Lady of Hay (25 page)

***

Tim was in his studio, staring at a copy of the photo of Jo and Nick. He had blown it up until it was almost four feet across and had pinned it to a display board. A spotlight picked out their faces with a cold, hard neutrality that removed personality, leaving only feature and technique behind.

Thoughtfully he moved across the darkened studio to the tape deck and flipped a switch, flooding the huge, empty room with the reedy piping of Gheorghe Zamfir, then he returned to the photograph. He stood before it, arms folded, on the very edge of the brilliant pool of light, the only focus in the huge vaulted darkness of the studio.

Beside him on the table lay a small piece of glass. As he tapped the powder onto it and methodically rolled up a piece of paper, his eyes were already dreamy. He sniffed, deeply and slowly, then he walked back to the picture.

It was some time later that, with a felt pen, working with infinite care, the tip of his tongue protruding between his teeth, he began to draw a veil and wimple over Jo’s long, softly curling hair.

***

It was about ten o’clock the next morning that a knock came at the apartment door. Jo opened it to find Sheila Chandler, one of her upstairs neighbors, standing on the landing. She was a prim-looking woman in her late fifties, the intense unreal blackness of her iron-waved hair set off by a startling pink sleeveless chiffon dress. Jo barely knew her.

She gave Jo an embarrassed smile. “I am sorry to disturb you, Miss Clifford,” she said. “I know you’re busy. We can hear you typing. It’s just that I thought I must look in and see if there is anything I can do to help.”

Jo smiled vaguely. “Help?” she said.

“With the baby. I’ve had four of my own and I know how it can be if you get one that cries all night. Staying with you, is it?” The woman was staring past Jo into the apartment.

Jo swallowed hard. “He…you heard him?” She clutched at the door.

“Oh, I’m not complaining!” Sheila Chandler said hastily. “It’s just that on these hot nights, with all the windows open, the noise drifts up the well between the buildings. You know how it is, and my Harry, he’s not sleeping too soundly these days…”

Jo took a grip on herself. “There’s no baby here,” she said slowly. “The noise must be coming from somewhere else.”

The woman stared. “But it was here. I came down—last night, about eleven, and I listened outside your door. I nearly knocked then. Look, my dear, I’m not making any judgment. I don’t care whose baby it is or how it got there, it’s just, well, perhaps you could close the window or something. Have you tried gripe water?”

Jo took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Chandler”—at last she had remembered the woman’s name—“but whatever you think, there is no baby!”

There is no baby.

She repeated the words to herself as she closed the door. Last night at eleven she had sat there, in silence, listening, and there had been no sound…

She went straight to the phone and called Sam, then she walked through into the bedroom and looked around. The windows were wide open. The room was tidy—and empty. The only sound was the distant roar of traffic drifting between the houses from the Cromwell Road.

Sam arrived at ten to twelve. He kissed Jo on the cheek and presented her with a bottle of Liebfraumilch.

She had put on some makeup to try to hide the dark rings under her eyes and was wearing her peacock-blue silk dress. Her hair was tied back severely with a black velvet ribbon. He looked her up and down critically. “How are you feeling, Jo?” The makeup did not fool him, no more than had her cheerful voice and breezy invitation. She had sounded near the breaking point.

“I’m fine. My breasts are back to normal, thank God!” She managed a shaky smile. “Let’s open that bottle. I’ve drunk all the Scotch. Sam—I think I’m going mad.”

Sam raised an eyebrow as he rummaged in the drawer for a corkscrew. She found it for him. “It’s the baby. I’ve heard him again.”

“I see.” Sam was concentrating on the bottle. “Last night?”

She nodded. “And, Sam, the woman upstairs has heard him too. She came down to complain.” Her hands were shaking slightly as she reached for two wineglasses from the cabinet.

He took them from her, his hands covering hers for a moment. “Jo, if the woman upstairs has heard it there has to be a logical explanation. There must be a baby in one of the other apartments and you’ve both heard it.”

“No.” Jo shook her head. “It was William.”

“Jo—”

“The noise was in this apartment, Sam. She said so. Last night. She stood on the landing outside my door and listened, and heard him!”

Sam pressed a glass of wine into her hand. “May I wander around?”

Jo waited on the balcony, sipping her wine, staring across into the trees in the square. It was five minutes before Sam joined her.

“I admit it is a puzzle,” he said at last. “But I’m not convinced there isn’t a baby—a real baby—somewhere in the building, or perhaps next door.” He had brought the bottle with him and topped up her glass. “Unless—I suppose there is a faint possibility that somewhere psychokinetic energy is being created, presumably by you—to project the sound of a child crying, but no, I don’t think so. It is so unlikely as to be impossible. I suggest you put it out of your mind.”

