Lady of Hay (64 page)

Another flash of lightning ripped across the sky, followed by a distant rumble of thunder. Putting her dismal thoughts firmly behind her, she raised her whip and urged her horse into a gallop, her veil streaming in the wind, tendrils of hair tearing themselves loose from her wimple and whipping across her eyes.

She raced up the hill into Hay, scattering children and poultry, oblivious of the shaken heads and secret smiles of men and women who saw her pass into the great gates in the walls of her castle. The guards came to attention smartly and Matilda reined in her horse to a rearing, sweating halt. With a glance up at the huge, swollen clouds, she turned to claim her wager from the disheveled, unhappy lady who had tried to keep up with her ahead of their bodyguard, when all thoughts of it were driven suddenly from her head by the sight of a figure coming toward her across the bailey.

Dropping her horse’s rein, she gave a short gasp, not daring to believe her eyes.

“Tilda?” she whispered at last as she slipped from the high wooden saddle. “Tilda, is it really you?” The girl had grown as tall as her mother, slim, with silver hair and a complexion as fair as the ivory of a carved crucifix.

“I hope you are well, Mother dear.” Tilda smiled and curtsied formally before submitting coolly to her mother’s ecstatic kiss. “I have come to be with Gruffydd.”

“And your baby, Tilda? Did you bring him?” Matilda held the girl’s two hands in her own, gazing into her face. There was so much of Richard there—and so little.

Tilda lowered her lashes. “I have two children now, mother. Rhys who is two, and Owain. He is only seven months. They—” She hesitated, glancing away. “That is, we thought it better that they should remain with Gruffydd’s mother and their nurses. I have come alone.”

“You mean they wouldn’t let you bring the children with you?” Matilda seized on the fact hotly. “The Welsh have kept them as hostages, two small babies!”

“No, Mother, do be calm. It wasn’t safe or suitable to bring them, that’s all. They are safe and happy where they are. I wouldn’t have left them otherwise.” Tilda glanced up as the first heavy drops of rain began. “Come, let’s go in, Mother. I don’t want to tell you my news in front of your entire escort, in a thunderstorm!”

She led the way to the door of the hall, her figure slim and erect like her mother’s. But there the similarity ended. Where Matilda was auburn and high-colored, Tilda was pale and ethereal. The mother belonged to the sun, the daughter to the moon.

Since Margaret had gone at last, only a month before, to marry her Walter, the castle had seemed quiet. Of all her children Margaret was the most like her mother, and Matilda missed her support and companionship sorely and dreaded the fact that at any moment Walter would take her away to his earldom across the Irish Sea, in Meath. Isobel was soon to go too, to Roger Mortimer at Wigmore, whose first wife had died in the plague and whose eager suit William had indulgently agreed, so it was a double joy to have her eldest daughter home.

But Tilda proved a hurtful disappointment. She showed little warmth to her mother, answering her excited questions in a bored tone that effectively dampened Matilda’s enthusiasm. She went to sit obediently at Gruffydd’s side as soon as he returned with William to the castle and reduced Isobel to tears with her cutting, icy criticism.

Matilda, who had been going to beg her to come with her to Bramber for the Christmas celebration, bit back the invitation. “You’ve changed, Tilda. You used to be gentle and obedient to your family,” she reproached her sadly.

Tilda drew a quick breath and turned on her mother, her eyes flashing. “I owe you no obedience, Mother. My duty is to my husband! And it is hard to be gentle when my father is called an ogre and a murderer throughout the principalities. He is known for his treachery and his double-dealing. And as for you.” The girl paused, her nostrils pinched suddenly. “They call you a sorceress,” she hissed. “I hear stories being told to my children of Mallt the witch who will come for them if they don’t sleep, and it’s their own grandmother who is being talked of!” Her voice had risen to a cry of anguish.

Matilda looked at her in horrified silence for a moment. “Why don’t you stop them?” She turned away, not wanting the girl to see the indignant tears that threatened to come suddenly to her eyes.

