Lady of Hay

27

Jo had fallen first to her knees, then slowly down until she was sprawled on the grass, her head near a lump of roughly shaped stone. Nick knelt beside her. “Jo!” he called urgently. “Jo, for God’s sake, can you hear me?”

His anger had vanished, the sudden unsought surge of antagonism gone. He took off his shirt and rolled it up, gently pushing it beneath her head, and, worried by her stillness, felt for the pulse in her wrist. It was there, quick and light, but steady, her breathing shallow. As he knelt, helplessly watching her, she flung out her arm with a little painful cry.

“Jo?” he whispered. “Jo, where are you? Can you hear me?” There was no response. Her eyes did not open; her face was still.

He chafed her hand gently as the thunder rumbled closer behind them and he saw a flicker of lightning in the valley. “Jo, love, you must wake up. We can’t stay up here in the rain. Jo!” He spoke more loudly, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her. She groaned and her eyes opened, but she did not see him. Her gaze went past him to the distant hills.

“Please, no,” she whispered. “Please.”

“Jo! You must wake up.” Nick shook her again, more roughly this time. “Jo. Come on! Listen to me.” He let her fall back with a sigh, and touched her face lightly with the tip of his finger. “Are you with him again, Jo? Is Lord de Clare there?” His jaw tightened. “Are you lying in his arms at this very moment?” He clenched his fists. “Why here, Jo? What happened here? What triggered it off?”

She didn’t answer. Far away in the mists of that other storm, Matilda was staring at the streaming torches of the frightened soldiers.

A heavy drop of rain fell on Nick’s naked back. He glanced up, aware suddenly of how close the storm had come. The sky overhead was indigo above the soft weight of the slate-bellied clouds. Two more drops fell on Jo’s white blouse as he stared down at her trying to control the conflict of strange emotions inside himself. “Christ!” he cried out loud suddenly. “Oh, Jesus Christ!”

He bent over her and kissed her fiercely, his eyes closed as he felt the complex web of anger and frustration and desire ride over him. Then it was gone as fast as it had come and he was aware only of the fact that he was kneeling on the bleak mountainside with an unconscious woman and that it was about to pour with rain. He scrambled to his feet and, gently extricating the shirt from beneath her head, shrugged it on. Then he stooped and lifted her from the ground. Slowly he began to descend back toward the car, holding Jo in his arms, wary of the steep ground that was slippery now beneath the rain. He had gone perhaps half the distance back toward the lane when he heard a shout. The rain was falling harder now. He shook his head to clear it from his eyes, conscious of the sweat standing on his forehead. His heart was pounding. Jo was slim, but she was tall, and already her weight was exhausting him, tearing at the muscles of his arms and shoulders.

“Wait, man, wait! I’ll help you!” The figure was gesticulating now as it appeared out of the rain, a black-and-white collie at his heels. “An accident, was it?” He was beside Nick now, a small man in plus fours, incongruous with shirt sleeves and a flat cap against the rain. Nick gently lowered Jo’s feet to the ground, supporting her weight on his shoulder, gasping for breath.

“She fainted,” he said after a moment, noting with relief the broad shoulders and sinewy arms of his rescuer. “I had to try to get her out of this rain.”

“Put her arm around my neck, here. I’ll give you a hand.” The man spoke with calm authority. “We’ll get her to my car, see. It’s only down there.” He gestured to a stony track leading up from the lane. In the dancing lightning Nick could see a silver Range Rover drawn up on the grass immediately below them.

Between them they lifted Jo into the back, her head cushioned on a blanket. Then Nick climbed in beside her as their rescuer vaulted into the driver’s seat, the dog beside him. Outside the rain became heavier every second, drumming on the roof, surrounding them in a wall of streaming water as it poured down the windshield and slammed against the windows.

The man turned, his elbow over the back of his seat. “They’re the devil, these storms. They come so fast then in ten minutes the sun is out again. Is that your Porsche I saw a couple of miles back?”

Nick nodded. “We walked farther than I realized.” The man was staring down at Jo. He nodded. “Easy to do in the mountains. And in this funny old weather too. Will we take the lady to the hospital? It’ll be easier in this, I reckon.”

Nick stared down at Jo. She was deathly pale, her head rolling sideways as the man turned back to peer through the windshield, beginning to ease the car forward slowly up the rutted lane. Her hands were ice-cold, her breathing very shallow. Nick rubbed her hand gently. After finding another blanket covered in dog hairs, he laid it over her. With a sigh he nodded at the man’s back. “Yes, please,” he said. “I’d be very grateful if you would take us to the hospital.”

Jo awoke in the hospital, disoriented and afraid, and meekly she submitted to a barrage of tests before at last she was discharged by a puzzled doctor who could find nothing more wrong than a possible allergy to electrical storms. Deeply relieved that she appeared to be all right, Nick phoned Margiad Griffiths and told her to expect them back in Hay that evening.

