Lady of Hay: An enduring classic – gripping, atmospheric and utterly compelling

Lady of Hay: An enduring classic – gripping, atmospheric and utterly compelling Barbara Erskine A story spanning centuries. A long awaited revenge.In London, journalist Jo Clifford plans to debunk the belief in past-lives in a hard-hitting magazine piece. But her scepticism is shaken when a hypnotist forces her to relive the experiences of Matilda, Lady of Hay, a noblewoman during the reign of King John.She learns of Matilda's unhappy marriage, her love for the handsome Richard de Clare, and the brutal death threats handed out by King John, before it becomes clear that Jo’s past and present are inevitably entwined. She realises that eight hundred years on, Matilda’s story of secret passion and unspeakable treachery is about to repeat itself…Barbara Erskine’s iconic debut novel still delights generations of readers thirty years after its first publication. Copyright (#ulink_a056f5b6-e589-5578-88b1-140af89c015c) This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd 1986 Published by Sphere Books Ltd 1987 Published by Warner Books 1992 Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996 Copyright © Barbara Erskine 1986 Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016 Cover images © Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com) Barbara Erskine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication Source ISBN: 9780007250868 Ebook Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 9780007368822 Version: 2017-09-06 Praise for Lady of Hay: (#ulink_dc8d3502-5f92-50af-b796-f3dd90184c0a) ‘The author’s storytelling talent is undeniable. Barbara Erskine can make us feel the cold, smell the filth and experience some of the fear of the power of evil men.’ The Times ‘Convincing and extremely colourful.’ The Mail Contents Cover (#u87d78766-c838-5544-8350-42caf0e63b54) Title Page (#u078071a4-0878-5465-b667-98085ae128a5) Copyright (#u31ad7bf5-e92f-5f1f-90a7-1fb4cb3ae998) Praise (#ue77a17af-8faa-5894-b564-a8d024d22c18) Prologue: Edinburgh 1970 (#u3515a668-8fe7-5c84-85d8-e89c2c702db6) Chapter 1: London: 1985 (#ue56ce87b-ba5c-5689-9b19-5f6100c764b1) Chapter 2 (#u8390f755-4cd4-5fa9-a26d-ce531ce39248) Chapter 3 (#u7532755a-3d37-56a5-b755-e07e94a72d7c) Chapter 4 (#u4fc984ff-6ece-5b25-8113-f7a4a8233bbc) Chapter 5 (#ude6feafc-e8fc-5519-9557-60076f341d6d) Chapter 6 (#ude5241e8-da93-53ee-9982-af924f987f20) Chapter 7 (#u21e2bd41-7ec5-5c06-af44-acde14529bf4) Chapter 8 (#uf60e08e0-680f-5440-a244-64e95e3dc9fa) Chapter 9 (#u78d41c02-d4c9-5fe7-8716-9c28e0419b21) Chapter 10 (#u2adc0721-9a21-59b0-81c8-94389b551a91) Chapter 11 (#u3809fae4-c898-577a-8a00-21de98dc7cfe) Chapter 12 (#u6971e670-5d52-53ba-83af-2d9f03ae90d4) Chapter 13 (#u79bf9000-e6c1-5c02-a85b-48b9c81654fb) Chapter 14 (#u2c018c2c-299a-5e0a-891a-580f213e5b50) Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo) Epilogue one: 10 October 1216 (#litres_trial_promo) Epilogue two: Paris – January 1986 (#litres_trial_promo) Historical note (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo) Family Tree (#litres_trial_promo) Keep Reading Sleeper’s Castle (#litres_trial_promo) Keep Reading Barbara Erskine’s Novels (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) Also by Barbara Erskine (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Prologue (#ulink_c48adfe0-a8dc-5f0f-98cb-5009420b54f1) Edinburgh 1970 (#ulink_c48adfe0-a8dc-5f0f-98cb-5009420b54f1) It was snowing. Idly Sam Franklyn stared out of the dirty window up at the sky and wondered if the leaden cloud would provide enough depth to ski by the weekend. ‘Tape on now, Dr Franklyn, if you please.’ Professor Cohen’s quiet voice interrupted his thoughts. Sam turned, glancing at the young woman lying so calmly on the couch, and switched on the recorder. She was an attractive girl, slender and dark, with vivacious grey-green eyes, closed now beneath long curved lashes. He grinned to himself. When the session was over he intended to offer her a lift back into town. The psychology labs were cold. As he picked up his notebook and began heading up a new page he leaned across and touched the grotesquely large cream radiator and grimaced. It was barely warm. Cohen’s office was small and cluttered, furnished with a huge desk buried beneath books and papers, some half-dozen chairs crowded together to accommodate tutorial students, when there were any, and the couch, covered by a bright tartan rug, where most of his volunteers chose to lie whilst they were under hypnosis, ‘as if they are afraid they will fall down’, he had commented once to Sam as yet another woman had lain nervously down as if on a sacrificial altar. The walls of the room were painted a light cold blue which did nothing to improve the temperature. Anyone who could relax comfortably in Michael Cohen’s office, Sam used to think wryly, was halfway to being mesmerised already. Next to him the radiator let out a subterranean gurgle, but it grew no hotter. Professor Cohen seated himself next to the couch and took the girl’s hand in his. He had not bothered to do that for his last two victims Sam noticed, and once more he grinned. He picked up his pen and began to write: Hypnotic Regression: Clinical Therapy Trials Subject 224: Joanna Clifford 2nd year Arts (English) Age: 19 Attitude: He chewed the end of the pen and glanced at her again. Then he put ‘enthusiastic but open-minded’ in the column: Historical aptitude: Again he paused. She had shrugged when they asked her the routine questions to determine roughly her predisposition to accurate invention. ‘Average, I suppose,’ she had replied with a smile. ‘O-level history. Boring old Disraeli and people like that. Not much else. It’s the present I’m interested in, not the past.’ He eyed her sweater and figure-hugging jeans and wrote as he had written on so many other record sheets: Probably average. Professor Cohen had finished his preliminary tests. He turned to Sam. ‘The girl’s a good subject. There’s a deep trance established already. I shall begin regressing her now.’ Sam turned back to the window. At the beginning of the series of tests he had waited expectantly at this stage, wondering what would be revealed. Some subjects produced nothing, no memories, no inventions; some emerged as colourful characters who enthralled and amazed him. But for days now they had been working with routine ill-defined personalities who replied in dull monosyllables to all the questions put to them and who did little to further their research. The only different thing about this girl – as far as he knew – were her looks: those put her in a class by herself. The snow was thickening, whirling sideways, blotting out the buildings on the far side of the street, muffling the sound of car tyres moving north towards the city. He did not bother to listen to the girl’s words. Her soft English voice sounded tired and blurred under hypnosis and he would have to listen again and again to the tape anyway as Cohen transcribed it and tried to fathom where her comments, if there were any, came from. ‘And now, Joanna,’ the Professor’s voice rose slightly as he shifted on the high stool to make himself more comfortable. ‘We’ll go back again, if you please, back before the darkness, back before the dreams, back to when you were on this earth before.’ He is getting bored too, Sam thought dryly, catching sight of his boss glancing at his watch. The girl suddenly flung out her arm, catching a pile of books on the table beside the couch and sending them crashing to the floor. Sam jumped, but she seemed not to have noticed. She was pushing herself up onto her elbow, her eyes open, staring in front of her. Cohen was all attention. Quietly he slid from the stool and as she stood up he moved it out of her way. Sam recovered from his surprise and wrote hastily: Subject somnambulant; moved from couch. Eyes open; pupils dilated. Face pale and drawn. ‘Joanna,’ Cohen spoke softly. ‘Would you not like to sit down again, lassie, and tell us your name and where you are.’ She swung round, but not to face him. Her eyes were fixed on some point in the middle of the room. She opened her mouth as if trying to speak and they saw her run her tongue across her lips. Then she drew herself up with a shudder, clutching at the neck of her sweater. ‘William?’ she whispered at last. Her voice was husky, barely audible. She took a step forward, her eyes still fixed on the same point. Sam felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle as he found himself looking at it too, half expecting someone or something to appear. His notebook forgotten, he waited, holding his breath, for her to speak again, but she stayed silent, swaying slightly, her face drained of colour as she began to stare around the room. Disconcerted, he saw that huge tears had begun to run slowly down her cheeks. ‘Tell us where you are and why you are crying.’ The quiet insistent voice of Professor Cohen seemed to Sam a terrible intrusion on her grief but to his surprise she turned and looked straight at him. Her face had become haggard and old. ‘William,’ she said again, and then gave a long desperate cry which tore through Sam, turning his guts to water. ‘William!’ Slowly she raised her hands and stared at them. Sam dragged his eyes from her face and looked too. As he did so he heard a gasp and realised with a shock that the sound had come from his own throat. Her hands had begun to bleed. Electrified, he pushed himself away from the window and reached out towards her but a sharp word from Cohen stopped him. ‘Don’t touch her. Don’t do anything. It’s incredible. Incredible,’ the older man breathed. ‘It’s auto-suggestion, the stigmata of religious fanatics. I’ve never seen it before. Incredible!’ Sam stood only feet from her as she swayed once again, cradling her hands against her chest as if to ease their pain. Then, shivering uncontrollably, she fell to her knees. ‘William, don’t leave me. Oh God, save my child,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘Let someone come. Please … bring us … bring him … food. Please … I’m so cold … so cold …’ Her voice trailed away to a sob and slowly she subsided onto the floor. ‘Oh God … have mercy on … me.’ Her fingers grasped convulsively at the rush matting which carpeted the room, and Sam stared in horror as the blood seeped from her hands onto the sisal, soaking into the fibres, congealing as she lay there emitting dry, convulsive sobs. ‘Joanna? Joanna!’ Cohen knelt awkwardly beside her and, defying his own instructions, he laid his hand on her shoulder. ‘Joanna, lass, I want you to listen to me.’ His face was compassionate as he touched her, lifting a strand of her heavy dark hair, gently stroking her cheek. ‘I want you to stop crying, do you hear me? Stop crying now and sit up, there’s a good girl.’ His voice was calm, professionally confident as the two men watched her, but there was growing anxiety in his eyes. Slowly her sobs grew quieter and she lay still, the harsh rasping in her throat dying away. Cohen bent closer, his hand still on her shoulder. ‘Joanna.’ Gently he shook her. ‘Joanna, are you hearing me? I want you to wake up. When I count three. Are you ready? One … two … three …’ Under his hand her head rolled sideways on the matting. Her eyes were open and unblinking, the pupils dilated. ‘Joanna, do you hear me? One, two, three.’ As he counted Cohen took her by the shoulders and half lifted her from the floor. ‘Joanna, for the love of God, hear me …’ The panic in the man’s voice galvanised Sam into action. He dropped on his knees beside them, his fingers feeling rapidly for a pulse in the girl’s throat. ‘Christ! There’s nothing there!’ ‘Joanna!’ Cohen was shaking her now, his own face ashen. ‘Joanna! You must wake up, girl!’ He calmed himself with a visible effort. ‘Listen to me. You are going to start to breathe now, slowly and calmly. Do you hear me? You are breathing now, slowly, and you are with William and you have both eaten. You are happy. You are warm. You are alive, Joanna! You are alive!’ Sam felt his throat constrict with panic. The girl’s wrist, limp between his fingers, had begun to grow cold. Her face had taken on a deathly pallor, her lips were turning grey. ‘I’ll ring for an ambulance.’ Cohen’s voice had lost all its command. He sounded like an old man as he scrambled to his feet. ‘No time.’ Sam pushed the Professor aside. ‘Kneel here, by her head, and give her mouth-to-mouth. Now man! When I say so!’ Crouching over the girl he laid his ear to her chest. Then, the heel of one hand over the other, he began to massage her heart, counting methodically as he did so. For a moment Cohen did not move. Then he bent towards her mouth. Just as his lips touched hers Joanna drew an agonising, gasping breath. Sam sat back, his fingers once more to her pulse, his eyes fixed on her face as her eyelids flickered. ‘Go on talking to her,’ he said urgently under his breath, not taking his eyes from her face. Her colour was beginning to return. His hands were once more on her ribs, gently feeling the slight flutter of returning life. One breath, then another; laboured painful gulps of air. Gently Sam chafed her ice-cold hands, feeling the stickiness of her blood where it had dried on her fingers and over her palms. He stared down at the wounds. The cuts and grazes were real: lesions all around the fingernails and on the pads of the fingers, blisters and cuts on her palms, and a raw graze across one knuckle. Cohen, making a supreme effort to sound calm, began to talk her slowly out of her trance. ‘That’s great, Joanna, good girl. You’re relaxed now and warm and happy. As soon as you feel strong enough I want you to open your eyes and look at me … That’s lovely … Good girl.’ Sam watched as she slowly opened her eyes. She seemed not to see the room, nor the anxious men kneeling beside her on the floor. Her gaze was focused on the middle distance, her expression wiped smooth and blank. Cohen smiled with relief. ‘That’s it. Now, do you feel well enough to sit up?’ Gently he took her shoulders and raised her. ‘I am going to help you stand up so you can sit on the couch again.’ He glanced at Sam, who nodded. Carefully, the two men helped her to her feet and guided her across the room; as she lay down obediently Cohen covered her with the rug. Her face was still drawn and pale as she laid her head on the pillow. She curled up defensively, but her breathing had become normal. Cohen hooked his stool towards him with his toe, and perching himself on it, he leaned forward and took one of her hands in his. ‘Now, Joanna, I want you to listen carefully. I am going to wake you up in a moment and when I do you will remember nothing of what has happened to you here today, do you understand? Nothing, until we come and ask you if you would like to be regressed another time. Then you will allow us to hypnotise you once more. Once you are in a trance again, you will begin to relive all the events leading up to this terrible time when you died. Do you understand me, Joanna?’ ‘You can’t do that.’ Sam stared at him in horror. ‘Christ, man! You are planting a time bomb in that girl’s mind!’ Cohen glared back. ‘We have to know who she is and what happened to her. We have to try and document it. We don’t even have a datefix …’ ‘Does that matter?’ Sam tried to keep his voice calm. ‘For God’s sake! She nearly died!’ Cohen smiled gently. ‘She did die. For a moment. What a subject! I can build a whole new programme round her. Those hands! I wonder what the poor woman can have been doing to injure her hands like that. No, Dr Franklyn, I can’t leave it at that. I have to know what was happening to her, don’t you see? Hers could be the case which proves everything!’ He stared down at her again, putting his hands lightly on her face, ignoring Sam’s protests. ‘Now Joanna, my dear, you will wake up when I have counted to three and you will feel refreshed and happy and you will not think about what happened here today at all.’ He glanced up at Sam. ‘Is her pulse normal now, Dr Franklyn?’ he asked coldly. Sam stared at him. Then he took her hand, his fingers on her wrist. ‘Absolutely normal, Professor,’ he said formally. ‘And her colour is returning.’ ‘We’ll send her home now, then,’ Cohen said. ‘I don’t want to risk any further trauma. You go with her and make sure she is all right. Her flatmate is a technician at the labs here, that’s how we got her name for the tests. I’ll ask her to keep an eye on things, too, to make sure there are no after-effects, though I’m sure there won’t be any.’ Sam walked over to the window, staring out at the snow as he tried to control his anger. ‘There could well be after-effects. Death is a fairly debilitating experience physically,’ he said with quiet sarcasm. It was lost on Cohen, who shook his head. ‘The lass won’t remember a thing about it. We’ll give her a couple of days to rest, then I’ll have her back here.’ His eyes gleamed with excitement behind the pebble lenses. ‘Under more controlled conditions we’ll take her back to the same personality in the period prior to her death.’ He pursed his lips, took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead with it. ‘All right. Here we go. Joanna, do you hear me? One … two … three.’ Joanna lay still, looking from one to the other, dazed. Then she smiled shakily. ‘Sorry. Didn’t hypnosis work on me? In my heart of hearts I thought it probably wouldn’t.’ She sat up and pushed back the rug, swinging her feet to the floor. Abruptly she stopped and put her hands to her head. Sam swallowed. ‘You did fine. Every result is an interesting result to us, remember.’ He forced himself to smile, shuffling the papers on the table so that her notes were lost out of sight beneath the pile. The tape recorder caught his eye, the spools still turning, and he switched it off, unplugging it and coiling up the flex, not taking his eyes off her. She stood up with an effort, her face still very pale, looking suddenly rather lost. ‘Don’t I get a cup of tea or anything, like a blood donor?’ she laughed. She sounded strained; her voice was hoarse. Cohen smiled. ‘You do indeed. I think Dr Franklyn has it in mind to take you out to tea in style, my dear. It’s all part of the service here. To encourage you to return.’ He stood up and went over to the door, lifting her anorak down from the hook. ‘We ask our volunteers to come to a second session, if they can, to establish the consistency of the results,’ he said firmly. ‘I see.’ She looked doubtful as she slipped into the warm jacket and pulled the scarf around her neck. Groping in the pocket for her gloves she gave a sudden cry of pain. ‘My hands! What’s happened to them? There’s blood on my scarf – there’s blood everywhere!’ Her voice rose in terror. Cohen did not blink. ‘It must be the cold. You’ve been a naughty girl and not worn your gloves, that’s nasty chapping.’ ‘But –’ She looked confused. ‘My hands weren’t cold. I wore gloves. I don’t even get chilblains. I don’t understand …’ Sam reached for his raincoat. He suddenly felt very sick. ‘It’s the heavy snow coming so soon on top of a warm spell,’ he said as reassuringly as he could. ‘I’ll prescribe something for you if you like. But I suggest scones and cream and hot tea might be the best medicines to start with, don’t you think?’ He took her arm. ‘Come on. My car is round the back.’ As he closed the door of the room behind them he knew that he would personally see to it that she did not return. 1 (#ulink_e877b38a-cb68-5949-b89b-4cdb4b1254d1) London: 1985 (#ulink_e877b38a-cb68-5949-b89b-4cdb4b1254d1) ‘Basically I like the idea.’ Bet Gunning leaned across the table, her eyes, as they focused on Jo’s face, intense behind the large square lenses of her glasses. ‘Six articles exploring various fads which have swept the world showing man’s fear and rejection of modern life and values. Shit! That sounds pompous!’ The eyes narrowed and gleamed suddenly. ‘I’m right in thinking that the usual Jo Clifford approach will be used? A ruthless appraisal, then a knife in the back?’ Jo was watching her intently, admiring Bet’s professionalism. The relaxed lunch at Wheeler’s, the casual gossip – she had seemed only to glance at the typed notes Jo had pushed across the table but now, as she reeled off the titles of the articles, she proved she had memorised and digested them. Bet had no need to refer back to the paper she had slipped into the enormous leather sack she toted everywhere on her shoulder. ‘“Whole Food: Health or Nostalgia” – a bit old hat, lovie, if you don’t mind my saying so. It’s been bunked and debunked so often. Unless you’ve got a new approach?’ Jo grinned. ‘Trust me, Bet. OK the series in principle and I’ll show you some outlines.’ Bet looked at her sharply. Jo was wearing her innocent look, her grey-green eyes staring vaguely into the middle distance, her dark hair framing her face so that she looked disarmingly soft and feminine. Meeting her for the first time she had thought Jo might be an actress, or a model perhaps; Bet smiled inwardly. Were there any clues? The uncompromisingly large man’s Rolex watch perhaps? Their eyes met and both women smiled appreciatively. They had been friends for five years, ever since Bet had taken over as editor of Women in Action. Jo had been on the staff then, learning the trade of journalism. She learned fast. When she left to go freelance it was because she could name her figure for the articles she was producing. ‘“Anything Ethnic”, “Medieval Medicine”, “Cosmic Consciousness” – my God, what’s that? – “Meditation and Religion” – you’ll have to keep that light –’ Bet was going through the list in her head. ‘“Regression: Is history still alive?” That’s the reincarnation one, yes? I read an article about it somewhere quite recently. It was by an American woman, if I remember, and totally credulous. I must try and look it up. You will, of course, be approaching it from quite the opposite standpoint.’ Jo smiled. ‘They tried it on me once, at university. That’s what gave me the idea. The world authority on the subject, Michael Cohen, tried to put me under – and failed. He gave me the creeps! The whole thing is rubbish.’ Bet gave a mock sigh. ‘So another set of anodynes for the people bites the dust, already!’ Her raised shoulders emphasised the sudden Jewish accent. Jo gave an unexpected gurgle. ‘Am I that cruel?’ ‘You know damn well you are. That’s what we’re paying you for! OK, Jo, show me the outlines. I’m thinking in terms of a New Year or spring slot so you’ve plenty of time. Now, what about illustrations? Are you fixed up or do you want them done in house?’ ‘I want Tim Heacham.’ ‘You’ll be lucky! He’s booked solid these days. And he’d cost.’ ‘He’ll do it for me.’ Bet raised an eyebrow. ‘Does he know that?’ ‘He will soon.’ ‘And what will Nick say?’ Jo’s face tightened for a moment. ‘Nick Franklyn can go take a running jump, Bet.’ ‘I see. That bad?’ ‘That bad.’ ‘He’s moved out?’ ‘He’s moved out. With cream please.’ Jo smiled up at the waiter who had approached with the coffee pot. Bet waited until he had withdrawn. ‘Permanently?’ ‘That’s right. I threw his camera across the room when I found out he’d been sleeping with Judy Curzon.’ Bet laughed. ‘You cow.’ She sounded admiring. ‘It was insured. But my nerves aren’t. I’m not possessive, Bet, but he’s not going to mess me about like that. If it’s off it’s off. I don’t run a boarding-house. What do you think about the title of the series?’ ‘Nostalgia Dissected?’ Bet looked up, her head a little to one side. ‘Not bad. I’m not totally convinced, but it certainly puts the finger on your approach.’ She beckoned to the waiter for the bill. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me any more about Nick?’ Jo put down her coffee cup and pushed it away. She stared down at her hand, extending it over the tablecloth, flexing her fingers as if amazed they still worked. ‘It is three years, four months and eight days since I met Sam again and he introduced me to his brother. Doesn’t that surprise you?’ ‘It surprises me that you counted, lovie,’ Bet said, slightly acidly, tossing her American Express card down on the waiter’s tray. ‘I worked it out last night in the bath. It’s too long, Bet. Too long to live in someone’s pocket, however well one gets on. And, as you know, we don’t all that often!’ ‘Bullshit. You’re made for each other.’ Jo picked up her coffee spoon and idly drew a cross in the surface of the sugar in the earthenware bowl in the centre of the table, watching the crystals impact and crumble with a concentrated frown. ‘Perhaps that’s it. We’re so awfully alike in a lot of ways. And we are competitive. That’s bad in a relationship.’ She stood up, the drab olive of her dress emphasising her tanned arms with their thin gold bangles as she unslung the canvas satchel from the back of the chair and swung it onto her shoulder. ‘Tim said he’d be at his studio this afternoon so I’m going up to see him now. Are you going straight back across the river?’ ‘’Fraid so. I’ve a meeting at three.’ Bet was tucking the credit card back in her wallet. ‘I won’t give you any good advice, Jo, because I know you won’t listen, but don’t hop straight into bed with Tim out of revenge, will you. He’s a nice guy. Too nice to be used.’ Jo smiled. ‘I didn’t hear that, Miss Gunning. Besides I’m a nice guy too, sometimes. Remember?’ She walked slowly, threading her way through the crowded streets, the June sun shining relentlessly on the exposed pavements. Here and there a restaurant had spilled umbrella-shaded tables out onto the pavements, where people dawdled over their coffee. In England, she thought affectionately, the sun makes people smile; that was good. In a hot climate it drives them to commit murder. She ran up the dark uncarpeted staircase to Tim’s studio in an old warehouse off Long Acre and let herself in without knocking. The studio was deserted, the lines of spots cold and dark as she walked in. She glanced round, wondering if Tim had forgotten, but he was there, alone, in shirtsleeves, reclining on the velvet chaise-longue which was one of his favourite photographic props. There was a can of Long Life in his hand. Above him the sun, freed from the usual heavy blinds, streamed through huge open skylights. ‘Jo! How’s life?’ He managed to lever himself upright, a painfully thin man, six foot four in his bare feet, with wispy fair hair. His unbuttoned shirt swung open, revealing a heavy silver chain on which hung an engraved amulet. ‘Beer or coffee, sweetheart? I’m right out of champers.’ Jo threw her bag on the floor and headed for the kitchenette next to one of the darkrooms. ‘Coffee, thanks. I’ll make it. Are you sober, Tim?’ He raised his eyebrows, hurt. ‘When am I not?’ ‘Frequently. I’ve a job for you. Six to be precise and I want to talk about them. Then we’ll go and see Bet Gunning in a week or two if you agree.’ ‘Ah, another great expos? for Women in A!’ He put the can down with exaggerated care and placed his fist on his right breast as though about to take an oath. ‘The Leith Police Dismisseth Us! There. Right first time. Not a milligram over the limit. Fit to drive a beautiful lady reporter-person anywhere, any time. Reporting for duty, ma’am!’ He grinned. ‘Better give me coffee too, though, just in case. I’ve just been spurned by a little corker of a dolly. Old enough to be her father, she said I was.’ He pulled a mournful face. Jo reappeared with two mugs of black Nescaf?. ‘How old are you, Tim?’ ‘Guess.’ She put her head on one side. ‘Pushing fifty I’d say.’ He groaned, clutching at his head. ‘The bitch. She sees my soul and not my body. Actually I’m forty-two next Wednesday. You and Nick must come to my party. Ouch. What have I said?’ He slumped once more onto the couch and held out his hand for the coffee. ‘Not me and Nick.’ She sat down beside him. ‘Separately if you like. Together. Not.’ ‘Sorry. When did it happen?’ ‘A couple of days ago, going on a couple of years. Forget it, Tim. It’s not important. I want to talk business.’ ‘Always the hard worker, our Jo.’ He glanced at her, completely attentive suddenly. ‘OK. Fire. What do you want? A series for W I A you say. Is it going to be colour or are we going for black and white?’ She pulled a sheaf of notes from her bag and peeled a copy off for him. ‘Take a look at the subjects, just to give you an idea.’ He read down the page slowly, nodding critically, as she sipped her coffee. ‘Presumably it’s the approach that’s going to be new, sweetie? When’s the deadline?’ ‘I’ve got months. There’s quite a lot of research involved. Will you do them for me?’ He glanced up at her, his clear light green eyes intense. ‘Of course. Some nice posed ones, some studio stuff – whole-foods and weaving – the vox pops in chiaroscuro. Great. I like this one specially. Reincarnation. I can photograph a suburban mum under hypnosis who thinks she’s Cleopatra as she has an orgasm with Antony, only Antony will be missing.’ He threw the notes to the floor and sipped his coffee thoughtfully. ‘I saw someone being hypnotised a few months back, you know. It was weird. He was talking baby talk and crying all over his suit. Then they took him back to this so-called previous life and he spouted German, fluent as a native.’ Jo’s eyes narrowed. ‘Faked, of course.’ ‘Uh-uh. I don’t think so. The chap swore he’d never learned German at all, and there’s no doubt he was speaking fluently. Really fluently. I just wish there had been someone there who knew anything about Germany in the 1880s, which is when he said it was, who could have cross-questioned him. It was someone in the audience who spoke German to him. The hypnotist couldn’t manage more than a few words of schoolboy stuff himself.’ Jo smiled gleefully. ‘Do you think it’ll make a good article?’ ‘More like a book, love. Don’t be too ready to belittle it, will you. I personally think there’s a lot in it. Do you want me to introduce you to Bill Walton? That’s the hypnotist chap.’ Jo nodded. ‘Please, Tim. I’m genned up on the subject from books and articles, but I certainly must sit in on a session or two. It’s incredible that people really believe that it’s regression into the past. It’s not, you know.’ She was frowning at the wall in front of her where Tim had pinned a spread of huge black and white shots of a beautiful blonde nude in silhouette. ‘Is that who I think it is?’ He grinned. ‘Who else? Like them?’ ‘Does her husband?’ ‘I’m sure he will. It’s the back lighting. Shows her hair and hides the tits. They really are a bit much in real life. I’d say she was the proverbial milch cow in a previous existence.’ Jo looked back at him and laughed. ‘OK, Tim. You tell your Mr Walton he’s got to convince me. Right?’ She got up to examine the photos. ‘It’s something called cryptomnesia. Memories that are completely buried and hidden. You’ll probably find your man had a German au pair when he was three months old. He’s genuinely forgotten he ever heard her talk, but he learned all the same and his subconscious can be persuaded to spit it all out. These are awfully good. You’ve made her look really beautiful.’ ‘That’s what they pay me for, Jo.’ He was watching her closely. ‘I was talking to Judy Curzon last week. She has an exhibition at the Beaufort Gallery, did you know?’ ‘I know.’ She turned. ‘So you know about it.’ ‘About you and Nick? I thought he was fooling about. I’m surprised you took it seriously.’ She picked up her cup again and began to walk up and down. ‘It’s happened too often, Tim. And it’s getting to hurt too much.’ She looked at him with a small grimace. ‘I’m not going to let myself get that involved. I just can’t afford to. When a man starts causing me to lose sleep I begin to resent him and that’s not a good way to nurture a relationship. So better to cut him off quickly.’ She drew a finger across her throat expressively. Tim hauled himself to his feet. ‘Ruthless lady. I’m glad I’m not one of your lovers.’ He took her cup from her and carried it through to the kitchen. ‘And you really can be grown up about it and not mind if I ask him and Judy to the party?’ ‘Not if I can bring someone too.’ He turned from the sink where he had dumped the cups and spoons. ‘Someone?’ ‘I’ll think of someone.’ ‘Oh, that kind of someone. A spit-in-Nick’s-eye someone.’ He laughed. ‘’Course you can.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and stared at her for a moment. ‘It could always be me, you know, Jo.’ She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. ‘It couldn’t, Tim. I like you too much.’ He groaned. ‘The most damning thing a woman can say to a man, a real castrating remark. “I like you too much,”’ he mimicked her, his voice sliding up into an uncomfortable falsetto. He burst out laughing. ‘At least you didn’t say I was too old, though. Now scram. I’ve got work to do. Consider yourself on for the photos, but let me know when as soon as you can.’ Nick Franklyn sat back on the low, cord sofa and stared at the girl’s legs. They were long, crossed at the ankle; he could see where the stacked heel on her left shoe was scuffed. His eyes travelled up the desk and across the typewriter, to where her face, hidden by two curtains of blonde hair, stared down at the work she was copying, her red painted nails clicking irritatingly on the keys as she worked. It was already three fifteen. The phone on her desk buzzed and she picked it up, placing it automatically between her shoulder and chin so she need not stop typing. ‘Right Miss Gunning.’ She barely raised her eyes as she tipped the receiver back onto its cradle. ‘You can go in now,’ she said to Nick. ‘Thanks.’ He levered himself from the seat and strode across to the door. Bet was standing at the window of her office, staring down at the river eleven storeys below as she lit a cigarette. A pleasure steamer was plodding up the centre of the tideway, its bows creaming against the full force of water as it plied from Westminster Pier towards the Tower. ‘What can I do for you, Nick?’ She turned, drawing on the cigarette, and looked him up and down. He was dressed in jeans with a denim jacket, immaculately cut, which showed off his tall spare figure and tanned face. He grinned. ‘You’re looking great, Bet. So much hard work suits you.’ ‘Meaning why the hell couldn’t I see you three days ago when you rang?’ ‘Meaning editor ladies are obviously busy if they can’t see the guy who handles one of their largest advertising accounts.’ He sat down unasked opposite her desk and drew up one foot to rest across his knee. She smiled. ‘Don’t give me that, Nick. You’re not here about the Wonda account.’ ‘I’m not?’ ‘Jim Greerson’s been handling that one.’ She turned and pushed the window open further. Below on the river the boat hooted twice as it disappeared under Blackfriars Bridge. ‘Unless you’ve sacked your best partner.’ ‘OK. So I’ve come to ask you a favour. As a friend.’ She narrowed her eyes against the glare off the water and said, without turning round, ‘About?’ ‘Jo.’ She waited in silence, conscious of his gaze on her back. Then slowly she turned. He was watching her closely and he saw the guarded look in her eyes. ‘Does Jo need any favours from me?’ she asked. ‘She’s going to bring some ideas to you, Bet. I want you to kill one of them.’ He saw the flash of anger in her face, swiftly hidden, as she sat down at her desk. Leaning forward, she glared at him. ‘I think you’d better explain, Nick.’ ‘She’s planning a series of articles which she’s going to offer Women in Action. One of them is about hypnosis. I don’t want her to write it.’ ‘And who the hell are you to say what she writes or doesn’t write?’ Bet’s voice was dangerously quiet. She kept her eyes fixed on Nick’s face. A muscle flickered slightly in his cheek. ‘I care about her, Bet.’ Bet stood up. ‘Not from what I’ve been hearing. Your interests have veered to the artistic suddenly, the grapevine tells me, and that no longer qualifies you to interfere in Jo’s life. If you ever had that right.’ She stubbed out her cigarette half smoked. ‘Sorry, Nick. No deal. Why the hell should you want to stop the article anyway?’ Nick rose to his feet. ‘I have good reasons, Bet. I don’t know who the hell has been talking to you about me, but just because I’m seeing someone else doesn’t mean I no longer care about Jo.’ He was pacing up and down the carpet. ‘She’s a bloody good journalist, Bet. She’ll research the article thoroughly …’ He paused, running his fingers through his thatch of fair hair. ‘And why shouldn’t she?’ Bet sat on the corner of her desk, watching him intently. He reached the end of his trajectory across her carpet and, turning to face her, he leaned against the wall, arms folded, his face worried. ‘If I tell you, I’m betraying a confidence.’ ‘If you don’t tell me there’s no way I’d ever consider stopping the article.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re a hard bitch, Bet. OK. But keep this under your hat or you’ll make it far worse for Jo. I happen to know that she is what is called a deep trance subject – that means if she gets hypnotised herself she’s likely to get into trouble. She volunteered in the psychology lab at university when she was a student. My brother Sam was doing a PhD there and witnessed it. They were researching regression techniques as part of a medical programme. She completely flipped. Jo doesn’t know anything about it – they did that business of “you won’t remember when you wake up” on her, but Sam told me the professor in charge of the project had never seen such a dramatic reaction. Only very few people are quite that susceptible. She nearly died, Bet.’ Bet picked up a pencil and began to chew the end of it, her eyes fixed on his face. ‘Are you serious?’ ‘Never more so.’ ‘But that’s fantastic, Nick! Think of the article she’ll produce!’ ‘Christ, Bet!’ Nick flung himself away from the wall and slammed his fist on the desk in front of her. ‘Can’t you see, she mustn’t do it?’ ‘No I don’t see. Jo’s no fool, Nick. She won’t take any risks. If she knows –’ ‘But she doesn’t know.’ His voice had risen angrily. ‘I’ve asked her about it and she remembers nothing. Nothing. I’ve told her I think it’s dangerous to meddle with hypnosis – which it is – but she laughs at me. Being her, if she thinks I’m against it she’s keener to do it than ever. She thinks everything I say is hokum. Please, Bet. Just this once, take my word for it. When she brings the idea to you, squash it.’ ‘I’ll think about it.’ Bet reached for another cigarette. ‘Now if you’ll forgive me I should be at a meeting downstairs.’ She smiled at him sweetly. ‘Did you know we were running a review of Judy Curzon’s exhibition this week, by the way? She’ll be pleased with it, I think. Pete Leveson wrote it so the publicity should be good.’ He glared at her. ‘It’s a damn good exhibition.’ He reached out for the doorknob. ‘Bet –’ ‘I said I’d think about it, Nick.’ She sat gazing at the desk in front of her for several minutes after he had left. Then she reached down to the bag which lay on the carpet at her feet, and brought out Jo’s sheaf of notes. The paragraph on hypnotic regression was right on top. Glancing through it she smiled. Then she put the notes into the top drawer of her desk and locked it. 2 (#ulink_4df7cd61-3e7a-554b-a369-a87843badeff) As Jo let herself into her flat she automatically stopped and listened. Then, throwing down her bag, she turned and closed the door behind her, slipping the deadlock into place; she had not really thought Nick might be there. She went into the kitchen and plugged in the kettle. It was only for those few minutes when she first came in that she missed him: the clutter of cast-off jackets, papers, half-smoked cigarettes and the endlessly playing radio that surrounded him. She shook her head, reaching into the fridge for the coffee beans. ‘No way, Nicholas,’ she said out loud. ‘You just get out from under my skin!’ On the table in the living room was a heap of books and papers. She pushed them aside to make room for her coffee cup and went to throw open the tall French windows that led onto the balcony which overlooked Cornwall Gardens. The scent of honeysuckle flooded the room from the plant, which trailed over the stone balustrade. When the phone rang she actually jumped. It was Tim Heacham. ‘Jo? I’ve fixed up for us to go and see my mate Bill Walton.’ ‘Tim, you’re an angel. When and where?’ She groped for the pad and pencil. ‘Six fifteen Thursday, at Church Road, Richmond. I’m coming with you and I’ll bring my Brownie.’ She laughed. ‘Thanks, I’ll see you at your party first.’ ‘You and someone. OK, Jo. Must go.’ Tim always hurried on the phone. No time for preliminaries or goodbyes. A broad strip of sunlight lay across the fawn carpet in front of the window, bringing with it the sounds of the London afternoon – the hum of traffic, the shouts of children playing in the gardens, the grinding monotony of a cement mixer somewhere. Reaching for her cup Jo subsided onto the carpet, stretching out her long legs in front of her as she flipped through the address book she had taken from the table, and brought the phone down to rest on her knee as she dialled Pete Leveson’s number. ‘Pete? It’s Jo.’ ‘Well, well.’ The laconic voice on the other end of the wire feigned astonishment. ‘And how is the beautiful Joanna?’ ‘Partnerless for a party. Do you want to come?’ ‘Whose?’ ‘Tim Heacham.’ There was a pause on the other end of the line. ‘I would be honoured of course. Do I gather that Nick is once more out of favour?’ ‘That’s right.’ Pete laughed. ‘OK, Jo. But let me take you out to dinner first. How is work going?’ ‘Interesting. Have you heard of a chap called Bill Walton, Pete?’ Her glance had fallen to the notepad in front of her. ‘I don’t think so. Should I?’ ‘He hypnotises people and regresses them into their past lives.’ She kept her voice carefully neutral. To her surprise he didn’t laugh. ‘Therapeutically or for fun?’ ‘Therapeutically?’ she echoed incredulously. ‘Don’t tell me it’s considered good for you!’ She glanced across at the heap of books and articles which formed the basis of her researches. Half of them were still unread. ‘As a matter of fact it is. Fascinating topic.’ Pete’s voice faded a moment as if he had looked away from the phone, then it came back strongly. ‘This is work I take it? I was just looking for a phone number. You remember David Simmons? His sister works for a hypnotherapist who uses regression techniques to cure people’s phobias. I’ll tell you about it if you’re interested.’ It was one thirty in the morning when the phone rang, the bell echoing through the empty studio. Judy Curzon sat up in bed with a start, her red hair tousled. ‘Dear God, who is it at this hour?’ Nick groaned and rolled over, reaching for her. ‘Ignore it. It’s a wrong number.’ But she was already pulling herself out of bed. Standing up with a yawn she snatched the sheet off him and, wrapping it round her, she fumbled her way to the lamp. ‘It never is a wrong number at this hour of the morning. I expect someone is dead.’ She pushed through the bedroom door and into the studio. Nick lay back, running his fingers through his hair, listening. He could hear the distant murmur of her voice. Then there was silence. She appeared in the doorway. ‘It’s your bloody brother from Edinburgh. He says you left a message for him to ring, however late.’ Nick groaned again. ‘I spent most of yesterday trying to reach him. Sorry, Judy.’ ‘Sam? Where the hell have you been all day?’ ‘Out.’ Sam’s voice echoed down the receiver. ‘I wasn’t sure where to reach you. When I couldn’t get a reply at your flat I thought I’d better try the abode of the latest belle. She did not sound pleased to speak to me.’ ‘Can you blame her?’ Nick glanced at the bedroom door, which stood ajar, and wished he had closed it. ‘Sam, can I speak to you tomorrow from the office?’ ‘No chance. Sorry, Nick. If it’s that important, talk now. I’m flying to Basel at eight tomorrow – no, this morning. If I live.’ He coughed loudly. Nick swore under his breath. ‘Hold on a minute, Sam.’ He put down the phone and padded across the floor. ‘Judy love, shall I close the door, then I won’t disturb you.’ She was in bed, lying back on the pillow, the sheet drawn up to her waist, her breasts bare. She smiled, trying to hide her irritation. ‘I’ll fall asleep if you do.’ Nick grinned. ‘I can always wake you.’ He shut the door and went back to the phone. Picking up the receiver again he spoke quietly. ‘Sam? Can you hear me? It’s about Jo. I need your advice.’ There was a chuckle from the other end. ‘In bed with one and in love with the other. I’d say you need my advice badly.’ ‘Shut up and listen. It’s about this hypnosis business. She’s set on writing an article on hypnotic regression. Of all things to pick out of the air. I’m pretty sure she means to try it again. What do I do?’ There was a moment’s silence. He heard Sam sigh. ‘That’s a tricky one, Nick. As I told you she is dangerously susceptible. Someone who reacts as violently as she does under hypnosis can be potentially in a lot of trouble in the hands of an inexperienced practitioner. In fact, in any hands. You really have to dissuade her.’ ‘She won’t listen to me. Can I tell her what happened to her last time?’ ‘No. No, Nick, it’s too risky. I could do it perhaps, but not you. Hell! I can’t postpone this trip. Can you get her to wait until I get back? It’s only a week, then I’ll fly direct to London and have a chat with her about it. Stall her till then, OK?’ ‘Are you saying she’ll go off her head or something if she’s regressed again?’ ‘I’m just saying don’t let her do it.’ ‘I’ll try and stop her.’ Nick grimaced to himself. ‘But you know Jo. Once she gets the bit between her teeth …’ ‘Nick, it’s important.’ Sam’s voice was very serious. ‘I may be wrong, but I suspect that there is a whole volcano simmering away in her unconscious. I discussed it with Michael Cohen dozens of times – he always wanted to get her back, you know, but I persuaded him in the end that it was too dangerous. The fact remains that her heart and breathing stopped – stopped, Nick. No, it is not just a case of going off her head as you put it. If that happened again and someone didn’t know how to handle it – well, I don’t have to spell it out, do I? It must not happen again. And just warning her is no good. If you were to tell her about it, cold, after post-hypnotic suggestion that she forget the episode, she either won’t believe you – that’s the most likely – or, and this is the risk, she may suffer some kind of trauma or relapse or find she can’t cope with the memory. You must make her wait, Nick, till I get there.’ ‘OK, Sam. Thanks for the advice. I’ll do my best. The trouble is, she’s not talking to me.’ Sam laughed. ‘I’m not surprised when you’re in another woman’s bed.’ Putting down the phone Nick went into the kitchen and lit the gas under the kettle. A motorbike roared up the street below, a lonely sound in the silence, and he shivered, keeping his eyes on the friendly blue flame. ‘So. Why do you have to discuss Jo Clifford with your brother for half an hour in the middle of the night?’ He turned guiltily to see Judy, wearing a tightly belted bathrobe, standing in the doorway. ‘Judy –’ ‘Yes. Judy! Judy’s bed. Judy’s flat. Judy’s fucking phone!’ ‘Honey.’ Nick went to her and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘It’s nothing to do with you – with us. It’s just … well.’ He groped for words. ‘Sam’s a doctor.’ ‘Sam’s a psychiatrist.’ She drew in her breath sharply. ‘You mean there is something wrong with Jo?’ Nick grinned as casually as he could. ‘Not like that. Not so’s you’d notice, anyway. Look, Judy. Sam is going to come and have a chat to her, that’s all. Hell, he’s known her for about fifteen years – Sam introduced her to me in the first place. She likes Sam and she trusts him. I had to talk to him tonight because he’s going to Switzerland tomorrow. There is no more to it than that. He’s going to help her with an article she’s working on.’ She looked doubtful. ‘What has this got to do with you, then?’ ‘Nothing. Except he’s my brother and I’d like to think she is still a friend.’ Something in his expression made her bite back the sarcastic retort which hovered in the air. ‘Is that coffee you’re making?’ she asked lamely. She gave a small, lost smile. Nick resisted the impulse to take her in his arms. ‘Sure, then we must get some sleep. I’ve an early start at the office.’ At his desk the next morning Nick pressed the button on the phone. ‘Jane? Get Jo Clifford for me at her flat.’ He gnawed his thumbnail, staring down at the heap of papers on his desk. The intercom buzzed. ‘Sorry, Nick. There’s no reply.’ ‘Damn. Thanks, Jane. Can you keep trying every now and again?’ He glanced at his watch. It was after nine and Sam was already on his way to Basel. Her flat remained empty all day. At eight he drove to Judy’s studio in Finborough Road. He knew it would cause trouble if he rang again from there but that could not be helped. He rang four times in the course of the evening and checked once with the exchange to see if her phone was out of order. Then, angry with her and himself, he gave up. Judy was sulking. She had grudgingly opened a can of soup which they shared in silence, then returned to her huge abstract canvas. The light was too poor to paint, but she studied it for a long time, her thin shoulders hunched defensively, refusing to look at him. He went to her and, putting his arms around her, cupped her small breasts in his hands. He kissed the back of her neck. ‘You know why I’m trying to reach her, Judy.’ She nodded without speaking. Then she turned and put her arms round his neck. ‘I can’t help it, Nick. I love you so much. I’m sorry.’ He kissed her gently. ‘You’re a silly child, Judy. Now, come to bed and I’ll tell you about a party we’re going to next week.’ He could not bring himself to say he loved her. Next morning she still had not told him whether she was prepared to go to the party. He was watching her as she stood before a large canvas, once more lost in thought, a slim, small red-haired figure dressed in a man’s shirt and torn paintstained jeans. Her feet were bare. She turned away from it at last wiping her fingers on a rag. ‘I really don’t want to go. For one thing Jo will be there.’ He frowned. ‘It’s important, Judy. There will be other people there too for God’s sake. People with influence. You need the exposure, love.’ He grinned suddenly and moving towards her took hold of her shirt, a hand on each lapel, drawing her towards him until she was pressed against his chest. ‘You need a lot of exposure, Judy.’ She stopped him as his fingers began working at her buttons, and pulled away, shaking her hair out of her eyes. ‘No, Nick. Not now. I want to work.’ She padded across to the mantelpiece and picked up a newspaper cutting. ‘Did you see this?’ He took it from her, frowning. Then he laughed. ‘But Judy that’s great. Pete Leveson’s column is publicity with a capital P. You’ve arrived, kid!’ He dropped a kiss on the tangle of red hair. She was staring down at the clipping in her hand, frowning. ‘Did you ask him to write about me?’ Nick was watching her with something like tenderness. His blue eyes narrowed quizzically, and he grinned. ‘No one tells Pete Leveson what to write. Many have tried. He’s been offered bribes before, but it doesn’t work. No. If you’re there, you’re there on your own merit.’ She still looked unhappy. ‘He was very close to Jo once, wasn’t he?’ ‘They went around together.’ Nick agreed cautiously. ‘They both worked for W I A.’ ‘So she might have said something –’ ‘She might but I hardly think it’s likely under the circumstances.’ He turned and went to stare out of the large uncurtained window, onto a vista of fire escapes and back windows beyond long depressing gardens strung with washing. ‘Look, Judy, do you mind if we drop the subject? If you are going to work some more on that painting I’ll clear out. I’ve got things to do back home.’ She bit her lip, cursing herself silently for mentioning Jo’s name. ‘See you tonight maybe?’ she said. ‘I’ll cook if you like.’ That at least was something Jo couldn’t do, or so she had gathered from Nick’s oblique remarks. He laughed. ‘That’s an offer you know I can’t resist. OK. I’ll be back around eight.’ He put his arm around her shoulder and gave her an affectionate squeeze. ‘I’ll bring us some wine.’ He ran down the four flights of dingy stairs to the front door and pulled it open over the detritus of old leaflets and letters that habitually littered the bare floor behind it. He detested Judy’s studio, the shabby rundown house with its dark stair-well that always smelled of cooking and stale urine, the noisy dirty street where scraps of old paper drifted over the pavement and wrapped themselves around the area railings. Every time he left his Porsche there he expected to find someone had stolen the wheels or carved their name across the gleaming bonnet. As he eased himself into the driving seat he was frowning. It irritated him that she was so attached to the studio. It made no sense now she was becoming successful. As he drew away from the kerb he glanced back up at the terrace of houses. Her dusty windows gleamed curtainless in the sun, the bottom half of the sash thrown up, the box of geraniums which he had wired to the sill for her a defiant splash of colour in the uniformly drab fa?ade. When he turned back to squint through the tinted windscreen he had already put her out of his mind. He was a relaxed driver, his elbow resting casually on the lowered glass of the window, his hand gentle on the wheel as he leaned forward to slot in a cassette while the car crawled along the Brompton Road then north up Gloucester Road. He frowned again as he drew up at the lights. Her phone still wasn’t answering that morning. ‘Get the hell out, Nick,’ Jo had said. ‘I’m my own woman. I don’t belong to you. I just don’t want to see you any more …’ He drummed his fingers on the steering-wheel, undecided, and glanced at his watch. The empty parking meter outside her flat decided him. Swinging her latch keys he made for the pillared porch which supported her balcony, glancing up to see the window open wide beneath its curtain of honeysuckle as he let himself in. ‘Jo?’ As the flat door swung open he stuck his head round it and looked in. ‘Jo, are you there?’ She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, the typewriter on the low coffee table in front of her, dressed in jeans and a floppy turquoise sweater, her long dark hair caught back with a silk scarf. She did not appear to hear him. He studied her face for a moment, the slim arched brows, the dark lashes which hid her eyes as she looked down at the page before her, the high planes of the cheek-bones and the delicately shaped mouth set off by the severe lines of the scarf – the face of a beautiful woman who would grow more beautiful as she grew older – and he found he was comparing it with Judy’s girlish prettiness. He pushed the door shut behind him with a click. ‘I’ll have that key back before you go,’ she said without looking up. He slipped it into his breast pocket with a grin. ‘You’ll have to take it off me. Did you know your phone was out of order?’ ‘It’s switched off. I’m working.’ ‘That’s bloody stupid. Supposing someone wanted you urgently.’ He took a deep breath, trying to curb his sudden anger. ‘Is there any coffee going while we talk, Jo?’ Without waiting for an answer he walked through to the kitchen. It was a mess, stacked with unwashed dishes and opened cans. He found the orange coffee pot full of cold grounds and with a grimace began to rinse it out in the sink. ‘What’s been going on here?’ he called out over his shoulder. ‘Nothing, as you can plainly see,’ she answered quietly. Soundlessly she had come to stand in the doorway behind him, watching. ‘I’ve been working, as I said, so I haven’t been skivvying and the place is a shambles.’ He rummaged in the fridge and brought out half a bottle of milk. Solids floated in the clear blue whey as he held it to the light and he shuddered as he tipped it out. ‘You obviously need looking after, lady.’ ‘Don’t I just.’ She found two clean mugs in the back of the cupboard. ‘We’ll have to have it black. So. What have you come for?’ ‘To talk. To see how you are.’ ‘I am fine. Busy. Unencumbered. Just the way I like it.’ ‘And starving?’ She smiled. ‘Are you offering to take me to lunch?’ ‘Nope.’ The coffee made to his satisfaction, he poured it out and, gathering up the two mugs, he led the way back to the living room. He put down the mugs and picked up the top book on the pile by her typewriter and glanced at the title. The Facts Behind Reincarnation. He frowned. ‘Jo, I want to talk to you about your article.’ ‘Good. Discussing topics is always helpful.’ Deliberately misunderstanding him she flopped down on the sofa cushions and reached out her hand for the mug. ‘You know my views about this hypnotism business.’ ‘And you know mine.’ She grinned at him, her grey-green eyes narrowing. ‘So let’s break new ground. Let’s discuss my wholefood article. I’ve an interview fixed up with Rose Elliot and another with the head chef at the Ritz, to find out –’ ‘Jo, will you promise me not to let yourself be hypnotised?’ She leaned forward and put down the mug. ‘I’ll promise you nothing Nick. Nothing at all.’ ‘I’ve a good reason for asking.’ ‘Yes. You think you can meddle in my life. Well you can’t. I thought I had made that clear. I am not your concern.’ ‘Christ, Jo! Don’t you know how dangerous hypnosis can be? You hear awful stories of people permanently damaged by playing with something they don’t understand.’ ‘I’m not playing, Nick,’ she replied icily. ‘Any more than you play at advertising.’ He sat down opposite her, his blue eyes hard. ‘Advertising does not interfere with your consciousness –’ ‘That’s a matter of opinion!’ ‘And neither,’ he went on, ignoring her interruption, ‘does it seek to work in your mind without your conscious knowledge.’ ‘Oh no?’ She laughed. ‘Oh, Nick, don’t be so naive. What else is advertising but mind bending? You’ve read enough psychological crap to qualify you three times over as a better shrink than your brother! But that’s not the point. The point is I’m working. Working, not playing, on a series of articles. If I were a war correspondent I’d go to war. If I find my field of research is hypnotism I get hypnotised. If necessary.’ Furiously she got up and walked up and down the room a couple of times. ‘But if it worries you so much perhaps you’d be consoled if I tell you that I can’t be hypnotised. Some people can’t. They tried it on me once at university.’ Nick sat up abruptly, his eyes on her face. ‘Sam told me about that time,’ he said with caution. ‘So why the hell do you keep on then?’ She turned on him. ‘Ring up your brother and ask him all about it. Samuel Franklyn, M.D., D.P.M. He will spell it out for you.’ ‘Jo –’ ‘Go to hell, Nick! Or take me to a pub. But don’t mention the subject again, OK?’ Nick groaned. ‘You are a stubborn, stupid, blind fool, Jo.’ She stared angrily at him for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, she grinned. ‘I know. It’s hell isn’t it? Shall I get my jacket?’ As they were walking along the river’s edge after a pub lunch at Strand on the Green Nick broached the subject again, however. They had stopped to look at the water as it sucked and gurgled around the bows of a moored yacht and divided to race around Oliver’s Eyot. He watched her covertly as she stared at the water, mesmerised by the glint of sunlight on the wet mud slicks, her eyes narrowed in the glare. ‘Jo. Will you talk to Sam? There’s something I think you should know.’ She looked round and stared at him. ‘Nick, I thought I warned you –’ ‘No. I’m warning you. You’ve got to listen, Jo. I’m not interfering, I’m not trying to wreck your career. Sam told me I should never discuss this with you. But it’s important and I think you should talk to him. It’s about that time in Edinburgh when you were hypnotised –’ ‘When I wasn’t hypnotised!’ She turned and began walking briskly back towards Kew Bridge. ‘Thanks for the lunch, Nick. It was nice, for old times’ sake. Now I suggest you get back to Judy. I’ll get a bus home –’ ‘Don’t be an idiot, Jo.’ Almost running, he caught her up and took her arm as she made her way between the Saturday afternoon strollers. On the river behind them a coach yelled instructions to a rowing eight through a megaphone. Neither of them heard him, too engrossed in their furious antagonism. As they reached the car he forced her to get in and drove in tight-lipped silence till they drew up outside her flat. Then he turned to her and put his hand on her wrist. ‘Jo, Sam will be in London next week. Just hold on till then. Promise me. Once he’s seen you –’ ‘Seen me?’ she echoed. ‘For God’s sake, Nick. What’s the matter with you? I need to see your brother about as much as I need you at the moment and that is not a lot!’ ‘Jo, it’s important,’ he said desperately. ‘There is something you don’t know. Something you don’t remember –’ She turned on him. ‘What do you mean I don’t remember? I remember every bit of that session in Edinburgh. Better than Sam does obviously. Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t want me to investigate the subject of regression. It’s one of his pet theories, isn’t it, and he doesn’t want me to debunk it in the press. That wouldn’t suit him at all!’ She groped furiously for her seat-belt release. ‘Just leave me alone, Nick! If your brother wants to see me, let him come and see me. I’ll deal with him myself. You and I have nothing else to say to each other. Nothing!’ She flung the car door open and climbed out. ‘Goodbye, Nick.’ He watched, exasperated, as she ran up the steps, then he drove off without looking back. Closing the street door behind her she leaned against it for a moment, blinking hard. Then resolutely she began to climb the stairs to her own front door. It was only when she reached the top that she realised that he still had her spare set of keys. Pete Leveson, resplendent in a pink silk shirt and velvet jacket, picked Jo up on the following Wednesday soon after six. ‘Still not talking to Nick?’ he asked as he opened the car door for her. The black Audi Quatro was double-parked outside her flat. ‘I’ve not seen him since Saturday.’ She settled in and pulled the seat-belt across her green silk dress. ‘But I think we will tonight. Do you mind?’ ‘As long as you don’t actually expect me to hit him.’ He eased the car out into the traffic. ‘We don’t have that sort of relationship, Pete. It’s very civilised.’ Jo frowned. ‘Anyway I do my own hitting when necessary, thank you.’ ‘Of course. I’d forgotten how liberated you are. I miss you still you know, Jo.’ She glanced at him sharply. Pete was a handsome man in his mid-forties and, though it was ten years since they had had their brief affair, they had managed to stay the best of friends. He did not look at her now, concentrating on the traffic as he drove. She changed the subject abruptly. ‘You promised to tell me all about the hypnotherapist, remember? Did you find out his name for me?’ ‘’Course I did. Got your notebook in that sexy little purse of yours? He’s a chap called Bennet. I’ve got his phone number and address. He’s got consulting rooms in Devonshire Place.’ She grinned. ‘So he costs – and he’s successful, yes?’ ‘Presumably it’s tax-deductible for you! I’m assuming this party’s at Tim’s studios so I thought we might eat at that new place in Long Acre. It’s still early, but if we’re doing battle we may as well go in fortified.’ He grinned again. ‘We’re not doing battle, Pete, so there’ll be no fisticuffs, I told you. A dignified silence is all I require.’ She rested her arm along the back of his seat, studying his profile. ‘If that bastard thinks I care at all he’s got another thing coming.’ ‘But you do.’ He glanced at her. ‘Poor old Jo.’ ‘Stuff.’ She smiled. ‘Now, where is it you’re taking me for dinner?’ The huge photographic studio was already full of people when they arrived. They paused for a moment on the threshold to survey the crowd, the women colourfully glittering, the men in shirt-sleeves, the noise already crescendoing wildly to drown the plaintive whine of a lone violin somewhere in the street below. Someone pressed glasses of champagne into their hands and they found themselves sucked inexorably into the huge hot room. Jo saw Nick almost at once, standing in front of Tim’s photos, studying them with almost ostentatious care. She recognised the set of his shoulders, the angle of his head. So, he was angry. She wondered briefly who with, this time. ‘You look wistful, Jo.’ Tim Heacham’s voice came from immediately behind her. ‘And it does not suit you.’ She turned to face him. ‘Wistful? Never. Happy birthday, Tim. I’m afraid I haven’t brought you a present.’ ‘Who has?’ He laughed. ‘But I’ve got one for you. Judy’s not here.’ ‘Should I care?’ She noticed suddenly that Pete was at the other end of the room. ‘I don’t think you should.’ He took the glass from her hand, sipped from it, and gave it back. ‘You and Nick are bad news for each other at the moment, Jo. You told me so yourself.’ ‘And I haven’t changed my mind.’ ‘Nor about tomorrow I hope?’ ‘Tomorrow?’ ‘Our visit to Bill Walton. He’s going to lay something special on for us.’ He shivered ostentatiously. ‘We’re going to see Cleopatra and her Antony! I find it all just the smallest bit weird.’ She laughed. ‘I hope you won’t be disappointed this time, Tim. It’ll only be as good as the imagination of the people there, you know.’ He held up his hand in mock horror. ‘No. No, you’re not to spoil it for me. I believe.’ ‘Jo?’ The quiet voice behind her made her jump, slopping her wine onto the floor. ‘Jo, I want to talk to you.’ She spun round and found that Nick was standing behind them. Quickly she slipped her arm through Tim’s. ‘Nick. I didn’t expect to see you. Did you bring Judy? Or Sam? Perhaps Sam is here ready to psych me out. Is he?’ Rudely she turned her back on him. ‘Tim, will you dance with me?’ She dragged her surprised host away, leaving Nick standing by himself looking after her. ‘Jo, love, you’re shaking.’ Tim put his arm round her and pulled her against him. ‘Come on. It’s not like you to show your claws like that. You know Judy isn’t here. Nor is Sam. So what’s it all about, eh?’ She closed her eyes briefly and rested her forehead against his chest. ‘I know, I know, I know. I’m a fool. It’s Sam. I’ve got this weird feeling that I don’t want to see him. Nick’s been at me about this hypnotism business – we’ve already rowed about it. It’s all to do with Sam, who disapproves of my work and has been trying to pressurise me through Nick into dropping the whole thing.’ She pushed away from him and smiled with an effort. ‘Do you think I’m neurotic?’ Tim grinned. ‘Only in the nicest sort of way. Come on. Let’s get another drink – most of yours went on the floor, and the rest is down my neck.’ He took her hand firmly. Then he made a rueful face. ‘You’re in love with Nick you know, Jo. The real thing.’ She laughed. ‘No. No, Tim, you dear old-fashioned thing. I’m not in love with anyone. I’m fancy free and fully available. But you are right about one thing, I need another drink.’ There was no way she would ever admit to herself or to anyone else that she loved Nick. If she did then it was an observation which had to be stamped out. Behind her Tim glanced towards the door. He frowned. Judy Curzon stood there, dressed in a floor-length white dress embroidered with tiny flame and amber coloured beads, her red hair brushed close to her head like a shining cap. Her huge eyes were fixed on Nick’s face. Tim shook his head slowly, then firmly he guided Jo into the most crowded part of the room. 3 (#ulink_a615f999-ee39-5a4b-aee9-a13268da512a) While Tim locked the car the following evening, Jo stared up at the front of the house. It was a tall, shabby building in the centre of a long terrace of once elegant Edwardian town houses, the windows dark and somehow forbidding on this, the deeply shadowed side of the street. She turned her back on it with a shiver and glanced down instead at the brightly lit windows in the basement of the house behind her. Through one she could see a woman bustling round in the kitchen; putting cups out on a tray. The ordinariness of the action was reassuring. Behind them the traffic sped down the hill, slowing at the bottom for the traffic lights before dropping into Richmond. ‘Jo, about last night –’ Tim was pocketing his car keys. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Jo hunched her shoulders. ‘It was a great party for some. Now please forget it.’ ‘But the way Judy behaved was appalling. How could she have even thought of it!’ ‘She’s a jealous lady, Tim, fighting for a man. Women are like that. Primeval!’ ‘And aren’t you going to fight?’ ‘For Nick? No.’ Two young women were climbing the hill towards them, their arms linked. They were giggling, looking at the house numbers, and instinctively Jo knew they were heading for the same address. She relaxed slightly. For them it had the same slightly naughty, slightly frightening feeling as Jo had felt attending a seance when she was a student. She shivered. Was it going to be a party game as she suspected or had Nick been right? Would the evening turn into something risky? Firmly she put Nick out of her mind. Whatever had been left between her and Nick was over. She was aware suddenly that Tim was behind her. He was smiling. ‘I hope the one in the d?collet? red dress takes part,’ he murmured. ‘I’d like to see her in an orgasmic seizure!’ ‘Lech.’ She grinned at him affectionately. ‘I don’t know where you get this idea that everyone has an orgasm the moment they are regressed. Has it crossed your mind that in a previous life she may have been a man with a stubby beard and BO?’ ‘Spoil-sport. She might have been a boy, though. Look at that neat little derri?re!’ They watched the two girls climb the flight of stone steps which spanned the basement area and ring the doorbell. A light came on behind the stained glass of the fanlight. The door opened and the two girls disappeared. Jo took Tim’s arm. ‘You shouldn’t make comments like that, Mr Heacham. It could get you a reputation, you know,’ she said, laughing. They waited side by side for a gap in the traffic before crossing the road then sprinted between a taxi and a Bedford van. ‘Perhaps we’d better get you regressed. Find out what you were in a previous life.’ ‘No fear.’ Tim stopped abruptly at the foot of the steps and took her hand. ‘Jo, love. Can you bear in mind that this chap is a friend of a friend? Go easy on the put-downs.’ ‘I’m not going to put anyone down, Tim.’ She hitched her thumb through the strap of the bag on her shoulder. ‘I’m going strictly as an observer. I shan’t say a word. Promise.’ The front door was opened by a woman in a long Laura Ashley dress, her fair hair caught back in an untidy pony-tail. She had a clipboard in her hand. ‘Mr Heacham and Miss Clifford?’ she confirmed. ‘The others are all here. Follow me, please.’ The dark hallway was carpeted wall to wall with a thick brown runner which muffled their footsteps as they followed her past several closed doors and up a flight of stairs to the first floor. There, in a large room, facing onto the long narrow gardens which backed the houses, they found Bill Walton and some dozen other people, already seated on a semicircle of upright chairs. Walton held out his hand to them. ‘How are you? As you requested, Tim, I’ve told everyone that a lady and gentleman of the press will be here. No one objects.’ He was a small, wizened man of about fifty, his sandy hair standing out in wisps around his head. Jo looked apprehensively into his prominent green eyes as she shook hands. Somewhere outside children were playing in the evening sunlight. She could hear their excited shouting and the dull thud as a foot connected with a ball. In the room there was a muted expectant silence. She could see the two girls seated side by side at the end of the row. Both now looked distinctly frightened. Next to them a man in a roll-necked sweater whispered to his companion and laughed quietly. The room was a study – a large, comfortable untidy room, the wall at one end lined with books, the opposite one hung with a group of Japanese prints mounted on broad strips of fawn linen. Jo took her place on one of the remaining chairs whilst Tim slipped unobtrusively behind her, perching on the arm of a chair by the fire, removing the lens cap from his camera and putting it quietly down on the seat beside him. Walton moved to the windows and half drew the curtains, shutting out the soft golden glow of the evening. Then he switched on a desk lamp. He grinned at the small audience before him. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, first let me welcome you all. I hope you are going to find this evening instructive and entertaining. Let me say at the outset that there is nothing whatsoever to be afraid of. No one can be hypnotised who does not wish it.’ He glanced at Jo as, quietly, she slipped a notebook out of her bag. She rested it, still shut, on her knee. ‘My usual procedure is to make a few simple tests initially to find out how many of you are good hypnotic subjects, then from amongst those who seem to be suitable I shall ask for volunteers to be put into deep hypnosis and regressed if possible. I should emphasise that it does not always happen, and there have been occasions when I have found no one at all suitable amongst my audience.’ He laughed happily. ‘That is why I prefer to have a dozen or so people present. It gives us a better choice.’ Jo shifted uncomfortably on the wooden chair and crossed her legs. Beside her the others were all staring at him, half hypnotised already, she suspected, by the quiet smoothness of his voice. ‘Now,’ he continued, hitching himself up onto the desk so that he was sitting facing them, his legs swinging loosely, crossed at the ankle. ‘Perhaps you would all look at my finger.’ He raised it slowly until it was level with his eyes. ‘Now, as I raise my hand you will find that your own right hand rises into the air of its own accord.’ Jo felt her fingers close convulsively around her pencil. Her hands remained firmly in her lap. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the hand of the man next to her as it twitched slightly and moved, then it too fell back onto his knee. She noticed his Adam’s apple jump sharply as he swallowed. She looked back at Walton, who was watching them all with apparent lack of interest. ‘Fine. Now I want you all to sit back and relax against the back of your chairs. Perhaps you would fix your eyes on the light behind me here on the desk. The light is bright and hard on the eyes. Perhaps if you were to close your eyes for a few moments and rest them.’ His voice had taken on a monotonous gentle tone which soothed the ears. ‘Fine, now it may be that when you try to open them you will find that you can’t. Your lids are sealed. The light is too bright to look at. The darkness is preferable.’ Jo could feel the nails of her hands biting into her palms. She leaned forward and stared down the line of seated people. Two were blinking at the light almost defiantly. The others all sat quietly, their eyes closed. Walton was smiling. Quietly he stood up and padded forward over the thick carpet. ‘Now I am going to touch your hands, one by one, and when I pick them up you will find that you cannot put them down.’ His voice had taken on a peremptory tone of command. He approached the man next to Jo, ignoring her completely. The man’s eyes were open and he watched almost frightened as Walton caught his wrist and lifted the limp hand. He let go and to Jo’s surprise the arm stayed where it was, uncomfortably suspended in midair. Walton made no comment. He passed on to the next person in the line. Behind her Jo heard the faint click of the camera shutter. A moment later it was all over. Gently, almost casually, Walton spoke over his shoulder as he returned to his desk. ‘Fine, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. You may lower your hands and open your eyes. And may I suggest that we all have some coffee at this stage while we consider what is going to happen next.’ Jo licked her lips nervously. Her mouth had gone dry as she sat watching the man next to her. His hand had returned slowly to his lap, completely naturally, without any effort of will on his part, as far as she could see. She glanced over her shoulder at Tim. He winked and gave a thumbs-up sign. Then he subsided into his chair. As if at a signal the door had opened behind them and the young woman reappeared wheeling a trolley on which sat two large earthenware coffee pots. Unobtrusively she moved up the line of chairs, never speaking, nor raising her eyes to meet those of anyone in the room. Jo watched her and found herself wondering suddenly whether it was to stop herself from laughing at their solemn faces. When they had all had their coffee Walton sat down once more. He was looking preoccupied as he stirred the cup before him on the desk. Only when the woman had left the room did he speak. ‘Now, I’m glad to say that several of you tonight have demonstrated that you are susceptible to hypnosis. What I intend to do is to ask if any one of those people would like to volunteer to come and sit over here.’ He indicated a deep leather armchair near the desk. ‘Bring your coffee with you of course and we’ll discuss what is going to happen.’ It was several minutes before anyone could be prevailed upon to move but at last one stout, middle-aged woman rose to her feet. She looked flustered and clutched her cup tightly as she approached the chair and perched on the edge of it. Walton rose from his desk. ‘It’s Mrs Potter, isn’t it? Sarah Potter. Now, my dear, please make yourself comfortable.’ His voice had dropped once more and Jo again found herself sitting upright, consciously resisting the beguilement of the man’s tone as she watched the woman lean back and close her eyes. Walton gently took the cup from her and without any preliminary comments began to talk her back into her childhood. After only a slight hesitancy she began to answer him, describing scenes from her early schooldays and they could all plainly hear the change in the quality of her voice as it rose and thinned girlishly. Tim stood up and, creeping forward, dropped on one knee before the woman with his camera raised. Walton ignored him. ‘Now, my dear, we are going back to the time before you were born. Tell me what you see.’ There was a long silence. ‘Back, further back into the time before you were little Sarah Fairly. Before, long before. You were on this earth before, Sarah. Tell me who you were.’ ‘Betsy.’ The word came out slowly, puzzled, half hesitating, and Jo heard a sharp intake of breath from the people around her. She gripped the notepad on her knee and watched the woman’s face intently. ‘Betsy who?’ Walton did not take his eyes from her face. ‘Dunno. Just Betsy …’ ‘You were lucky this evening.’ Walton looked from Jo to Tim and back with a grin. ‘Here, let me offer you a drink.’ The others had gone, leaving Tim packing his cameras and Jo still sitting on her wooden chair, lost in thought. ‘Three subjects who all produced more or less convincing past lives. That’s not bad.’ Jo looked up sharply. ‘More or less convincing? Are you saying you don’t believe in this yourself?’ She saw Tim frown but Walton merely shrugged. He had poured three glasses of Scotch and he handed her one. ‘I am saying, as would any colleague, Miss Clifford, that the hypnosis is genuine. The response of the subject is genuine, in that it is not prompted by me, but where the personalities come from I have no idea. It is the people who come to these sessions who like to think they are reincarnated souls.’ His eyes twinkled roguishly. Tim set his camera case on a chair and picked up his own glass. ‘It really is most intriguing. That Betsy woman. A respectable middle-aged housewife of unqualified boringness and she produces all those glorious words out of the gutter! I can’t help wondering if that was merely her repressed self trying to get out.’ He chortled. Walton nodded. ‘I find myself wondering that frequently. But there are occasions – and these are the ones of course which you as reporters should witness – when the character comes out with stuff which they could in no way have prepared, consciously or unconsciously. I have had people speaking languages they have never learned and revealing historical detail which is unimpeachable.’ He shook his head. ‘Very, very interesting.’ Jo had stood up at last. She went to stand by the bookcase, still frowning slightly. Walton watched her. ‘Did you know, Miss Clifford, that you are potentially a good hypnotic subject yourself?’ She swung round. ‘Me? Oh no. After all, none of your tests worked on me.’ ‘No. Because you fought them. Did it not cross your mind that the fact that you had to resist so strenuously might mean something? I was watching you carefully and I suspect you were probably one of the most susceptible people here tonight.’ Jo stared at him. She felt suddenly cold in spite of the warmth of the room. ‘I don’t think so. Someone tried to hypnotise me once, at university. It didn’t work.’ She looked into her glass, suddenly silent, aware that Walton was still watching her closely. He shook his head. ‘You surprise me. Perhaps the person wasn’t an experienced hypnotist. Although, of course, if you resisted as you did today, no one could –’ ‘Oh, but I didn’t resist them. I wanted it to happen.’ She remembered suddenly the excitement and awe she had felt on her way to Professor Cohen’s rooms, the abandon with which she had thrown herself into answering all his questions before the session started, the calm relaxation as she lay back on his couch watching Sam standing in the corner fighting with his notepad whilst outside the snow had started to fall … She frowned. How strange that the details of that afternoon had slipped her mind until this moment. She could picture Sam now – he had been wearing a brown roll-neck sweater under a deplorably baggy sports jacket. When they had been introduced she had liked him at once. His calm relaxed manner had counteracted Cohen’s stiff academic formality, putting her at ease. She had trusted Sam. So why now did she have this sudden image of his tense face, his eyes wide with horror, peering at her out of the darkness, and with it the memory of pain …? She shrugged off a little shiver, sipping from her glass as she glanced back at Walton. ‘It was about fifteen years ago now – I’ve probably forgotten most of what happened.’ He nodded slowly without taking his eyes from her face. Then he turned away. ‘Well, it might be interesting to try again,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Would you like to?’ ‘No!’ she answered more sharply than she intended. ‘At least, not yet. Perhaps when my research is a bit further advanced …’ Warning bells were ringing in her mind; Sam’s face was there again before her eyes, and with it she heard Nick’s voice: ‘There is something you don’t know, something you don’t remember …’ Shakily she put down her glass, aware of Tim’s puzzled eyes upon her. Furiously she tried to get a grip on herself as she realised suddenly that Bill Walton was addressing her whilst he straightened some papers on his desk. ‘And were you pleased overall with what you saw this evening, Miss Clifford?’ She swallowed hard. ‘It was fascinating. Very interesting.’ ‘But I suspect that you are going to debunk the reincarnation theory in your articles? My wife is a great fan of yours and she tells me your style of journalism can be quite sharp.’ Jo grimaced. ‘She’s right. If she told you that it’s very brave of you to be so open with me.’ ‘Why not? I’ve nothing to hide. As I told you, the hypnotism is real. The responses are real. I do not seek to explain them. Perhaps you will be able to do that.’ He grinned. Jo found herself smiling back. ‘I doubt it,’ she said as she picked up her bag, ‘but I dare say I’ll give it a try.’ 4 (#ulink_7b5d9a3f-fd4b-51be-a108-967899881b66) ‘Why did you do it, Judy?’ Nick pushed open the door of the studio and slammed it against the wall. She was standing in front of the easel, once more dressed in her shirt and jeans, a brush in her hand. She did not turn round. ‘You know why. How come it’s taken you nineteen hours to come round and ask?’ ‘Because, Judy, I have been at work today, and because I wasn’t sure if I was going to come round here ever again. I didn’t realise you were such a bitch.’ ‘Born and bred.’ She gave him a cold smile. ‘So now you know. I suppose you hate me.’ Her face crumpled suddenly and she flung down the brush. ‘Oh Nick, I’m so miserable.’ ‘And so you should be. Telling Jo in front of all those people what Sam and I had talked about in confidence. Telling her at all was spiteful, but to do it like that, at a party – that was really vicious.’ ‘She didn’t turn a hair, Nick. She’s so confident, so conceited. And she didn’t believe it anyway. No one did. They all thought it was just me being bitchy.’ She put her arms around his neck and nuzzled him. ‘Don’t be angry. Please.’ He disengaged himself. ‘I am angry. Very angry indeed.’ ‘And I suppose you followed her last night?’ Her voice was trembling slightly. ‘No. She told me to go to hell as you well know.’ He turned away from her, taking off his jacket and throwing it down on a chair. ‘Is there anything to drink?’ ‘You know damn well there is.’ She retrieved her paintbrush angrily and went back to her painting. ‘And get me one.’ He glared at her. ‘The perfect hostess as ever.’ ‘Better than Jo anyway!’ she flashed back. She jabbed at the painting with a palette knife, laying on a thick impasto of vermilion. ‘Leave Jo alone, Judy,’ Nick said quietly. ‘I’m not going to tell you again. You are beginning to bore me.’ There was a long silence. Defiantly she laid on some more paint. Nick sighed. He turned and went into the kitchen. There was wine in the refrigerator. He took it out and found two glasses. He had not told Judy the truth. Last night, at midnight, he had gone to Cornwall Gardens and, finding Jo’s flat in darkness, had cautiously let himself in. He had listened, then, realising that there was still a light on in the kitchen, he had quietly pushed open the door. The room had been empty, the draining board piled high with clean, rinsed dishes, the sink spotless, the lids on all the jars, and the bread in the bin, when he had looked, new and crusty. ‘What are you doing here?’ Jo had appeared behind him silently, wearing a white bathrobe. He had slammed down the lid of the bread bin. ‘Jo, I had to talk to you –’ ‘No, Nick, there is nothing to talk about.’ She had not smiled. Staring at her he had realised suddenly that he wanted to take her in his arms. ‘Oh Jo, love. I’m sorry –’ ‘So am I, Nick. Very. Is it true what Judy said? Am I likely to go off my head?’ ‘That’s not what she said, Jo.’ ‘Is that what Sam said?’ ‘No, and you know it isn’t. All he said was that you should be very careful.’ He had kept his voice deliberately light. ‘How come Judy knows so much about it? Did you discuss it with her?’ ‘Of course I didn’t. She listened to a private phone call. She had no business to. And she didn’t hear very much, I promise. She made a lot of it up.’ ‘But you had no business to make that call, Nick.’ Suddenly she had been blazing angry with him. ‘Christ! I wish you would keep out of my affairs. I don’t want you to meddle. I don’t want your brother to meddle! I don’t want anything to do with either of the Franklyns ever again. Now, get out!’ ‘No, Jo. Not till I know you’re all right.’ ‘I’m all right. Now, get out.’ Her voice had been shaking. ‘Get out, get out, get out!’ ‘Jo, for God’s sake be quiet.’ Nick had backed away from her as her voice rose. ‘I’m going. But please promise me something –’ ‘Get out!’ He had gone. Nick took a couple of gulps from his glass and topped it up again before going back into the studio. Pete Leveson was standing next to Judy, staring at the canvas. Nick groaned as Pete raised a hand. ‘I thought I’d find you here. Has anyone told you yet that you are five kinds of shit?’ Nick handed him one of the glasses. ‘You can’t call me anything I haven’t called myself already,’ he said dryly. Judy whirled round. ‘All right, you guys. Stop being so bloody patronising. I’m the one who said it all, I’m the one who told her, not Nick. If you’ve come here to reproach anyone, it should be me, not him.’ She put her hands on her hips defiantly. Pete gave a small grin. ‘Right. It was you.’ ‘Was Jo very upset later?’ she was unable to resist asking after a moment. ‘A little. Of course she was. She didn’t believe anything you said, but you chose a pretty public place to make some very provocative statements.’ ‘No one heard them –’ ‘Judy.’ Pete gave her a withering look. ‘You were heard by virtually every person in that party, including Nigel Dempster. I’ve been on the phone to him, but unfortunately he feels it was too juicy a titbit to miss his column. After all, he’s got a job to do much like mine when you think about it. “Well-known columnist accused of being a nutter by blonde painter at Heacham party …” How could he resist a story like that? And he was there in person! It’ll be in Friday’s Mail.’ ‘Hell!’ Nick hit his forehead with the flat of his hand. ‘They’ll crucify Jo. She’s trodden on too many toes in her time.’ ‘She’ll be OK,’ Judy broke in. ‘She’s tough.’ ‘She’s not half as tough as she makes out,’ Nick replied slowly. ‘Underneath she’s very vulnerable.’ Judy looked away. ‘And I’m not, I suppose?’ ‘We are not talking about you, Judy. It is not your sanity that is going to be questioned in the press.’ ‘She can always sue them.’ ‘If she sues anyone, it would be you. For defamation or slander. And it would serve you right.’ Judy blanched. Without a word she took the glass out of Nick’s hand and walked with it to the far end of the studio where she stood looking out of the window to the bare earth and washing lines of the garden below. Pete frowned. ‘Just how much truth is there in any of this story?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘None at all. Judy misunderstood completely.’ Nick compressed his lips angrily. ‘Squash the story if you can, Pete. It’s all rubbish anyway, but if it wasn’t –’ he paused fractionally, ‘– if it wasn’t, think how much damage it could do.’ Pete nodded. ‘I had a reason for asking. You are sure that hypnosis can’t hurt her in any way?’ ‘Of course not.’ Nick gave an uncomfortable little laugh. Then he looked at him sharply. ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘No reason. No reason at all …’ Pete drove straight to Cornwall Gardens from Judy’s studio. It was nearly seven and almost certainly Jo would be at home. He scowled, thinking of the news he must break: probably the lead story in next morning’s Mail Diary. He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel for a moment as he paused at the lights in Brompton Road. If Nick preferred that red-haired cow to Jo it was he who needed his head examining. And soon. He backed the car into a parking space in three fluid movements and climbed out, stretched his long legs for a moment, then sprinted across the road. There was no answer. He tried again, louder, but still the flat was silent. Cursing quietly to himself he felt in his pocket for a pen and, tearing a page from the back of his diary, he scribbled a note and put it through her door. ‘Come on, Jo. There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ Tim put a double Scotch on the table in front of her and sat himself down in the chair facing her. Jo summoned up a tired smile. ‘I’m exhausted, Tim, that’s all. This’ll put me right.’ She picked up her glass. ‘Thanks for arranging everything this evening.’ ‘But Walton worried you, didn’t he, and not just because you thought he was a fake?’ She shook her head slowly. ‘He wasn’t a fake. At least, I don’t think so. A telepath perhaps – I don’t know –’ She was silent for a minute. ‘Yes, he did worry me, Tim. The stupid thing is I don’t know why. But it’s something deep inside me. Something I can’t put my finger on, floating at the edge of my mind. Every minute I think I’m going to remember what it is, but I can’t quite catch it.’ She took a sip from her glass and grinned suddenly, her face animated. ‘Makes me sound pretty neurotic, doesn’t it? No Tim, I’m OK. I think I’ve been letting Nick get to me more than I realise, with his fearsome warnings. He’s a bit paranoid about hypnosis. He told me once that he has this fear of losing consciousness – even on the edge of ordinary sleep. I think he thinks hypnosis is the same – like an anaesthetic.’ ‘And it is true he’s been on to his trick-cyclist brother about you?’ Tim asked gently after a pause. She drew a ring on the table with her finger in some spilled beer. ‘I could kill Judy.’ She looked up at him again and gave a rueful grimace. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if what she said was true. Nick told me he’d been in touch with Sam.’ ‘You knew Sam well of course.’ She nodded. ‘He became a friend after –’ She hesitated. ‘After they tried to hypnotise me, he and his boss, in Edinburgh, that first time. But we were never lovers or anything. The coup de foudre came with his kid brother.’ Tim raised an eyebrow. ‘And the foudre has not yet run to earth, has it?’ ‘Oh yes. After last night it has. Finished. Caput. Finis. Bye bye Nicholas.’ She bit her lip hard. Reaching over, Tim touched her hand lightly. ‘Poor Jo. Have another drink.’ He stood up and picked up her glass without waiting for her reply. She watched him work his way to the bar, his tall, lanky frame moving easily between the crowded drinkers. She frowned. Tim reminded her of someone she had known when she was a child, but she could not quite remember who. Someone she had liked. She gave a rueful grin. Was that why she could never love him? She held out her hand for her glass as he returned. ‘I’ve just thought of who it is you remind me of.’ She gave a quick gurgle of laughter. ‘It’s not someone from one of my previous lives. It’s my Uncle James’s Afghan hound. His name was Zarathustra!’ Tim poured himself another whisky as soon as he got in. He had dropped Jo off at her flat, declining her offer of a coffee. Throwing himself down in one of his low-sprung easy chairs, he reached for the phone. ‘Hi, Nick. Can you talk?’ He shifted the receiver to his other hand and picked up his drink. ‘Listen, have you seen Pete Leveson?’ ‘He was here earlier.’ Nick sounded cautious. ‘Did he manage to call off the press?’ ‘Apparently not. Have you warned Jo?’ Tim took a long drink from his glass. ‘I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. Shit, if he can’t do it no one can. And I don’t think Jo has a clue what is in store for her. She doesn’t seem to realise anyone else heard at all. As far as she was concerned there were only two people in that room at that moment – Judy and herself. I hope that dolly of yours is really proud of herself. Listen, Nick, what is this about Jo and hypnotism? Is it serious?’ ‘Yes. It’s serious. So if you’ve any influence with her, keep her away from it.’ ‘We went to see a hypnotist tonight.’ ‘Christ!’ ‘No, no. Not for Jo. Or at least only for her to watch other people being regressed. It was fascinating, but the fact is that Jo did behave a bit oddly. She didn’t seem to be the least bit susceptible herself when he did his tests on everyone at the beginning, but afterwards Walton said she was really, but she had been fighting it, and it upset her.’ ‘It would.’ Nick’s voice was grim. ‘Look, Tim, is she going to see him again? Or anyone else, do you know?’ ‘I don’t think so. She did say that maybe she’d got enough material to be going on with.’ ‘Thank God. Just pray she doesn’t feel she needs to pursue any of this further. Sorry, Tim. Judy’s just coming in. I’ve got to go.’ His voice had dropped suddenly to a whisper. Tim grinned as he hung up. The henpecked Lothario role did not suit Nick Franklyn one bit. 5 (#ulink_d6c17129-bd33-59f9-981c-2a3d772b7114) Jo wanted to ring Sam. For hours she had lain tossing and turning, thinking about Bill Walton and Sarah Potter, who had once been a street girl called Betsy; and about Tim and Judy Curzon; but her mind refused to focus. Instead again and again she saw images of Cohen’s little Edinburgh study, with the huge antiquated radiator against which Sam had leaned, then the snow, whirling past the window, blotting out the sky, then her hands. Somehow her hands had been hurt; she remembered her fingers, blistered and bleeding, and Michael Cohen, his face pale and embarrassed, talking about chilblains and suddenly with startling clarity she remembered the bloodstains on the floor. How had the blood, her blood, come to be smeared all over the floor of his study? She sat up abruptly, her body pouring with sweat, staring at the half-drawn curtains of her bedroom. The sheets were tangled and her pillow had fallen to the floor. Outside she could just see the faint light of dawn beginning to lighten the sky. Somewhere a bird had begun to sing, its whistle echoing mournfully between the tall houses. With her head aching she got up and staggered to the kitchen, turning on the light and staring round; automatically she reached for the kettle. She found Sam’s number in her old address book. Carrying a cup of black coffee through to the sitting room, she sat on the floor and picked up the phone. It was four thiry-two a.m. as she began to dial Edinbugh. There was no reply. She let the phone ring for five minutes before she gave up. Only then did she remember that Sam had gone abroad. She drank the coffee slowly, then she rang Nick’s flat. There was no answer from his phone either and she slammed down the receiver. ‘Goddamn you, Nick Franklyn!’ she swore under her breath. She stood up and went to throw back the curtains, staring out over the sleeping square. On the coffee table behind her lay a scrap of paper. On it was written in Pete Leveson’s neat italic script: Dr Carl Bennet, hypnotherapist. (Secretary Sarah Simmons: sister of David who you rather fancied if I remember when he came to WIA as a features writer in ’76.) Have made an appointment for you Friday, three pm to sit in on a session. Don’t miss it; I had to grovel to fix it for you. Jo turned and picked up the piece of paper yet again. She did not want to go. It was two forty-five as she walked slowly up Devonshire Place peering at the numbers and stopping at last outside one with a cream front door. Four brass plates were displayed on the elegantly washed panelling. The door was opened by a white-coated receptionist. ‘Dr Bennet?’ she said in response to Jo’s enquiry. ‘Just one minute and I’ll ring upstairs.’ The place smelled of antiseptic and stephanotis. Jo waited in the hall, staring at herself in a huge gilt-framed mirror. Her eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep and she could see the strain in her face as she watched the woman on the telephone in the reflection behind her. ‘You can go up, Miss Clifford,’ the woman said after a moment. ‘The first floor. His secretary will meet you.’ Jo walked up slowly, aware of a figure waiting for her on the half-landing at the head of the flight of stairs. Sarah Simmons was a tall fair-haired woman in a sweater and shirt and Jo found herself sighing with relief. She had been afraid of another white coat. ‘Jo Clifford?’ Sarah extended her hand with a pleasant smile. ‘Pete Leveson spoke to us about you. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ Jo grinned. ‘Did he warn you I’m the world’s most violent sceptic?’ She laughed. ‘He did, but Carl is very tolerant. Come and meet him.’ Carl Bennet was sitting at a desk, in a room which looked out over the street. It was a pleasant book-lined study, furnished with several deep armchairs and a sofa, all with discreet but expensive upholstery; the fitted carpet was scattered with Afghan rugs – sufficiently worn to emphasise their antiquity. It was a comfortable room; a man’s room, Jo thought with sudden amusement, the sort of room which should smell of cigars. It didn’t. There was only the faintest suspicion of cologne. Carl Bennet rose to greet her with a half-hesitant smile. ‘Miss Clifford. Please, come and sit down. Sarah will bring us some coffee – unless you would prefer tea?’ He spoke with a barely perceptible mid-European accent. He nodded at Sarah who disappeared through a door in the far wall, then he looked back at Jo. ‘I find my kitchen is the most important part of my office here,’ he said gently. ‘Now tell me, exactly how can I help you?’ Jo took out her notebook and, balancing it on her knee, sat down on one of the chairs. It was half turned with its back to the window. Her mouth had gone suddenly dry. ‘As I believe Pete Leveson told you, I am writing an article on hypnotic regression. I should like to ask you about it and if possible see how you work.’ She was watching his face intently. ‘Yesterday I attended a session with Bill Walton in Richmond. I wonder whether you know him?’ Bennet frowned. ‘I’ve heard of him of course –’ ‘And you don’t approve?’ ‘On the contrary. He has published some interesting papers. But we practise in very different ways.’ ‘Can you tell me how your approach differs?’ Jo kept her eyes fixed on his face as Sarah came in with a tray. ‘Of course. Mr Walton is an amateur, Miss Clifford. He does not, I believe, ever claim medical benefits from his work. I am a psychologist and I use this form of hypnosis in the treatment of specific conditions. I use it primarily in a medical context, and as such it is not something to be debunked by cheap journalism. If that is what you have in mind, then I would ask you to leave now.’ Jo flushed angrily. ‘I feel sure, Dr Bennet, that you will convince me so thoroughly that I will have no cause to debunk – as you put it – anything,’ she said a little sharply. She took a cup from Sarah. ‘Good.’ He smiled disarmingly. He took off his spectacles and polished them with the cloth from the spectacle case which lay on his desk. ‘Are you really going to allow me to sit in on a session with a patient?’ Jo asked cautiously. Bennet nodded. ‘She has agreed, with one proviso. That you do not mention her name.’ ‘I’ll give you a written undertaking if you wish,’ Jo said grimly. ‘Would you explain a little of what is going to happen before she gets here?’ ‘Of course.’ He stood up and, walking over to the chesterfield, sat down again. ‘It has been found that unexplained and hitherto incurable phobias frequently have their explanation in events which have occurred to a subject either in very early infancy or childhood, or in a previous existence. It is my job to regress the patient to that time, take them once more through the trauma involved, which is often, I may say, a deeply disturbing experience, to discover what it is that has led to the terror which has persisted into later life or even into another incarnation.’ Jo strove to keep the disbelief out of her voice as she said, ‘Of course, this presupposes your absolute belief in reincarnation?’ ‘Of course.’ She could feel his eyes steady on her face. She glanced away. ‘I am afraid you will have to convince me, Dr Bennet. I must admit to being very dubious. If you were to affirm to me your belief in reincarnation as part of a religious philosophy I should not presume to query it. It is this quasi-medical context –’ she indicated the consulting room couch. ‘Are you saying therefore that everyone has lived before?’ He gave a tolerant smile. ‘In my experience, no. Some have lived on this earth many times, others are new souls.’ She stared at him, swallowing with difficulty the bubble of laughter which threatened to overwhelm her as he stood up again, a solid greying man in his sixties, and walked over to her chair. ‘I can see you are derisive, Miss Clifford,’ he said severely, his eyes on hers, magnified a little by the thick lenses of his glasses. ‘One grows used to it as an initial, perhaps defensive response. All I ask is that you keep an open mind while you are here. Are you objective enough to be able to do that?’ Jo looked away. ‘I am sorry, I really am. I pride myself on my objectivity and I will try. In fact –’ she set her cup down at her feet ‘– you have aroused my curiosity intensely. Can you tell before you start whether people have lived before?’ He smiled. ‘In some cases, yes. Sometimes it is harder.’ Jo took a deep breath. ‘Can you tell by looking at me?’ He stared at her, holding her gaze for a while, until she dropped her eyes and looked away. ‘I think you have been on this earth before, yes.’ She felt her skin creep. ‘How can you tell?’ He shrugged. ‘I might be wrong. It is an instinct I have developed after years of studying the subject.’ He frowned. ‘I have a suspicion that the patient you are about to meet may not have done so in fact,’ he said with a grimace. ‘I can’t promise anything from her that will necessarily help you with your article. I have had one preliminary interview with the lady – we shall just call her Adele. She is a good hypnotic subject. She has a very strong and illogical fear of water which can be explained by nothing that she can remember. I shall try to regress her and it may be that we need go no further than her own childhood to discover the cause.’ He walked thoughtfully back to his desk, glancing at his watch. ‘She is late, I fear. Sarah!’ He called towards the side room from where they could hear the sound of a typewriter. It stopped and Sarah appeared in the doorway. ‘Ring Mrs Noble and make sure she has remembered her appointment.’ He scowled at the blotter on his desk, tracing the ornate gold tooling of the leather with a neatly manicured finger. ‘This lady is both vague and a hysteric,’ he said almost to himself. ‘It would not entirely surprise me if she did not turn up.’ He picked up the file on his desk and turned back the cover. Jo felt a sharp stab of disappointment. ‘Are people usually apprehensive about your treatment?’ she asked after a moment’s pause. He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘It would be strange if they were not.’ Sarah appeared in the doorway. ‘Sorry, Carl, she’s not coming. She says her daughter is ill and she has to go to see her. I told her she’d have to pay for the appointment anyway –’ Bennet gave a sharp gesture of dismissal. He stood up abruptly. ‘I am sorry, Miss Clifford. I was looking forward to proving my case to you. I am afraid this visit has wasted your time.’ ‘Not necessarily surely.’ Sarah had picked up the folder on the desk. ‘Have you ever considered undergoing hypnotic regression yourself, Joanna? After all, Carl now has an afternoon free – at your disposal.’ Jo swallowed. ‘I suppose I should try it myself,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Do you think I could be regressed, Dr Bennet?’ He spread his fingers in the air and shrugged. ‘We could try. People of strong personality tend to make good subjects, but of course they must allow themselves to be hypnotised. No one can be against their will, you know. If you are prepared to set aside your reservations completely I would be prepared to try.’ ‘I have no phobias to speak of.’ She managed a little smile. ‘Hobby horses yes. Of such are my columns made, but phobias, I don’t think so.’ ‘Then we could regard it merely as an interesting experiment.’ He bowed with old-fashioned courtesy. Jo found she was breathing rather fast. The palms of her hands were sweating. ‘I’m afraid I would be a difficult subject even if I co-operate as hard as I can. I did take part in a survey at university under Professor Cohen. He didn’t manage to get anywhere with me.’ Bennet sat down on the edge of the desk and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Michael Cohen was one of the great authorities on the subject. I wish I had met him before he died,’ he said a little wistfully. ‘I’m surprised to find you so hostile to the theories behind hypnotic regression if you were involved in any of his clinical trials. When you say nothing happened, do you mean he was not able to regress you at all?’ Jo shook her head. ‘He couldn’t hypnotise me. I didn’t know why. I didn’t fight it. I wanted it to happen.’ Bells were ringing in her mind once more, full of warning. Almost in panic she turned away from him, not wanting him to see the struggle going on inside her, and crossed the carpet to look out of the window into the busy street below, shivering in spite of the humid warmth of the afternoon. The sun was reflecting on a window opposite, dazzling as she stared at it. She turned back to Bennet. ‘I have a small tape recorder in my bag. Would you object if I used it while you try?’ He shook his head and gestured towards a table by the far wall. ‘As you see, I use one too, for various reasons. I also always insist that Miss Simmons is present to act as a chaperone.’ He did not smile. ‘I should explain, however, that often one needs a preliminary session to establish a rapport between hypnotist and patient. It is a far more delicate relationship than that implied by music hall acts on the pier or sensational fiction. So you should not expect too much on this occasion.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Or too little either, Miss Clifford. You may indeed be a hard subject – I’m sure with your co-operation, though, I can achieve something. And I have a feeling you would be an interesting case.’ He smiled boyishly. ‘Quite a challenge in fact. But I don’t wish to talk you into this if you still have any reservations. I think you should take a little time to consider –’ ‘No!’ Jo surprised herself with the vehemence of her reply. ‘No, let’s do it. I’d like to.’ ‘You are quite sure?’ ‘Quite.’ She reached for her bag and pulled the recorder out of it. ‘What shall I do?’ He walked towards the window and half pulled one of the curtains across, shading the room. Above the roof of the opposite building a huge purple cloud had appeared, threatening the sun. He glanced at it as he went back to Jo. ‘Just relax. You are very tense, my dear. Why don’t we have a cup of tea or some more coffee perhaps whilst we talk about what is to happen.’ Jo shook her head. ‘I’ll be OK. I suppose it’s natural to want to resist giving your mind to someone else.’ She bit her lip. ‘Can I just ask you to promise one thing? If anything happens, you’ll do nothing to stop me remembering it later. That’s important.’ ‘Of course. It will all in any case be on tape.’ He watched as she set the tape recorder on the floor next to his couch. ‘Shall I lie down?’ she asked, eyeing it nervously. ‘If you wish. Wherever you feel most comfortable and relaxed.’ He glanced at Sarah, who had quietly seated herself at the table in the corner before the tape deck. Then he turned back to Jo. ‘Now, Joanna – may I call you Joanna?’ ‘Jo,’ Jo whispered. ‘Very well, Jo. I want you to relax completely and close your eyes.’ Jo felt the panic overtaking her. Her eyes flew open and she sat upright. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do it.’ ‘Just as you like. Try leaning back against those cushions. Why don’t we try a light trance first, just to make you feel more relaxed, shall we? There’s nothing to worry about. Just something to make you feel good. You may have seen Bill Walton do it. It’s a very usual way of testing people’s reactions.’ Behind him Sarah smiled grimly, recognising the tone of his voice as she saw Jo make herself comfortable against the cushions, her ankles crossed on the soft hide of the sofa. Jo closed her eyes once more and visibly tried to make herself relax. ‘That’s fine.’ Bennet moved towards her on silent feet. ‘Now, the sun is filling the room once more, so I’m going to ask Sarah to pull down the blinds, but meanwhile I want you to keep your eyes tight closed.’ He glanced at the window. The sun had gone. The narrow strip of sky visible from the room was a livid bruise of cloud. There was a low rumble of thunder as he began speaking again. ‘That’s right. You can feel the light burning your eyes. Keep them tightly closed. That’s fine.’ He touched her face lightly. ‘Now, you want to open them but you can’t. The light is too bright.’ Jo did not move. She could hear him clearly and she knew she could open her eyes if she wanted to, but she could sense the glare behind her lids. There seemed no point in moving until Sarah had shut out the sun, the dazzling white shape which had appeared over the rim of the house on the other side of Devonshire Place, shining directly into the room. Bennet took her hand gently. ‘Jo, can you hear me? Good. Now, I’m going to tickle your hand slightly, just enough to make you smile. Can you feel me do it?’ Sarah gasped. He had taken a small pin from his lapel and driven it deeply into her palm. Jo smiled, her eyes still closed, still wondering why he didn’t shut out the sun. Bennet glanced at Sarah. Then he turned back to Jo. ‘Now my dear, I want you to go back to when you were a little girl …’ Some ten minutes later Sarah’s whisper broke into his concentration. ‘Carl, she’s the best subject I’ve ever seen.’ He frowned at her, his whole attention fixed on the figure lying back against the cushions in front of him. ‘I had a feeling she might be,’ he replied in an undertone. ‘I can’t understand why Cohen couldn’t reach her, unless –’ He broke off and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Unless what?’ ‘Unless he gave her a post-hypnotic suggestion that she should not remember for some reason.’ He turned back to Jo. ‘Now, Jo, my dear, I want you to go back, back to the time before you were born, to the dark time, when you were floating free …’ Jo stirred uneasily, moving her head from side to side. Then she lay still again, completely relaxed as she listened to him. ‘Now, Jo. Before the darkness. When you lived before. Do you remember? You are another person, in another time. Do you remember? Can you tell me? What do you see?’ Jo opened her eyes and stared hard in front of her at the arm of the sofa. ‘It’s getting dark,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Dark and cold.’ ‘Are you indoors or out, can you see?’ Bennet frowned at the window, which showed that it was indeed getting dark and that a torrential summer rain had begun to fall, streaming down the windows, gurgling from a broken gutter. There was another deep roll of thunder. Jo spoke hesitantly. ‘It’s the trees. They’re so thick here. I don’t like the forest.’ ‘Do you know which forest it is?’ Bennet was watching her intently. ‘No.’ ‘Can you tell me your name?’ She frowned, puzzled. ‘I don’t know. Some call me – they call me Matilda – no, Moll … I don’t know.’ ‘Can you tell me something about yourself, Matilda? Where do you live?’ Slowly Jo pushed herself up from the cushions till she was sitting bolt upright, staring into space. ‘I live,’ she said firmly, ‘I live far away from here. In the mountains.’ Then she shook her head, perplexed. ‘The mountains fill my eyes. Black and misty, not like at home.’ She began to rub her eyes with her knuckles, like a child. She looked bewildered. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. I want to sleep.’ She lay back and closed her eyes. ‘Tell me something else then, Matilda,’ Bennet prompted gently. ‘What are you doing?’ There was no answer. ‘Are you walking in the forest, or riding perhaps?’ Jo hunched her shoulders rebelliously and said nothing. Bennet sighed, ‘Come now, my dear. Tell me what are you wearing? Are you dressed in your prettiest clothes?’ He was coaxing now. He glanced at his watch and then looked at Sarah. ‘Pity. I thought we were going to get something interesting. We might try again another time –’ He broke off as Jo let out an exclamation. ‘They told me to forget. How can I forget? It is happening now …’ Bennet had not taken his eyes off her face. He leaned forward, every nerve ending suddenly tense. Slowly Jo was standing up. She took a couple of paces from the sofa and stood looking at the wall, her eyes wide open. ‘When is it going to stop snowing?’ she asked distinctly. She wrapped her arms around herself as if trying to enfold herself more warmly in her thin linen dress and he saw her shiver violently. ‘It is snowing hard,’ Bennet agreed cautiously. She frowned. ‘I had hoped it would hold off until we reached the castle. I don’t like the snow. It makes the forest so dark.’ ‘Can you tell me what the date is, my dear?’ ‘It is nearly Yule.’ She smiled. ‘Time for feasting.’ ‘And which year, do you know?’ Bennet reached for a notepad and pen. He watched Jo’s face carefully. Her eyes were normal and focusing, but not on him. Her hand, when he reached gently and touched it, was ice-cold. ‘It is the twentieth year of the reign of our Lord King Henry,’ she said clearly. ‘What a foolish question.’ She took another step. ‘Oh Holy Mother of God, we’re nearly there.’ Her voice fell to a whisper. ‘I am going to William.’ ‘Who is William?’ Totally absorbed, Bennet stopped writing and looked up, waiting for an answer. But Jo did not answer. Her whole attention was fixed on something she could see distinctly lying on the road in front of her in the snow. It was the bloody body of a man. 6 (#ulink_b2400b11-9b46-5423-ae03-d4e2345a02a4) The melting snow was red with blood. Richard, the young Earl of Clare and Hertford, pulled his horse to a rearing halt, struggling to control the animal as it plunged sideways in fear, its ears flat against its head. It had smelled the carcass and the wolves at the same moment and it snorted with terror as Richard tried to force it around the deserted kill at the edge of the track. A buzzard flew up at the riders’ approach leaving all that remained of the mangled corpse in the slush-threaded mud. A few rags of clothing were the only sign that it had once been human. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ The slim red-haired girl swathed in a fox-fur mantle who had been cantering fast behind him, was concentrating so hard on catching him up that his sudden halt nearly unseated her. Behind her, at a more sedate pace, rode a second young woman and Richard’s twelve knights, wearing on their surcoats the gold and scarlet chevrons of Clare. The riders formed a semicircle in the cold sleet and gazed down at the torn limbs. One or two of the men crossed themselves fervently and the red-haired girl found herself swallowing hard. She pulled her veil across her face hastily. ‘Poor man,’ she whispered. ‘Who could have done such a thing?’ ‘Wolves.’ Richard steadied his horse with difficulty. ‘Don’t look, Matilda. There’s nothing we can do for the miserable bastard. No doubt the men of the village will come and bury what the buzzards and kites leave.’ He turned his horse and kicked it on, forcing it past the body, and the other riders slowly followed him, averting their eyes. Two or three had their hands nervously on the hilts of their swords. All round them the bleak Welsh forest seemed deserted. Oak and ash and silver-limbed beech, bare of leaves, their trunks wet and shining from the sleet, crowded to the edge of the track. Save for the ringing of the horses’ hooves on the outcrops of rock and the squeak and chink of harness it was eerily silent. Richard gazed round apprehensively. He had been shaken more than he liked to admit by the sight of the slaughtered man. It was an ill omen so near the end of their journey. He noticed Matilda edging her horse surreptitiously closer to his and he grinned in sympathy with a silent curse for the need for an armed escort which prevented him from taking her before him on his saddle and holding her in the safety of his arms. But escort there had to be. He scanned the lengthening shadows once more and tightened his grip on his sword. Wales was a savage place; its dark glowering mountains, black forests and wild people filled him with misgiving. That Matilda should want to come here of her own free will, to join William de Braose when she did not have to, filled him with perplexed anger. ‘We should never have left Raglan,’ he said tersely. ‘Walter Bloet was right. These forests are no place for a woman without a proper escort.’ ‘I have a proper escort!’ He saw the angle of her chin rise a fraction. ‘You.’ Far away, echoing from the lonely hills, came the cry of a wolf. The horses tensed, ears flat, and Matilda felt the small hairs on the back of her neck stir with fear. ‘How much further until we get there?’ she whispered. Richard shrugged. ‘A few miles. Pray God we reach there before dark.’ He turned in his saddle, standing up in the stirrups to see his men better. ‘Make all speed,’ he shouted, then spurred his horse on towards the north. Matilda pounded after him, clinging low over her horse’s neck, determined not to drop behind, and their thundering hooves threw up clods of mud where the ice-rimmed puddles were melting slowly in the rain. The track was growing increasingly treacherous and slippery. She quickly drew level with him again, her white veil blowing for a moment across her face from beneath her fur hood. ‘Richard,’ she called, ‘wait. Slow down. This will be our last chance to talk …’ He slowed fractionally, wiping the sleet from his eyes. ‘We have had time enough to talk,’ he said abruptly. ‘You have chosen to tell me very little. I have no idea, even, why you are here, which will make it hard for me to face your no doubt irate husband with a satisfactory explanation as to why I have brought you to him.’ He saw her flush. ‘Just tell him the truth,’ she retaliated defensively. ‘Very well.’ He lashed his reins across the horse’s neck. ‘I shall tell him how I was quietly riding, minding my own business, from home in Tonbridge to Gloucester when I met his baggage of a wife, completely unescorted except for one trembling female, hell-bent on riding the breadth of England to his side in mid-winter. I shall tell him that I saw it as my chivalrous duty to escort you myself. And I shall tell him that any man who leaves a young, beautiful, newly wed bride alone in Sussex with her mother-in-law, while he travels to his furthest lands, is a mutton-headed goat.’ He managed a wry grin, ducking the wet slap of a low-hanging branch in his path. If Matilda had been his wife he would not have left her. He clenched the reins fiercely; no one would accuse Richard de Clare of lusting after another man’s wife. He admired her daring and her humour and her spirit, so unusual in a woman, no more than that. He glanced across at her and saw that she was smiling. ‘Why did you choose to come to Wales?’ he asked suddenly. She looked down at her hands. ‘Because I have nowhere else to go, but to my husband,’ she said simply. ‘With him I am a baron’s lady, mistress of a dozen castles, a woman of some importance.’ Her mouth twitched imperceptibly. ‘At Bramber with his mother I am merely another female with the sole distinction of being hated by her twice as much as anyone else. Besides,’ she added disarmingly, ‘it’s boring there.’ He stared at her in disbelief. William de Braose was a vicious ill-bred man at least twice her age, with a reputation which few men would envy. Even the thought of the brute’s hands touching her made the blood pound in Richard’s temples. ‘And you would prefer your husband’s company to being bored?’ he echoed incredulously. She raised her chin a fraction, a mannerism he was beginning to know well. ‘I did not ask your opinion of him, just as I did not ask you to escort me to him.’ ‘No, I offered.’ He took a deep breath. ‘So – I shall tell him also,’ he went on, ‘that an invitation to this Christmas banquet we hear he is to give for Prince Seisyll tomorrow is the only reward I shall ask for all my trouble. I shall wave aside the gold and jewels he is bound to press on me for my services in escorting you. I shall nobly ignore his passionate outpourings of gratitude and praise.’ Matilda made a small grimace, all too well aware of her husband’s reputation for tight-fistedness. She frowned, glancing at Richard sideways. ‘Supposing he’s furious with me for coming?’ ‘So you have considered that possibility at last!’ Richard squinted into the wind. ‘He’ll probably beat you and send you back to Bramber. It’s what you deserve.’ A racing shadow in the trees distracted him for a moment. He scanned the surrounding forest, his face set. They were passing through a clump of junipers, thick and impenetrable; the ideal hiding place for an ambush. Secretly he suspected that his men, however well-armed, would be no match for the leaping, yelling Welsh should they choose to attack. He had heard that they could sweep down, cut a throat, rip open a horse’s belly and be away again before a man even had the chance to draw his sword. He shuddered every time he thought of the dangers on the route which Matilda had so confidently decided that she and Nell could ride on their own. ‘Is that what you’d do to your wife?’ She peered at him, wiping the rain from her eyes as they trotted on again, side by side. ‘What?’ ‘Beat her and send her home.’ ‘Of course. Especially if she turned up with a good-looking fellow like me.’ He forced a smile, his eyes still narrowed as he gazed through the icy sleet. Matilda glanced at him, then changed the subject, turning in her saddle. ‘Poor Nell. She’s still keeping up.’ The girl was white-faced and rode slumped in the saddle, her eyes fixed determinedly on her shiny knuckles as they clutched the cold wet reins. She was obviously near to tears, oblivious to the half-hearted banter of the knights around her or the tired baggage animals who jostled her horse constantly with their cumbersome packs. Matilda grimaced ruefully. ‘She started this adventure so well with me, but she’s regretting every step now. Ever since we crossed out of Sussex, even with you there to protect us, she’s been scared and weepy. Seeing that poor man will be the last straw. She’ll spend the night having the vapours.’ ‘Don’t tease her.’ Richard leaned forward to slap his horse’s steaming neck. ‘She had a lot of courage to come with you. You didn’t feel so brave yourself when you saw that corpse. And don’t forget no one else would come with you at all.’ She frowned, and dug her mare indignantly with her heels, making it leap forward so that she had to cling to the saddle. ‘Most of the others were Lady Bertha’s women anyway, not mine,’ she said defensively. ‘I didn’t want them to come. I shall ask William for my own attendants as soon as we get to Abergavenny.’ Richard suppressed a smile. ‘That’s a good idea. Go and ride with Nell now. I’m going to scout ahead and check all is quiet.’ He did not give her the chance to argue, spurring his horse to a gallop. The very stillness of the forest worried him. Where were the woodsmen, the charcoal burners, the swineherds, the usual people of the woods? And if not theirs then whose were the eyes he could feel watching him from the undergrowth? Sulkily Matilda reined in and waited for Nell to draw level. The girl’s china-blue eyes were red-rimmed from the cold. ‘Are we nearly there, my lady?’ She made an effort at smiling. ‘My hands are aching so from the cold, I’m drenched through to my shift, and I’m so exhausted. I never imagined it would be so many days’ ride from Bramber.’ Her voice had taken on an unaccustomed whining note which immediately irritated her mistress. ‘We’re almost there, Nell.’ Matilda made no effort to hide her impatience. She was straining her eyes ahead up the track after Richard as the trees thinned and they found themselves crossing a windswept ridge covered in sodden bracken, flattened by the rain. There was a movement in some holly bushes on the hillside to the right of them and she peered at them trying to see through the glossy greenery. Her heart began to pound. Something was hidden there, waiting. Two deer burst out of the thicket and raced away out of sight up the hill. Richard cantered back to her side. He was smiling, but there was a drawn sword in his hand. ‘I thought we were in for trouble for a moment,’ he called. ‘Did you see? Shall I send a couple of men after them? Then we can make our own contribution to the feast.’ They plunged into the thickness of the forest again, their horses’ feet padding in the soft wet leaf-mould beneath the bare trunks of ash and beech. From time to time the cold waters of the Usk appeared in the distance on their left, pitted grey with raindrops. Sometimes the track ran straight, keeping to the line of the old Roman road, then it would wander away over the curving contours which followed, amongst the trees, the gently sloping hills. Slowly dusk was coming on them through the trees, up from the river valley, and with it came menace. The escort closed more tightly round them and, at a command from Richard, the men drew their swords. Matilda saw his face was concentrated and grim and she felt a sudden shiver of fear. They rode on in silence through the darkening forest until at last in the distance through the trees they glimpsed the tall white keep of Abergavenny Castle, swimming in the mist which had gathered over the river. Richard’s face grew more taut as he saw it. The castle meant sanctuary from the threatening forest. But it also meant facing de Braose and relinquishing to his care the beautiful child-woman who was his wife. They rode as fast as they could through the half light across the deserted fields which clustered around a small township, past the church, and up the track which led to the drawbridge and the high curtain walls of the castle. It seemed that they were expected, for the drawbridge was down and the guard stood to attention, allowing them to clatter through into the castle ward unchallenged. There, shadowed by the towering walls, darkness had already come and torches flared in high sconces, lighting the faces of the men of the garrison with a warm unreal glow. As soon as they were across it the drawbridge began to move, the cumbersome clank of the rolling chains signalling the disappearance of the cold forest as the gates closed and the castle was sealed for the night. William de Braose was waiting for them on the steps of the great hall. He was a short man of stocky build with a ruddy complexion set off by his tawny mantle, his dark gold hair and beard catching fiery lights from the torches in the wall sconces behind him. He watched the men and horses milling round for a moment then he slowly descended the steps and approached his wife, his hand outstretched to help her dismount. His face was thunderous. Swinging off his own horse Richard saw with a quick glance that for the first time Matilda looked afraid. ‘In the name of Christ and all His saints what are you doing here?’ William roared. He reached up and pulled her violently from the saddle. When standing she was several inches taller than he, a fact of which he was obviously painfully conscious. ‘I couldn’t believe it when my scouts said that you were coming through the forest. I thought I forbade you to leave Bramber till the spring.’ ‘You did, my husband.’ Matilda tried to sound contrite as she pulled the furs more closely round her in the chill wind. ‘But the weather seemed so good this winter and the roads were passable, so I thought there wouldn’t be any danger. I hoped you’d be glad to see me …’ Her voice tailed away to silence and she could feel her heart beginning to thump uncomfortably beneath her ribs. How could she have forgotten what he was like? The hostility with which he always treated her, the cruelty in which he took such pleasure, the rank smell of debauchery which hung over him? In spite of herself she shrank from him and abruptly he released her arm. He swung round on the circle of men which had formed around them, listening with open interest to the exchange. His face flushed a degree deeper in colour. ‘What are you staring at?’ he bellowed. ‘See to your horses and get out of my sight!’ Matilda turned, blindly searching for Richard amongst the men. He was standing immediately behind her. Gently he took her arm. ‘Let me help you in, Lady Matilda,’ he said quietly. ‘You must be tired.’ William swung round, his head thrust forward, his fists clenched. ‘Leave her, Lord Clare,’ he shouted. ‘My God, you’d better have a good reason for bringing my wife here.’ He swung on his heel and strode towards the flight of steps which led up to the main door of the keep, his spurs clanking on the hollow wood. Halfway up he stopped and turned, looking down on them. ‘You are not welcome here, either of you.’ His face was puce in the flickering torchlight. ‘Why did you come?’ Matilda followed him, her cloak flying open in the wind to reveal her slim tall figure in a deep-blue surcoat. ‘I came because I wanted to be with my husband,’ she said, her voice clear above the hissing of the torch beside her. ‘My Lord de Clare was only going as far as Gloucester, but he insisted that it was his duty not to let me travel on my own. We owe him much thanks, my lord.’ Her husband snorted. He turned back up the steps, walking into the great hall of the keep and throwing his cloak down on the rushes where a page ran to pick it up. ‘His duty was it?’ He stared at Richard as he followed him in, his eyes stony with suspicion. ‘Then you will perform the double duty of escorting her back to Gloucester at first light.’ Matilda gasped. ‘You’re not going to let me stay?’ ‘Indeed I am not, madam.’ ‘But … why? May we not at least stay for the feast tomorrow?’ She had followed him towards the central hearth in the crowded hall. ‘Why shouldn’t we attend? It is not my right as your wife to be there?’ ‘No, it is not your right,’ he roared. ‘And how in the name of Christ’s bones did you learn of it anyway?’ He turned on her and, catching her arms, gripped her with a sudden ferocity. ‘Who told you about it?’ ‘Walter Bloet at Raglan. Stop it, my lord, you’re hurting me!’ She struggled to free herself from his hold. ‘We stopped there to rest the horses and they told us all about it. He was very angry that you had not invited him.’ She glanced round, suddenly conscious of the busy figures all around them. Only those close to their lord and his lady seemed to realise that there was something amiss between them and had paused to eavesdrop with unashamed curiosity. The rest were too absorbed in their tasks. Smoke from the fire filtered upwards to the blackened shadows of the high vaulted ceiling. ‘Damn him for an interfering fool! If you had waited only another two days, all might have been well.’ He stood for a moment gazing at her. Then he smacked his fist into the palm of his hand. ‘Go on up.’ He turned away. ‘Go to my bedchamber and rest. You are leaving tomorrow at dawn. That is my last word on the subject.’ Matilda looked around desperately. The evening meal was obviously not long over and the servants had only just started clearing away the trestles to make room for the sleepers around the fire. Two clerks had come forward, hovering with a roll of parchment, trying to catch William’s eye, and the shoemaker, a pair of soft leather boots in his hand, was trying to attract his lord’s attention behind them. Her husband’s knights, men-at-arms, guests, servants crowded round them. On the dais at the end of the hall a boy sprawled, his back against a pillar, softly playing on a viol. Richard touched her softly on the arm. ‘Go up, my lady. You need to rest.’ She nodded, sadly. ‘What about you? Your welcome is as cold as mine.’ ‘No matter.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’ll take you back to Gloucester as he commands, first thing tomorrow. It is for the best.’ He escorted her towards the flight of steps at the end of the hall which William had indicated, cut into the angle of the new stone wall, and at the bottom of the stair he kissed her hand. A single rush taper burned weakly in the vaulted chamber above. A tapestry hung on one side of the shadowy room, and a fireplace was opposite. Matilda was trying to hold back her tears. ‘Go and find the women’s quarters, Nell,’ she said sharply as the girl dragged in after her, still sniffing. ‘I suppose I’ll …’ She hesitated for only a second. ‘I’ll be sleeping with Sir William in here tonight. I won’t need you.’ She shivered suddenly and bit her lip. ‘I misjudged our welcome it seems. I’m sorry.’ She watched as Nell disappeared up the stair which led to the upper storeys of the tower, then with a sigh she turned to the fire. She stood for a long time before the glowing embers, warming her hands. All round her her husband’s clothes spilled from the coffers against the walls and on a perch set in the stonework a sleepy falcon, hooded against the dim light, shifted its weight from one foot to the other and cocked its head enquiringly in her direction as it heard the sound of her step. Wearily she began to unfasten her mantle. In the hall below a Welsh boy slipped unnoticed to the kitchens and collected a cup of red Bordeaux wine from one of the casks which were mounted there. Onto a pewter platter he piled some of the pasties and cakes which were being prepared for the next day’s feasting and, dark as a shadow, he slipped up the stairs to his lord’s chamber. He was sorry for the beautiful girl in the blue dress. He too had been sworn at by de Braose and he too did not like it. She was standing by the fire, the glowing embers reflecting the red glint in her massed dark hair. Her veil lay discarded on the bed with her wet mantle, and she was fingering an ivory comb. The boy watched breathlessly from the shadows for a moment, but he must have moved, for she turned and saw him. He was surprised to see that there were no tears in her eyes. He had thought to find her crying. ‘What is it, boy?’ Her voice was very tired. He stood still, abashed suddenly at what he had dared to do, forgetting the cup and plate in his hands. ‘Have you brought me some food?’ She smiled at him kindly. Still he did not move and, seeing his ragged clothes and dark face, she wondered suddenly if he had yet learned the tongue of his Norman masters. ‘Beth yw eich enw?’ she asked carefully, groping for the words Meredith the steward at Raglan had taught her, laughing at her quick interest. It meant, what is your name? The boy came forward and shyly went down on one knee, set the wine and cakes on one of the chests beside the bed, then turned and fled back to the hall. Matilda gazed after him for a moment, perplexed, and then, throwing back her hair, she sat down on the bed and began to eat. She was ravenously hungry and she had to think. She sat for a long time over her cup of wine, as the rush burned lower. Then in the last flickering light she stood up and began to take off her clothes. The sound of talk and laughter had begun to lessen in the hall below and now an occasional snore was beginning to echo up the stairs. To her relief there was no sign of William. She slipped naked under the heavy bed coverings and, her plans quite made up for the morning, was soon asleep. 7 (#ulink_6cdbf50c-e2ef-5ca2-9eaa-f5294f3ff70e) On the sofa Jo stirred uneasily. Beneath her lids her eyes moved rapidly from side to side and her breathing quickened. ‘I was tired after the days of endless riding,’ she said slowly. ‘And I slept heavily. It is first light now. The room is grey and shadowy and the fire has sunk to a heap of white ash. I am sleepy … trying to remember where I am …’ There was a long pause. ‘I am not alone any more … There is someone here with me in the room …’ ‘So you are awake at last!’ William leaned over the bed and dragged the covers down to her waist. His breath stank of stale wine. ‘My beautiful wife, so eager for her husband’s company. I’m flattered, my dear, that you should have missed me so much.’ He laughed and Matilda felt herself shudder. She lay still for a moment, afraid to move, as his calloused hands gripped her breasts, then she reached down desperately for the bedcovers, trying to drag them over her once more, remembering the charm she had recited to herself in the dark; the charm which would protect her from him for months to come. She forced herself to lie still and looked up at him, her clear eyes steady on his. He immediately looked away, as always uncomfortable beneath her gaze. ‘You must not touch me, my lord.’ His mouth widened into a sneer. ‘Oh no? And why not, pray?’ He grabbed her wrist, twisting it painfully until she wanted to scream, but she managed to keep her voice calm as she spoke. ‘Because I am with child. And my nurse Jeanne says if you lie with me again whilst he is in my belly he will be stillborn.’ She held her breath, watching his face. Cruelty turned to anger, then disbelief, then to superstitious fear. Abruptly he released her and he crossed himself as he straightened, moving away from the bed. ‘That witch! If she has put the evil eye on my child …’ ‘She casts no evil eye, my lord.’ Matilda sat up, drawing the fur bedcover over her breasts and clutching it tightly. ‘She wants to protect him. That is why she sent me to you, whilst I was still able to travel. Your son must be born in Wales, in your lands in the Border March. You cannot send me back to Bramber.’ She watched him, hugging herself in triumph as he stood with his back to her, staring down at the dead ash in the hearth. Then he swung round. ‘How does she know all this?’ Matilda shrugged. ‘She has the gift of seeing.’ ‘And she sees that I will have a son?’ ‘A strong, brave son, my lord.’ She saw the look of triumph on his face as he stared at her. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But you may not stay here. I shall order a litter to take you on to Brecknock. You will be safe there.’ She lay back on the pillows and closed her eyes with a sigh. ‘You are kind, my lord. I will try and obey you. I just pray to the Blessed Virgin that the extra journey will not harm the child. I am so tired.’ She put her hand on her stomach dramatically. ‘Please. May I not rest a day or two more? For your son’s sake?’ She glanced up through her eyelashes to see what reaction her words provoked. William seemed nonplussed. He strode back and forth across the room a couple of times kicking viciously at the hay which was strewn on the floor, obviously struggling with himself. Seeing his preoccupation she felt a wave of something which was almost affection for this stocky broad-shouldered man, still almost a stranger to her. He looked so uncertain. ‘Are you pleased, William?’ she asked after a moment. ‘About the baby?’ ‘Of course I’m pleased.’ His voice was gruff. ‘But I don’t want you here. Not today.’ ‘But why not? I shan’t be in your way, I promise.’ She raised herself on her elbow, her hair cascading about her bare shoulders, dark auburn in the pale sunlight. ‘You won’t even know I’m here, and in a day or two when I’m rested I shall go to Brecknock if you think that’s really best.’ William straightened his shoulders, frowning reluctantly. ‘If I allow you to stay,’ he blustered, ‘and I’m only saying if, you would have to promise on no account to leave this room. Not for any reason. It would not be safe. You would have to give me your oath.’ ‘I promise, my lord.’ She crossed her fingers beneath the covers. ‘You do understand me. You are not to move from here all day, no matter what happens.’ He glared down at her. ‘In fact you would have to stay in bed. The feast is not for you. It’s no ordinary Christmas junketing but a gathering of local Welsh princes and dignitaries for political discussions. I have to read them an ordnance from King Henry. That’s why the Bloets weren’t asked. It’s no place for them, and it’s no place for women. Do you understand?’ He turned away from her and strode over to the perch where his falcon sat. Picking up the gauntlet which lay on the coffer nearby, he pulled it over his knuckles. Gently he freed the bird’s jesses and eased it onto his fist, whispering affectionately as he slipped the hood from its head. The creature looked at him with baleful eyes. ‘If you are going to be here I’ll take this beauty back to the mews,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Remember, you are not to leave that bed. If you try, I shall have you locked up.’ He turned on his heel sharply and left the room. Matilda waited until his footsteps had died away. Then she slipped triumphantly from the bed and pulled a fur-lined dressing-robe around her shoulders. Running to the high window, she peered out, feeling the cold wind lift her hair, listening to the sounds of life which were beginning to stir in the bailey below. It was grey morning. The watery sun above the hills to the east was so shrouded in mist and cloud that it give off as little heat as the waning moon. Shivering a little, she glanced round the room. It did not look so comfortable in the cold light but she hugged herself excitedly. Her plan had worked. She was free of Bertha, was mistress of her own large household, or would be very soon, and had ensured that she was free of her husband’s loathsome attentions until her baby was born. She gave a wistful smile. She had never felt better nor stronger than in the last two months, and she knew there was no risk. She was strong and healthy and had had no premonitions for the baby, nor for herself. She frowned suddenly as she gazed from the window, for premonitions she had certainly had, strange formless terrors which had plagued her for the last three nights in her dreams. She shrugged away the thought. Whatever they meant, she was not going to let them spoil today’s excitement. She wondered where Richard was this morning, then abruptly she put him out of her mind. To think about Richard de Clare was dangerous. She must forget him and remember that she was another man’s wife. She dragged her thoughts back to the day’s feasting. She had no intention of keeping her promise to William and staying in bed. She meant to be there at his side. There were about five hours to wait until it began, she judged, squinting up at the sun. Many of the guests were probably already at the castle or camped round its walls, others would be riding down from the Welsh hills and from Prince Seisyll’s court, wherever it was, with their attendants and their bards and their entertainers. She felt a tremor of excitement. At the sound of a step on the stairs she turned from the draughty window and ran back to the bed, shivering. A small woman entered, her hair grey beneath a large white veil. She was bearing a tray and she smiled at Matilda a little shyly. ‘Good morning, my lady. I’ve brought you some milk and some bread.’ ‘Milk!’ Matilda was disgusted. ‘I never drink milk. I’d much rather have wine.’ ‘Milk is better for you, madam.’ The older woman’s voice with the gentle lilt of the hills was surprisingly firm. ‘You try it and see, why don’t you?’ Matilda pulled herself up on the pillows and allowed the woman to feed her broken pieces of the fine wastel bread. She found she was very hungry. ‘Did I see you in the hall last night?’ she asked between mouthfuls. The woman smiled, showing rotten teeth. ‘No, madam, I was in the kitchens most of yesterday, helping to prepare for the feasting.’ Matilda sat up, her eyes shining with excitement. ‘Do you know how many people are coming? Was there much food being brought in? Are the guests already arriving?’ Laughing, the woman spread her strong work-worn hands. Her nails were badly broken. ‘Oh enough for two armies, madam, at least. They seem to have been at work for days, ever since Sir William even hinted at a feast. But yesterday and the day before, I have been helping too with a lot of the women, to see that all is ready in time.’ Matilda lay back, stretching luxuriously beneath the rugs. ‘I wish I were coming,’ she commented cautiously. ‘Sir William feels that I should rest because of my condition, and not attend.’ She glanced at the other woman, and saw with satisfaction that she looked astonished. ‘Surely you’ll feel better by then, madam, if you rest now.’ The woman smiled kindly and twitched one of the coverlets straight. ‘It would never do to miss such a fine occasion as this one, indeed.’ Matilda smiled. ‘That’s what I’ve been thinking. I feel much better already.’ She noticed that the plate was empty and smiled. It was no use pretending that she felt too ill to eat. She tried to compose her face. ‘Where’s Nell, the lady I brought with me?’ she demanded, suddenly remembering. ‘She should have come to look after me. I want her to arrange some maids. I brought no other attendants.’ The woman concealed a smile. ‘Your lady, madam, is talking to Sybella, the constable’s wife. I felt you needed food first, attendants later. I’m thinking you’d have waited all day indeed if it had been up to those two.’ Without comment she took the plate and cup and put them aside, bending to pick up the mantle which Matilda had left trailing from the end of the bed. ‘Tell me your name.’ Matilda was watching closely out of half-shut eyes. ‘Megan, madam. My husband is one of Sir William’s stewards.’ ‘Well, Megan, I want to see that my clothes chests are brought up here and then later, if I do feel better, will you help me to dress for the feast?’ ‘Of course I will, gladly indeed.’ Megan’s face lit up with pleasure. ‘And listen,’ Matilda raised herself on an elbow and put her finger to her lips. ‘We won’t let Sir William know that I might be coming. I don’t want him to forbid me, thinking I am more tired than I am.’ She lay back on her pillows again after Megan had gone, well pleased with the little Welshwoman’s conspiratorial smile of understanding. Below in the courtyard the morning sounds were reaching a crescendo of excitement and down the winding stairs to the hall she could hear a hubbub of shouting and laughter and the crashing of the boards onto the trestles as the tables were set up. It was hard to lie idle with so much going on about her but she was content to rest for the moment. The time to get up would come later. She watched as a boy staggered in with a basket of logs and proceeded to light a new fire, and then a man humped in her boxes of clothes. There was still no sign of Nell, but Megan was close on his heels. Throwing back the lids under Matilda’s instructions she began to pull out the gowns and surcoats, crying out with delight as she fingered the scarlets and greens of silks, fine linens and soft-dyed wools, laying them on the bed one by one. Matilda looked at each garment critically, considering which she should wear. Ever since she had heard about the feast she had thought about the gold-embroidered surcoat brought to her from London by William for her name day. It had come from the east and smelled of sandalwood and allspice. ‘Oh my lady, you must wear this.’ Megan held up her green velvet gown trimmed with silver. ‘This is perfect for you. It is beautiful, so it is.’ Matilda took it from her and rubbed her face in the soft stuff. ‘William thinks that green is unlucky,’ she said wistfully. She loved that dress and she knew it suited her colouring. It would go well below the gold. Nell appeared at last, fully recovered from the journey and in high spirits, as Megan was hanging up the last of the gowns in the garderobe. She had brought a message. ‘From one of Lord Clare’s knights,’ she whispered, full of importance. ‘He wants to see you in the solar, now, whilst Sir William is out in the mews with his hawks.’ She helped Megan dress Matilda hastily in a blue wool gown and wrapped her in a thick mantle against the draughts. Then, her finger to her lips, she led the way out of the bedchamber. Richard was waiting in the deep window embrasure, half-hidden behind a screen. He was dressed for travelling. ‘Richard?’ Matilda stared at him as Nell withdrew. ‘I am leaving. Your husband demands it.’ He put out his hand towards her, then let it fall. He shrugged. ‘My men are waiting. I return to Gloucester.’ ‘No,’ she whispered in anguish. ‘I thought he would change his mind and let you stay … I thought you would be here …’ He reached out and touched her hand. ‘This is your household, lady,’ he said sadly. ‘This is where you wished to be, at your husband’s side. There is no place for me here. Better I go now.’ ‘But I thought it would be different – I thought it would be all right.’ She looked away from him, her bravery and excitement forgotten. ‘I had forgotten what he is like.’ She put her hands to her face trying not to cry. ‘And I have to stay with him for the rest of my life!’ Richard felt the sweat start on the palms of his hands. ‘You are his wife,’ he said harshly. ‘In God’s eyes you belong to him.’ They stood for a moment in silence. She wanted to cling to him. Firmly she put her hands behind her. ‘I am carrying his child,’ she said at last with an effort. ‘So he is going to let me stay. Not here, but at Brecknock. He is not going to send me back to Bramber after all.’ She gave a faint smile. Richard stiffened. The pain in his face was hidden in a moment, but she had seen it. She clenched her fists in the folds of her long skirts. ‘Are you not going to congratulate me on fulfilling my wifely duty?’ He bowed slightly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ ‘I couldn’t …’ she whispered. ‘I couldn’t …’ Outside the wind was rising, funnelling down the valley, turning the melted slush back to crisp whiteness. It rattled the shutters and screens and stirred the hay which covered the floors, releasing the smell of stale woodruff, tossing the fire-smoke back down into the rooms. ‘You said your men were waiting,’ she said at last. The words caught in her throat. ‘So. God be with you.’ He took her hand and raised it to his lips. Then he left her. She heard him walk across the room and slowly down the long winding stair, his sword catching on the stone wall as he went until the sound died away and she was alone. She sat for a long time on the stone seat in the embrasure, then, stiff with cold, she returned to her room and crept back beneath the covers of the bed. Some time later Megan reappeared. She was bubbling with excitement. Prince Seisyll had arrived with his eldest son Geoffrey and his retinue, his harper and his chief councillors. ‘Handsome he is,’ Megan reported breathlessly, her eyes sparkling. ‘A real prince to look at, and tall …’ Matilda dried her eyes, pushed back the covers, and slipped out of bed. She was standing in the middle of the floor in her shift with Megan braiding her long hair to go beneath her veil when she heard William’s unmistakable step on the stairs. She glanced round wildly, looking for somewhere to hide, not wanting him to see her preparations. ‘Quick, madam.’ Megan threw a warm dressing-gown round her shoulders. ‘Wait in the garderobe and I’ll tell him you’re busy.’ She giggled nervously as Matilda fled for the little archway in the corner of the room. Standing motionless amongst the hanging clothes just inside the doorway behind the leather curtain, shivering in the draught from the open closet hole, Matilda held her breath and listened. There was a moment’s silence, and then she heard William’s irritated exclamation as he saw that the bed was empty. ‘Your lady will be back in a moment.’ Megan’s voice was as firm as ever, Matilda heard, and she imagined Megan gesturing modestly towards the doorway where she was hidden. To her surprise William made no comment. There was a pause as he fumbled with the lid of a coffer, then she heard his loud step as he left the bedchamber and the squeak and clatter of his chain mail as he ran down the spiral stairs again. She emerged to find Megan pulling her gown from beneath a cover on the bed. ‘Lucky I thought to hide it, madam, isn’t it?’ ‘What was my husband wearing, Megan?’ Matilda was puzzled. ‘Surely he wasn’t armed for a feast?’ She held up her arms as the other woman slipped the fine green cloth over her head and began to lace it up the back. ‘He was wearing a hauberk, madam, then he took his tunic and mantle from over there –’ she indicated the rail on the far side of the room ‘– and put them on over it. I suppose he can’t bring himself to trust his guest quite, even when by custom our people always leave their arms by the door when they accept a man’s hospitality.’ She smiled a little ruefully. ‘And Prince Seisyll is the Lord Rhys’s brother-in-law, and he’s the ruler of all south Wales and at peace with your King Henry, so there would be no danger and, besides, I’ve always heard that Seisyll is a good man, chivalrous, with honour better than many at King Henry’s court.’ The colour rose a little in her cheeks as she spoke. Matilda smiled and touched her arm gently. ‘Of course he is, Megan. I expect William is just being careful, that’s all, out of habit.’ She bit her lips hard to bring out the red in them, and lifted a small coffer onto the table to find her jewellery and her rouge. ‘Are you going to attend at the back of the hall?’ ‘Oh yes, indeed, as soon as you’ve gone down. I want to see all the finery and hear the music.’ Megan deftly twisted Matilda’s hair up and around her head and helped Nell adjust the veil and the barbette which framed her face. They were pulling the folds of her surcoat of scarlet and golden thread into place and tying the heavy girdle when they heard the trumpet summons to the banquet from the great hall below. Megan looked up in excitement as the notes rose to the high rafters and echoed round the castle. Matilda met her gaze for a moment, holding her breath, then impatiently she gestured at the woman to go down the stairs and peep at the scene. She wanted to time her entrance exactly. Nell had secured herself a place at the feast by cajoling the chatelaine and she glanced at Matilda for permission to go as Megan returned, her soft shoes making no sound on the stone. ‘They are seated, madam. They have washed their hands and wine has been called for. They’re bringing in the boars’ heads now. You must hurry.’ She was breathless with excitement. Without a word Matilda crossed to the top of the stairs and, taking a deep breath, began to tiptoe down. She was scared now the moment had come, but she refused to let herself think about what would happen if William sent her away in front of everyone. She was too excited to turn back. At the foot of the stairs she waited, her back pressed against the stone wall, just out of sight of the noisy hall. It was lit with torches and hundreds of candles, although it was full day outside, and a haze of smoky heat was already drifting in the rafters and up the stairs past her towards the cooler upper floors of the tower. The noise was deafening. Cautiously she edged a step or two further and peered round the corner. The archway where she stood was slightly behind her husband and his guests at the high table, and in the deep shadow she was satisfied that she would not be seen. The Prince, she could see, was seated at William’s right hand. He was clean-shaven and his dark hair was cut in a neat fringe across his eyes. He was finely arrayed in a sweeping yellow cloak and tunic and she could see a ring sparkling on his hand as he raised it for a moment. He had thrown back his head with laughter at some remark from a man on his right. Then, as she was plucking up the courage to slip from her hiding place and go to his side, William rose to his feet, and she saw him produce a roll of parchment. He knocked on the table for silence with the jewelled handle of his dagger and then, with it still clutched in his hand, looked around at the expectant hall. Matilda stayed hidden, scanning the crowded tables, trying to recognise faces she knew. There was Ranulph Poer, one of the king’s advisers for the March, with his foxy face and drooping eye, who had visited them on numerous occasions in the summer at Bramber. And there too at the high table was plump white-haired Philip de Braose, her husband’s uncle, and between them a youth of about fifteen, not much younger than she. That must be the Prince’s son, she thought, and as he turned for a moment to lean back in his chair and look at his father she saw his sparkling eyes and flushed face. He is as excited as I am, she realised suddenly, and she envied the boy who was sitting there by right while she had to resort to subterfuge. To her surprise there were no other faces that she recognised. And there were no women at the high table at all, just as William had said. She had expected him to have invited many of the men whom she knew to be neighbours on the Welsh March, but as Walter Bloet had complained, none of them was present. William was scrutinising the parchment in his hand as if he had never seen it before. She could see the ugly blue vein in his neck beginning to throb above his high collar. His mail corselet was entirely hidden by his robe. ‘My lords, gentlemen,’ William began, his voice unnaturally high. ‘I have asked you here that you may hear a command from the high and mighty King Henry regarding the Welshmen in Gwent.’ He paused and, raising his goblet, took a gulp of wine. Matilda could see his hand shaking. The attention of everyone in the hall was fixed on him now, and there was silence, except for some subdued chatter among the servants at the back, and the growling of two dogs in anticipation of the shower of scraps which they knew was about to begin. Matilda thought she could see Megan leaning against one of the serving men at the far end of the hall, and briefly she wondered why the woman wasn’t seated at one of the lower tables if her husband was a steward. Nell, she had seen at once, had found herself a place immediately below the dais. Prince Seisyll had leaned back in his carved chair and was looking up at William beside him, a good-natured smile on his weathered face. ‘This is an ordnance concerning the bearing of arms in this territory,’ William went on. ‘The King has decreed that in future this shall no longer be permitted to the Welsh peoples, under …’ He broke off as Prince Seisyll sat abruptly upright, slamming his fist on the table. ‘What!’ he roared. ‘What does Henry of England dare to decree for Gwent?’ William paused for a moment, looking down at the other man, his face expressionless and then slowly and deliberately he laid the parchment down on the table, raised the hand that still held his dagger and brought the glinting blade down directly into the Prince’s throat. Seisyll half rose, grasping feebly at William’s fingers, gurgled horribly, and then collapsed across the table, blood spewing from his mouth over the white linen table-cloth. There was a moment’s total silence and then the hall was in an uproar. From beneath their cloaks William’s followers produced swords and daggers and as Matilda stood motionless in the doorway, transfixed with horror, they proceeded to cut down the unarmed Welsh. She saw Philip de Braose lift his knife and stab the young prince in the back as the boy rose to try to reach his father, then Philip and Ranulph together left the table and ran for the door, hacking with their swords as they went. William was standing motionless as he watched the slaughter all round him, the blood of his victim spattered all over his sleeve. His face was stony. Above the screams and yells a weird and somehow more terrible sound echoed suddenly through the vaulted wooden roof of the hall. A man-at-arms had plunged his sword through the heart of the old harper, who, seated with his instrument, had been waiting to serenade his Prince’s host. The old man fell forward, clutching wildly at the strings so that they sang in a frightening last chord and then, as he sprawled to the floor, Matilda saw the soldier slice through the strings of the harp, the blade of his sword still drenched with its owner’s blood. 