Lady of Hay

8

As the cab drew away from the curb Jo settled back on the broad, slippery seat and closed her eyes against the glare of the sunlight reflected in the spray thrown up from the road by the traffic. Then she opened them again and looked at her watch. It was barely five. She had lived through twenty-four hours of fear and horror and it was barely five o’clock. In front of her the folding seats blurred; above them the tariff card in the window floated disembodied for a moment. Her hands were shaking.

With a squeal of brakes the taxi stopped at the traffic lights and her bag shot off the seat onto the floor. As she bent to retrieve it she found herself wincing with pain. Her fingertips felt bruised and torn and yet, when she examined them, they were unharmed. She frowned, remembering the way she had clung to the stone arch to stop herself from fainting as she watched the slaughter of William’s guests, and she swallowed hard. She put her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket as the taxi cut expertly through the traffic toward Kensington, the driver thankfully taciturn, the glass slide of his window tightly closed, leaving her alone with her thoughts. She felt strangely disorientated, half her mind still clinging to the dream, alienated from the roar of the rush hour around her. It was as if this were the unreal world and that other cold past the place where she still belonged.

Her apartment was cool and shadowy, scented by some pinks in a bowl by the bookcase. She threw open the tall balcony windows and stood for a moment looking out at the trees in the square. Another shower was on its way, the heavy cloud throwing racing shadows over the rooftops on the far side of the gardens.

She turned toward the kitchen. After collecting a glass of apple juice from the carton in the refrigerator, she carried it along to the bathroom, set it carefully down on the edge of the bath, and turned on the shower. She stepped out of her clothes, then stood beneath the tepid water, letting it cascade down onto her upturned face, running it through her aching fingers. She stood there a long time, not allowing herself to think, just feeling the clean stream of the water wash over her. Soon she would slip on her cool cotton bathrobe, sit down at her desk, and write up her notes, just as she always did after an interview, while it was still absolutely fresh in her mind. Except that this time she had very few notes, only the small tape recorder that was waiting for her now on the chair just inside the front door.

Slowly she toweled her hair dry, then, sipping from her glass, she wandered back into the living room. She ran her fingers across the buttons of the machine, but she did not switch it on. Instead she sat down and stared blankly at the carpet.

In the top drawer of her desk was the first rough typescript of her article. She could remember clearly the introduction she had drafted:

Would you like to discover that in a previous life you had been a queen or an emperor; that, just as you had always suspected, you are not quite of this mundane world; that in your past there are secrets, glamour, and adventure, just waiting to be remembered? Of course you would. Hypnotists say that they can reveal this past to you by their regression techniques. But just how genuine are their claims? Joanna Clifford investigates…

Jo got up restlessly. Joanna Clifford investigates, and ends up getting her fingers burned, she thought ruefully. On medieval stone. She examined her nails again. They still felt raw and torn, but nowhere could she see any sign of damage; even the polish was unchipped. She had a vivid recollection suddenly of the small blue-painted office in Edinburgh. Her hands had been injured then too. She frowned, remembering with a shiver the streaks of blood on the rush matting. “Oh, Christ!” She fought back a sudden wave of nausea. Had Cohen hypnotized her after all? Had she seen that bloody massacre before, in his office? Was that what Sam had wanted to tell her? She rubbed her hands on the front of her bathrobe and looked at them hard. Then, taking a deep breath, she went over and picked up the tape recorder, setting it on the low coffee table. Kneeling on the carpet, she pressed the rewind button and listened to the whine of the spinning tape. She did not wait for the whole reel. Halfway through she stopped it and started to listen.

“William is reading the letter now and the prince is listening to him. But he is angry. He is interrupting. They are going to quarrel. William is looking down at him and putting down the parchment. He is raising his dagger. He is going to…Oh, no, no NO !” Her voice rose into a shriek.

Jo found she was shaking. She wanted to press her hands against her ears to cut out the sound of the anguished screaming on the tape, but she forced herself to go on listening as a second voice broke in. It was Sarah and she sounded frightened. “For God’s sake, Carl, bring her out of it! What are you waiting for?”