“You poor child. Come on up. I’ll help you to your room,” Mrs. Griffiths met Jo at the door as Nick pulled their suitcases from the car. “I’m just so very sorry you couldn’t come here on Wednesday when you asked, but we were so full up, we were.” She took Jo’s elbow in her hand and firmly guided her toward the stairs. “Your fiancé said you’d share a room. I hope that is all right?”

Jo nodded wearily. “That’s fine, Mrs. Griffiths, thank you.”

“And that nice Mr. Heacham?” Mrs. Griffiths asked curiously as she stopped on the landing, panting.

“Has gone back to London. He was a colleague, as I told you.”

The other woman sniffed loudly. “Colleague he might have been, my dear. But he was very much in love with you. But you know that of course.”

Jo gently removed her arm from Mrs. Griffiths’s protective clutch. “Yes, I know,” she said bleakly.

“May we see our room?”

Jo jumped visibly as Nick’s voice came from immediately behind them on the stairs. He was carrying their suitcases.

Flustered, Mrs. Griffiths threw open the door opposite them. “There,” she said. “I hope you like it.” She shot a nervous glance at Nick.

The room was a large one. Two single beds with a foot space between them faced the windows that looked out onto the street. The bedspreads and curtains were of primrose yellow chintzy material and the carpet moss-green. Jo walked to the window and threw it open, staring out at the quiet houses opposite. She was trembling slightly. “This is a lovely room. Thank you.”

Mrs. Griffiths preened herself visibly. “I wanted you to have the best this time, my dear. Now, Mr. Franklyn said you’d like supper in, so I’ve put on a nice piece of lamb. It’ll be ready about eight, if that is all right with you.” She smiled from one to the other. “My Ted, he loved my cooking when he was alive. He always said my lamb roasts were the best he’d ever tasted. Now”-she looked around with quick confident possessiveness-“I think you’ll find you’ve everything you need. But you’ve only to call downstairs if you can think of anything.” She glanced nervously at Nick once more as he opened the door for her and ushered her out, then he closed it firmly behind her.

He spun to face Jo. “So, even she could see that Tim Heacham is in love with you!”

Jo froze. Slowly she turned to face him. “Tim has gone back to London, Nick. He came here to take photographs. That was all.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

She walked across to the nearest bed and pulled her suitcase up onto it. “I didn’t sleep with Tim, no.”

She had still been Matilda when she had slipped into Tim’s arms, and he? Surely for a few hours he had been once again Richard, Earl of Clare. She looked up and met Nick’s eye steadily for a moment before beginning to pull clothes from her bag. That hard suspicious face, the tightened jaw, the eyes cold with anger. He had changed again to that other Nick. The Nick who had made her so afraid because he reminded her of an arrogant Plantagenet prince. She swallowed hard, trying to put the thought out of her mind, shaking out her two dresses, hoping he would not see how her hands were trembling. “Are there any coat hangers in the closet, Nick?” She forced herself to sound normal. “I think I should change for this sumptuous dinner, don’t you?” She gave him a hesitant smile. “I’ll have a shower and get the smell of hospital out of my hair.”

He picked up his own bag and flung it on the other bed. “Right, I’ll have one after you.” He grinned at her suddenly as he pulled out a fresh shirt. He was himself again.

Jo picked up her bathrobe and washing things and opened the door, glad to escape. She wanted to be alone, to think; to try to face the terrible suspicion that was becoming every second more real in her mind-that Nick had once been John, King of England, the man responsible for her death.

She closed the door behind her softly and took a deep breath. Below her Mrs. Griffiths was climbing the stairs once again. She came to an abrupt halt as she saw Jo with her hand on the handle of the door.

“Miss Clifford, I forgot to tell you. After you left here on Wednesday a Miss Gunning called from London. She said I was to tell you if I saw you again to call her urgently. You can use the phone in the parlor if you like.”

Jo frowned. She glanced at her watch, then back at the bedroom door. “I might just catch her before she goes out. Thank you. I’ll phone straight away.” She followed Mrs. Griffiths down the stairs. “She’s my boss, in a manner of speaking,” she said apologetically as Mrs. Griffiths showed her the phone in what was obviously her private sitting room. “I’ll pay for the call.”

Bet was in the bath.

“Jo? Thank Christ you’ve called! Where are you?”

Jo looked around the small neat room with its deep armchairs with spotless antimacassars. She could smell the lamb cooking.

“Back in Hay. What is so urgent, Bet?”

“Jo, love, I’m not sure how to say this, but I had lunch with Nick on Wednesday. We talked quite a bit. Jo, listen, I think he’s going to try to come after you. I know this sounds crazy, but I think he’s dangerous. I think he’s out of his mind. He really hates you, Jo. God knows what’s got into him, but I think he is capable of trying to kill you!”

There was a moment’s silence, then Bet’s voice rang out again in the quiet room. “Jo? Jo, are you there? Did you hear what I said?”