“Because for all I know, it’s true.” There was no mistaking the hard note of dislike in Tilda’s voice. “I remember you muttering spells when I was a child, you and that old nurse of yours. I remember the smoking concoctions you would brew up in your still room. And there are other things. They say you talk to spirits, that you called up a hundred thousand devils at Dinas, that you ride with the storm—as you did”—her eyes suddenly flashed—“the day I came here, Mother.”

Matilda sat down on a carved joint stool and gazed into the glowing embers of the fire. “If you believe all that of me, Tilly, why did you come back to us?”

“I came to see Gruffydd. I didn’t know if he would be allowed to come home. I had to come here.”

“I see.” Matilda’s voice was flat. “Well, my dear. You’d better go to him, then.” She shifted slightly on her stool, turning her back to Tilda, and sat in silence.

Her daughter stood for a moment, hesitating, half regretting her outburst, then with one backward glance at her mother’s hunched figure she swept past her out of the door.

Matilda saw to it that they were never alone together after that, and although she spoke kindly to Tilda and treated her with every consideration, it was with relief that she saw her leave Hay at last with Gruffydd.

William, his elbows firmly spread upon the table, commented at the meal that evening. “That was a good marriage. I’ve had my doubts about the politics of it often enough: the link wasn’t strong enough to hold old Rhys, but Gruffydd is a good enough man, for a Welshman. I could wish he were stronger, but I reckon he’s made our daughter a good husband. She looked well and happy.” He glanced at her, grinning. “I know you were never content to see her off into the Welsh hinterland, Moll. I hope this visit has at last put your worries at rest.” All Matilda could do was lower her eyes and nod.

***

“No! That’s wrong!” Jo was shaking her head. “William knew! He knew she was not his daughter! He would not have said that! He would not have cared…”

She staggered slightly, her hand against the cold, shadowed castle wall; her head was spinning and her mouth was dry. She felt slightly sick. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles trying desperately to clear her head. “He would not have called her ‘our’ daughter. He knew. He knew about Richard by then. He had forced me to tell him…”

But did he know? She could feel her heart beginning to pump uncomfortably beneath her ribs. Was it William who had questioned her about her unfaithfulness with Richard, or had it been Sam? Sam pursuing her into the past. A Sam who had taken upon himself the face of William de Braose. A Sam who had forced her to strip and then whipped her—something the real William had never dared to do.

She closed her eyes, breathing hard.

When she opened them again she was conscious suddenly that a man was staring at her. He had parked a Land Rover in the shadow of the wall near her, watching her closely as he climbed out and locked it. She smiled uncomfortably at him and forced herself to walk on slowly, aware suddenly that he probably thought she was drunk.

She stumbled again, and as her hand shot out to steady herself, she stared at her fingers braced against the stone. Make notes. That was the thing to do. With a pencil in her hand she felt real; she could fight Sam and William and the past and everything they threw at her.

Determinedly she groped in her bag for her notebook, trying to fend off the strange dislocation that still lingered as she stared up toward Pen y Beacon and the pearly mist that clung about its summit.

***

Three-quarters of the way across England, at Clare, Tim Heacham, a page meticulously cut from a newspaper in his pocket, was standing by the walls of what had once been a mighty castle. The taxi that had brought him out from Colchester had gone. He was alone. Slowly he walked over the grass, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the ground a few yards in front of him. There had to be something he could do, but his mind was a blank.

Nick and Sam Franklyn. He should have known. He should have trusted his instincts. He should have warned Jo while there was still time. Now it was too late. Whatever was to happen was already in train, and there was nothing he could do. Nothing.

He looked up at the sky. “Oh, God, Jo, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so very sorry.”

31

Ann Clements was fifteen years younger than her husband, a plump, very blond woman with large teeth and a warm, irrepressible smile. She kissed Jo as if she had known her for years.

