Lady of Hay

by Barbara Erskine

  When she next woke the room was absolutely silent. There were no voices, no sounds from below in the great hall. She lay for a while, her face still buried in the fur of the bedcover, too stiff and dazed to move, feeling its rancid hair scratchy against her mouth and nose, then at last she managed to raise herself a little and try to turn over. At once her head began to spin and she was overwhelmed with nausea. With a sob she fell back onto the bed.

  A hand touched her shoulder and something cool and damp and comforting was pressed gently to the back of her neck.

  “I’ll help you, my lady, shall I?” Megan’s voice was little more than a whisper.

  At the sound of it Matilda forced herself to lift her head. Then reluctantly she pulled herself up onto one elbow and looked around.

  “Megan? Megan, is it you? Tell me it’s not true. It’s not. It’s not…” Her voice broke. “It must not be true.”

  The room was dark as she groped for the woman’s hands and held them fast. Slowly as her sight adjusted to the gloom she could just see Megan’s face in the dying glow of the fire. Her eyes were shut and tears streaked her cheeks as, wordlessly, Megan shook her head.

  They remained unmoving for a long time, huddled together on the bed, their hands tightly clasped as they listened to the logs shifting on the hearth. Then at last Matilda pulled herself up against the pillows.

  “How long have I been asleep?” she said. Her voice sounded strange and high to her ears. “Where is my…where is William?” She could not bring herself to call him her husband.

  Megan opened her eyes wearily and sat motionless for a moment, staring in front of her. Then she shook her head, unable to speak.

  “Is he still here, in the castle?”

  “Duw, I don’t know,” Megan answered finally, her voice lifeless. “They took out the dead and cleaned the blood away. Then Lord de Braose sent a detachment of his men after the people who stayed behind at Castle Arnold. Prince Seisyll’s wife, his babies…” She began to cry openly.

  “His babies?” Matilda whispered. “William has ordered the death of Seisyll’s babies?” She stared at Megan in disbelief. “But surely there are guards? There will be men there to protect them?”

  “How? When all the prince’s men came with him, thinking there is peace between King Henry and the men of Gwent, trusting the King of England’s honor!” The gentle face had twisted with hatred.

  “I must stop them.” After pushing the covers aside, Matilda climbed shakily from the bed. Her feet were bare but she did not notice. Megan did not move as she made her way to the top of the stairs and listened for a moment to the silence that was broken only by the howl of the wind outside the walls. Steeling herself, Matilda began to tiptoe down, her feet aching from the cold stone.

  The great hall was empty. The rushes on the floor had been swept away, leaving the flagstones glistening with water. The tables had been stacked and the chairs and benches removed. It was absolutely empty. Moving silently on her bare feet, Matilda crossed to the center of the floor and looked around. The echoing vault of the roof was quiet now and the fire had died. Two or three torches still burned low in their sconces, but there was no one to tend them and they flared and smoked by turns in the draft. The only smell that remained was the slight aroma of roasting beef.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she breathed. She crossed herself fearfully as her eyes searched the empty shadowy corners, but nothing stirred. There were no ghosts yet of the dead.

  Forcing herself to move, she left the hall and went in search of her husband. The solar, the guardroom, the kitchens, and the stores were all empty. And the chapel, where the wax candles had burned almost to the stub. The whole keep was deserted. Reluctantly she turned at last to the entrance and, walking out, stood looking down into the dark bailey courtyard below.

  It was full of silent people. Every man, woman, and child from the castle and the township appeared to be there, standing around the huge pile of dead. Behind them some of William’s guards stood muttering quietly, looking uneasily around them into the shadows or toward the lowered drawbridge. They all appeared to be waiting for something—or someone. Nowhere was there a sign of the dark twisted face that belonged to her husband.