“I heard,” Jo said softly.

“And?”

“And I hope you’re wrong.” Jo’s voice was bleak. “I hope to God you’re wrong…”

In London Judy Curzon was staring curiously around the small neat living room of the house in Gloucester Avenue. Everything was immaculately in place. The white sofa with two geometrically designed black-and-white cushions, the only furniture besides a white table and a phalanx of bookshelves down one wall, holding, besides hundreds of books, a stereo system, video recorder and television, and a rank of indexed filing boxes.

“A drink, Judy?” Pete Leveson followed her into the room after closing the front door.

“Thank you.” She was still looking around with interest.

Noticing, he gave a rueful smile. “This is all the furniture left after my first two wives cleaned me out. It’s all one needs. Something to sit on, books, and music.”

She took the glass from him. “My philosophy too. Only I make my guests sit on hard stools, or the floor.” She gingerly lowered herself onto the sofa. “Are you sure you don’t mind my coming over?”

Pete walked over to the window. He threw up the lower sash and sat down on the white-painted window seat. “I’m glad you did. I needed some company. So, what’s new in Fulham?”

“I’m preparing for a new exhibition.”

“So soon?” He put his foot up on the seat and clasped his hands around his knee.

“Not so clever really. I had nearly enough material for two exhibitions anyway. This one is exciting though. It’s going to be in Paris. But I didn’t come to talk about that. Pete, I need your help.”

“You don’t need my help, Judy. But you’ll have it, for what it’s worth. I enjoyed writing up the last one, and the thought of a trip to Paris to write about the next is not entirely obnoxious to me.” He grinned. “I might even buy a picture myself this time.”

“I’m not talking about the exhibition!” Brushing aside his intended compliment, she jumped up restlessly and went to stand in front of his bookcase, staring up at the lines of titles. “I want you to…that is…” She turned awkwardly toward him. “You know Tim Heacham, don’t you?”

Pete concealed a smile in his hand. “Of course.”

“Did you know he was in love with Jo Clifford?”

“I had heard rumors to that effect, yes.”

“He doesn’t just fancy her, Pete. It is something much, much more…” For a moment Pete saw an almost painful sympathy in her eyes and he looked at her with renewed interest. Her short red hair was becomingly tousled, her dark-green shirt and her jeans well cut and for once paint-free. She exuded an air of gamine charm that did not quite conceal the determination which directed all her movements. His eyes rested on her broad, almost masculine hands with their neatly trimmed nails. Scarlet talons were more to his taste, but she certainly had something, some underlying current of sexuality that appealed to him enormously. He stood up and reached for her glass. “Let me get you another,” he said gently. “I take it you feel that I can help their romance along somehow.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Yes. And for a start you can tell the world what a mess Nick has made of his business affairs.”

Pete’s mouth fell open. “Hang on a minute. I had the impression that you were rather keen on Nick yourself.”

The green eyes clouded. “No longer. The reason he has been ignoring the office more and more is because he has been hypnotized too, like Jo. And in his previous existence he knew her before. And he hated her enough to kill her.” She took the refilled glass from him and gave him a knowing smile. “Surely you could use material like that, Pete, couldn’t you?”

Jo stood for several minutes after she had hung up the telephone, staring out of the window at the roof of the tower of Hay Church, almost hidden among the trees. She was numb.

“Finished, then, dear?” Margiad Griffiths popped her head around the door. “Supper will be on the table in fifteen minutes, if you were going to have a quick bath.”

Jo looked blankly at the bathrobe and sponge bag she had put down on one of the chairs. Slowly she picked them up. “I’ll pay you for the call,” she said huskily.

“Bad news, was it, dear?” Mrs. Griffiths came into the room properly. “That white, you are. Here.” She gave a conspiratorial smile. “Why don’t I give you a glass of sherry. That’ll perk you up a bit, so it will. You can take it upstairs with you.”

Gratefully Jo took the tiny thistle crystal glass of sweet sherry and made her way back upstairs. The bedroom door was still shut. She locked herself in the bathroom and, drawing the shower curtain around the bath, turned on the tepid water before she pulled off her mud-stained jeans and blouse and stepped under the shower attachment, letting the water stream over her face and breasts, soaking her hair until it turned to a jet curtain of wet silk on her back.

Supper was ten minutes late and Margiad Griffiths was flustered. “It’s the wine, see. I sent my Doreen up the road to get you some from the Swan, but I don’t know if it’s any good. My late husband, he knew about wine, but I don’t like the stuff myself!” She thrust the bottle at Nick shyly and then handed him the corkscrew.

Nick looked gravely at the label. “That’s very nice, thank you. Will you thank your daughter for going to so much trouble,” he said to her with a smile.

He grinned at Jo as their hostess withdrew. “Chambré it certainly is, after its voyage back from the Swan, wherever that is. The label says it was a good wine once. But it has been shaken to the point of shall we say sparkling, if not actually frothing.”