“Are you going to interview me or shall I interview you?” she said cheerfully as they picked their way into the house over the two small toddlers, a vast quantity of scattered Legos, and a large white rabbit with pink eyes.

Jo laughed as she patted one of the children on the head. “Perhaps we’d better toss for it.”

“All right.” Ann smiled at her. “That is Polly you’re stroking. The other one is Bill and the rabbit is called Xerxes. Sit down. I’ll make us some coffee. Once Ben comes in I’ll start lunch.” She turned to an immense heap of unwashed dishes, searching for two mugs. “Ben told me all about you, of course. Put that down, Polly.” She had not turned around and Jo concluded with a grin that she had eyes in the back of her head as the little girl with her mop of blond curls guiltily put down the milk jug. “I’ve seen people being regressed back home in the States—it’s practically a minor industry there—but your case sounds absolutely amazing. Ben tells me you intended to write a book about it.”

Jo nodded.

“But you changed your mind?”

Jo shrugged. “I thought I had when I saw Ben. Now I’m undecided again. I went straight from here to Brecon on Tuesday after I’d seen him. I regressed there, and once again yesterday in Hay. Both times deliberately. But I just don’t know what to think anymore. If it were just me, I’d go on. It is all so real to me, and someone has proved I was speaking real old Welsh, and that clinched it for me, but then some rather unpleasant things happened.”

“And you found other people muscling in?” Ann rinsed out the two mugs.

“I found that, after all, the whole thing could have been orchestrated by someone else.” Jo bit her lip “And if that’s true, his motives terrify me.”

Ann glanced up at her. “Can you tell me about it?”

Jo shrugged. “It’s all so involved. There’s one friend…a colleague really. Tim Heacham. He has been regressed—quite independently. He was one of the people in Matilda’s story.”

Ann raised an eyebrow. “Could be true, you know. Or it could be strong autosuggestion. Has he gone into the detail you were able to?”

Jo shrugged again. “I don’t think so. The experience seems to have been very different for him, but he’s afraid of getting any more involved. He wants nothing to do with it. And now I’ve found out there is someone else—a man I’m very fond of. He seems to have been regressed as well.”

“Sounds as if the habit’s catching.” The dry comment was all but drowned by screams from Bill as his sister tugged a great handful of his hair. Ann calmly picked up a child under each arm.

“If you were to ask my advice I should say leave your friends out of this. Let them all work out their own problems. And you concentrate on yours.”

“And go on doing it?”

Ann straightened, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Do you think you can stop?”

Jo rescued the box of coffee filter papers from Bill, ruffled his hair absently, and handed the box to his mother. “No, I don’t think I can.” She gave a half-embarrassed smile.

“Then you must go on with the book idea.” Ann put the pot on the stove. “It’s a good way of approaching it. Writing is one of the best therapies there is, you must know that. And it gives you a justification for following the story on without being afraid it is becoming an obsession. It kind of justifies your actions, forces you to stop and analyze them, and gives you an excuse for doing it all in one. It also gives you a natural cutting-off point at the end.” She looked at Jo closely. “That’s kind of a safety valve. It’s something I think you must have. But there are other precautions you must take—I’m surprised your therapist hasn’t made them clear to you. You must stop either trying or allowing yourself to regress when you are alone. For two reasons. The brain enjoys excursions of this sort. They take on an almost narcotic compulsion and become easier and easier to do, and from what Ben tells me, you are finding that already. All you need now is some sort of trigger—a place, an association even, or, as you told Ben, an electrical storm to stimulate the brain cells. You don’t want to end up finding the past is more compelling than the present! The other reason is self-evident. You are alone and unmonitored. That could be dangerous.” She glanced at Jo and smiled. “If you go into a trance in the middle of the M4 you just might get run over!”

Jo gave a shaky laugh. “That had occurred to me. But I can’t always stop it happening.”