  Matilda stepped out over the threshold and walked slowly down the flight of wooden steps. She was half-conscious of the inquiring faces turned toward her on every side, but her eyes were fixed on the bodies of the dead. The Welsh moved aside to let her pass and watched as she walked, head and shoulders taller than most of them, a stately slim figure in her gold and scarlet gown, to stand before her husband’s victims. An icy wind had arisen. It whipped at her long hair, tearing it out of the loose braids that held it. Megan must have removed her headdress while she lay insensible and she had not noticed.

  She stood there a long time, head bowed, her eyes fixed on the ground, only half seeing the flickering shadows thrown by the torches of the men-at-arms. Then at last she raised her eyes to look directly at the men her husband had killed. The body of Prince Seisyll lay slightly apart from the others and someone had crossed his hands across his breast. On his forefinger a dark red stone glittered coldly in the torchlight.

  Slowly her gaze traveled back to the gory heap, searching for the body of his son, the boy whose excited happy mood had so matched her own. She saw him almost at once, lying sprawled beneath another man, his head thrown back, his mouth open in horror at what he had seen. A trickle of blood had dried on the downless chin. His fingers were still clutching the linen napkin that the page had handed him as William began his speech. A few feet from his head lay the harp with its severed strings. Its frame had been snapped in two.

  Her feet no longer felt the cold as she walked across the cobbles to the gatehouse and out over the drawbridge. In fact, she felt nothing at all. No one tried to stop her. The guards moved aside to let her pass and regrouped beneath the gateway behind her.

  She walked slowly down toward the shining sweep of the river, her hair quite loose now, lifting around her head in a cloud. The wind carried showers of icy raindrops off the iron whiteness of the desolate hills but she neither saw nor felt their sting on her face. Somehow she seemed to find a path as she moved unseeing through the darkness and avoided trees and bushes and the outcrops of rock in her way. The cold moon was glinting fitfully through the rushing clouds to reflect in the Usk beneath as she stood for a while on the bank gazing into the luminous water; then she walked on. Soon the castle was out of sight and she was quite alone in the whispering trees. There the snow had melted and clogged into soft slush beneath the network of roots and the path became muddy beneath her toes, dragging at the sodden train of her gown.

  It was several minutes before she realized that there was someone speaking to her, the voice quietly insistent, urging her back, calming the unsteady thudding of the pulse in her head.

  ***

  “I’m reaching her now,” Carl Bennet murmured to the frantic woman at his side. He sat forward on the edge of his chair, staring intently at Jo as she lay restlessly on the sofa by the window. Outside the rain had begun again, sliding down the panes, forming little black pools in the soil of the dusty window box.

  “Jo? Matilda? Can you hear me?”

  His voice was professionally calm and reassuring again, only the beads of sweat on his forehead betraying the strain of the past hour.

  On the sofa Jo stirred and half turned to face him. “Who is that?” she asked. “There is sleet in the moonlight. I cannot see properly.” Her eyes opened and she stared blindly at Bennet. “Is it you? The Welsh boy who brought me my food? I did not know what was planned. You must believe me, I did not know…” With tears running down her cheeks again she struggled to sit up, clutching at Bennet’s jacket.

  Avoiding her desperate fingers, he leaned forward and put his hands gently on her shoulders, pushing her back against the cushions.

  “Listen, my dear, I am going to wake you up now, I want you to come back to us. I am going to count to three. When I do
so you will wake up as Joanna Clifford. You will remember all that has occurred but you will be relaxed and happy. Do you understand me?” For a moment he thought she had not heard him, but after a pause her hands dropped and she ceased struggling. He watched her face, waiting for the slight nod that came after a long perplexed silence.

  “Good girl,” he said softly. “Now…one—two—three.”

  He waited only a moment more, to be certain, then he leaned back in his chair and took off his glasses.

  Jo lay still, staring from Bennet to his secretary and back. For a moment none of them spoke. Then, as Jo raised her hand and ran her fingers through her hair, Bennet stood up. “I think we could all do with some coffee,” he said, his voice shaking. “Would you, Sarah, please?”

