Time's Echo (39 page)

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 probably 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.

It was very quiet in the chapel. I sat heavily in one of the pews and stared unseeingly at the window above the altar, admitting to myself that I was scared. My heart was lurching unevenly along
like an old Labrador and the breath seemed to be stuck in my throat.

My worst fear, being trapped, unable to outrun whatever was coming for me. I hadn’t been able to outrun the tsunami, and I couldn’t run away from this.

Hawise was stronger than I was, I had to accept that, too. I was stuck here in York until she chose to let me go.
If
she chose to let me go. Too late, I remembered Lucy. Had she been
sucked into Hawise’s story as I had been, only to find that she couldn’t get out? Was that why she had been down by the Ouse that night? A coldness stole over me at the thought. Had she
re-died Hawise’s death, just as she had relived her life? Would I end up in the river, drowning again? I covered my face with my hands.

I am in church, my hands over my face. I am supposed to be thanking God for our deliverance from the pestilence, but I am not praying. God has taken Ned. He has taken my
friends and my little maids, and He has spared Francis Bewley. I cannot thank Him for that.

Where my heart used to be, there is a stone: hard, cold, heavy. The sickness has swooped and now, sated, it has moved on, leaving me stranded in a wasteland. Only now do I truly realize what I
have lost, and how safe Ned made me feel. The thought of never holding him again is like a great hand reaching inside me, twisting, wrenching, until I want to double over in pain. Sometimes I put
my hand under my breast and flinch at the crack of my heart breaking again and again.

Gradually we crept out of our houses and looked around, dazed at the suddenness and savagery with which the sickness attacked. Incredibly, it is still summer. The birds are still singing, the
trees are still green. The houses still stand, the dogs still scuffle in the gutters, but in the street are terrible gaps in the air where people used to be.

But I have Bess. I can thank God for that, at least. So I murmur along with the prayers and hold onto the knowledge that she is safe.

For Bess, I straighten my back and go on. She is too small to understand what has happened, but she knows enough to insist on staying with me now. She won’t be left with Agnes any more,
and I wonder what went on in that room when I was nursing Francis. So I take her with me when I go to market, balancing her on my hip as I go through the motions of inspecting grain or smelling
fish. I have no heart for it, but we must eat.

Bess struggles to get down, and I set her on unsteady feet. Oblivious to the fact that we are all reeling still at finding ourselves in a strange, empty new world, she clings onto my skirts for
balance and peeps a smile at the countrywomen, whose grim faces soften at the sight of her.

Bess staggers away as I buy butter. I am watching her out of the corner of my eye, but I am digging in my purse for a coin and wondering what I will do for money when the purse is empty, when
there is rumbling and shouting behind me. The countrywoman’s eyes widen in horror, and I swing round to see a cart bearing down on Bess, who is hunkered in its way, absorbed in picking up a
pebble with precise fingers and examining it with wonder.

‘No!’ the word bursts from me. I am too far from her. Everything is happening in slow motion. The open mouth of the carter, the wild eyes of the horse, the creak of the wheels, Bess
looking up.

And then at the last moment before the cart would have been upon her, she is snatched up out of the way. She screams in fright and protest, arching back furiously from the grip of a small, dirty
girl.

‘Bess!’ I reach them seconds later and grab my daughter, holding her to me and patting her all over to reassure myself that she is safe. My heart is pounding with shock and fear, and
my expression must be wild, because when I turn to her saviour, the girl flinches away.

That stops me in my tracks and I force myself to be calm. ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ I say. ‘I want only to thank you.’

Thank you. The words are pitifully inadequate for what I feel.

‘Didn’t do nothing,’ she mutters.

She is not a well-favoured child, and one foot is twisted and crooked, but her eyes are bright with a mixture of wariness and intelligence. She reminds me of Hap. She is painfully thin and she
smells disgusting.

‘What is your name?’

‘Jane.’

I see the way her eyes fix on the food in my basket. ‘How long is it since you have eaten, Jane?’

Jane, it turns out, is fifteen, although she is so thin and small that she seems much younger. She is the only survivor of a tanner’s family, which explains the smell. Their street is a
poor one, and it has suffered even more than most. There are no neighbours left to take Jane in, and she has no kin that she knows of. They had little enough to begin with, and since the sickness
she has been scavenging as best she can.

‘I can take care of meself,’ she says defiantly when I ask who is looking after her.

‘Come,’ I say, ‘let us find you a pie.’ The cookshops are open again, and when Bess sees Jane devouring her pie, she clamours for one too. I’m about to buy her one
when, starving as she is, Jane breaks off a crust and gives it to my daughter, whose crying instantly subsides.

‘Jane,’ I say, ‘Bess needs a nursemaid. Would you like to come and live with us?’

So now I have two children to care for, and where there are children there can never be utter despair. Francis and Agnes shrink back in disgust when I lead Jane into the house.

‘What are you thinking of, Hawise? She is flthy!’ Agnes’s voice rises shrilly. ‘What if she brings the sickness back?’

‘She will not be dirty when she has had a chance to clean herself,’ I say, holding firmly to Jane’s hand. ‘She has survived the sickness, just as we have. Besides, this
is my house now, and if I choose to offer her charity, that is my choice, is it not? I do not ask you to take Jane into your own house.’

‘We have been discussing that,’ says Francis smoothly. ‘You are a widow now, and Agnes and I are all you have. I am head of the family, and I think we should all stay together,
Sister, and support each other. It is only right.’

I stare at them. I had not thought anything else would have the power to horrify me after the pestilence, but so it is. I have been too leaden with grief to think about getting through more than
one day at a time, but I should have been on my guard. Francis has always coveted Ned’s wealth, I know. He yearns for the fine hangings, the wine and the plate. He covets
me
.

He will not have me. I swear it to myself.

‘I am not well,’ Agnes said. ‘You know I am not strong. We cannot go home. Our servants have fled or are dead!’

‘My servants have died too, Agnes.’

‘But you can afford to replace them.’

I look at my sister in disbelief. Margery and little Joan. Alison and Isobel. They were not things to be replaced. I cannot go to the market and get some more Joan, a new Margery.

‘And if we are under one roof, I can offer you protection and a godly example,’ says Francis. Francis who slobbered his mouth across mine while his wife cowered in another room,
frantic for his safety. Francis whose thing rose as I bathed him.

‘I need no example from you,’ I say stonily, ‘nor do I need protection.’

‘Are you sure about that, Sister? I think you would be wise to reconsider.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Already there are rumours. They’re saying you are a witch.’