Time's Echo Read Online Free PDF Page B

with Elizabeth. Mother Dent is a poor widow, a cunning woman by some accounts, but my sister Agnes told us once that she has heard Sybil
Dent is a witch. She had a familiar, Agnes said, a cat she called after the Devil himself, and then she lowered her voice so that we shivered. ‘It sucks the blood from her cheek.’
    Mistress Beckwith says that such stories are nonsense, but still, I falter, and instinctively I reach for Elizabeth’s hand.
    ‘Let’s go back,’ she whispers.
    ‘It will take too long. We’re late. Besides,’ I add valiantly, ‘she won’t hurt us. She is just an old woman.’
    I call urgently to Hap, but he won’t come any closer to the widow and in the end I have to pick him up. He whines as we edge past Sybil, mumbling, ‘Good day to you.’
    We are almost past when Sybil swings round and fixes us both with a fathomless gaze.
    ‘Take heed,’ she says, her voice old and cracked, and we hesitate. I can feel Hap trembling in the crook of my arm.
    ‘Take heed of what?’ I ask, more boldly than I feel.
    Sybil’s eyes seem to look into us and through us. It is as if she sees something we cannot, and the hairs on the back of my neck lift. ‘Ware the iron,’ she says. ‘Ware
the water.’
    ‘What does that mean?’ Elizabeth’s voice is high and thin, but the Widow Dent just turns away, hunching her shoulders.
    ‘Take heed,’ is all she will say.
    I tug Elizabeth away. ‘Leave her,’ I say. ‘She knows not what she says.’
    When we are past her, I put Hap down. We walk quickly away, and then faster and faster until we are running, running back to Monk Bar and the city, giggling with relief, and the breeze against
our cheeks blows the widow’s warning from our minds.
    The touch on my arm jarred me back to reality so abruptly that I gasped with fright. I felt sick and faint, as if I had fallen down a step in the dark.
    ‘Grace? Are you all right?’ Drew Dyer took his hand away, eyeing me warily. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.’
    ‘I’m . . . It’s . . . ’
    Desperately I tried to pull myself together. I clutched at the chain around my neck, feeling its silver warm from my skin. Its braiding was reassuringly familiar beneath my fingertips. I was
Grace Trewe, I remembered that straight away, but I had been that girl – Hawise, her friend had called her – too. She was still there, in my head. I could feel her frustration as she
faded, unwilling to let me go.
    I looked down, half-expecting to see a little black dog under my arm. I was sure I could feel the warm weight of him, his shiver as we passed Widow Dent. But Hap had gone. I was wearing jeans
and a long-sleeved top under my cardigan, not an apron over my kirtle, but I could still feel the linen frill at my neck, the tightness of the bodice laced over my red petticoat.
    Cautiously I looked around. This path was Shooter Lane. The patchwork of small enclosed fields and orchards was sealed now with tarmac, and houses and cars stood where once the wildflowers
frothed in the hedgerows. When I reached out to touch the wall beside me again, the brick was rough and real beneath my fingertips.
    ‘Grace?’ said Drew again. He was watching me in concern. ‘You were just standing there as I came up behind you. Are you sure you’re okay?’
    I shook my head to clear it. I’d had a peculiarly vivid hallucination – that was all. It had to have been. Clearly only moments had passed while I lay in the long grass with Hap
pressed into my leg and my friend by my side.
    ‘Yes . . . Yes, I’m fine,’ I managed. I couldn’t tell Drew that in my mind I’d been another girl, in another time. He would think I was mad.
I
would think
I was mad. ‘I just didn’t sleep very well, that’s all. And I’m still jet-lagged.’ I even mustered a smile of sorts. ‘It’s not a good combination. I blanked
out completely there for a moment.’
    ‘You’re very white. Perhaps you should go back and lie down?’
    ‘No!’ My