Lady of Hay

by Barbara Erskine

  Janet chuckled. “I’d like to see Dave’s face if I tried that one. Mind you, I like him to touch me. Imagine, in my condition!” She patted her stomach affectionately, then she glanced up. “Did you—did Matilda have the baby?”

  Jo nodded. “Do you want to hear the gory details of medieval obstetrics? Perhaps it’s not tactful at the moment. The entire range of facilities were available to me—no expense spared. A pile of straw to soak up the blood, a midwife who stank of ale and had all her front teeth missing—I imagine kicked out by a previous client—and I was given a rosary to hold. I broke it, which was considered an ill omen, and I had a magic stone tied on a thong around my neck. I was naked, of course, and the labor went on for a day and a night and most of the next day.”

  Janet shuddered. “Spare me. I’m going to have an epidural. Did it hurt terribly?”

  Jo nodded. “I was too tired by the end to know what was going on properly. Then afterward, in real life, I began to produce milk for that poor scrap of a baby who was only a dream!”

  “You’re not serious.” Janet looked shocked.

  “Oh, it only lasted a day or two, thank God, but it was rather disgusting at the time.”

  Janet was staring at her. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “No.”

  “And your Nick. Did he know about all this?”

  “Oh, yes. He was, you might say, present at the birth. He was watching while I was describing it all under hypnosis.”

  “Then I’m not surprised he’s a bit rattled.” Janet shivered again. “The poor man must really feel weird. I’ll tell you one thing. If all that had happened to me, I’d never let myself be hypnotized again as long as I lived. Never!” She shuddered theatrically.

  “You wouldn’t want to know what happened?”

  “But you do know what happened, Jo. David showed you, in that book. She died. Horribly.”

  Jo drew her knees up to her chin and hugged them. “She died in about 1211. The events I am describing happened around 1176. That’s thirty-five years later.”

  “And you’re going to relive thirty-five years of her life?” Janet’s expression dissolved suddenly into her irrepressible smile. “I take it this is a fairly long project, Jo?” The smile faded abruptly. “I think you’re mad. Nothing on earth would make me go through with that deliberately. Didn’t Dave say she had six children? Are you going to go through another five pregnancies and deliveries like that first one? I’m prepared to bet real money they still hadn’t even invented morphine by the turn of the thirteenth century.”

  Jo grinned tolerantly. “Perhaps you’re right. And it is a pretty thankless task, with no baby at the end of it…” She blinked rapidly, aware of a sudden lump in her throat.

  Janet heaved herself to her feet and came and put her arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Jo. I didn’t mean to upset you—”

  “You haven’t.” Jo pulled away from her and stood up. “Besides, if I’m honest I have a particular reason for wanting to go back. Not just to see Will, though I want to hold him so much sometimes it hurts.” She gave an embarrassed smile. “I have to go back to see Richard again. I need him, Janet. He’s gotten under my skin. To me he is completely real.”

  “Supposing Matilda never saw him again?” Janet said thoughtfully after a moment.

  “Then I’ll have to learn to live without him. But until I know for sure, I have a feeling I shall go back. Come on.” She reached for the bedcover and pulled it down. “I need my beauty sleep, even if you don’t. Tomorrow I am going to Hay and Brecon and places to see if I can lay Matilda’s ghost. If I can, then there will be no more regressions. No more Richard. Just an article in Women in Action that will be of passing interest to some and total boredom to others and then it will all be forgotten.”

  She climbed into bed and lay back tensely after Janet had gone, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, half afraid that all the talk of babies might once more conjure up the sound of crying in the echoing chambers of that distant castle, but she heard nothing but the gentle sighing of the wind.

  Outside the window the clouds streamed across the moon and shadowed silver played over the ruins. If Seisyll’s ghost walked, she did not see him. Within minutes she was asleep.