  He walked across to the table and switched off the tape recorder with a sharp click. He took a deep breath. “Well, how do you feel, Jo?” he asked. His tone was light and conversational. His glasses polished to his satisfaction at last, he put them back on his nose. Then he turned to look at her.

  “I don’t know.” Jo pushed herself up against the cushions. “Oh, God, I’m so cold. My feet are freezing.” She leaned forward and rubbed them. “And my fingers are hurting—Oh, Christ, I don’t believe it! Tell me it didn’t happen!” She buried her face in her hands.

  Bennet glanced at the open door through which came the sound of rattling cups from the kitchen.

  “Do you remember everything?” he asked cautiously. After removing the reel from the recorder, he held it lightly between finger and thumb.

  “Oh, yes, I remember. How could I forget!” Jo raised her face and stared at him. He recognized the same blind anguish he had seen as she acted out the role under hypnosis. “All that blood,” she whispered. “To see those men die. To smell it! Did you know blood smelled? And fear? The stink of fear!” She stood up unsteadily and crossed to stare out of the window. “That boy, Doctor. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen. He watched his father die and then—” Her voice cracked to a husky whisper and she fell silent, pressing her forehead against the window as a tear trickled down her cheek.

  Quietly Sarah reappeared and put the tray on the desk. Bennet raised his fingers to his lips. He was watching Jo intently. Outside there was a flurry of angry hooting in the narrow street but none of them noticed it.

  Jo turned back toward the room. Her face was white and strained. “Did you record everything I said?”

  He nodded. Her own small tape recorder still sat on the floor beside the couch, the microphone lying where it had fallen on the rug.

  “Come, have coffee now,” he said quietly. “We can listen later.”

  “I still don’t believe it,” she said as she sat down and took the cup from him. It rattled slightly on the saucer as she tightened her grip. “You’ve set me up somehow. No, not intentionally, but somehow. There is no way all that was real, and yet I couldn’t have dreamed that—that obscenity—that boy’s death.” She found herself blinking hard, and she steadied herself with an effort. There was a long silence.

  She sipped the coffee slowly, then she looked up, forcing a smile. “So, tell me what you thought. How did I do as a subject?”

  Bennet had taken his own cup back to his chair and Sarah, sitting at the side table, her own hands still shaking, turned to look at him. She had recognized his barely suppressed excitement.

  He chewed his upper lip for a moment. “I think I can say in all honesty that you are the best subject I have ever worked with,” he said at last. “As I told you, people’s sensitivities vary enormously and it often takes several sessions before a deep enough trance is reached for any meaningful contact to be made with another personality.” He took a gulp of coffee. “But this Matilda. She was so clear, so vivid.” He stood up again. “And so powerful. Do you realize I lost control of you? That has never happened to me before in all my years of experience. I tried to break the trance and I couldn’t!”

  Jo stared at him. “I thought I had read that that couldn’t happen.”

  He shrugged. “It was only temporary. There was nothing to be afraid of. But it was fascinating! Do you feel ready to discuss what you remember now?” He reached down to where a pile of notebooks lay beside his chair and selected one.

  Jo frowned. Then slowly she shook her head, concentrating all her attention on the steaming black liquid in her cup, still fighting the unfamiliar emotions that overwhelmed her. “In a minute. I’m sorry, Dr. Bennet, but I feel rather odd.”

  He was watching her carefully. With a glance at Sarah he went over to collect the coffeepot from the desk in front of her and poured some more into Jo’s cup. “I doubt if you have ever witnessed a massacre before, my dear,” he said dryly. “It would be surprising if you were not upset.”

  “Upset! But I feel as though I had really lived through it, for God’s sake!”

  “You have. For you, every part of that experience was real.”

  “And not only for you,” Sarah added softly behind him.