Jo managed to laugh. “The way I feel now, I don’t care how it comes as long as it’s wet and alcoholic.” She watched him draw the cork and gingerly sniff the neck of the bottle. “The food looks lovely,” she said soberly after a minute.

“And so is the wine, in spite of its adventures. Here’s to the intrepid Margiad-isn’t that a lovely name?” Nick took a large mouthful. “And here’s to you, Jo.” He met her eye, suddenly sobering.

Jo sat back in her chair. “There was a phone message waiting for me to call Bet Gunning this evening,” she said. Her gray-green eyes studied his face gravely. “I spoke to her just now.”

“Oh?” Nick picked up his knife and fork.

“She said she had lunch with you last week.”

Nick smiled. “Is that why she called? To tell you what happened?”

“What did happen, Nick?”

“She told me to keep away from you. She said I was ruining your career prospects and spoiling your literary style. She then offered herself to me as compensation. When I declined her kind suggestion she was a little upset. Though not enough, I should have thought, to report back to you. What was her version?”

Jo gave a small smile. “Much the same. Bet is nothing if not honest. Perhaps she wouldn’t have been if you had accepted her offer.” She took a tentative mouthful of lamb. “She also told me she thought you hated me.” She did not look up.

Nick said nothing for a moment.

“Hated me enough to want to kill me,” she went on, so quietly he thought for a moment he had not heard aright.

“Jo.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “Bet is a self-confessed troublemaker and bitch. She also had a vivid imagination. For God’s sake-” His expression turned to one of incredulity. “You don’t believe her?”

She shook off his fingers and put down her knife and fork. “No, of course not.”

She reached for the wine bottle and poured some more into her glass. “But you have been rather odd, Nick. You admitted it yourself.” Her hand was shaking as she looked up at him. She forced herself to smile.

He frowned. Then abruptly he stood up, pushing his chair back, his food hardly touched.

“Jo, we’ve got to have this out. I love you-” He gave her an embarrassed grin. “Not an easy thing for an Englishman to say in broad daylight, but, there, I’ve said it. I think I’ve loved you ever since I first met you.”

There was a moment’s tense silence as they both considered suddenly the deeper implications of what he had said. With a shiver Jo looked down at her plate. Her throat had constricted so tightly she could barely breathe.

“Then why did you go to Judy?” she whispered at last.

He groaned. “God knows! Because you told me to go to hell, I suppose.” He paused. “Because sometimes you make me so angry-”

“Angry enough to want to hurt me-” She looked up at him.

“No!” he replied explosively. “It is as if-” He paused in mid-sentence, staring out of the window. “It is as if there is something in my mind that closes down like a shutter. When it happens I don’t know what I’m doing for a while. That’s not an excuse, Jo. There is no excuse for what I did to you. It’s perhaps all the more frightening because it’s like that. I don’t understand it.” He frowned. “But it will not-cannot happen again.”

Jo ached suddenly to stand up with him and take him in her arms, but resolutely she sat still, staring down at her plate again. “Sit down, Nick, and eat your supper. Mrs. Griffiths will be so hurt if we don’t at least make the effort,” she said quietly. “I expect you’ve been overworking, what with the worry about Desco and everything,” she added, as matter-of-factly as she could. “That might explain it all.”

He sat down heavily opposite her. “It might, I suppose.” He gave a weary smile.

“Why did you come here, Nick?”

“To Wales?” He paused. “To see you. To be with you.”

“But why?” She clenched her fists in her lap, waiting for his reply.

“Because I was worried about you, I suppose,” he replied after a moment.

“I see.” She bit her lip. “And you’re still going back tomorrow?”

“I have to. I’m due to fly to New York on Wednesday and I’ve got an awful lot to do first. But I’ll wait and see how you are before I go. It worries me the way you are having these regressions spontaneously. Supposing there had been no one there. Supposing it had happened to you in the street, or driving, for God’s sake!”

“There is no reason it should happen again, Nick.” Jo gave up her attempt to eat and laid down her knife and fork. “I don’t think what I had today was a regression anyway. I just fainted-like I did at Ceecliff’s. As I told you, the doctor said it was probably something to do with the thunder we’ve been having so much. It happened before in a storm, remember? He thinks it’s an allergic reaction to electric force fields, or something.” She gave a little laugh. “He said I’d probably be the sort of person who pukes under pylons.”

Nick managed a smile. “But you didn’t tell them about the regressions, did you?”

She shook her head. “They’d have locked me up, Nick. And kept me in for a month for psychiatric tests. If anyone is going to do any tests on me, it’s going to be Carl Bennet.” She glanced up at him under her eyebrows. “Would you come with me, Nick, if I went back to him?”

Nick frowned. She saw his fingers clench and unclench around the handle of his knife. “As an observer, Jo,” he asked quietly after a long pause, “or as another patient?”