“I think I can teach you how. If you let me.” Ann picked the pot off the stove and poured coffee into the two mugs. “I hope you don’t mind me saying all this, but it’s an area that interests me and I had a feeling you might just find it easier to talk to a complete stranger about it all. But if you want me to drop the subject, say so. I won’t be offended—”

Jo glanced out of the window at the view across the mountains. “No,” she said slowly. “You’re right. I do need someone to talk to. And it’s strange but I feel you know more about this than Dr. Bennet.”

Ann shook her head. “I doubt it. I think it’s more that I can put myself in your shoes better than he can. He’s a man, after all. He’s probably all excited about the mechanics of what is happening to you and has forgotten that there’s a human being here, getting all screwed up in the process.”

Jo gave a wry smile. “I haven’t told you the worst yet. The newspapers got hold of the story—perhaps you saw them. If not I’ll show you the cuttings. You might as well read them. Everyone else in England has.”

“This is not England,” Ann rebuked gently. “As you of all people should know! No, I haven’t seen them. We get papers with the mail, but there never seems time to open them in the summer.” She gave each of the children a glass of pressed apple juice and then threw herself down on a chintz armchair. “Now, sit down and show me before Ben comes in.”

She found some glasses and read both Pete’s articles without comment. Then she handed them back to Jo. “If this Pete Leveson was a friend of mine, I’d cross him off my Christmas card list,” she said succinctly. “You can do without publicity like that. Your Nick Franklyn must be spitting blood.”

“He’s in the States.” Jo smiled faintly. “He probably doesn’t even know about it.”

Ann gave her a long shrewd glance over her glasses. “Don’t take this too seriously, Jo. Hysteria is one of the most catching conditions. These men—and it’s unusual for men”—she interrupted herself thoughtfully—“they are fond of you. They see you deeply involved with something they cannot be part of, and they try, consciously or not, to join you in your past.”

“So you don’t think they’ve been reincarnated too?”

She shrugged. “I think it’s unlikely. I haven’t met them, so I can’t form an opinion as to how genuine they are. But I still hold by my advice. Ignore them if you can. And work out your own destiny. And leave them to work out theirs.”

“But supposing my dreams aren’t real either!” Jo stood up restlessly. “This is where all my doubts come back. Supposing Nick’s brother has implanted King John in Nick’s mind. Supposing he has done the same to me with Matilda.” She shook her head wearily. “There’s something almost evil about Sam these days. Something strange. He’s very clever, Ann. He frightens me.”

“Is he clever enough to have taught you ancient Welsh in three easy lessons?”

Jo looked down into her coffee mug. “I don’t see how he could have.”

“Neither do I.” Ann relaxed back into her chair. “I believe you have tapped into another life somehow. Maybe this Sam Franklyn is trying to manipulate you and his brother for some reason of his own, but if he is, he’s working on something that is already there, at least as far as you’re concerned, believe me.” She sat forward suddenly. “Can you hear the geese chattering? They’ve seen Ben. We’ll talk about this some more after lunch, okay?”

Jo had all the notes she needed on Ann by four o’clock. They had walked the smallholding again, taken more pictures, and Jo had tried her hand at milking. It was in the cowshed that Ann turned to her, leaning against the angular rump of the pretty Jersey cow.

“Would you allow me to try some regression techniques on you later, when the kids are in bed?”

Jo hesitated. “I don’t know. I think I’d be embarrassed—”

She glanced at Ben, who was gently rubbing some ointment into the eye of one of his calves.

“No need. You are concerned to find out about Matilda’s children and grandchildren. You need to see some of the happy side of her life, if she had any, poor lady. Why not let me try and lead you there? Better than going back to Hay and violently hallucinating in the parking lot all alone.”

Jo made a face. “Put like that—”

“You can’t refuse. Good. Listen, go and call your landlady and tell her you are staying here tonight. We’d love to have you, and that way it won’t matter if it gets late. We’ll keep it happy and loose, I promise.”