  ***

  The breezes of Sussex were gentle after the frosty mornings of the west and the trees were still heavy with leaves as yet untouched by frost. As Matilda’s long procession slowly traveled the last miles to Bramber, she could see from far away the tall keep of the castle, standing sentinel on its height above the River Adur. They rode slowly down the long causeway into the small village that clung among the saltings around the foot of the castle hill. The parish church and the castle looked out across the marshes and the deep angle of the river toward the sea. The tide was in and the deep moat full of water as they clattered across the drawbridge, with gulls swooping and wheeling around them and diving into the slate-colored ripples below.

  Her beloved nurse Jeanne greeted them outside the towering gatehouse with tears of joy, but she had news of death.

  “What is it, Jeanne, dear? Is it the old lord?” Matilda gazed around as she slipped from her horse, dreading suddenly any visitation of sickness that might come near her son. He was so little and vulnerable. She ached sometimes with love for the little boy and with the terrible fear of what might become of him.

  “It’s Sir William’s mother, the Lady Bertha.” Jeanne’s wrinkled old face was suddenly solemn. “She slipped on the stairs and broke her thigh two months since. She lived on for weeks in terrible pain, poor soul, and then she died at last a week ago, God rest her. The bones were too old to knot properly.” The old woman crossed herself and then looked up shrewdly under her heavy eyelids. “I wonder you didn’t meet the messengers we sent after Sir William. You’ll be mistress of your own now, ma p’tite. I’m glad for you.”

  Secretly Matilda felt no sorrow for the domineering old woman, but she felt a moment’s regret for William, who had cared for his mother in an embarrassed way.

  William had left Gloucester with the king, taking with him most of his fighting men, save her escort, after a brief, futile inquiry into the murder of the three missing knights. It would be some time before he returned to Bramber.

  Matilda suppressed the smile of relief that kept wanting to come. It might not be seemly, but a great weight had been lifted from her mind. She had dreaded her meeting with Bertha. The old woman’s bitter tongue would not have spared her a lashing for her impropriety and disobedience in leaving Bramber the year before, nor would she have allowed Matilda to continue ordering her husband’s household. She glanced around at Bernard, who was sitting slackly on his roan gelding behind her, apparently lost in thought. He would have lost all his respect for her if he’d heard Bertha. Now there was no danger. Bramber was hers. Breathing a silent prayer of gratitude, she raised her arm in a signal and the tired procession of horses and wagons moved slowly under the gatehouse into the steeply cobbled bailey within.

  After dismounting once more, Matilda followed Jeanne into the cool dimness of the great hall and looked around with a quiet sigh of satisfaction at the beautiful arched windows, trimmed with delicately carved flintstone borders, and the intricate carving that adorned pillars and doorways. Bramber was beautiful compared with Brecknock. Beautiful, civilized, and safe.

  She forced herself to go at once to look at the recumbent body of her father-in-law. It was because he still lived that Bertha had remained mistress of Bramber. Had he died as God, she was sure, had intended, Bertha would have gone to her dower lands and left Matilda in charge of the castle. It was because he still lived too that William was in such a strange position, a baron in all but title. She looked down at old William’s face. He had changed not at all since she had left Bramber. The skin was perhaps more shrunken, the eye sockets more hollow as his dimmed eyes still gazed sightlessly at the ceiling. The only sign of life was the clawed hand that grasped incessantly at the sheet drawn up over the old
man’s chest. Dutifully she dropped a light kiss on the papery skin of his brown cheek. He gave no sign of recognition, and after a moment she left his bedside.

  In the privacy of her own solar she hugged Jeanne again. After taking Will from his nurse, she unwrapped him herself and presented him for the old woman’s inspection. Jeanne examined the baby’s sleeping face. Then to Matilda’s relief she nodded and smiled. “A fine boy,” she commented. “He does you credit, ma p’tite, but then I’d expect you to have bonny children.” She glanced sideways at Matilda. “I can see you’re going to have another too. That is good. This time I shall be near to watch over you.”

