Lady of Hay

30

Jo took the wrong road at the bottom of the hill and found herself heading northwest instead of back along the Wye Valley toward Hay. She almost stopped to turn, then on a sudden defiant impulse she drove on into the narrow busy streets of Brecon itself, slowing the car to a standstill in the knotted traffic. She found a place to park, then wandered slowly around the town before climbing to the cathedral with its squat tower. By the time she had reached it she had made up her mind.

After pushing open the door, she walked in, staring around. The guidebook was very informative. It was during the lifetime of Bishop Giles de Breos and his brother Reginald that the eastern part of the original Norman church of Bernard of Newmarch had been replaced by the chancel, tower, and transepts that exist today. Her eye traveled down the lines of close print. Reginald was the only Lord of Brecknock to be buried in the Priory Church. She bit her lip, staring around. Reginald was buried there. There, somewhere beneath the lovely arching vault of the chancel…Suddenly she didn’t want to know. Reginald, that sturdy, cheerful boy, her third son, whom she loved in such an uncomplicated way and who had loved her. Her eyes filled with tears, and it was only with an effort that she pulled herself together. After all, she had not needed to come into the cathedral. If she had really wanted no more to do with the de Braose family she should not have gone to Brecon at all. She stood staring up at the high altar with its carved reredos and its offering of flowers below the huge stained-glass window, then forced herself to look back at the guidebook that told about the church of the de Braoses.

There wasn’t much left of the castle. A mound and an ivy-covered fragment of wall, that was all, but she was used to that now. She climbed the worn staircase carefully and stood staring out across the rooftops toward the vivid toothed outline of the Beacons. Yes, this view she did remember; the outline in the mist and the sunset behind that faraway bastion of mountains. She dug her nails into the stone blocks of the wall, then, taking a deep, relaxing breath, she deliberately began to empty her mind.

The room was dark and there was a pounding in her temples. She tried to raise her head, then, with a groan, let it fall back on the pillows, lights flashing and searing behind her eyelids. She lay, exhausted, for what seemed a long time, then dazedly she realized there were people in the room with her. Someone helped her to vomit and she lay back again, a cool wet cloth across her burning forehead. She heard Elen’s voice, alternately scolding and soothing, and a man’s voice intoning something. Was it prayers or a magic charm? She tried to concentrate, but her mind slipped away and wandered again.

Two men in Aberhonddu had died of the plague and one of William’s clerks had succumbed, with suppurating boils beneath his armpits. She had visited him, holding a bunch of rue to her nose, and laid a gentle hand on his forehead, trying to ease his pain, before they realized what illness it was that had struck him down.

The summer was cursed. No rain had fallen. The harvest was failing. Heat shimmered and hung over the mountains like an oppressive cloud. Lord Rhys was dead. His sons still fought one another ceaselessly and Gruffydd was imprisoned now at Corfe. There was no news of Tilda, nor of the little son that Gerald had told them she had borne. No news…no news…

Desperately she called for her nurse, but Jeanne did not come, and Matilda could feel the tears wet on her cheek as the delirium swept her once more into darkness.

A cursed summer. A summer where William had quarreled with Trehearne Vaughan, her kind, scholarly friend, their neighbor at Hay, the man who had given her her Welsh bard, a kinsman of the Welsh princes. His face floated in and out of her dreams with William’s. William who never came. William, who kept away from the plague-bound castle and left her to her fate.

It was a long while later that she woke and, for a time, looked around. The pain in her head seemed to have eased for a moment and then she became conscious of the terrible burning in her groin. She groaned and closed her eyes. It had been dark beyond the unshuttered window, but the flickering light from the sconce by her bed seared her eyes; the room was pungent with burning herbs from a brazier. She tried to call out and tell them all to go away-to leave her, to save her children, her babies-but her tongue was swollen and dry in her mouth and no words came. One or two angry tears squeezed out between her swollen eyelids and she slid once more into a half-sleeping dream. When she awoke again her bed was wet with sweat and vomit and there seemed to be no one there to help her. “They have left me to die.” The whole of her left side pained her and there was an agonizing cutting pain beneath her arm now as well as on her side.