She went up at about nine. Nick did not stop her. Nor did he suggest he go to bed too. Instead he let himself out into the street and began slowly to walk toward the church.

The churchyard was shadowy. It smelled of new-mown grass in the evening twilight as he sat down on the wall and lit a cigarette, feeling the dew soaking into his shoes. He could see the bats flitting in and out of the darkness of the yew trees around him and once or twice he heard their faint sonar squeaks. Slowly it grew dark. He knew he ought to go back. Mrs. Griffiths would probably be waiting to lock up, but somehow he did not want to leave the quiet velvet night. He ground out his third cigarette into the grass with his heel, conscious that the dew was striking chill all around him now. Moths had begun to crawl over the streetlight near by, fluttering desperately in its harshness. He watched as the bats swooped through the pool of light, taking the mesmerized insects in quick succession before wheeling out into the darkness again and circling for another swoop. In the distance he heard a clock chime eleven.

Reluctantly he stood up.

Jo was asleep. He clicked on the lamp beside his bed but she did not move and for a moment he stood looking down at her. He had described the strange thing in his mind as a shutter. It was more like a shadowy incubus, lying sleeping in his brain, that every now and then shook itself and stirred and murmured. And when it spoke he had to obey. He felt the prickle of fear touch the skin at the back of his neck as his mind skidded obliquely away from the lurking suspicion that had begun to haunt him. But there was one thing he had to face. Whatever it was, this alien part of him, Bet was right, it threatened Jo. Gently he pulled the sheet up over her shoulders, touching a strand of her hair as he tucked it around her. Asleep she looked so vulnerable. Why should any part of him want to harm her? Bet had seen it. Her bantering and flirting had stopped the moment she had seen the other being in his eyes. And Judy. What was it she had said to him? You weren’t regressed. Sam told you who you were and then he told you what to do . He sat down on his bed thoughtfully. But his first attack on Jo had been before Sam had hypnotized him. And Sam would never want him to hurt Jo. Angrily he pushed away the echo of his mother’s voice. You must never let Sam hypnotize you, Nick…Did he find out who you were in Matilda’s past? What did he let you remember?

He remembered suddenly Judy’s expression as he had moved toward her in the living room of his apartment, intending to take her glass and refill it. She had backed away from him, and he had seen in her eyes the same fear and uncertainty he had seen in Bet’s; Judy too had glimpsed the stranger in him.

Jo stirred on her bed and flung out her arm, but she did not wake. Nick looked down at her, then he walked away to the other side of the room. He did not dare let himself touch her again.

She woke at dawn. Her eyes strayed sleepily around the unfamiliar room focusing on the open window for a moment, then she started to shake.

She sat up, clutching her pillow to her chest, burying her face in it as she tried to control the terror that flooded through her. The memory had returned all at once, just as it had before, the details three-dimensional in their clarity. Castel Dinas in the threatening storm, Prince John, the drunken men, and her own vulnerability and fear as the king’s brother made his intentions clear.

She clutched the pillow tighter, seeing again the handsome, drunken face above her, feeling his brutal hands on her breasts, feeling her absolute powerlessness before his determination.

“Are you all right, Jo?”

She stifled a scream as Nick’s hand closed over her wrist, and, tearing herself from his grasp, she threw herself to the far side of her bed. “Don’t touch me!” She slid out of the bed, still holding the pillow, and backed away from him. She was trembling violently.

“I’m not going to touch you, Jo.” Nick moved back. He sat on the side of his own bed, his eyes on her face. “You’ve had a bad dream, that’s all.”

“A dream!” Her face was white as she stared at herself in the dressing-table mirror. “Do you think a dream did this? And this?” She thrust her wrists at him and then her shoulder in the thin silk nightgown with its ribbon straps. Both were bruised and there was a long scratch on her neck near her collarbone. Her throat was bruised and swollen.

Nick stared at her in horror. He had become suddenly very cold. “Jo! I hope you don’t think I did that, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t do it!”

“Didn’t you?” She was like a trapped animal, her shoulders pressed against the wall. “How do I know it wasn’t you?”

“It wasn’t, Jo.” Nick moistened his lips nervously with his tongue. “You were asleep last night when I came back from my walk. I didn’t touch you. I slept here in this bed, until just now when you woke me. For God’s sake, Jo! Do you think I could do that to you in your sleep and you not wake?” He was breathing heavily. “You’ve had a dream. Another regression in your sleep. It wasn’t anything to do with me, Jo.”

She was a little calmer now. He saw her arms still defensively clutching the pillow, her face pinched and white. “No,” she breathed at last. “It was at Castel Dinas, I remember now.” She took a deep painful breath. “We rode there with the prince’s men. There was a storm and the castle guard was terribly frightened-of the ancient gods. I don’t know who they were. Celts, or Druids, I suppose, but they still walk the hills. John and I were there. Alone.”