They drank homemade wine while Ann prepared the quiche for supper, then, when they had eaten, she led Jo to the sofa and sat her down.

Ben perched himself uncomfortably in the corner, his eyes on his wife’s face as she talked Jo back into a trance.

“Hell, Annie, I didn’t know you could do that,” he murmured as Jo obediently raised her arm and held it suspended over her head.

Ann took off her glasses. “I have a lot of talents you don’t know about, Benjamin,” she retorted. “Now, to work.” She knelt at Jo’s feet. “Matilda de Braose, I want you to listen to me. I want you to talk to me about your son. Your eldest son, Will, the child who gave you so much pain at his birth. He is grown up now. Tell me about him…”

“Will had been ill all winter again.” Jo shook her head sadly. “So ill. He wanted to go with his father to fight with the king and Prince John against the French, but he had to stay with me at Bramber. Then, at the end of May, it happened. John came back to us.”

***

Matilda was waiting in the great hall, arrayed in her finest gown, her hair netted in a fillet of silver, with Will, gaunt still, but stronger, at her right hand, when a flurry of activity at the door announced the arrival of their new king.

King Richard had died on 6 April in the Limousin, to be succeeded, not by Arthur, his elder brother’s child, the true heir, some said, by strict right of primogeniture, but by his younger brother, John. John, the grown man the country needed for its king.

William had been among the first to kneel to declare his allegiance before the new king set off for England, and Bramber had been their first stop on the road to Westminster after landing at Shoreham.

Staring at the doorway, Matilda felt a slight constriction in her throat as John appeared, surrounded by his followers; but with every ounce of courage she possessed, she stepped forward to greet him, curtsying to the ground over the hand that he held to be kissed.

His blue eyes, as she glanced up, were inscrutable, but he retained her fingers in his for a moment longer than necessary. “I trust you remember, my lady, that I invited you, many years ago, to be at my coronation.”

“Thank you, Your Grace, I shall be there.” Her glance shifted to William, who was beaming at the king’s side. Behind him, the king’s retinue were crowding into the great hall: nobles, officers, captains of his guard, all travel-stained and weary after the Channel crossing, but eager for the refreshment that Matilda’s cooks and butlers had been preparing since dawn.

With the king ensconced on the high seat of honor, reaching out for the goblet of wine that Will, on one knee, passed him, Matilda gave a little sigh. This should have been a moment of great pride and happiness, with her husband so obviously high in the favor of the new king, so why was she uneasy? She glanced at John and found he was watching her over the rim of the goblet. In spite of herself she felt the heat rising in her face and she looked away again.

Then he was speaking and she knew that, over the hubbub of talk and the intervening crowds who fawned and crowded around him, John was talking to her.

“We look forward to our coronation and to services from our loyal and devoted subjects, as we know you all to be. We know there can be no treachery among those of you who stay our friends.” He rose and flourished the cup and William, delighted, responded pledge for pledge.

Matilda thought of the coronation to come at Westminster Abbey, lit with a thousand candles, thick with incense, and then of the ceremonies that would follow, and tried to put her worries out of her mind. John was king now. He would almost at once, Will assured her, be returning to France. With William so high in favor the next years should be good. Forcing herself to be calm and to share the excitement and good humor of the gathering, she at last took up her own cup and held it out to be filled.

***

“That’s good,” Ann put in softly, almost afraid to speak as the silence stretched out in the room. “But I don’t want you to think about the king too much. Tell me about your children. About their marriages. Talk about Reginald and Giles and Will. Talk about the good times, if you can…”

For a moment Jo stayed silent and Ben shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his eyes leaving her face at last to stare out of the window to where the last pale-green reflections of the sunset were slowly merging into true darkness. From the hillside he could hear the occasional contented exchange between his grazing sheep, and involuntarily he felt himself clutching at the arms of his chair as if to reassure himself of its solidity.