“Christ! Christ, be with me!” This time she managed a whisper, but at once someone was there, sponging her face. “Be brave, Mother dear. You will be well.” It was Margaret’s voice, shaking, pleading. “Please, Mother. You must get well.” The girl was bending over her, trying to ease away the foul pillow. Matilda heard herself scream as the girl jarred her body and she saw the terror in Margaret’s eyes. Then she saw nothing more.

When she next awoke it must have been dawn. The sconces had gone out and the brazier was cold. A pale light was beginning to filter through the unshuttered window opposite the bed, and she could hear the clear, joyful caroling of a thrush from the rowan tree outside in the bailey. She lay quite still, shivering beneath the damp covers, wondering where she was. The room smelled terrible. She tried to lick her lips, but her tongue was too dry. She could feel the sticky pus running down beneath her arm and shoulder. After closing her eyes, she drifted into an uneasy sleep. She did not know it yet, but her indomitable body had won the battle against the plague.

As soon as she was strong enough, she sat in the high arched window of her solar, looking down toward the town and out across the river to the mountains. It worried her that her legs were feeble and unsteady still, but it was pleasant to lose herself for a while in the broad view, resting from her study of the accounts and figures that she had had brought to her bedside. The people of Aberhonddu had suffered terribly from their losses in the plague and the poor harvest, and she knew that they and all her vast estates faced untold hardships, if not starvation, in the coming winter. With her hand pressed to her aching forehead she tried once again to calculate how the meager contents of the granaries within the castle and its farms could be made to stretch.

Her eye was caught suddenly by a flurry of activity near the Honddu Bridge and she sat forward with interest. A small group of horsemen seemed to be waiting there, stirring the dust on the roadway as their impatient animals pawed the ground. Then she saw for whom they were waiting. A party of men-at-arms were riding two by two up the track from the east. Before them, clearly recognizable under his banner, rode William, his surcoat emblazoned with the rising eagle, shimmering in the sun, the black horse on which he rode prancing slightly, resenting the firmly held rein.

The party on the bridge rode forward to meet him and for a moment the two groups of horsemen drew to a halt, facing each other in the dusty road.

Matilda passed her hands over her eyes again, sighing. Her sight had seemed weaker since her illness and all this peering into the glare gave her a headache. She thought at first the flashes of light catching her vision were from her own head but then, with a shock, she realized they came from the sunlight reflecting on drawn swords. She leaned forward suddenly, her heart thumping, and the accounts slid unheeded from her knees to the floor.

The smaller group of men were being beaten back toward the bridge and they seemed to be fighting for their lives. She tried to follow William, lost sight of him, then saw him again. He was determinedly fighting one man, the leader of the other group. Then suddenly it was all over. The man was disarmed. Matilda saw his sword fly, at William’s savage stroke, in a great arc, flashing in the sunlight as it fell into the undergrowth by the side of the road. The man was dragged from his horse and his hands bound behind him. Then the victors remounted and at a yell from William set off at the gallop toward the bridge. The man tried desperately to run with them, lost his balance and fell, to be dragged mercilessly behind the horses of his captors. Matilda watched, sickened, until they were out of sight at the gates of the township, and then she turned from the window. So William had come back.

Elen dressed her in her scarlet surcoat as she asked and then went down to find Dai, a shepherd who had come in from the hills to sell his flocks to the drovers and had stayed, working for a while, in the stables of the castle. Somehow it had become his self-appointed task to carry Matilda up and down the steep, winding stairs to her solar and out into the herb garden whenever she required, handling her with such gentleness and ease that she had grown dependent on him in her weakness, although she knew he pined for his hills and would long since have been gone but for her pleas that he stay.

“I will wait for Sir William in the great hall, Dai bach,” she said with a smile, and she was rewarded with a long slow grin as with a quiet “ Ie, fyng arglwyddes ” he bent over her.

But William did not come into the hall, although she waited for what seemed like an eternity. When she had almost given up, leaning with closed eyes against the narrow, high-backed carved chair by the hearth, she heard the clatter of hooves and the shouts of men in the bailey outside. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she pushed herself up from the chair to be standing when William appeared.