  “It was a hallucination, some sort of dream.” Slowly Jo put down her cup. “You must have put it all into my head. You are not trying to tell me that I am a reincarnation of that woman—”

  “I am not trying to tell you anything,” said Bennet with a sigh. “We are only just beginning to grope our way toward an explanation for this kind of phenomenon. All we can do is record what happens with meticulous accuracy and consider the various hypotheses. I happen to believe in reincarnation, but, as you say, it may well be some kind of dream sequence, and it may come from nowhere but your own unconscious. The interest lies in trying to verify whether or not the events you appeared to live through really happened, and in recording every detail that you can remember.” He took his glasses off again with a weary smile. “There is one thing I can assure you of, though. I did not put the idea into your head, telepathically or verbally. The tapes will bear me out on the latter and also my great ignorance of Welsh history. We did not study Wales, I regret to say, in Vienna before the war.” He smiled. “We won’t discuss anything further now, though, if you’d rather not. You are tired and we both need to evaluate what has occurred. But whatever the explanation, the fact remains that you are an amazingly responsive subject. You reached the deepest levels of trance, and next time—”

  “Next time?” Jo interrupted him. “Oh, no, not again. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t take it. I have enough material here to write my article and that is all I want.”

  For a moment he stared at her in dismay. Then he shrugged and resumed his seat. “Of course, I cannot compel you to return, but I do most ardently hope you will. Not only for your researches, but to help me with mine. This Matilda, she seems a remarkable girl. I should like to know more about her.”

  Jo hesitated. Then she stood up. “No, I’m sorry. It is interesting, I agree, but I don’t like it. I was so much in your power, in your control. You could be levitating me next, or making me go stiff as a board, whatever you call it, for all I know.” She shuddered.

  “Cataleptic.” He smiled again. “You were in a far deeper state of trance than is needed to induce catalepsis, my dear.”

  She had begun collecting her notebook from the table but at his words she swung to face him. “You mean you could have done that to me?”

  “Of course.”

  “You didn’t though.”

  “No, although it is still used by some practitioners as a method of gauging the depth of trance reached. I prefer to use a pin.” His eyes twinkled behind his glasses.

  “A pin?”

  “Oh, yes. You’ll hear it on the tape. I stuck a pin into the back of your hand. Had you not been in a sufficiently deep trance you would have shrieked at me and bled, of course.”

  Jo stared at both her hands in disbelief. “And I did neither?”

  “You did neither.”

  She shivered. “It’s horrible. You could end up having complete domination over people without them ever knowing it!”

  Carl looked off
ended. “My dear, we have a professional code, I assure you, like all doctors, and, as I said, always a chaperone.”

  “In case you get your evil way with a woman patient?” The strain on Jo’s face lessened as she smiled at last.

  “Even hypnotherapists are human!” he responded.

  “And as such are liable to be hurt by what I write about them in the magazine?” Serious again, Jo swung her shoulder bag onto her arm. She picked up her tape recorder and stood up, shocked to find her knees were still trembling.

  Bennet made a deprecatory gesture with his hands. “I will admit I have read some of your work. I believe it to be well researched and objective. I can ask for no more from you in my case.”

  “Even though I’m not converted to your theories of reincarnation?”

  “All I ask is an open mind.” He went to the door ahead of her. “Are you sure you feel well enough to go? You wouldn’t like to rest awhile longer?”

  She shook her head, suddenly eager to be outside in the fresh air.

  “Then I will say good-bye. But even if you feel you must leave us now, I beg you to consider returning for another session. It might help to clarify matters for both of us.”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, then, can I ask you to note down every detail of what you remember?” he begged. “While it is still fresh in your mind. I think you will find your memory clear and complete. Far, far more than you described to me. All kinds of details that you did not mention at the time but that you will remember later. You’ll do it anyway for your article, I’m sure.” He was standing in front of the door, barring the way. “And you’ll check the history books to see if you can find out whether Matilda existed?”

  She gave a tight smile. “I will. I’m going to check everything meticulously. That I promise you.”

  “And you will tell me if you find anything? Anything at all?” He took her hand and gripped it firmly. “Even if she is the heroine of a novel you read last year.” He grinned.

  “You don’t believe that?”