  Matilda smiled. She had suspected that she was pregnant again, though outwardly her slim waist hadn’t thickened an inch, so she wondered how Jeanne could tell so easily. But she was happy. This time she would stay at Bramber. Nothing would induce her to travel after William as she had done before. There was to be no possibility of the evil eye being directed at her unborn child. She took Jeanne’s hands and kissed the old woman again on the cheek. The black mist-covered mountains of Wales and their unhappy memories seemed very far away.

  ***

  Giles, her second son, was born in April the following year, as the heavy scented air of Sussex drifted like balm through the open windows of Bramber Castle, bringing with it the slight tang of salt from the hazy channel, floating in from the saltings below, and, from the fields and Downs, the heady perfume of apple blossom and bluebells. As the child was laid, sleeping peacefully, in its crib, Jeanne slipped silently to the glowing hearthstone and there laid wine and water and fresh towels for the fairies. With their blessing the child would grow strong and lucky. Matilda felt a sudden shiver of fear. There had been no such magic for baby Will. Dimly she remembered as a bad dream from the past the vision she had had at her eldest son’s birth and she crossed herself, afraid for him. Then, even as she tried to recall the meaning of the vision, it blurred and slipped from her and she saw that Jeanne was watching her with strangely narrowed eyes. Matilda fought to look away but somehow she could not move. The memory grew dim and she saw only the reflection of the sunlight glinting on the ewer of water by the fire, and then again she slept.

  ***

  In her bed at Abergavenny Jo stirred in her sleep as the dream faded. The moonlight touched her face with cold fingers and she flung her arm across her closed eyes and shivered before lying still again.

  ***

  “I want you to listen to me carefully.” Sam sat down on the edge of the coffee table in front of Nick, his eyes on his brother’s face. “You trust me, don’t you?”

  Imperceptibly Nick nodded.

  “Good. And you know I would do nothing to harm you—and I think it would harm you, Nick, to take you back into the past too soon. First I must prepare you. I must warn you who you were in that life, long ago…” Sam paused, a flicker of grim humor straying across his face. “You were not Richard de Clare, Nick, and you have good reason to be jealous of him. He was your friend and your adviser. And he was your rival. You and he both loved Matilda de Braose. But Richard won her. It was to him that she turned. She despised you. She feared you and hated you. She was your enemy, Nick. Do you remember?” He paused, watching Nick’s face closely as his brother shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his face somber. His gaze had strayed from Sam toward the lamp once more, his eyes fixed on it, the pupils pin-size in the brilliant blue of the floodlit irises. Hanging down toward the carpet at his side, one of his hands twitched involuntarily as he clenched and unclenched his fist.

  Sam smiled, wondering for a brief second if what he was saying had a grain of possibility behind it. Where had the violence in his brother come from? One day he would find out for sure, but not today. Today he was setting the scene.

  “I think perhaps you do remember, Nick,” he went on quietly. “You were a prince when you first saw her. She was beautiful and tall and charming. A lady. And you were a snotty boy. Do you remember? You were born too late. She was the first woman you ever desired and she was already another man’s wife and the mother of his child, and you were too young still even to screw the serving wenches you caught in the dark corners of the palace. You made do then with pinching their breasts and thrusting your hand up their skirts, but later it was different. Later you could have any woman you wanted. And you took them. Peasant or lady. Willing or not. Your reputation has echoed down through the centuries. You took them all. All save Lady de Braose. Her scorn unmanned you. When she looked at you, you knew she still saw you as a sniveling child. And your love began to sour. You determined to bring her to her knees, do you remember, Nick? You told her husband to control her better, but he was weak.” His jaw tightened momentarily. “She needed William’s help and he failed her. When he should have whipped her and bridled her shrewish tongue, he let her speak. He let her walk into your trap, when he could have saved her.” He stopped, unable to go on for a moment, sweat standing out on his forehead as he watched Nick’s face. “You hated her by then, and you determined she would pay for her scorn with her life.”