“ A hanging! There’s to be a hanging! ”

She heard the excited page call across the hall and saw him scamper out again into the sun. With a quick look over their shoulders in her direction the three men who had been sweeping out the old rushes cast aside their brooms and ran after the page, pushing each other in their haste to leap down the flight of steps outside the hall.

Matilda looked around for Dai but he had gone. The man she had seen must have been some felon William had encountered on his way from Hay and he was going to administer summary justice before bothering to come to greet her. She sighed, thinking of the poor scoundrel she had watched them drag away.

Slowly, with shaking steps, she made her way to the doorway and, clinging to the doorpost for support, looked out at the scene below her in the bailey. The open area between the walls of the keep and the outbuildings that clustered round the outer walls was full of men and horses. Her husband was the only man still mounted. She saw him at once, and near him a soldier on a ladder was easing a rope across a beam that jutted beyond the rough stones of the wall.

She could see no sign of the prisoner. William’s face shocked her. It was cruelly twisted, full of hatred and malice, and though he looked straight at her, she knew that he hadn’t seen her.

She glanced up, shuddering, at the serene sky and at the heavy fruit on the rowan tree growing in the bailey above the teeming, shouting men. The women of the castle had gathered together near the kitchens and gossiped quietly as they waited curiously, their eyes on the crowd of men. Matilda felt a touch on her arm. Margaret was standing behind her. “Come away, Mother. Don’t watch.”

Matilda shrugged her off. “I’ve seen hangings before, child. I was looking for your father.”

A sudden noise, half shout, half sigh, made her turn back to the scene below. They had thrust the prisoner up onto the back of a raw-boned horse and were leading him beneath the noose. His face was covered in mud and blood, but as she glanced at him compassionately, Matilda suddenly gave a gasp.

“It’s Trehearne Vaughan from Clyro! It’s Trehearne,” she cried desperately. “Dear God, is William out of his mind? We’ve got to stop him. Margaret, help me quickly!” She pushed forward, gripping her daughter’s arm.

“William, for Christ’s sake, stop!” she screamed. “Don’t do it! At least take time to decide-” But her cry was lost in the roar of the crowd as, with a thwack on its rump, the horse was sent careering across the cobbles, leaving Trehearne hanging from the beam. His legs kicked violently.

“Cut him down, for God’s sake!” she screamed again above the noise of the crowd. “Oh, God! Oh, God, stop it! Save him!” She never knew how she found the strength to cross the bailey, but at last she was by her husband. “William, you can’t know what you’re doing!” She grabbed at his bridle and his horse reared back, its eyes wild. “Cut him down, for the love of God.” She groped at him frantically, her eyes blinded with tears.

William glanced down at her for a moment unseeing, his face a twisted mask, then suddenly he seemed to realize she was there as she pulled desperately at his mantle. He smiled, and abruptly she stepped back in fear. “Cut him down. A good idea.” He forced his plunging horse toward the man and sliced through the rope with one stroke of his sword. Trehearne fell to the cobbles and lay there twitching, his face swollen and purple beneath the mask of drying blood.

Looking down at him for a moment, William, in the expectant hush around him, suddenly laughed. “I think we’ll have his head,” he said in a tone so quiet that Matilda scarcely heard it. He beckoned and two men-at-arms caught up the spasmodically jerking body and dragged it to the stone mounting block. There, at a nod from William, one of them struck off the man’s head with one blow from his heavy two-edged sword. A great sigh ran round the bailey, followed by a yell and wild cheering.

All around her men and horses had begun to move again, the spectacle over. There was work to be done. Ignoring the fallen trunk of the man and the bloodied head that lay on the cobbles where it had fallen, William reined back his terror-stricken horse and rode past Matilda to the steps of the great hall. Dismounting, he flung his rein to a squire and stamped up into the doorway without a backward glance.