“Listen to me, Jo. Listen!” Bennet tried to cut in, his patient, quiet voice taut. “Lady Matilda, can you hear me?” He was shouting now. “Listen to me. I am going to count to three. And you are going to wake up. Listen to me …”

But her own voice, or the voice of that other woman speaking through her, ran on and on, sweeping his aside, not hearing his attempts to interrupt. Jo was breathing heavily, a pulse drumming in her forehead. She could hear all three of them now. Sarah sobbing, saying “Carl, stop her, stop her,” Bennet repeating her name over and over again-both names-and above them her own hysterical voice running on out of control, describing the bloodshed and terror she was watching.

Then abruptly there was silence, save for the sound of panting, she was not sure whose. Jo heard a sharp rattle as something was knocked over, and then Bennet’s voice very close now to the microphone. “Let me touch her face. Quickly! Perhaps with my fingers, like so. Matilda? Can you hear me? I want you to hear me. I am going to count to three and then you will wake up. One, two, three.”

There was a long silence, then Sarah cried, “You’ve lost her, Carl. For God’s sake, you’ve lost her. ”

Bennet was talking softly, reassuringly again, but Jo could hear the undertones of fear in his voice. “Matilda, can you hear me? I want you to answer me. Matilda? You must listen. You are Jo Clifford and soon you will wake up back in my consulting room in London. Can you hear me, my dear? I want you to forget about Matilda.”

There was a long silence, then Sarah whispered, very near the microphone, “What do we do?”

Bennet sounded exhausted. “There is nothing we can do. Let her sleep. She will wake by herself in the end.”

Jo started with shock. She distinctly remembered hearing him say that. His voice had reached her, lying half awake in the shadowy bedchamber at Abergavenny, but she-or Matilda-had pulled back, rejecting his call, and she had fallen once more into unconsciousness. She shivered at the memory.

The sharp clink of glass on glass came over the machine and she found herself once more giving a rueful smile. So he had had to have a drink at that point, as, locked in silence where he could not follow her, she had woken in the past and begun her search of the deserted windswept castle.

For several minutes more the tape ran quiet, then Sarah’s voice rang out excitedly. “Carl, I think she’s waking up. Her eyelids are flickering.”

“Jo? Jo?” Bennet was back by the microphone in a second.

Jo heard her own voice moaning softly, then at last came a husky “There’s someone there. Who is it?”

“We’re reaching her now.” Bennet’s murmur was full of relief. “Jo? Can you hear me? Matilda? My lady?” There was a hiss on the tape and Jo strained forward to hear what followed. But there was nothing more. With a sharp click it switched itself off, the reel finished.

She leaned back against the legs of the chair. She was trembling all over and her hands were slippery with sweat. She rubbed them on her bathrobe. Strange that she had expected to hear it all again-the sound effects, the screams, the grunts, the clash of swords. But of course to the onlooker, as to the microphone, it was all reported, like hearing someone else’s commentary on what they could see through a telescope. Only to her was it completely real. The others had been merely eavesdroppers on her dream.

Slowly she put her head in her hands and was aware suddenly that there were tears on her cheeks.

Nick swung out of the office and ran down the stairs to the street. The skies had cleared after the storm, but the gutters still ran with rain as he sprinted toward the parking lot.

Jo’s door was on the latch. He pushed it open with a frown. It was unlike her to be careless.

“Jo? Where are you?” he called. He walked through to the living room and glanced in. She was sitting on the floor, her face white and strained, her hair still damp from the shower. He saw at once that she had been crying. She looked at him blankly.

“What is it? Are you all right?” He flung down the jacket he had been carrying slung over his shoulder and was beside her in two strides. Crouching, he put his arms around her. “You look terrible, love. Nothing is worth getting that worked up about. Ignore the damned article. It doesn’t matter. No one cares what it said.” He took her hand in his. “You’re like ice! For God’s sake, Jo. What have you been doing?”

She looked up at him at last, pushing him away from her. “Pour me a large drink, Nick, will you?”