  He sat forward on the edge of the table, hooking his forefinger into the knot of his tie and pulling it loose while behind him the sky was losing its color, the sunset fading as the glare of streetlights took over outside the open window.

  “And now, Nick,” he went on after a pause, “you and she have been born in another century and in another world, and this time you are not a child. This time she sees you as a man, a man she finds attractive, a man to whom she has submitted. But you cannot trust her. Your hate remains. You have not forgotten, Nick. And you have not forgiven. You swore vengeance against Matilda de Braose eight hundred years ago and you are pursuing it still.”

  He stood up abruptly and turned away from his brother. “And this time, my friend,” he murmured, “when she calls on her husband for help, it will be there. I shall not let her down again. I have waited for the chance to make amends, and now at last I have it. Now at last we are all once more on the stage together.” He turned. “You will love the role I’ve given you, Nick. You always were a conceited little bastard—so self-assured. So clever. So sure every woman will fall for you. And they all do, don’t they? But Jo is beginning to see through you. She has tasted your violence now. She no longer trusts you, and if you hit her again, Nick, she will come to me. She will always come to me, I shall see to that. And I shall comfort her. She’ll return to you for more because there is something of the masochist in Jo. Violence excites her. She may even tempt you to kill her, Nick. But I shall be there.” He smiled evenly. “And this time I shall be the one in charge. This time I shall have men to help me. And you will crawl away, my liege. You will lick your wounds and beg for forgiveness as William did to his king, and I shall have you sent away, not to hide in France to die a whimpering shameful death like William had to, no, I shall have you committed, brother mine, to an asylum. The sort of place they put people who live in a world of make-believe and pretend that they are kings. And Jo will come to me. Jo will be mine. She will repent that she slighted me and beg for forgiveness and I will console her as a husband should.”

  He walked toward the tray and poured himself half a tumbler of whisky. He drank it down at a gulp and then poured another.

  “Have you been listening to me, Nick?” He turned slowly.

  For a moment Nick gave no sign of having heard, then slowly he nodded.

  “And have you understood what I have told you?”

  Nick licked his lips. “I understand,” he said at last.

  Sam smiled. “Good,” he said softly. “So, tell me what your name was, Nicholas, in this past life of yours.”

  “John.” Nick looked at Sam with alarming directness.

  “And you know what you must do?”

  Nick shifted in his chair. He was still staring at Sam but there was a clouded, puzzled look on his face.

  Sam frowned. He put down his glass. “Enough now,” he said slowly. “You are tired. I am going to wake you soo
n. You must ask me to hypnotize you again, little brother. You find that hypnosis is soothing. It makes you feel good. You are going to forget all that I have told you today with your conscious mind, but underneath, slowly, you will remember, so that when you are next with Jo you will know how to act. Do you understand me?” His tone was peremptory.

  Nick nodded.

  “And one other thing.” Sam picked up his shirt and began carefully to straighten the sleeves. “A favor for a friend. Before Jo comes back you must go and see Miss Curzon. Make your peace with her, Nick. You like Judy, remember? She’s good in bed. She makes you feel calm and happy. Not like Jo, who makes you angry. Go and see Judy, Nick. Soon.” He smiled. “Now I want you to relax. You are feeling happy now and at ease. You are feeling rested. That’s good. Now, slowly I want you to count from one to ten. When you reach ten you will awake.” Slowly Nick began to count.

  ***

  “Abergavenny, Crickhowell, Tretower,” Jo murmured as she swung the MG onto the A40 next morning. She glanced up at the line of hills and then at the gleam of the broad Usk on her left, and she shivered, remembering the icy feel of the water, the snow beneath her bare feet, and the silence of the hills. Thankfully she concentrated as a tractor swung out onto the narrow road ahead of her. She leaned forward and turned on the car radio. She could not look at the hills now, not as well as hold the car on the road. She turned the station up loud and, hooting at the tractor, tore past him north toward Hay, refusing to let herself think about the vast empty area of moor and mountain far away on her right.