Matilda stood where she was in the middle of the bailey, holding Margaret’s arm. The girl’s face was white and Matilda could see the blue veins in her temples beating wildly. Swallowing with an effort the bitter bile that had risen in her throat, she began slowly to walk back toward the keep, consciously keeping her back straight, forcing her steps one by one as she leaned on Margaret’s shoulder, feeling the curious glances being cast in her direction by the dispersing crowd.

Dai appeared as she reached the steps and, unceremoniously picking her up, carried her back to the chair by the hearth. William was pouring himself wine from the jug on the table.

“ Fyng arglwyddes , may I have your permission to return to my hills?” She suddenly realized that Dai was kneeling before her, his face a pasty yellow. “I no longer wish to serve you. I’m sorry, meistress bach. Dioer , you were good to me indeed, you were, but I cannot stay.”

“I understand, Dai.” She sighed. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably. “God go with you, my friend.”

She watched him stride toward the doorway, expecting him to turn, but he didn’t. Neither did he so much as acknowledge William’s presence standing behind them. He went out onto the steps without a backward glance and ran down out of sight.

Margaret pressed a goblet of wine into her hand. “Drink this, Mother, you look so pale.” She glanced apprehensively over her shoulder toward her father, but he continued to ignore them, pouring himself another goblet and emptying it down in one gulp.

Matilda turned and looked at him at last. “Did Trehearne really merit such high-handed, barbaric treatment, William?” she asked, her voice trembling.

He set down the goblet with a bang on the trestle. “In my opinion, madam, he did.”

“He seemed to be waiting for you at Aberhonddu.”

“We had arranged to meet there, certainly.” He strode down off the dais. “He seemed to think we could discuss our differences and part friends. Ha! He misjudged me!”

Matilda raised an eyebrow. “So, I think, do a lot of people, William,” she murmured in disgust. “Have you thought of the repercussions that will follow? Trehearne was well liked by others as well as me, and he has powerful kinsmen.”

“So he couldn’t stop telling me. The man blabbed like a coward. He thought you could stop me. He thought Gwenwynwyn would avenge his death and that the Marches will be alight from Chester to Monmouth with revenge for his scrawny bones.” He turned and spat viciously into the rushes. “I doubt if he’s as important as he thinks.

“Page!” he yelled at the boy who was listening, open-mouthed, by the serving screens. “Help me off with my hauberk before I send you after Gwenwynwyn, you imp!” He threw back his head and laughed, then he hurled his goblet at the wall, where it struck and rolled away, dented, into a corner.

Lying taut and sleepless in bed that night next to her snoring husband, Matilda could not close her eyes.

The picture of Trehearne’s pitiful death kept rising before her, and with it the sight of her husband’s laughter. William seemed to care neither for the death of a neighbor and her friend nor for his broken word-for he had, it appeared, given Trehearne safe conduct to travel through his lands-nor for the revenge that would undoubtedly follow. His conceit and his overweening arrogance were complete.

And, though it didn’t seem important anymore, she could not help but notice that he had not once inquired for her health or excused his own flight from Brecknock in the summer. When they had finally gone to bed he had been incapably drunk.

There were tears on her cheeks when Jo came to. She remained quite still, leaning against the wall, her eyes fixed on the mighty summit of Pen y Fan, and for a moment she did not dare move, wondering, with a shudder of disgust, if she still had the marks of the plague sores on her body. Then suddenly, below her in the street, she heard some children laughing. The sound acted like a charm, easing away the awful realities of the stench and filth and misery of her trance. She stood upright, feeling the sun beating down on her head. There was a throbbing in her temples and the perspiration trickling down between her shoulder-blades was aggravating the raw whiplash across her back, but other than that there was no pain. She shuddered violently. William had indeed much to answer for.

Margiad Griffiths was in the kitchen when Jo arrived back at the house. She glanced at Jo in concern. “There, now, it’s ill you’re looking again, girl,” she said. “Come you in and sit down. And have a glass of my sherry, won’t you? I’m all alone here. You’re doing too much driving up and down, you are. Why don’t you try and stay down here for a bit?”

Jo sat down gratefully on a kitchen chair. “I would like to,” she said. “I’m doing two jobs at once, that’s the trouble.” She sipped the sherry and closed her eyes.

