wan
smile in return. Poor Agnes. To my sister it must seem as if I have everything, and I cannot tell her that it is not so – not when she has to go back to our father’s house in Hungate,
with little to look forward to other than for her head to stop aching.