He gave her a long, searching look. Then he stood up. He found the Scotch and two glasses in the kitchen. “It’s not like you to fold, Jo,” he called over his shoulder. “You’re a fighter, remember?” He brought the drinks in and handed her one. “It’s Tim’s fault. He was supposed to warn you last night what might happen.”

She took a deep gulp from her glass and put it on the table. “What are you talking about?” Her voice was slightly hoarse.

“The paragraph in the Mail. What did you think I was talking about?”

She shook her head wearily. “I haven’t seen any papers today. I was here all morning, and then this afternoon I went…out.” She fumbled with the glass again, lifting it with a shaking hand, concentrating with an effort. “They printed it, did they? The great quarrel between your past and present loves. That must have done a bit for your ego.” With a faint smile she put out her hand. “Show me what it said.”

“I didn’t bring it.” He sat down on the edge of the coffee table. “If you are not upset about that, Jo, then what’s happened?”

“I went to see a hypnotherapist.”

“You what?” Nick stood up abruptly.

She nodded, and fumbling for a cigarette, watched him in silence.

“You know, it isn’t a fraud,” she said at last. “I can’t explain it, but whatever it was, it came from me, not from him.” She balanced the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray and picked up her glass. “It was so real. So frightening. Like a nightmare, but I wasn’t asleep.”

Nick frowned. Then he glanced at his watch. “Jo, I’m going to phone Judy-I’ll tell her I can’t make it this evening.” He paused, waiting for her to argue, but she said nothing.

She lay back limply, sipping her drink as he dialed, watching him, her eyes vague, as, one-handed, he slipped his tie over his head and unbuttoned his shirt. The whisky was beginning to warm her. For the first time in what seemed like hours she had stopped shaking.

Nick was brief to the point of curtness on the phone, then he put the receiver down and came back to sit beside her. “Right,” he said, “let’s hear it all from the beginning.” Leaning forward, he stubbed out her abandoned cigarette. She did not protest. “I take it you’ve got it all on tape?” He nodded toward the machine.

“All but the last few minutes.”

“Do you want me to hear it?”

She nodded. “The other side first. You’ll have to wind it back.” She watched as he removed the cassette and turned it over; then she stood up. “I’ll go and get some clothes on while you listen.”

Nick glanced at her. “Don’t you want to hear it again?”

“I did. Just before you came home,” she said quietly. “We’ll talk when you’ve heard it.”

It was a long time before Nick appeared. She was lying on the bed. She had not got dressed. She watched him quietly as he walked across the carpet and sat down beside her. He looked grim.

“How much of that do you remember?” he asked at last.

“All of it.”

“And you weren’t fooling?”

She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Did I sound as if I were fooling? Did he?”

“All right, I’m sorry. I had to be sure. Do you want to talk about it now?”

“I don’t know.” She hugged her bathrobe around her. “Nick, this is crazy. I’m a journalist. I’m on a job. A routine, ordinary sort of job. I’m going about my research in the way I always do, methodically, and I am not allowing myself to become involved in any personal way. Part of me can see the whole thing objectively. But another part-” She hesitated. “I was sure that it was all some kind of a trick. But it was so real, so very real. I was a child again, Nick. Arrogant, uncertain, overwhelmed, and so proud of the fact that I was pregnant, because it made me a woman in my own right and the equal of William’s mother! And I was going to be the mother of that boor’s son!” She put her face in her hands. “That is what women have felt for thousands of years, Nick. Proud to be the vehicle for men’s kids. And I felt it! Me!” She gave an unhappy laugh.

Nick raised an eyebrow. “Some women are still proud of that particular role, Jo. They’re not all rabid feminists, thank God!” His voice was unusually gentle. “You remember all her feelings then? Even things you don’t mention out loud?”