“Do you want to go and have a sleep, girl? I’ll get you some supper later.” Margiad eyed her closely. She could see the exhaustion on Jo’s face, the gray pallor beneath her tanned skin, the lines of pain that had not been there two weeks before when she had first seen her.

Jo shook her head slowly. “Do you believe in destiny, Mrs. Griffiths?”

“Destiny, is it?” Margiad thought for a moment. She pulled out the chair opposite Jo and eased herself into it.

“Fate, you mean? No. I don’t. Life is what you make of it yourself. We’ve no one to blame but ourselves in the end. It’s depressed you are, isn’t it?”

Jo nodded. “I suppose I am.” She reached for the bottle unthinkingly and refilled her empty glass. Margiad, who had not yet sipped her own sherry, said nothing.

“I think I’m being haunted,” Jo said softly.

Margiad raised a brisk eyebrow. “Who by?”

“A woman who died nearly eight hundred years ago.”

“You mean you’ve seen her?”

Jo frowned. “She’s not a ghost. Not an external thing at all. She’s inside me. Somewhere in my mind-memories…” She put down her glass and put her hands over her eyes. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m mad.”

Margiad shook her head slowly. “I told my Doreen that you had a fey look about you when first I saw you. You’ve Welsh blood in you, haven’t you, for all your English way of talking?”

Jo groped in her pocket for a tissue. Not finding one, she stood up and tore a paper towel from the roll over the sink. “I think I must have,” she said slowly.

“It is like that with a lot of Celtic people,” Margiad said comfortably. “They have the sight. It is not easy for those who cannot control it, but you must learn to live with it. Don’t fight what’s in you, girl. Accept it as a gift from God.”

“But I’m not foreseeing the future,” Jo said in anguish. “Though, God knows, perhaps that would be even worse. I’m seeing the past! In great detail.”

“Then, there’s a reason for it. A truth to be learned, an injustice to be righted-who knows?” Stiffly Margiad stood up. She disappeared into her sitting room and Jo could hear her rummaging around in a drawer. A moment later she returned. In her hands was an old leather-covered Bible. She thrust it at Jo. “Pray if you can, girl. If you can’t, just put it under your pillows. It’ll ward off the bad dreams. Now, I’ve a nice stew cooking. It’ll be ready in an hour, so you go up and have a hot bath and put all this out of your head!”

Nick lay back on his hotel bed and tore off his tie. His shirt was damp from the heat of the sidewalk outside and he was sweating and uncomfortable but, for the moment, he was too exhausted even to go and stand under the cold shower. He put his arm across his eyes. The presentation had gone well; he should be elated. He listened wearily to the wail of a police siren fifteen floors below on Lexington Avenue.

He was almost asleep when the phone rang beside him. He rolled over onto his elbows and picked up the receiver.

“Nick?” It was Jim Greerson. “How did it go?”

Nick lay back. “Okay. I think things are looking hopeful. How about your end?”

“I had dinner with Mike Desmond as arranged last night. I groveled a bit more, old boy, and then I told him what an ass he was, chucking the best up-and-coming firm in London just because we’d given a break to a new fellow. I told him we’d supervise a new campaign for him personally.” He hesitated. “When I say we, I actually said you.”

“And?” Nick crossed his ankle over his raised knee. He was gazing up at the ceiling.

“He’s not too pleased with the service he’s got so far from you know who. I gather he expected them to jump once they’d got a sniff of the account, instead of which, according to him, they send some teenybopper copywriter over. I saw him at a good psychological moment. Besides which, he said he couldn’t pass up the opportunity of being serviced by royalty.” Jim sniggered.

“Royalty?” Nick leaned over and reached for the jug of orange juice on the bedside table. “What royalty? Don’t tell me Prince Edward has decided to become an adman?”

“No, old son. You.”

“Me?”

“Your secret life. You mean you don’t know it’s blown? It’s all over the papers here, for God’s sake. The Mail had it on Thursday and the Standard on Friday.”

