Time's Echo (48 page)

Desperately I try to hold up my sleeve, but the hands shoving at me throw me off-balance, and I stumble and fall heavily onto my hands and knees.

For a moment I couldn’t move. I hung my head in despair, sobbing for breath, while the rain beat pitilessly around me. All I could do was wait for them to drag me back to
my feet and prod me onwards to the river.

But no one did. Slowly I realized that the shouting had stopped too. All I could hear was the skirl of the wind and the rain drumming onto the ground. The women had gone.

Still I didn’t move. I was afraid of some trick. My eyes flickered from side to side, calculating my options. It wasn’t long since we had left Agnes’s house, but I was
exhausted, and my chest was heaving like a beaten horse. I couldn’t outrun anyone in this state, but it wasn’t far to the house. If I could make it back there, we could shut ourselves
up until the women calmed down, as they would without Francis and Agnes whipping them into a frenzy. When the rain stopped and folk started about their business once more, everything would return
to normal.

Except for me. I thought of the coins in the box in Ned’s study. I would take what I could, and Rob could get us onto a boat. We would all go to Hull, to London, to the Baltic. Anywhere
Francis and Agnes could not follow. The thought of them made my whole body clench with horror.

All I had to do was get back to the house and I would be safe.

Cautiously I got to my feet. I put my hand to my head instinctively to straighten my cap and was horrified to find my head uncovered. It was the final humiliation and my eyes pricked with tears
of shame, before my mind cleared and I remembered.

The house in Coney Street was no longer there. There were no women. No Bess. There was no one to run from, and no one to run to. I slumped with relief. No one was going to force me to the river.
I had woken from the nightmare just in time.

Only to find myself in a different one. The realization hit me like a slap. Sophie was still out there somewhere, by the river. And the rain was rank with the smell of rotting apples.

I turn and hands jab at me, but as I lift my head I can see Jane standing behind the crowd. Her eyes are wide with horror. Mog is by her side and I know without being told that
the cat has fetched her, but what can Jane do? She is barely more than a child herself, and I need her to look after Bess.

I don’t dare cry out to her, but our eyes meet. ‘
Take Bess
,’ I will her. ‘
Go
.’

But she doesn’t understand what I am trying to tell her. She just stands and watches, her hand to her mouth, her expression despairing.

Francis grips my arm. ‘You think that urchin will save Bess?’ he sneers, following my gaze. ‘She can do nothing. Agnes and I will take Bess. We will make her our own. I will do
what I like with her, Hawise.’ He puts his face close to mine and his breath is foul. ‘She will know that her mother was a witch, and she will shudder at the thought of you.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ I try and wrench my arm away, but he holds it fast behind my back. ‘You cannot get away with it!’

‘Can we not? Do you see anyone rushing to save you? Why should they? It’s all your own fault,’ he said, almost peevishly. ‘All you had to do was love me, but you
wouldn’t.’

‘I will love you now,’ I say desperately – anything to get back to my daughter and Jane. ‘I will, I promise.’

But Francis shakes his head. ‘It’s too late,’ he says. ‘I will take Bess instead.
She
will love me.’

‘
No!
’ My voice rises to a howl. ‘A curse be on you, Francis Bewley!’ I cry, and there is a gasp from the women. ‘May you rot in Hell for what you have done
to me and mine. May your arms droop and your pizzle wither. Your bones will ache and rattle in your skin, and your sinews crack. I call on the Devil himself to cast you into torment!’

There is one moment when the women waver at my curse, but Agnes moves quickly. ‘You see?’ she says. ‘She cries out to her Master!’

I ignore her. ‘You will never sleep easy again,’ I tell Francis as he pushes me forward. ‘And when you arrive in Hell, I will be waiting for you.’

I reeled from one side of the street to the other, so tired that I was weaving over the road as if I were drunk. I was lucky there was so little traffic around that night. The
grazes on my palm stung and my knees throbbed as I stumbled on between the present and the past, hardly knowing or caring where I was going, until I turned down High Ousegate and saw the bridge
ahead.

It looked bare and exposed without the buildings I was used to seeing, and I stopped. Everything in me told me to turn back, but I dragged the thought of Sophie to the front of my mind and
forced myself on.

