Time's Echo (47 page)

‘Agnes?’

She gasps and the jar slips from her hands as she leaps to her feet. I hear the crack as it hits the stone floor, where Charity is too lazy to lay rushes.

‘Hawise! What are you doing here?’ Her voice is tight with shock.

‘I didn’t mean to give you a fright.’

I stoop to help pick up the pieces and the sour smell of piss hits me. ‘What on earth did you have in here?’ I sniff at a piece. It is unmistakable. I raise my brows.
‘Agnes?’

‘It is nothing to do with you!’ She snatches the pottery from me, but my eye is caught by the metal glinting in the dull candlelight.

‘Pins.’ I pick one up between forefinger and thumb. Suddenly I know what she has been doing. ‘You’re making a witch’s bottle.’

Agnes sucks in her breath. ‘What if I am? It is All Hallows’ Eve. We do what we must to keep the evil forces away.’

‘And you think burying a bottle under your door will keep a witch away?’ I laugh. ‘That is just silly superstition, Agnes! And who are you trying to keep away? Your husband has
had all the so-called witches hanged!’ My amusement fades bitterly as I remember Sybil hanging from the gibbet, tongue bulging and tiny feet twitching.

‘Not all,’ says Agnes and looks at me.

There is a moment of stillness. The only sound is the rain drumming on the roof. I stare back at my sister and read the truth writ in her face.

‘You think
I
am a witch? Agnes, you cannot believe so.’

‘Can I not? Who else would flaunt their familiar so shamelessly?’ She points a shaking finger beside me, and there is Mog, gazing unblinkingly at Agnes.

Mog, who I was so careful to shut in the kitchen.

I swallow. ‘She is just a cat.’

‘No ordinary cat would follow you around so. Get it out of here!’ Agnes looks around wildly for a weapon and ends up throwing the broken pieces of pottery at Mog, who doesn’t
even bother to move.

I pick her up all the same. ‘Agnes, what are you thinking?’ I try to reason with her, but it is soon clear that she is beyond reason.

‘Francis told me of your spells at the time of the sickness,’ she says, panting. ‘He told me how it is with you. He knows you for what you are.’

‘And you believe him? We are sisters, Agnes!’

‘Are we? What do we know of you, after all? My father was bewitched by your mother, just as you bewitched Ned Hilliard. Who knows where she was from, or what she was?’

‘You never thought this before Francis suggested it to you,’ I protest.

‘Yes, I did. I never said it, because what was the point? You were always the favourite, always the one men looked at. I have spent my whole life in your shadow. No one ever looked at me
while you were by.’

‘What matters it now? You have a husband of your own.’

‘Only because you did not want him!’

‘I thought he told you that I pursued him?’

Confused, she puts a hand to her head. ‘You did! And when he refused you, you put a spell on him so that he cannot think of anyone but you.’ She shoves her face close to mine,
careless of Mog’s warning hiss. ‘You unmanned him! In our bed he can do nothing for me unless I let him call me Hawise. A fine revenge you took on him!’

I take a step back, hugging Mog to me. ‘Oh, Agnes . . . ’ I am sickened by the thought of it. I feel dirty knowing what Francis has put my sister through. ‘How do you bear
it?’

‘What choice do I have? He is my husband,
mine
! He would love me if only you were gone,’ she says wildly.

‘Where can I go? I would if I could,’ I say bitterly. ‘We are both women, we have to stay where we are put.’

‘You are always lucky. It is always easy for you.’ Agnes hugs her arms to her and looks at me with hate-filled eyes. ‘Oh, you loved to vaunt your fortune over me, didn’t
you? Your wealthy husband, your wealthy
adoring
husband. You couldn’t be like everyone else and make do. No, you have to have everything: a fine house in Coney Street, a moonstruck
husband, a child. I tried to make sure you would not have that, at least, but you went out to that witch Sybil Dent, didn’t you?’

‘What do you mean, you tried to make sure?’

‘Those infusions I gave you.’ She laughs. ‘Dear sister, you don’t really think I meant for you to have a child, when my own husband was incapable of giving me one, do
you? And you were so pleased to be fond sisters! You drank them all up and then you conceived anyway. I couldn’t have that.’

I have a horrible image of Agnes bending over me, pressing a goblet into my hand.
Drink this, Sister.

‘You killed my baby,’ I realize slowly. I feel dull and stupid.