Jo frowned. “I don’t know. I think so…I’m not sure. I remember that, though. Hugging myself in triumph because I carried his child-and because I had thought of a way to keep him from molesting me. He must have been a bastard in bed.” Her voice shook. “The poor bloody cow!” She picked up a pot of face cream from the table and turned it over and over in her hands without seeing it. “She probably had a girl in the end, not the precious son she kept on about, or died in childbirth or something. Oh, God, Nick…It was me. I could feel it all, hear it, see it, smell it. Even taste the food that boy brought me. The wine was thin and sour-like nothing I’ve ever drunk, and the bread was coarse and gritty, with some strong flavor. It didn’t seem odd at the time, but I can’t place it at all, and I could swear I’ve still got bits of it stuck between my teeth.”

Nick smiled, but she went on. “It was all so vivid. Almost too real. Like being on some kind of a ‘trip.’”

“That follows,” Nick said slowly. “You obviously have had some kind of vivid hallucination. But that is all it was, Jo. You must believe that. The question is, where did it come from? Where have all the stories come from that people have experienced under this kind of hypnosis? I suppose that is the basis of your article.” He hesitated. “Do you think this massacre really did happen?”

She shrugged. “I gave a very clear date, didn’t I? Twenty years of King Henry. There are eight of them to choose from!” She smiled. “And Abergavenny, of course. I’ve never been there, but I know it’s somewhere in Wales.”

“South Wales,” he put in. “I went there once, as a child, but I don’t remember there being a castle.”

“Oh, Nick! It’s all quite mad!”

“What did it feel like, being hypnotized?” he asked curiously.

She sighed. “That’s the stupid thing. I’m not sure. I don’t think I knew it was happening. I didn’t seem to go to sleep or anything. Except real sleep when I slept in the castle. Only that wasn’t real sleep because the time scale was different. I lived through two days, Nick, in less than two hours.” She sat down on the bed again, looking at him. “This is what happened before, isn’t it? When Sam was there. They did hypnotize me and they lost control of me that time too!”

Nick nodded. “Sam said you were told not to remember what happened, it would upset you too much. And he said I mustn’t talk about it to you, Jo, that’s why I couldn’t explain-”

“I lived through those same scenes then,” she went on, not hearing him. “I saw the massacre then too.”

Nick looked away. “I don’t know, Jo. You must speak to Sam-”

“It must have been the massacre, because I hurt my hands tearing at the stone archway. But I really bled in Edinburgh. My fingers were bruised and bleeding, not just painful!” Her voice was shaking. “Oh, God, it was all so real. Nick, I’m frightened.” She stared at her hands, holding them out before her.

Nick took hold of them gently, standing up. “Come on,” he said. “We need another drink. And something to eat. Is there any food in the apartment?”

She dragged her thoughts back to the present with difficulty. “In the freezer. I forgot to buy anything today.” She gave a rueful smile. “I was going to go shopping on my way back from Devonshire Place but everything went out of my head.”

Nick grinned. “I’m not surprised. Being a baron’s lady with a castle full of serfs, you can hardly be expected to lower yourself to trundle around the supermarket with a shopping cart. You must try not to let it upset you too much, Jo. Try and see the amusing side. Think of it as a personalized horror film. You got front-row seats and no ice cream in the intermission. But, apart from that, thank God there’s no harm done this time.”

“That doesn’t sound very scientific.” She forced herself to smile. Standing up slowly, she pulled the belt of her robe more tightly around her. Then she headed toward the kitchen and pulled open the freezer door. “There’s pizza in here or steak.” The normality of her action calmed her. Her voice was steady again.

“Pizza’s fine. What intrigues me is where you dredged all this information up from. The details all sounded so authentic.”

“Dr. Bennet and Bill Walton both said that they usually are. That’s one of their strongest arguments in favor of reincarnation, of course.” She lit the oven and put two pizzas in. “Where it is possible to substantiate things apparently they are usually uncannily accurate. I’m going to check as much as I can. Is there any whisky left?”

“I’ll get it.”