“I can’t,” Jo cried. “Can you imagine what it’s like hearing little Will cry, knowing he’s hungry, wanting to hold him? Wondering why, if I can’t feed him, someone else doesn’t? Someone who is there, in the past with him!”

“Jo, I did warn you,” Sam said gently. “You should have stopped while you still could.”

Jo stared at him. “You mean I can’t stop now?” She snapped off a stem of honeysuckle. “No, of course I can’t, you’re right.” Leaning on the balustrade, she sniffed at the delicate red and gold flower. “I tried to call Dr. Bennet but he’s still away in the States. Sam, I’ve got to work this thing through, haven’t I? I’ve got to get it out of my system. And the only way to do that is to go on with the story. Find out what happened next.” She turned to face him. “Please, Sam, I want you to hypnotize me. I want you to regress me.”

Sam was watching her closely. Thoughtfully he raised his glass and took a sip of wine. “I think that’s a good idea, Jo,” he said at last.

“You mean you will?” She had been prepared for a stand-up argument.

“Yes, I’ll hypnotize you.”

“When?”

“After lunch. If the mood seems right we’ll have a go this afternoon.”

To her surprise Jo wasn’t nervous. She was relaxed in Sam’s company, relieved not to be alone in the apartment anymore, and she enjoyed the lunch with him. Several times she found herself talking about Nick, as if she could not avoid the sound of his name, but each time she sensed Sam’s disapproval and, not wanting to spoil the atmosphere between them, she changed the subject. They played music and drank the wine, and she lay back on the sofa, listening to the soft strains of the guitar.

She was almost asleep when she felt him sit down on the sofa beside her and gently take the empty wineglass from her hand.

“I think this is as good a moment as any to start, don’t you?” he said. He raised his hand and lightly passed it over her face, closing her eyes as he began to talk.

She could feel herself drifting willingly under his spell. It was different from Carl Bennet. She could hear Sam’s voice and she was aware of her surroundings, just as in Devonshire Place, but she could not move. She was conscious of him standing up and going over to the front door, where she heard him draw the bolt. Puzzled, she wanted to ask him why, but she could feel part of her mind detaching itself, roaming free, settling back into blackness. Suddenly she was afraid. She wanted to fight him but she could not move and she could not speak.

Sam sat beside her on the sofa. “No, Jo,” he said softly. “There is nothing you can do about it, nothing at all. It never seems to have crossed your mind, Jo, that you might not be alone in your new incarnation, that others might have followed you. That old scores might have to be settled and old pains healed. In this life, Jo.” He gazed down at her silently for several minutes. Then he raised his hands to her face again. “But for now, we’ll meet in the past. You know your place there. You are still a young and obedient wife there, Jo, and you will do as I say. Now, you are going back…back to that previous existence, Jo, back to when you were Matilda, wife of William, Lord of Brecknock, Builth and Radnor, Hay, Upper Gwent and Gower, back to the time at Brecknock after Will’s birth, back to the day when you must once again welcome your husband and lord into your bed.”

16

The dining room in the hotel on the rue St. Honoré was beginning to empty. Nick was immersed in some sketches and Judy was bored. She got up and helped herself to some English newspapers discarded on the next table, then, pouring herself some coffee, she began to leaf through them.

“God! They’re not even today’s,” she exclaimed in disgust after a moment.

Nick glanced up. “They get the new ones in the foyer. Here.” He tossed some francs on the table. “Get me a
Times
while you’re at it, will you?”

But Judy was staring down at the paper on the table in front of her, open-mouthed.

“So he went ahead and did it,” she said softly. “He actually did it.”

There was something in her voice that made Nick look up. Even upside-down he recognized Jo’s photo.

“What the hell is that?” he said sharply. He snatched the paper from her.

“It’s nothing, Nick. Nothing, don’t bother to read it—”

She was suddenly afraid. After a week without a mention of her name, Jo’s shadow had risen between them again. She stood up abruptly. “I’ll get today’s,” she said, but he never heard her. He was staring down at yesterday’s copy of the
Daily Mail
.

He read the article twice, then, glancing at his watch, he stood up, folded the paper under his arm, and strode toward the iron-gated elevator. He passed Judy in the foyer and never saw her.

Impatiently he allowed the elevator to carry him slowly up to his floor. He wrenched the doors open, then strode to their room. It was several minutes before the number in London was ringing. He sat impatiently on the bed, spreading the paper out beside him with his free hand, as he waited for someone to answer.

The tone rang on monotonously in Jo’s empty apartment. Upstairs, Henry Chandler looked at his wife in exasperation. “Why doesn’t she get an answering machine if she’s a journalist? If that phone doesn’t stop ringing it’ll wake that damn baby again.”

“She’s gone shopping,” Sheila Chandler said slowly. “I saw her leave earlier.”

“Did you see the kid?”

“No, she was alone.”

They looked at each other significantly.

Downstairs the faint sound of the phone stopped. Seconds later they both heard the thin protesting wail.