‘What a mess you made,’ she remembers with a shudder of disgust.

‘This story of a hare with two heads – you started that, didn’t you?’

‘It could have been anything.’ Agnes shrugs. ‘It might easily have been a monster, with all the time you spent consorting with witches. She told you, didn’t
she?’

‘Who?’

‘The witch. You went to see her one day, and after that you wouldn’t take anything I made. So you had a child after all, and all the gossips there to protect her. I couldn’t
get rid of them all, especially that old servant of yours, Margery. She was always watching me. She knew something.’

I am cold to my core at the knowledge that my Bess has had an enemy so close since she was born.

‘You wouldn’t have hurt Bess?’

‘Babes die all the time. I nearly saw her off in her cradle, but you woke up, didn’t you? Then Margery was pushing in, interfering, and the chance was lost.’

I look into my sister’s pale eyes and realize at last that she is quite mad. My mouth is dry. All this time I thought Francis was the danger, and it turns out that my own sister was the
greater.

I have to keep her talking. I will get away and take my daughter, take Jane and Rob and the cat and leave. I have been stuck like a fly in honey, when I should have been making plans to go.
Without Ned, there was nothing to keep me here. Why have I stayed so long? We can take a keelboat to Hull, then a ship. We can go to London, to Hamburg – anywhere my Bess will be safe.

Agnes is between me and the door, and her empty eyes are fixed on mine. There is something awry in her. I thought it was just that she was sickly, but the wrongness in her goes deeper than that.
How is it that I have never seen it before?

‘Why did you not take your chance when you had Bess during the sickness?’ I ask through stiff lips.

A sly look crosses her face. ‘Francis wants her,’ she says.

The horror of it freezes the breath in my lungs.

‘Francis is a monster,’ I say and my voice is shaking.

‘You see?’ Francis’s voice behind me makes me swing round, but he is not talking to me. He is ushering in a triumvirate of goodwives. Barbara Cook, Anne Tyrry and Marion
Carter. Bitter women, every one of them.

They look edgy and feverish. Has he kept them behind the door, waiting for the right moment to bring them in?

‘See her with her familiar – mocking me, calling
me
a monster!’ Francis points accusingly at me where I stand clutching Mog. ‘Am I not at divine service every
day? Do I not serve the Lord? I keep all His commandments, as you know. I am monstrous to the Devil she worships, no doubt.’

‘
You
are the Devil. Only the Devil could desire a small child.’ I turn to the women. ‘Can you not see what he is? He is abominable! You are mothers. You know it is
unnatural and loathsome to covet a child the way he does.’

‘I desire only to bring up her as the Lord commands, away from her mother, the witch.’ Francis’s voice is sanctimonious.

‘You will never take her from me! I am leaving this city,’ I tell him. ‘You can be rid of me, gladly, but you will not have my daughter.’

Francis shakes his head. ‘You cannot leave now. Not now we know you for what you are.’

I laugh in exasperation. ‘For the love of grace, how many times do I have to tell you? I am not a witch!’

‘Your actions say otherwise.’

‘I do not have to answer to you.’ I make to push past them towards the door, but Francis moves in front of me to block my way.

‘You cannot leave me, Hawise,’ he says, his voice low so that only I can hear. ‘I’m not letting you go.’

I draw in a breath and set my teeth. ‘This has gone on long enough, Francis. Look to your wife. You cannot have me, and you cannot have my daughter. Ever. I’m going.’

He’s not expecting my shove and he staggers back, letting me push past him to the door.

‘Stop her!’ cries Agnes. ‘She is a witch! She will curse us all!’

Her words unleash something in the air, a wrongness that makes the tiny hairs at the nape of my neck prickle a warning. I know I have to get out, now. I have my hand on the door when Francis
grabs my arm, swinging me round so that Mog is thrown from my grasp, spitting.

‘Let me go!’

‘No.’ He has himself back under control, and his expression bodes ill for me. ‘No, this is All Hallows’ Eve. If we let her go, who knows what mischief she will wreak on
us?’

Mog is growling now, her hair on end and her eyes fixed on Francis, who shifts back, but refuses to let me go.

‘See her familiar? No ordinary cat would growl so.’

The women huddle together in fright. They can sense the evil too, but it comes from Francis and Agnes, not from Mog.

‘Kill it,’ says Agnes, quite quietly, but there is something so implacable in her voice that silence falls abruptly and the only sound is Mog, vibrating warningly.