“John?” Nick whispered. He could feel the goose bumps rising on his skin.

Jo looked at him directly for the first time. “Prince John,” she said. They stared at each other in silence.

Nick tried to swallow the sudden bile that had risen in his throat. “And he did that to you?” he said slowly.

She nodded. He could see the accusation in her eyes. “It was you, Nick-”

“No!” He launched himself from the bed. “Jo, get a grip on reality! It was not me! You were in a trance. No one touched you except inside your head. I took you to the hospital and they kept you there for hours while they examined you. There wasn’t a mark on you. Not yesterday, not last night. It happened in your sleep, Jo!” Gently he took the pillow from her and put it back on the bed, then he caught her hands. They were ice-cold. “Jo. I think we should see Bennet. As soon as possible.” He pushed her into a sitting position on her bed.

She was looking up at him. Tentatively she raised her hand and traced her fingers lightly over his eyes and nose. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and she threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, Nick, don’t let it be true. Please,” she cried desperately. “Don’t let it be true.”

After-dinner cigar smoke wove around fluted silver candlesticks and drifted up to the high ceiling, curling beneath the plastered moldings. Ponderously Sam stood up, a glass of port in one hand, and walked down the long table to a vacant chair near its head. He put down his glass and extended his hand. “Dr. Bennet? My name is Samuel Franklyn.”

Bennet looked up and surveyed him briefly, then he indicated the empty place beside him. “Please, sit down, Dr. Franklyn. I hoped we might meet here this evening,” he said. He reached for the decanter. “We have a patient in common, I believe.” He glanced up once more, his eyes narrowed. “One of the most interesting cases I have ever come across. Cigar?”

Sam shook his head. “She has finally changed her mind about our conferring-now that it is too late for me to stop your becoming involved-did she tell you?”

Bennet raised an eyebrow. “She did not. But I did intend to have a word with you anyway, I must confess.” He was studying Sam’s face with interest. “When did you last see her professionally?”

“On the twelfth. You were away, I believe.”

Bennet nodded slowly. “I saw her the following week. We had a very disturbing session during which I tried, at her request, to suggest to her that her interest in her past life would lessen or be lost altogether. She rejected the suggestion and became very disturbed. It was necessary to sedate her. I have not spoken to her since then. She missed her next appointment.” Thoughtfully he kept his eyes fixed on Sam’s face.

“She went to Wales.” Sam took a sip from his port. “She decided to try to check some of the facts and locations of these regressions for herself. And now, I gather, she has begun to regress spontaneously.”

Bennet sighed. “Autohypnosis. I was afraid that might happen.”

“And not entirely involuntary, I think. I gather you believe in this reincarnation?”

Bennet smiled warily. “I try to be objective about my patients. In fact I had contacted one or two people with whom I would like to have confronted Joanna. A medieval historian. A linguist who would question the Welsh she has begun to speak from time to time. A colleague, Stephen Thomson-you’ve probably come across him-all of whom would be better equipped to judge the material she is producing. They could tell us so much about where all this is coming from if she could only be persuaded to return.”

Sam gave a slow smile. “She will return, I’m sure of it. My brother is with her in Wales at the moment, and I think he’ll see to it, one way or another, that she comes back. You met my brother, I believe?” he added thoughtfully after a moment.

“On more than one occasion.” Bennet laughed ruefully. “He does not trust me, nor my trade.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” Sam fell cryptically silent. He helped himself to some more port and passed the decanter on around the table. “I would be interested myself in your experts’ views. And so I think would Nick.” He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “He worries me sometimes, Nick,” he said reflectively.

Bennet refrained from commenting. He was watching Sam closely.

“He is becoming more and more unstable,” Sam went on. “With violently swinging moods. If he were a patient I would be a little concerned by now. As his brother I find it hard to be objective.” He gave a disarming grin.

“There didn’t seem much wrong with him to me.” Bennet leaned sideways, his elbow on the back of his chair. “He is worrying about a woman with whom he is obviously deeply in love, that’s all.” He paused. “He also is, I think, a deep trance subject himself. I should like the chance to regress him. I sense a soul much troubled through the ages. I should hazard a guess that you think so too.”

Sam’s hand, lying on the table near his glass, had closed into a fist. “I am not sure I share your belief in reincarnation, Dr. Bennet.”

“That surprises me.” Bennet smiled faintly. “I pride myself in having a nose for these things, and I should say you have reason to believe you have much in common with your brother.”

“Possibly.” Sam gave him a cold glance. “If I were to persuade him to bring Jo to you again, will you assemble your experts? But no more suggestions that she forget Matilda. She has to follow the story through.”

Bennet frowned. “Has to?”

“Oh, yes, she has to.” Sam stood up. He held out his hand. “It’s been very interesting meeting you, Dr. Bennet. I’ll be in touch when Jo and Nick return to London…” He gave a small bow and turned away, walking slowly back along the table toward his original seat.