***

“Who are you calling?” Judy threw back the bedroom door and stood in the doorway, staring at Nick.

“Jo.”

“Why?”

Nick put the receiver down with a sigh. “I want to know why she did such an idiotic thing as to give that story to Pete Leveson. She’ll lose every bit of credibility she has as a serious journalist if she allows crap like this to be published. Look at this. ‘I was married to a violent, vicious man, but my heart belonged to the handsome earl who had escorted me through the mountains, protecting me from the wolves with his drawn sword.’ Dear God!”

He picked up the phone and rattled it again. “
Mademoiselle? Essayez le numéro à Londres encore une fois, s’il vous plaît
.”

“It is nothing to do with you, Nick,” Judy said softly. “Jo has done it, for whatever reason, and it can’t be undone now.”

She saw his knuckles whiten on the phone. “
Eh bien, merci. Essayez un autre numéro, je vous en prie, mademoiselle
.”

“You’re making a fool of yourself, Nick.”

“Very probably.” He tightened his mouth grimly as he slammed the phone down at last. “Sam’s not there either. Look, look at this last bit. ‘I shall not rest, Jo told me, until I have learned the whole story…’ Even you, Judy, know enough now to have guessed that that is dangerous for her.”

Judy turned away. “I don’t expect she really meant it.”

Nick stood up slowly and walked across to her, spinning her around by the shoulders. “You knew about this article, didn’t you? Down there, in the dining room, you weren’t surprised. You were triumphant.” His eyes narrowed as he held her facing him. “So what do you know about all this?”

Judy stood quite still, staring up at his face. “You tell me something first, Nick Franklyn! Are you still in love with Jo? Because if you are, I shall bow out of your life now. Perhaps I could write an article or two myself. ‘How my lover challenged a man eight hundred years old to a duel over another woman.’ That’s it, isn’t it? You can’t bear to think of her in his arms, this Richard de Clare. You watched her, didn’t you? Last week when you rushed off and left me, you went to Dr. Bennet’s and watched her dreaming about making love to another man. You had to see it!”

She broke off with a little cry as Nick raised his hand and gave her a stinging slap across the face. The impact of it threw her against the wall and she stood there, her hand pressed to her cheek, her eyes brimming with tears. “You bastard—”

“That’s right.” His face was hard and very white. “I’ve warned you before, Judy. Leave Jo alone.” He turned to the bed and picked up his portfolio. “I have a meeting to go to now. I suggest it might be better for both of us if you pack your stuff and clear out before I get back.”

“Nick!” She threw herself at him and clung to his arm. “Nick, please, I’m sorry. I really am. I won’t mention her again.”

“I am going back to London tomorrow anyway, Judy. To Jo.” Nick’s face softened slightly as he saw her stricken expression.

“But she doesn’t want you. She keeps telling you she doesn’t want you.”

“Whether she wants me or not, I want her.” He spoke with enormous force, his eyes hardening.

Judy felt a sudden shiver. He was looking not at her but through her. She backed away from him. “I believe you’re as crazy as she is,” she whispered. “You can’t force a woman to love you.”

He stared at her, his attention fully on her again now. “Force her?” he echoed. “I won’t have to force her.” He laughed grimly. “I must go. Don’t worry about your bill, I’ll settle it. I’ll see you soon, Judy.” Gently he touched her cheek—still reddened from his slap—then he turned and left her alone.

Judy did not move. She stared around the room. The crumpled copy of the
Daily Mail
was still lying on the pillow where Nick had left it. She sat down, smoothing the page, and began to read slowly and carefully, taking in every word.

***

Sam was standing with his back to the window, his arms folded, listening as, hesitantly, Jo began to talk. Matilda had regained her strength slowly after the birth, but the day came at last when, accompanied by Sir Robert and four armed horsemen, she mounted for the first time the little bay mare William had given her. They rode out of the castle and turned northeast, following the rocky bed of the Honddu through a field silver and green with ripening oats and plunging almost at once into the woods.

“Llanddeu is up there, my lady.” Sir Robert pointed up a hill to their left. “About three miles, I reckon. We’ll go there when you’re stronger if you like.” But Matilda shook her head. Gerald had gone to St. David’s now, confident he was to be its new bishop, and Llanddeu had lost its interest.

She was amazed to find how stiff she had become, but she gritted her teeth and pushed the bay into a gallop behind Sir Robert as they followed a well-worn track through the heavy, dusty woods. They had slowed again to a trot when suddenly Sir Robert pulled to a rearing halt in front of her and drew his sword. “Stop,” he shouted. The four men with them closed around Matilda protectively at once, their swords raised and ready. She could feel herself shaking with fear, and the mare plunged nervously away from the horse next to her, sensing the danger. But, straining her eyes, she could see nothing in the heavy greenery all around them. She could hear nothing but the thudding of her own heart.