The nearness of the river repelled me. My chest was tight with terror, my breath wheezing thinly in and out of my lungs. I made it to the top of the steps leading down to King’s Staith,
where I had stood so often with Rob watching the loading and unloading of the keels from Hull, but the quay had gone, swallowed by the swollen Ouse. It surged high under the bridge, glistening
malevolently in the lights from the buildings lining its banks, an obscene mass of black, swirling water bearing relentlessly onwards.

There was no way I could reach the Millennium Bridge that way. I should have thought about the river flooding. With a sob of frustration I stumbled blindly back the way I had come.

Still cursing Francis, I am bundled onwards, out of the postern where the officer is huddled over a brazier and doesn’t even look our way, and down to St George’s
Field. When the sun shines the laundresses work here, but it is too dank and dirty today and there is no one around. The path is slick with mud, and I slip and slide as the mob hustles me further
down the river. It is scrubland here, too close to the river to be tilled. The cattle stand against the hedgerows, their bellies encrusted with mud, resigned to the rain, watching us incuriously as
we blunder past.

I don’t now remember how I found my way to the bridge at last. No longer even aware of the rain, I stumbled along the streets that ran parallel to the river, my boots
splashing through the puddles, my breath rasping in my ears. I was beyond thinking. I just knew I had to get to Sophie before the river carried her away. I kept making false turnings, only to be
baulked by a river swelling grotesquely by the minute, and when I finally staggered into the field that Hawise had known as St George’s Field, I could hardly believe it.

There ahead of me, just discernible through the gusting rain, was the arch of the suspension bridge. I bent over, retching.

‘Sophie!’ My thready voice was lost in the wind.

Dragging oxygen into my lungs, I forced myself upright. A mess of twigs, leaves and litter barrelled over the grass, while at the edge of the darkness the river heaved like a great, greedy
snake. If I got too close, it would snatch me up. Every instinct ordered me to retreat, but I went closer.

‘Sophie!’ I called again.

The river was creeping high over the banks. I pushed my way along under the willows, splashing through the water, feeling it tug remorselessly at my knees.

‘Sophie! Sophie!’

I almost missed her. Grabbing at the trailing branches of the willows to steady myself, I kept an eye on the water that sucked and swirled around my legs, until a glimpse of white made me turn
my head, and there she was, huddled beneath a bush.

‘Sophie!’ I splashed frantically towards her, dropping to my knees beside her. Her eyes were blank with fear and shock, and she was completely naked.

‘Oh, God . . . Oh, God . . . what have they done to you?’ I crouched beside her. ‘Sophie, we have to get away from here,’ I shouted in her ear. ‘The river’s
rising fast.’

For answer she latched her arms wordlessly around my neck and clung to me. My throat was so tight I couldn’t speak. I just held her close and fought the horror of the river grabbing at
me.

‘It’s okay,’ I managed at last through clattering teeth. ‘You’re safe now.’

But she wasn’t. I had no idea how to get her home and dry, and I could feel Hawise clamouring in my mind. The wind was screaming around us, tossing the willows about, and it was so wet and
cold that every breath was a struggle.

‘Come on.’ I tried to urge Sophie to her feet, but her face crumpled.

‘I have to stay.’ I could barely make out what she was saying between the wind and the rattling of her teeth, or perhaps of mine. ‘I have to be purified by the river goddess.
Ash said I had to stay here until he came back for me.’

I didn’t waste time trying to argue with her. ‘He sent me to get you.’ I had to shout over the sound of the gale.

‘But he said I had to prove myself worthy of the next level.’

‘You’ve done that,’ I said.

‘He t-told me I had to be n-naked. He t-took away my clothes.’ She began to cry, curling in on herself.

The water was lapping at my ankles. ‘Sophie . . . ’ I dragged her bodily to her feet, but I could see her desperately trying to cover her nakedness. Why hadn’t I thought to
bring a jacket? I dragged off my hoodie and froze as the rain splattered against my bare back.