She took down two plates and put them to warm. “Here, let me make a salad to go with these. Neither Bennet nor Walton was a fake, Nick. I was wrong to think it. They didn’t ask any leading questions. Bennet didn’t influence my ‘dream’ in any way. If he had, I’d have heard on the tape. Look, if there is any period of history I would say that I should like to identify with at all it would be the Regency. If he’d been a fraud he would have found that out in two minutes.” She poured vinegar and oil into a jar and reached for the pepper mill. “I daresay I could have reenacted a dozen Georgette Heyer novels. I read everything of hers I could lay my hands on when I was a teenager. But he didn’t ask. He didn’t guide me at all. Here, give this a shake. Instead I find myself in medieval Wales. With people talking Welsh all around me, for God’s sake!”

Nick shook up the dressing and poured it over the salad. “If it was Welsh,” he said quietly. “God knows what it was you said. If you had jumped up and down shouting Cymru am byth I might have been able to substantiate it!”

“Where did you learn that?” she laughed.

“Rugby. I don’t mess about when I go to Twickenham, you know, it’s very educational.” He touched her cheek lightly. “Good to see you laughing. It’s not like our Jo to get upset.”

She pushed a plate at him. “As Dr. Bennet pointed out, it’s not every day that ‘our Jo’ witnesses a full-dress massacre, even in a nightmare,” she retorted.

They ate in the living room. “Bach to eat by,” said Nick, putting his plate down and riffling through the stack of records. “To restore the equilibrium.”

She did not argue. It meant they didn’t have to talk; it meant she needn’t even think. She let the music sweep over her, leaving her food almost untouched as she lay back on the sofa, her feet up, and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again the sky was dark outside the French windows onto the balcony. The music had finished and the room was silent. Nick was sitting watching her in the light of the single desk lamp.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked indignantly. “What time is it?”

“Eleven. Time you were in bed. You look exhausted.”

“Don’t dictate, Nick. It’s time you went, for that matter,” she said sharply.

“Wouldn’t you like me to stay?”

She pushed herself up on her elbow. “No. You and I are finished, remember? You have to go back to your cozy love nest with the talented Miss Curzon. What was it you said on the phone, ‘working late’-she won’t believe it, you know, if you stay away all night!”

“I don’t much care what she believes at the moment, Jo. I am more concerned about you,” Nick said. He stood up and turned on the main light. “I don’t think you should be alone tonight.”

“In case I have nightmares?”

“Yes, in case you have nightmares. This has shaken you up more than you realize, and I think someone should be here. I’ll sleep here on the sofa if the idea of me in your bed offends you, but I’m going to stay!”

She stood up furiously. “Like hell you are!” Then abruptly her shoulders slumped. “Oh, God, Nick, you’re right. I do want you to stay. I want you to hold me.”

He put his arms around her gently and caressed her hair. “The trouble with you, Jo, is that when you’re nice, you’re very, very nice, but-”

“I know, I know. And when I’m horrid you hate and detest me. And I’m usually horrid.” She forced herself to smile. “Well, tonight I’m being nice. But it is only for one night, Nick. Everything will be back to normal tomorrow.”

In bed they lay for a long time in silence. Then Nick raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her in the faint light that filtered through the blind from the streetlamp in the mews.

“Jo,” he said softly. “You haven’t told me yet about Richard.”

She stiffened. “Richard?”

“Your lover in that castle. He was your lover, wasn’t he?”

Restlessly she moved her head sideways so he could not see her face. “I don’t know. It wasn’t me , Nick! He left the castle. He wasn’t there at the end. I don’t know what happened next. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.” Agitated, she tried to push him away, but he caught her wrist, forcing it back against the pillow so that she had to face him.

“You’re planning to see Bennet again, aren’t you?”

She shook her head violently. “No, of course I’m not.”

“Are you sure?”

Something in his voice made her stare up into his face, trying to see the expression in his eyes.

“For God’s sake, don’t do it. It’s dangerous. Far more dangerous than you or Bennet realize. Your life could be in danger, Jo.” His voice was harsh.

She smiled. “Now, that is melodramatic. Are you suggesting I could be locked in the past forever?” She reached up and tugged his hair playfully. “You idiot, it doesn’t work that way. People always wake up in the end.”

“Do they?” He lay back on the pillow. “Just make sure you’ve got your facts right, Jo. I know it’s your proud boast that you always do, but just this once you could be wrong.”