Time's Echo (18 page)

The church is filled with the chatter and laughter of our guests. Everyone loves a wedding. Ned has no kin here in York, but he has invited his neighbours, and my father is here with Agnes, and
the Beckwiths of course, and
their
friends and neighbours. Between them all, Ned and I haven’t had a chance to exchange a word privately, but as I sneak another glance at my husband,
he catches my eye and smiles one of his unexpected smiles.

Ah, yes, now I remember. He looks younger, less severe. Less daunting. Without thinking, I smile back at him, and something blazes in his eyes. I don’t know what it is, but it makes me
feel as if the butterflies on my gloves have taken flight and are fluttering frantically around inside me.

All at once I am filled with optimism. I will be mistress of my own home, a fine house in Coney Street. My husband is rich and sober and, when he smiles, he doesn’t seem so old. I think
about the shell he brought me. He knows what will please me, while I – I have my virtue to offer him, which I so nearly lost. I am luckier than I deserve. I have my family and friends around
me, and all is well.

No sooner have I thought it than a quake runs through me.

Ned looks down at me. ‘Are you cold?’

‘No.’ I shake off the strange feeling of unease and put on a bright smile. ‘Not at all.’

When the spiced wine is finished and the cakes have been eaten, we go out through the porch and my maids shower me with wheat, in token of fertility. Then the musicians strike up and the entire
wedding party sets off again for Ned’s house in Coney Street, where we are to have the bridal feast. This time I walk with Ned. We make a quiet centre to the party, which is already buoyed up
by the hippocras, and his arm is solid beneath my hand. I notice that, in spite of his stiff manner, my husband walks like a man easy in his own skin. I find myself remembering the warmth of his
mouth when we exchanged a kiss in the church porch to seal our vows.

I should have told him about Francis perhaps, but what could I have said? I don’t want Ned to know that I am a fool. I want to be a good wife to him, to forget Francis and put the past
behind me.

And then, as if the thought has conjured him out of the air, I see him, and my smile freezes.

Francis is standing at the edge of the street, watching as the procession passes. He is smiling, but when his gaze meets mine, it is so full of malevolence that my heart thuds sickeningly. I
stumble and would fall, were it not for Ned catching my arm.

A ripple of concern goes through the watching crowd, and some mutter superstitiously about it being a bad omen for the bride to trip.

Ned’s hand is steady at my elbow. ‘More like a sign that the Chamberlains still haven’t mended the mid-part of the street,’ he says, raising his voice so that others can
hear, and there is some laughter and nods of agreement.

When I look again, Francis is gone.

My eyes flicker from side to side. Did anyone see? Could they tell that he was watching me, the way a cat watches a mouse? Did they sense the malice in his gaze?

I have to swallow hard before I can answer Ned when he asks if I am hurt.

‘No, it was just a stone,’ I say, but my fingers tighten on his arm.

Ned’s house is huge, bigger even than Mr Beckwith’s. The first time I saw it, my eyes widened like a little owl. The shop that fronts Coney Street is leased to Richard Lydon,
apothecary. Inside, it is heady with the fragrances of the East. On the counter are sugar loaves and pitchers of wine, and glass jars filled with comfits and dried fruits, and wooden boxes of
quince paste, while the back of the shop is lined with wooden drawers filled with the spices Ned buys in the great markets of the Low Countries: verdigris and wormwood, cinnamon and pepper and
nutmeg, cloves and knobbly roots of ginger, precious saffron.

Behind the shop there is a fine hall, with its own entrance from the courtyard, and a parlour that Ned says I can make my own. There is a buttery and a closet, where Ned keeps his books. Further
back, a great kitchen with larders and a bakehouse, and stables across the yard. The main chamber is above the hall, but there is another over the shop, where the linen is kept, and two more, plus
chambers for the servants over the kitchen and under the eaves.

And of all this I am now mistress. I try not to look too daunted by it all.

The hall is lined with wainscot, and on the wall hang fine painted cloths that Ned has bought in Antwerp and Bruges. Today the hall is set up for the bridal feast. The trestle tables are
arranged on three sides of the room and covered in linen cloths. Great jugs of spiced wine are set out at regular intervals. I sit with Ned at the table on the raised dais and am served the way I
have served so many others in the past.