When they push me down to pull off my shoes and my stockings, I feel strangely detached. It is hard to believe this is actually happening, that they are tugging at my
netherhose, exclaiming at the colour and fingering the quality enviously. The rain has lessened to a mean drizzle and I can feel it pattering on my bare shoulders. I make myself curse and yell at
them, but I have become a thing, an animal, stripped of any feelings, and they do not even look in my face as they wrestle my arm down, so that they can tie my thumb to my toe with a lace pulled
from my sleeves. I struggle, but there are too many of them. Francis isn’t touching me, but he is watching, his face alight, and in a strange moment of utter clarity I glimpse him through the
press of women, rubbing himself through his hose.

Nobody else notices. Intent on my utter humiliation, they don’t even notice how quickly the river is rising. It is lapping around me as I lie twisted on the ground. It must be filling
their shoes and saturating their skirts, but they pay it no mind.

I was lurching backwards and forwards between times, and my mind was spinning, but I struggled desperately to fix on Sophie. I had to get her out of the river.

‘Sophie, we’ve got to go,’ I shouted in her ear as I helped her pull the hoodie over herself. It was so wet it could hardly be a comfort, but at least it covered her breasts.
Awkwardly, I kicked off my shoes and wriggled out of my sodden jeans. They would be better than nothing.

I pushed them at Sophie. ‘Put them on when we get out of this,’ I yelled as I took her arm.

By then I wore only a T-shirt and knickers, but I was too frantic to get Sophie out of the river to feel the cold. She clutched the jeans in front of her and we splashed through the water.

I could feel the river dragging at me, and with a mighty push I shoved Sophie forward, out onto the grass, so that I didn’t pull her back with me.

‘Stay there,’ I shouted at her. ‘Whatever you do, Sophie, stay there!’

I could see her standing on the grass, covering herself with my jeans, her hair fattened by the rain and her eyes stark with shock and fear. ‘Grace, what’s happening?
Grace!
’

I tried to call out to her, but she was fading, or I was fading – I wasn’t sure which. I saw her start to splash back and reach for me.

‘No!’ I cried, stumbling backwards into the river. If she touched me, she would be lost too. ‘No! Don’t touch me!’

‘Enough.’ Agnes takes one of my stockings and calmly ties it around my mouth. ‘No more curses,’ she says as my shouts are muffled and I intensify my
struggle. ‘You have done your worst. The Devil can save you,’ she says, her eyes afire.

She directs the women to lift me by the shoulders and the ankles. The river is churning, tugging at their skirts as they wade into the flooded shallows.

‘Deeper!’ Agnes cries. ‘Deeper!”

When they are up to their knees they swing me experimentally. I try and struggle, but I am twisted with my thumb tied to my toe, and my shoulder is on fire with pain. They cannot really mean to
do this, I think. They have punished me enough, surely. They have made their point. I am beaten and humiliated. Now they will put me down.

But they do not put me down. One more swing, wider this time.

‘Let her sink or swim, and may the Devil take her,’ shouts Agnes and, with a mighty heave and a grunt of effort, the women send me up, up into the air and out over the water.

The river swirled around me, knocking me off my feet, and I fell into its cold, cruel grip. My mouth and nose were full of bitter brown water and I surfaced, choking and
spluttering, as my feet scrabbled for purchase. The river wasn’t deep – only up to my waist – but it was very strong and the current pushed me along.

On the grass Sophie was screaming. She was safe as long as she stayed there. I fixed my mind on that as the river wrenched me along and I lost my footing again and the water closed over my head.

The river closes over my head and I am tossed and tumbled around in it. The lace tying my thumb to my toe has snapped and I fail my arms around, but I don’t know where
the air is. My lungs are screaming for air. I must have air. Blackness pounds at me, but at the very last moment – just as I am about to give in to it – my head breaks out of the
water.

I hauled in a choking breath, thrashing my arms in a desperate attempt to stop myself being swept away. A detached part of my mind was telling me that the situation was absurd.
I couldn’t drown in waist-deep water. I couldn’t have survived the tsunami to drown in a shallow river.

But I was back in my nightmares, back in the tsunami, helpless against the relentless surge. My heels dragged along what was usually the top of the bank and I grabbed at a trailing willow
branch, but the current shoved me on, so that it ripped through my hands. I staggered, slipped, sank under the water once more, and there was nothing but the roar of the river in my ears, its rank
taste in my mouth, and the paralysing fear that hammered in my head. This time I really was going to die.