Nick sat up. “What secret life? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Hang on, hang on. I’ll find the page and read it to you. Bear with me, old boy. It’s midnight here, and I’ve had a hard day.”

Nick lay still, his eyes closed, as Jim read the piece to him over the transatlantic line. He felt completely detached, as if the person being talked about were someone else. He was not surprised, not even indignant. Merely very, very weary.

When Jim finished there was a brief silence. “Is it all true, old boy?” Jim said tentatively after a moment.

“It’s true that I let my brother hypnotize me, yes,” Nick said curtly. “As to what happened, you’ll have to ask him. I remember nothing about it. It all seems very far-fetched.” He heard himself laugh. “I suppose Judy Curzon is responsible for this. I’ll wring her neck when I get back.”

“Better send her to the Tower, old boy, it’s more in character.” Jim laughed uproariously. “You haven’t heard from Jo about it, then?” he asked curiously after a moment.

“No,” Nick said shortly. “Not a word.”

There was a moment’s silence, then Jim went on. “Listen, I’ve got a meeting at eight tomorrow, so I’d best go or I’ll never wake up. I’ll call you tomorrow, same time, okay?”

Nick replaced the receiver. Sitting up, he swung his legs to the floor. The air-conditioning had made the room very cold. He walked into the bathroom, stripped off his shirt, and turned the shower full on, then he went back to the phone.

“I want to call London,” he said brusquely, and he gave his own number.

Margiad Griffiths woke Jo with a cup of tea. She sat down on the edge of Jo’s bed. “How did you sleep, then?”

Jo stretched. “Very well. Your charm must have worked.” She felt beneath the pillow for the old Bible and touched it lightly.

Margiad nodded. “I knew it would. There was a phone call for you earlier,” she went on. She reached into the pocket of her skirt for a piece of paper. “Mr. Clements. He said would you go and have lunch with him and his wife tomorrow about twelve. He said don’t call back unless you can’t go.”

Jo smiled. “That’s nice of him. Mr. Clements is the reason I’m here. He’s written lots of books on smallholdings and animals and the history of Northumberland. He’s bought a place near Brecon.”

Margiad stood up. “Famous, is he?” She smiled. “And you’re writing about him, are you? Good. That’ll take your mind off your other troubles.” She hesitated in the doorway. “What will you do today, then?”

Jo sat up, pushing her heavy hair off her face. She glanced at the window where a thin layer of hazy cloud masked the blue of the sky. “I’ll stay here another night or two if I may,” she said. “I’ve some notes to write up about Ben Clements, and then-” She hesitated. “Then I think I’ll explore Hay a little more.”

Heavy swirling black clouds were building up in the western sky although as yet there was no breath of wind. Matilda reined in her horse and glanced up, then she signaled the horsemen around her to hurry as they cantered back down the track toward Hay, following the curving arm of the Wye through the flat dry meadows, throwing up clouds of powdery dust that stung the eyes and choked the throat. A zigzag of lightning lit up the purple sky and sent her horse shying across the path of her companion, Lady de Say, who swore like a man and grabbed at the pommel of her saddle to prevent herself from being thrown. It was unbearably hot.

“I’ll wager a silver penny we can get back before the first raindrop falls,” Matilda called over her shoulder. She was exhilarated suddenly by the threat of the storm.

It had been a bitter and unhappy year, and she had been preoccupied during much of the ride with dark thoughts of the events that had followed Trehearne’s murder. His death had served, inevitably, as an excuse for more fighting in the hills and the intervention of his kinsman, the increasingly powerful Prince Gwenwynwyn, who had laid siege to Painscastle in his turn with a huge force of men. In a last attempt at mediation their son-in-law, Gruffydd, had, at Matilda’s suggestion, been brought back to Hay from his imprisonment at Corfe. But his surly attempts as a peacemaker failed and on 13 August, the feast of Holy Hippolytas, hostilities had culminated in a major pitched battle in the hills behind Trehearne’s home at Clyro, as the barons fought desperately to retain their ascendancy in the borders. They won, but with a terrible toll of Welsh lives.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She closed her eyes, breathing hard.

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

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

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

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

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

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