“What? What is it?” She looked around wildly.

“See, a rope.” Sir Robert had dismounted. With one slash of his sword he severed a rope that had been tied across the track at the height of a man’s neck as he rode on a horse. It fell, green-stained and invisible, into the grass at their feet.

“If we’d been going any faster or if I’d been distracted, it would have had us all off our horses.” Sir Robert hit the undergrowth with the flat of his sword. “See, here. The rogues have gone. They were hiding behind these bushes. They must have fled before we arrived. They could be anywhere in the woods by now.” A broken area of trampled greenery showed where several people had been crouching behind the thick holly.

“Were they robbers?” Matilda was still trying to soothe her horse, stroking the sweating neck, wishing she herself weren’t shaking quite so violently. She knew it was as much exhaustion as fear, but nevertheless she felt weak and frightened.

Sir Robert nodded silently. He had stopped to pick up the rope and was coiling it over his arm. “Outlaws of some kind, I’ll be bound. I’ll have a word with Sir William. I doubt if the Welsh would set up a trick like that if they were after reprisals. No one knew which way we were coming.” He swung the rope over his saddle and remounted.

Matilda noticed he didn’t sheathe his sword.

“Reprisals?” Her heart began to hammer again at the word.

“That’s right. They’re bound to come some time.” He turned his horse. “We’ll go straight back, my lady, with your permission. I was a fool to come out with so few men. In future when you ride, I will see to it that you have a full escort.”

She followed, relieved to be cutting short the ride. The thought of Welsh reprisals had become remote in the months at Brecknock, distracted as she had been by the baby and by William’s arrival with all his men. The Welsh she had met in the county of Brycheiniog were friendly toward her. None had seemed to bear any grudge. She shivered. Outlaws. They must have been outlaws of some kind, bent on robbery. She refused to let herself believe that they were men from Gwent.

Nevertheless, it was a relief to be back inside the castle. Although William sent search parties out to hunt for the men who had set up the rope, no trace of them was ever found. They had melted into the forest as silently and efficiently as if they had never been.

***

“That was foolish, to ride so far the first time out after the baby,” Sam said softly. He had seated himself next to Jo again. “But if you are well enough to ride, you are well enough to resume your wifely duties.”

Jo drew in her breath sharply. “It is too soon,” she whispered.

“No,” Sam said, “it is the right time. Look at me, my lady. Open your eyes and look at me.”

Jo had been staring toward the far corner of the room. Now, slowly, she turned to him and her eyes focused on his face. He held her gaze unwaveringly. “I am your husband,” he said. “You do recognize me, don’t you, Matilde”—he pronounced her name lightly, in the French manner—“I am your husband. Come to claim you.”

“Please. No!” Jo edged away from him. “My lord, I told you, it is too soon.”

Sam smiled. He put his hand out and caught her chin, forcing her face to his. Then he bent over her and kissed her on the lips. She went completely rigid, but she did not struggle. Sitting up, he looked down at her and saw her eyes were closed. “Look at me,” he said threateningly. “Look at me!”

Her eyes flew open. They were scornful and cold.

Sam felt a sudden surge of anger flow through him. Oh, yes, that had been the way she always looked at William. So superior, so dismissive, so beautiful and remote that her disdain had unmanned him, but not this time. This time he had absolute control of her body and her mind.

He levered himself off the sofa and stood looking down at her, forcing himself to be calm. She was watching him docilely enough, her eyes still mocking, but he thought he could see fear as well, hidden, but there, as she stared at her husband and waited.

He smiled grimly. “Stand up, Matilde,” he said slowly.

Hesitantly she obeyed him and stood quite still. He looked at her for a moment, then he turned to the tape deck in the corner. From his pocket he produced a cassette, which he slotted into the machine. He switched it on and listened as the first strains of an unaccompanied flute began to play in the room, then he sat down on the chair facing Jo. She had not moved. Her head was held at a defiant angle, her eyes watching him with cool disdain as he sat back and folded his arms.

“Now, my lady,” he said softly. “I want you to show me some wifely obedience.”

***

Matilda stared at her husband in horror. Behind him the blind flute player was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the window embrasure. She could hear the everyday noises of the castle all around them; any second someone would walk into the solar. She heard feet pattering down the spiral stairs in the corner and the swish of skirts on the stone. They hesitated then ran on down toward the lower floors, the sound dying away into the distance.

“Take off your mantle and gown, wife.” He repeated his order.

She glanced at the musician who played on as if he had heard nothing.

“My lord, I can’t—I need my maid. Please, this can wait until nightfall—”

“It cannot wait until nightfall.” His eyes narrowed and she could see the vein beginning to throb in his neck. He drew the ornately decorated dagger from his girdle and tested the blade gently against his thumb. “If the fastenings of your gown defeat you, I shall cut them for you.”