Bennet watched him as he went, a preoccupied frown on his face. There was something about Dr. Sam Franklyn that disturbed him greatly.

Jo and Nick arrived in Carl Bennet’s consulting room the following Tuesday. Besides Carl and Sam there were three strangers present.

Bennet took Jo’s hand when she came in. “Let me introduce you to my colleagues, my dear. This is Stephen Thomson, a consulting physician at Barts. He is something of an expert on stigmata and other phenomena of that kind.” He gave her an impudent grin. “And this is Jim Paxman, a medieval historian who knows a great deal about Wales, and this is Dr. Wendy Marshall, who is an expert on Celtic languages. She is going to try to interpret some of the Welsh words and phrases you come up with from time to time. She will know at once if they are real-and from the right period.”

Jo swallowed. “Quite a barrage of experts to try to trip me up.”

Bennet frowned. “If you object, I shall ask them all to leave, Jo.” He was watching her anxiously. “I don’t mean this to be an inquisition.”

“No.” Jo sat down resolutely. “No, if I’m a fake, no one wants to know it more than I do.” She gave Sam a tight smile. He was seated unobtrusively in the corner of the room, watching the others. He had nodded to her briefly, then his gaze had gone beyond her, to Nick.

Bennet glanced at Sarah, ready by her tape recorder, then he smiled. Around them the others were arranging themselves, leaving Jo alone, seated in the center of the room. “Shall we begin?” he said gently. He sat down next to her.

Jo nodded. She sat back, her hands loosely clasped in her lap, her eyes on Bennet’s face.

“Good,” he said after a moment. “You have learned to relax. That’s fine. I heard you had been practicing.”

Every eye in the room was on him as gently he talked Jo back into her trance. Within seconds he was content. He looked over his shoulder at Sam. “The self-hypnosis we were discussing has made her easier to regress. She doesn’t really need me, save as a control.” He straightened and looked at the others. “She is ready to be questioned. Who would like to have a go first? Dr. Marshall, what about you? Would you perhaps like to ask her something in Welsh? She has, as we all know, maintained that she has no knowledge at all of the language in this incarnation, and I suspect that would be very easy to prove one way or the other. Easier than questions of historical detail.”

Wendy Marshall nodded. She was a tall, slim woman in her early forties. Her hair, an attractive brown, was drawn back into a clip at the nape of her neck, to fall in undisciplined curls down her back. Its exuberance contrasted sharply with her severe expression and the puritanical simplicity of her linen dress. Picking up the clipboard that had been resting on her knee, she stood up and walked toward Jo.

“ Nawr te, arglwyddes Mallt .” She launched at once into a torrent of words. “ Fe faswn i’n hoffi gofyn ichwi ychydig cwestiynau, os ca i …I have told her that I’m going to ask her some questions,” she said over her shoulder.

The silence in the room was electric. Nick found he was clenching his fists, as, like everyone else, he watched for Jo’s reaction.

“ A ydych chi’n fyn deall i? Pa rydw i’n dweud? Fyng arglwyddes? ” Wendy went on after a moment.

There was a long pause. Jo gave no sign of having heard her. Her attention was fixed somewhere inside herself, far from the room in Devonshire Place. Wendy gave a shiver. She glanced at Bennet. “I just asked her if she understood me,” she said in an undertone. “She looks completely blank. I am afraid it looks as though she has been fooling you.”

Nick stood up abruptly. He walked toward the window and stared out, forcing himself to stay calm. Behind him, Sam’s gaze followed him thoughtfully.

Nick spun around. “You think she’s been lying?” he burst out. “You think the whole thing is a hoax? Some glorious charade we’ve all made up to amuse ourselves?”

“Nicholas, please.” Carl Bennet stood up. “I am sure Dr. Marshall is implying no such thing.” He turned to Jo. “Can you hear me, Lady Matilda?” His tone was suddenly peremptory.

Slowly Jo looked toward him. After a moment she nodded.

“You have told us that you speak the language of the hills,” he said firmly. “I want you to answer the questions this lady asks you. You can see this lady with me, can’t you, Matilda?”

Jo turned to Wendy, looking straight at her. Her eyes were strangely blank.

“Speak to her again now,” Bennet whispered.

Wendy raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

“ Fyng arglwyddes, dywedwch am y Cymry sy’n drigo o gwmpas y Gelli, os gwelych chi’n dda ,” she said slowly, speaking very distinctly. “ Ydych chi’n fyn deall i? ”

Jo frowned. She pushed herself forward in the chair, her eyes focused now intently on Wendy’s face.

“ Y…y Cymry o gwmpas y Gelli? ” she echoed hesitantly.

“That’s it! I’ve asked her to tell me something about the people of Hay-on-Wye,” Wendy said quickly over her shoulder, her face suddenly tense with excitement.