I make an effort to push Francis from my mind. It was a shock to see him like that, but what can he do, after all? I am married before God. It cannot be undone.

Still, my head is whirling with the look in Francis’s eyes and with the strangeness of finding myself suddenly a wife and mistress of this enormous house. Normally I have a hearty
appetite, but I only pick at the feast before me. I nibble at a slice of roast swan. Its pungent taste clings to the top of my mouth. It makes me think of the Ouse when the tide is low, when its
banks are sludgy and slimy, and all at once the thought of the river sends another ripple of unease through me. I put the slice down without finishing it.

There is a salad of herbs with cucumbers and hard eggs, which I like, and I take some of that instead, and some spiced custard. Ned urges me to try trout baked in a pie with eels, so I do. But
the rest of the feast is a blur – a seemingly endless parade of roast meat, from rib of beef to pig, from goose to lark, and all manner of sauces. There are stuffed cabbages and fruit tarts,
and fricassées and trifles, and almond custards and oyster chewets. The sugar deceits are very clever. They are made to look like dishes, and we break them and eat our plates at the end of
the feast, although I am almost too tired by now to enjoy the sweetness.

I sound like Agnes.

The voices and laughter grow ever louder over the sound of the fiddles. Beside me, Ned is as unreadable as ever, and I am finding it hard to keep smiling. The ring that he put on my finger in
the church porch keeps catching my eye, and I can’t get used to the sight of it glinting on my hand. My life has changed now. I have stepped through a door. I am no longer Hawise Aske; I am
Mistress Hilliard, and after tonight I will be a maid no more.

I have tried so hard not to think about Francis, but I can’t help remembering how it was in the orchard, and I shudder. Is that how it will be with Ned? Will he push his tongue in my mouth
like that? Will he heave and shove? Will he hurt me?

I bite my lip as I glance at him under my lashes. He is my husband now. He can do what he likes.

The feast seems to go on forever, and I am grateful when the wedding cakes are broken and shared at last and I can retire. Agnes left to lie down long ago, but the other women laugh and make
suggestive comments as they help me take off my dress and brush my hair. I climb into the big bed in my shift, wishing they would all go away and leave me alone, but as soon as they do, I want to
call them back, because the men are loud and boisterous outside and are pushing Ned into the room. They bang the door behind him, bellowing crude advice, until they grow tired (or thirsty, more
like) and clatter back down the stairs to rejoin the feast.

Ned and I are left alone. He seems bigger than I had remembered, more male, and the pulse in my throat flutters like a trapped bird.

I don’t know what I had expected – that he would throw himself on me and push into me perhaps, or lie down beside me and kiss me, but Ned does neither. He walks over to the chest and
pours wine into a goblet, then sits on the side of the bed and offers it to me.

‘Drink, Hawise,’ he says. ‘There is no hurry.’

My fingers are shaking as I take the cup. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Here, in our bedchamber, I hope you will call me Ned, as my friends do.’

I have never called him that to his face before. ‘Ned.’ I try it on my tongue and he almost smiles.

‘Are you nervous?’ he asks.

I moisten my lips. ‘A little,’ I confess.

‘I will try not to hurt you.’

‘I know my duty,’ I say quickly. ‘I am your wife now.’

‘Perhaps,’ he says, ‘I do not want your duty.’

There is a note in his voice that I do not understand. I shift uneasily. The sheet has been scattered with rosemary and, as I move, the fragrance stirs the air, reminding me of the water the
Widow Dent used to bathe my face and hands after Francis tried to force me. Today the rosemary is for faithfulness, but it is always for remembrance too.

I try to push the memory away. I don’t want to remember Francis. I should be thinking about my husband now, but my tongue is cleaved to the top of my mouth. We have never talked like this
before. We have never been this intimate before. He is very close, and shyness overwhelms me.

‘I am yours now,’ I manage to say after a moment, and he lets out a long breath as he reaches out to stroke my hair.

‘Yes, you are mine,’ he agrees. ‘What more could I want?’

His hand drifts from my hair to brush along my jaw, very gently, and he traces the outline of my mouth with his thumb. My skin tingles beneath his touch. ‘You are very beautiful, little
wife.’

‘I?’ My mouth drops open and his eyes crinkle. It’s as if he is smiling and not smiling at the same time.

‘Yes, you.’

‘But I am plain!’ I am so surprised I almost spill my wine.