Agnes reaches to the chest behind her and picks up a knife.

‘No!’ I scream, pulling frantically to get away from Francis. ‘Mog! Go!’

‘Close the window,’ Agnes says calmly to one of the women, and she edges nervously towards the window without taking her eyes off the cat.

‘Mog!’ I scream again, and this time the cat reacts. She springs at Agnes, who has been advancing slowly on her. In spite of herself, Agnes jerks back, and the women screech in panic
as, spitting and snarling, Mog leaps for the window and is gone.

I slump with relief, so glad at her escape that I forget the danger I am still in myself.

They have all taken Mog’s behaviour as a sign. They will not listen to me now.

‘We should call the constable,’ says Marion.

‘The minister,’ says Barbara nervously.

‘I say we deal with her ourselves,’ says Agnes.

I stare at her. Can this be my meek, colourless sister? It is as if the venom she has suppressed for so long is surging through her, making her brighter, bigger, bolder. She is unfurling like a
banner snapping in the wind. Hate has made her powerful. Her madness has transformed her. Even Francis suddenly looks diminished next to her.

‘How much more proof do you need?’ she demands of the women, who blunder together, sensing her power, catching something of her madness. Their eyes are growing sharp and frenzied.
They have forgotten, these goodwives, that I am a woman no different from them, that I cook and I bargain and I raise my child just as they do. They are seeing me through Agnes’s eyes, as
warped and dangerous.

‘If even I – her sister – know this about her, who can defend her?’ Agnes demands. Francis keeps hold of me, but he has stepped back and is letting Agnes do the
talking.

‘We cannot go through the proper channels,’ she says scornfully. ‘You know what fools men make of themselves over a lascivious woman. All she has to do is turn those eyes of
hers on them and they are bewitched. They will let her go, and she will be back in the parish. Do you feel safe with your children passing her house, knowing the black arts she practises in
there?’

The women shudder as one.

‘And your husbands?’ Agnes goes on. ‘One smile and they will be ensnared. They will be no good to you ever after.’

It doesn’t seem to matter that I have never once flirted with their husbands, that I have been constant to Ned. The women believe her utterly and mutter amongst themselves.

‘This is foolishness!’ I cry. ‘Think about what she is saying. There is no proof of any of it.’

‘Then by all means let us prove it,’ says Agnes. ‘Husband, hold her still.’ Obligingly Francis grips both my arms behind me, and Agnes thrusts her face against mine once
more. She is still holding the knife. I brace myself for her to spit at me, but instead she slices through the ribbons of my bodice and wrenches down my sleeve. The women gasp and recoil.

‘See!’ Agnes points the tip of the knife triumphantly at the mark on my shoulder. The one Ned said looked like a little hand.
Sweet
, he called it.
Like my wife.
‘Is that not the mark of a witch?’ she demands.

I can feel Francis’s eyes hot on my skin, and I burn with the shame of my flesh being exposed. I think about the misgoverned women I have seen in the pillory, or whipped through the
streets at the cart’s arse, disgraced in their smocks, their heads uncovered, their hair polled. I am one of them now, but I am too proud to let Agnes and Francis see how utterly I am
humiliated.

Lifting my chin, I look from Barbara to Anne and then to Marion. ‘It is not so,’ I say clearly. ‘I am no witch. I am a mother, as you are.’

‘Well, then, there is only one way left to prove it,’ says Agnes before any of the women can react. ‘We all know water will reject a witch,’ she says and the room falls
quiet. ‘Let us see whether she floats or no.’

‘Agnes, for God’s sake!’ I cry at that and she turns on me.

‘How dare you call on God? You, who are in league with the Devil!’

‘Oh, this is nonsense.’ I actually laugh.

This is a mistake. The women gasp and shuffle back even further, and Agnes’s smile is triumphant.

‘So, this amuses you? Let us see if you laugh when we put you in the water! You can call on the Devil to save you then. Come.’ She turns to the women, all business. ‘Let us do
it straight away. You are righteous women, and you know your duty to rid the streets of Satan and his accomplices. Will you help us?’

‘Aye, aye.’

Infected by her madness, they surge forward suddenly, pushing and prodding me from Francis’s grasp. ‘Let’s put her to the test!’ They bundle me out of the door, bearing
me out into the street before them. ‘To the river!’ they cry.