“ Eres ych araith ,” Jo said slowly, fumbling with the words. “ Eissoes, mi a wn dy veddwl di. Managaf wrthyt yr hynn a ovynny ditheu…pan kyrchu y Elfael a oruc Rhys… ”

“I will tell thee of what thou desirest…of Rhys’s attack on Elfael,” Wendy murmured, scribbling in her notebook. “Slowly. Yn araf .” She had forgotten her irritation with Bennet and with Nick as soon as Jo had started to speak. Sitting down close to her, she waited for a moment, her eyes intent on Jo’s face. “ Siaradwch e, yn araf, os gwelych chi yn dda ,” she repeated at last. “Slowly, please. Yn araf iawn .”

Jo gave a little half smile. She was looking beyond Wendy now, toward the windows as if she were watching Nick.

“ Rhys a dywawt y caffei ef castell Fallt a gyrrei ef Wilym gyt a’y veibion o Elfael a Brycheiniog megys ry-e yrrassei wynteu y ymdeith Maes-y-fed .” She paused thoughtfully. There was silence in the room, broken only by a quiet rattle as Sarah dropped her pen on the table in the corner; it rolled unnoticed across the polished surface to fall silently onto the carpet.

“Don’t tell me that’s not real Welsh she’s speaking,” Bennet said triumphantly. “What is she saying now?”

Wendy shook her head. “It is Welsh,” she said quietly, “but it’s hard to understand. The pronunciation is unusual and the syntax…that use of the old perfect form dywawt is striking. It’s an early Middle Welsh form that has disappeared. And also very odd is her use of the verbal particle ry with the pronoun -e, meaning ‘them,’ following it. Such usage is very early.” She looked around at the others. “You would not expect to find it even in the Middle Welsh of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. It is very, very interesting.”

“She is talking to you from the twelfth century, Dr. Marshall,” Sam put in quietly. “You would not, I am sure, expect anything other than twelfth-century speech.”

Wendy swung around to look at him. “She speaks modern English,” she said sharply. “Using your criterion I would expect her to speak the language of Layamon, or even more likely Norman-French. But not the English of the 1980s.”

Sam shrugged. “She has a twentieth-century brain, Dr. Marshall. The memories she is drawing on include the languages she would have spoken at the time. But they are being relayed through the medium of a twentieth-century woman who, until now, has been instructed to answer in the twentieth-century idiom. Why don’t you address her in old French? Or even Latin. See what happens!”

“ Pan dducpwyt chwedyl o’n orchyfygu vi bydwn yngastell Paen ,” Jo went on suddenly, completely oblivious of the exchange going on over her head. “ Gwybuum minheu yna ymladd a wnaem ninneu. Nyt oed bryd inni galw cymhorthiaid …”

“What is she saying now?” Bennet leaned forward urgently.

“Wait! I am trying to understand her,” Wendy snapped. She was frowning intently. “She said she would have to fight. There was no time to summon aid…”

“Where? Where is she?”

“Pain’s Castle is it? She is going to defend Pain’s Castle.”

“ Y glawr mawr - Y bu yn drwmm etto ,” Jo went on.

“The heavy rain, it was still heavy…” Wendy echoed under her breath.

“ Oed goed twe ymhob cyfer -”

“There was thick forest all around-”

“ Y clywssam fleiddyeu pellynnig -”

“We could hear distant wolves.”

Jo was sitting bolt upright suddenly, and she had begun to talk very fast, growing more fluent by the second as her tongue became accustomed to the unfamiliar sounds she was uttering. Her eyes were wide open, the pupils dilated, and she was becoming more and more excited.

“Tell her to speak English!” Bennet interrupted sharply. “I think we’ve proved our point beyond any doubt. Tell her, quickly…”

“ Dyna igud. Siaradwch Saesneg yn nawr, os fues dim ots gyda chi .” Wendy leaned forward and touched Jo’s arm almost reluctantly.

Jo drew away. She was staring beyond the people sitting around her in the room, into the far distance, where she could see an untended fire, burning low, the acrid smoke billowing around the castle hall as first one log and then another slipped from the dogs and fell into the ashes.

She was hearing the silence of that cold desolate night, torn by the ugly shouts and screams of men and the angry clash of swords as the first wave of attackers was beaten back from the scaling ladders they had flung up against the walls. She and she alone must take command. The lives of every man and woman in the castle depended on her now that the castellan was dead. Slowly she stood up and drew her cloak around her, then she turned toward the door. Somehow she must find the strength to take up his sword.

“ Seasneg, fyng arglwyddes. Nid ydyn ni ddim i’n eich deall chi !” Wendy cried. “Speak English. We can’t understand you!”

Jo stopped abruptly in the middle of her flow of words. “ Avynnwch chwi y dywettwyf I Saesneg? ” she repeated, puzzled. “ Saesneg …English…I must talk English?” Then, haltingly, she began to speak once more in a language they all understood.