Ned shakes his head. ‘Perhaps there are other maids who have golden hair and rosebud mouths, and who like to think they are pretty, but they look pale and colourless next to you. You are
like a candle flame, Hawise,’ he says, his voice deepening as he strokes his thumb very gently down my neck so that I shiver, but not with fear. ‘You bring warmth and light with you
wherever you go.’

I stare at him. Can this be Mr Hilliard, this man with the voice so deep it reverberates down my spine? I thought I had married a cool, calculating merchant, and instead I have a lover with a
poet’s tongue. I am amazed.

Ned can read my expression easily enough. ‘Why do you think I married you, Hawise?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say honestly. ‘My mistress . . . ’ I stop. I have no mistress now. I
am
the mistress. ‘Mistress Beckwith says that your friends
don’t like this marriage.’

‘Perhaps they do not,’ says Ned, ‘but I have not married my friends. It is true, when first I wed, I took the views of my family and friends into account. I thought more
carefully about the advantages of the match, the connections it would bring. But I was younger then, and had more to prove.’

His touch is tugging at something inside me. It’s as if there is a cord deep in my belly, tightening slowly with every stroke of his thumb, and I can feel myself begin to quiver with the
tension of it.

‘I was not unhappy,’ he goes on, his eyes never leaving my face. ‘We do what we must. But when my wife died, God rest her soul, and the child with her, I saw a chance to start
anew. I came to York, I thought perhaps . . . perhaps I could please myself, and so I have. I’ve wanted you since I first saw you at William Beckwith’s, Hawise. You were so bright, so
curious, but you were so very young. And now I have what I want, is it greedy of me to wish to please you too?’

My mouth is dry. He is still sitting on the side of the bed, facing me, and he is very solid and very close – so close I feel hazy with it. His hands feel nice. They are warm and dry and
capable, gentling down my arm, lifting my hand from the cover to press a kiss into my palm, and at the feel of his lips I hiss in a breath.

Ned raises his head to look at me, and the candlelight throws his face into relief, making the ordinary features seem stronger, more definite. He has a quiet mouth, with no angry spittle.

Our fingers entwine and on impulse I lean forward and press my lips to his before I lose my nerve and pull back. I am suddenly afraid that Ned will think me wanton, as Francis did.

I wish I hadn’t thought about Francis.

Ned isn’t angry, but he shifts closer. His nearness is suffocating, but he doesn’t try to kiss my mouth. Instead he lets his lips travel down my throat to the neck of my shift, and I
shiver again. My heart is stuttering, my pulse booming in my ears. I want him to stop. I want him to go on.

He nuzzles my shift aside to kiss his way along my clavicle, but pauses when he reaches the mark above my breast, and I remember how Francis had recoiled from it.
A harlot’s mark
,
he had called it.

‘I was born with it,’ I say.

Ned leans up on one elbow to that he can trace the outline of the mark with his finger. ‘A little hand,’ he says, smiling. ‘Sweet, like my wife.’ And he bends back to
kiss it.

He doesn’t mind. He thinks I am sweet. He thinks I am
beautiful
. The touch of his mouth is making me tremble.

‘Ned,’ I say shakily, and he looks up. He sees the cup, takes it from me and sets it aside. Then he pulls back the cover and I shift over in the bed so that he can lie down beside
me.

I don’t look as he slips off his robe and blows out the candle. The bed dips and creaks under his weight, and the fragrance of rosemary fills the air. In the darkness he turns to me, his
fingers feeling for my face. Then he kisses my mouth, very gently at first. I am taut, but he murmurs low, as if he were soothing a skittish horse, and I feel his lips on my throat, his hand
sliding under my shift, hot and hard on my skin. That cord inside me is twisting and tugging again and my blood shivers in my veins and I find myself arching beneath his touch.

‘Does it feel good?’ he whispers, his mouth at my breast.

‘Yes,’ I sigh. ‘Yes.’

He is naked, solid, warm. I smooth my hands over his shoulders, feeling his muscles flex beneath my fingers, and he makes a sound that is almost a groan. Dragging himself up, he covers me, and
through my fine linen shift I feel him hard and insistent and suddenly panic grips me. He is too heavy. I am suffocating beneath his weight, but I can’t move now. My legs are spread wide and
he is pushing into me.