8 (#ulink_cfaa7fa3-2087-5448-b5c3-a91e2977e9cf) Slowly she became aware of the pain in her hands and looking blindly away for the first time from the terror of the scene in front of her, she stared at them. For a moment she could not focus her eyes at all in the darkness, but then as the flickering torchlight played over the wall where she stood hidden she realised she was clinging to the rough-hewn architrave of the arch as though her life depended on it, and where her nails had clawed at the uneven surface her fingers were bleeding. There were smears of blood on the pale stone; her own blood. It was the last thing she saw. In the grip of a numbing horror which mercifully blotted out the sound of the boy’s desperate screams, she began to grope her way along the wall. Her gown and shift were drenched with sweat and she could feel the sour taste of vomit in her mouth as she dragged herself back up the spiral stairs, tripping on her long skirts in her haste to escape to the upper room before she collapsed. The only sound she could hear was her own breath, coming in tight dry gasps which tore painfully at her ribs and caught in her throat, threatening to choke her and, once, the sob of agony which escaped her as she stumbled on her hem and fell heavily, flinging out her hands to save herself with a jar which seared through her wrists and into her injured fingers. The bedchamber was deserted. The rushlights had died in a smoky smell of tallow and the only illumination came from the fire. Climbing dazed onto the bed she lay rigid, listening to the pine logs hissing and spluttering as they showered sparks onto the floor, where they glowed for a moment before going out. The distant sound of a shout echoed up the stairs and she turned over convulsively, pulling the covers over her head, trying to blot out the noise. Then all went black at last and she felt herself spinning down into silence. Some time later she stirred uneasily in her sleep, still hugging the pillow to her face. She half awakened and lay still, listening. A voice was calling her name in the distance, trying to rouse her and bring her back, calling a name again and again. She listened, half roused. But she resisted. She did not want to wake. She could not face the terror which consciousness would bring. ‘Let her sleep. She will wake by herself in the end!’ The words echoed in her head for a moment, so clear they must have been spoken from beside the bed then, as she turned her face away, they receded once more and she fell back into the dark. When she next woke the room was absolutely silent. There were no voices, no sounds from below in the great hall. She lay for a while, her face still buried in the fur of the bedcover, too stiff and dazed to move, feeling its rancid hair scratchy against her mouth and nose, then at last she managed to raise herself a little and try to turn over. At once her head began to spin and she was overwhelmed with nausea. With a sob she fell back onto the bed. A hand touched her shoulder and something cool and damp and comforting was pressed gently to the back of her neck. ‘I’ll help you, my lady, shall I?’ Megan’s voice was little more than a whisper. At the sound of it Matilda forced herself to lift her head. Then reluctantly she pulled herself up onto one elbow and looked round. ‘Megan? Megan, is it you? Tell me it’s not true. It’s not. It’s not …’ Her voice broke. ‘It must not be true.’ The room was dark as she groped for the woman’s hands and held them fast. Slowly as her sight adjusted to the gloom she could just see Megan’s face in the dying glow of the fire. Her eyes were shut and tears streaked her cheeks as, wordlessly, Megan shook her head. They remained unmoving for a long time, huddled together on the bed, their hands tightly clasped as they listened to the logs shifting on the hearth. Then at last Matilda pulled herself up against the pillows. ‘How long have I been asleep?’ she said. Her voice sounded strange and high to her ears. ‘Where is my … where is William?’ She could not bring herself to call him her husband. Megan opened her eyes wearily and sat motionless for a moment, staring in front of her. Then she shook her head, unable to speak. ‘Is he still here, in the castle?’ ‘Duw, I don’t know,’ Megan answered finally, her voice lifeless. ‘They took out the dead and cleaned the blood away. Then Lord de Braose sent a detachment of his men after the people who stayed behind at Castle Arnold. Prince Seisyll’s wife, his babies …’ She began to cry openly. ‘His babies?’ Matilda whispered. ‘William has ordered the death of Seisyll’s babies?’ She stared at Megan in disbelief. ‘But surely there are guards, there will be men there to protect them?’ ‘How? When all the Prince’s men came with him, thinking there is peace between King Henry and the men of Gwent, trusting the King of England’s honour!’ The gentle face had twisted with hatred. ‘I must stop them.’ Pushing the covers aside Matilda climbed shakily from the bed. Her feet were bare but she did not notice. Megan did not move as she made her way to the top of the stairs and listened for a moment to the silence which was broken only by the howl of the wind outside the walls. Steeling herself Matilda began to tiptoe down, her feet aching from the cold stone. The great hall was empty. The rushes on the floor had been swept away, leaving the flagstones glistening with water. The tables had been stacked and the chairs and benches removed. It was absolutely empty. Moving silently on her bare feet Matilda crossed to the centre of the floor and looked round. The echoing vault of the roof was quiet now and the fire had died. Two or three torches still burned low in their sconces, but there was no one to tend them and they flared and smoked by turns in the draught. The only smell that remained was the slight aroma of roasting beef. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ she breathed. She crossed herself fearfully as her eyes searched the empty shadowy corners but nothing stirred. There were no ghosts yet of the dead. Forcing herself to move she left the hall and went in search of her husband. The solar, the guardroom, the kitchens and the stores were all empty. And the chapel where the wax candles had burned almost to the stub. The whole keep was deserted. Reluctantly she turned at last to the entrance and walking out stood looking down into the dark bailey courtyard below. It was full of silent people. Every man, woman and child from the castle and the township appeared to be there, standing around the huge pile of dead. Behind them some of William’s guards stood muttering quietly, looking uneasily around them into the shadows or towards the lowered drawbridge. They all appeared to be waiting for something – or someone. Nowhere was there a sign of the dark twisted face which belonged to her husband. Matilda stepped out over the threshold and walked slowly down the flight of wooden steps. She was half-conscious of the enquiring faces turned towards her on every side, but her eyes were fixed on the bodies of the dead. The Welsh moved aside to let her pass and watched as she walked, head and shoulders taller than most of them, a stately slim figure in her gold and scarlet gown, to stand before her husband’s victims. An icy wind had arisen. It whipped at her long hair, tearing it out of the loose braids that held it. Megan must have removed her head-dress whilst she lay insensible and she had not noticed. She stood there a long time, head bowed, her eyes fixed on the ground, only half seeing the flickering shadows thrown by the torches of the men-at-arms. Then at last she raised her eyes to look directly at the men her husband had killed. The body of Prince Seisyll lay slightly apart from the others and someone had crossed his hands across his breast. On his forefinger a dark red stone glittered coldly in the torchlight. Slowly her gaze travelled to the gory heap, searching for the body of his son, the boy whose excited happy mood had so matched her own. She saw him almost at once, lying sprawled beneath another man, his head thrown back, his mouth open in horror at what he had seen. A trickle of blood had dried on the downless chin. His fingers were still clutching the linen napkin which the page had handed him as William began his speech. A few feet from his head lay the harp with its severed strings. Its frame had been snapped in two. Her feet no longer felt the cold as she walked across the cobbles to the gatehouse and out over the drawbridge. In fact she felt nothing at all. No one tried to stop her. The guards moved aside to let her pass and regrouped beneath the gateway behind her. She walked slowly down towards the shining sweep of the river, her hair quite loose now, lifting around her head in a cloud. The wind carried showers of icy raindrops off the iron whiteness of the desolate hills but she neither saw nor felt their sting on her face. Somehow she seemed to find a path as she moved unseeing through the darkness and she avoided trees and bushes and the outcrops of rock in her way. The cold moon was glinting fitfully through the rushing clouds to reflect in the Usk beneath as she stood for a while on the bank gazing into the luminous water; then she walked on. Soon the castle was out of sight and she was quite alone in the whispering trees. There the snow had melted and clogged into soft slush beneath the network of roots and the path became muddy beneath her toes, dragging at the sodden train of her gown. It was several times before she realised that there was someone speaking to her, the voice quietly insistent, urging her back, calming the unsteady thudding of the pulse in her head. ‘I’m reaching her now,’ Carl Bennet murmured to the frantic woman at his side. He sat forward on the edge of his chair, staring intently at Jo as she lay restlessly on the sofa by the window. Outside the rain had begun again, sliding down the panes, forming little black pools in the soil of the dusty window-box. ‘Jo? Matilda? Can you hear me?’ His voice was professionally calm and reassuring again, only the beads of sweat on his forehead betraying the strain of the past hour. On the sofa Jo stirred and half turned to face him. ‘Who is that?’ she asked. ‘There is sleet in the moonlight. I cannot see properly.’ Her eyes opened and she stared blindly at Bennet. ‘Is it you? The Welsh boy who brought me my food? I did not know what was planned. You must believe me, I did not know …’ With tears running down her cheeks again she struggled to sit up, clutching at Bennet’s jacket. Avoiding her desperate fingers he leaned forward and put his hands gently on her shoulders, pushing her back against the cushions. ‘Listen, my dear, I am going to wake you up now, I want you to come back to us. I am going to count to three. When I do so you will wake up as Joanna Clifford. You will remember all that has occurred but you will be relaxed and happy. Do you understand me?’ For a moment he thought she had not heard him, but after a pause her hands dropped and she ceased struggling. He watched her face, waiting for the slight nod which came after a long perplexed silence. ‘Good girl,’ he said softly. ‘Now … one – two – three.’ He waited only a moment more, to be certain, then he leaned back in his chair and took off his glasses. Jo lay still, staring from Bennet to his secretary and back. For a moment none of them spoke then, as Jo raised her hand and ran her fingers through her hair, Bennet stood up. ‘I think we could all do with some coffee,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘Would you, Sarah, please?’ He walked across to the table and switched off the tape recorder with a sharp click. He took a deep breath. ‘Well, how do you feel, Jo?’ he asked. His tone was light and conversational. His spectacles polished to his satisfaction at last, he put them back on his nose. Then he turned to look at her. ‘I don’t know.’ Jo pushed herself up against the cushions. ‘Oh God, I’m so cold. My feet are freezing.’ She leaned forward and rubbed them. ‘And my fingers are hurting – Oh Christ, I don’t believe it! Tell me it didn’t happen!’ She buried her face in her hands. Bennet glanced at the open door through which came the sound of rattling cups from the kitchen. ‘Do you remember everything?’ he asked cautiously. Removing the reel from the recorder he held it lightly between finger and thumb. ‘Oh yes, I remember. How could I forget!’ Jo raised her face and stared at him. He recognised the same blind anguish he had seen as she acted out the role under hypnosis. ‘All that blood,’ she whispered. ‘To see those men die. To smell it! Did you know blood smelled? And fear? The stink of fear!’ She stood up unsteadily and crossed to stare out of the window. ‘That boy, doctor. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen. He watched his father die and then –’ Her voice cracked to a husky whisper and she fell silent, pressing her forehead against the window-pane as a tear trickled down her cheek. Quietly Sarah reappeared and put the tray on the desk. Bennet raised his fingers to his lips. He was watching Jo intently. Outside there was a flurry of angry hooting in the narrow street but none of them noticed it. Jo turned back towards the room. Her face was white and strained. ‘Did you record everything I said?’ He nodded. Her own small tape recorder still sat on the floor beside the couch, the microphone lying where it had fallen on the rug. ‘Come, have coffee now,’ he said quietly. ‘We can listen later.’ ‘I still don’t believe it,’ she said as she sat down and took the cup from him. It rattled slightly on the saucer as she tightened her grip. ‘You’ve set me up somehow. No, not intentionally, but somehow. There is no way all that was real, and yet I couldn’t have dreamed that – that obscenity – that boy’s death.’ She found herself blinking hard and she steadied herself with an effort. There was a long silence. She sipped the coffee slowly, then she looked up, forcing a smile. ‘So, tell me what you thought. How did I do as a subject?’ Bennet had taken his own cup back to his chair and Sarah, sitting at the side-table, her own hands still shaking, turned to look at him. She had recognised his barely suppressed excitement. He chewed his upper lip for a moment. ‘I think I can say in all honesty that you are the best subject I have ever worked with,’ he said at last. ‘As I told you, people’s sensitivities vary enormously and it often takes several sessions before a deep enough trance is reached for any meaningful contact to be made with another personality.’ He took a gulp of coffee. ‘But this Matilda. She was so clear, so vivid.’ He stood up again. ‘And so powerful. Do you realise I lost control of you? That has never happened to me before in all my years of experience. I tried to break the trance and I couldn’t!’ Jo stared at him. ‘I thought I had read that that couldn’t happen.’ He shrugged. ‘It was only temporary. There was nothing to be afraid of. But it was fascinating! Do you feel ready to discuss what you remember now? He reached down to where a pile of notebooks lay beside his chair and selected one. Jo frowned. Then slowly she shook her head, concentrating all her attention on the steaming black liquid in her cup, still fighting the unfamiliar emotions which overwhelmed her. ‘In a minute. I’m sorry, Dr Bennet, but I feel rather odd.’ He was watching her carefully. With a glance at Sarah he went over to collect the coffee pot from the desk in front of her and poured some more into Jo’s cup. ‘I doubt if you have ever witnessed a massacre before, my dear,’ he said dryly. ‘It would be surprising if you were not upset.’ ‘Upset! But I feel as though I had really lived through it, for God’s sake!’ ‘You have. For you, every part of that experience was real.’ ‘And not only for you,’ Sarah added softly behind him. ‘It was an hallucination, some sort of dream.’ Slowly Jo put down her cup. ‘You must have put it all into my head. You are not trying to tell me that I am a reincarnation of that woman –’ ‘I am not trying to tell you anything,’ said Bennet with a sigh. ‘We are only just beginning to grope our way towards an explanation for this kind of phenomenon. All we can do is record what happens with meticulous accuracy and consider the various hypotheses. I happen to believe in reincarnation, but, as you say, it may well be some kind of dream sequence, and it may come from nowhere but your own unconscious. The interest lies in trying to verify whether or not the events you appeared to live through really happened, and in recording every detail which you can remember.’ He took his glasses off again with a weary smile. ‘There is one thing I can assure you of, though. I did not put the idea into your head, telepathically or verbally. The tapes will bear me out on the latter and also my great ignorance of Welsh history. We did not study Wales, I regret to say, in Vienna before the war.’ He smiled. ‘We won’t discuss anything further now, though, if you’d rather not. You are tired and we both need to evaluate what has occurred. But whatever the explanation, the fact remains that you are an amazingly responsive subject. You reached the deepest levels of trance and next time –’ ‘Next time?’ Jo interrupted him. ‘Oh no, not again. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t take it. I have enough material here to write my article and that is all I want.’ For a moment he stared at her in dismay. Then he shrugged and resumed his seat. ‘Of course, I cannot compel you to return, but I do most ardently hope you will. Not only for your researches, but to help me with mine. This Matilda, she seems a remarkable girl. I should like to know more about her.’ Jo hesitated. Then she stood up. ‘No, I’m sorry. It is interesting, I agree, but I don’t like it. I was so much in your power, in your control. You could be levitating me next, or making me go stiff as a board, whatever you call it, for all I know.’ She shuddered. ‘Cataleptic.’ He smiled again. ‘You were in a far deeper state of trance than is needed to induce catalepsis, my dear.’ She had begun collecting her notebook from the table but at his words she swung to face him. ‘You mean you could have done that to me?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘You didn’t, though.’ ‘No, although it is still used by some practitioners as a method of gauging the depth of trance reached. I prefer to use a pin.’ His eyes twinkled behind his glasses. ‘A pin?’ ‘Oh yes. You’ll hear it on the tape. I stuck a pin into the palm of your hand. Had you not been in a sufficiently deep trance you would have shrieked at me, and bled of course.’ Jo stared at both her hands in disbelief. ‘And I did neither?’ ‘You did neither.’ She shivered. ‘It’s horrible. You could end up having complete domination over people without them ever knowing it!’ Carl looked offended. ‘My dear, we have a professional code, I assure you, like all doctors, and, as I said, always a chaperone.’ ‘In case you get your evil way with a woman patient?’ The strain on Jo’s face lessened as she smiled at last. ‘Even hypnotherapists are human!’ he responded. ‘And as such are liable to be hurt by what I write about them in the magazine?’ Serious again, Jo swung her shoulder bag onto her arm. She picked up her tape recorder and stood up, shocked to find her knees were still trembling. Bennet made a deprecatory gesture with his hands. ‘I will admit I have read some of your work. I believe it to be well researched and objective. I can ask for no more from you in my case.’ ‘Even though I’m not converted to your theories of reincarnation?’ ‘All I ask is an open mind.’ He went to the door ahead of her. ‘Are you sure you feel well enough to go? You wouldn’t like to rest a while longer?’ She shook her head, suddenly anxious to be outside in the fresh air. ‘Then I will say goodbye. But even if you feel you must leave us now, I beg you to consider returning for another session. It might help to clarify matters for both of us.’ She shook her head. ‘No. I’m sorry.’ ‘Well then, can I ask you to note down every detail of what you remember?’ he begged. ‘While it is still fresh in your mind. I think you will find your memory clear and complete. Far, far more than you described to me. All kinds of details which you did not mention at the time but which you will remember later. You’ll do it anyway for your article, I’m sure.’ He was standing in front of the door, barring the way. ‘And you’ll check the history books to see if you can find out whether Matilda existed?’ She gave a tight smile. ‘I will. I’m going to check everything meticulously. That I promise you.’ ‘And you will tell me if you find anything? Anything at all?’ He took her hand and gripped it firmly. ‘Even if she is the heroine of a novel you read last year.’ He grinned. ‘You don’t believe that?’ He shook his head. ‘No, but I think you may. Perhaps you would come back, just to discuss what you have discovered,’ he went on hopefully as he opened the door for her at last. ‘Will you do that?’ ‘I’ll certainly send you a copy of the article before it goes to press.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll look forward to that. But remember, you know where I am if you need me.’ He watched as she walked along the carpeted hallway towards the stairs, then he closed the door and leaned against it. Sarah was collecting the cups. ‘Do you think she will come back?’ she said over her shoulder. She twitched the rug on the sofa straight and selected a new blank tape for the machine. Bennet had not moved from the door. ‘That girl is the best subject I’ve ever come across,’ he said slowly. Sarah moved, the tray in her hand, towards the kitchen. ‘And yet you were dreading this appointment.’ He nodded. ‘Pete Leveson had told me how anti she was. She had made up her mind before she ever met me that I was a charlatan.’ He chuckled. ‘But it is the strong-willed, if they make up their minds to surrender to hypnosis, who are by far the best subjects. This one was amazing. The way she took it over. I couldn’t reach her, Sarah! I could not reach her! She was out of my control.’ ‘It was frightening,’ Sarah said vehemently. ‘I wouldn’t have liked to be in her shoes. I bet she has nightmares about it. Did you notice? She wasn’t half so confident and sure of herself afterwards.’ He had begun to pace the carpet restlessly. ‘I have to get her back here. It is imperative that we try it again.’ Sarah glanced at him. ‘Weren’t you afraid, Carl? Just for a moment?’ she asked. He nodded. ‘I didn’t think it could happen. But it did. And that is why it is so important. She’ll come, though. She’ll think about it and she’ll come back.’ He smiled at Sarah vaguely, taking off his spectacles once more and squinting through them at some imaginary speck on the lens. ‘If she’s half the journalist I think she is, she’ll come back.’ 9 (#ulink_adbf24bd-0883-59ba-8043-306771641c34) As the cab drew away from the kerb Jo settled back on the broad slippery seat and closed her eyes against the glare of the sunlight reflected in the spray thrown up from the road by the traffic. Then she opened them again and looked at her watch. It was barely five. She had lived through twenty-four hours of fear and horror and it was barely five o’clock. In front of her the folding seats blurred; above them the tariff card in the window floated disembodied for a moment. Her hands were shaking. With a squeal of brakes the taxi stopped at the traffic lights and her bag shot off the seat onto the floor. As she bent to retrieve it she found herself wincing with pain. Her fingertips felt bruised and torn and yet, when she examined them, they were unharmed. She frowned, remembering the way she had clung to the stone arch to stop herself from fainting as she watched the slaughter of William’s guests, and she swallowed hard. She put her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket as the taxi cut expertly through the traffic towards Kensington, the driver thankfully taciturn, the glass slide of his window tightly closed, leaving her alone with her thoughts. She felt strangely disorientated, half her mind still clinging to the dream, alienated from the roar of the rush hour around her. It was as if this were the unreal world and that other cold past the place where she still belonged. Her flat was cool and shadowy, scented by some pinks in a bowl by the bookcase. She threw open the tall balcony windows and stood for a moment looking out at the trees in the square. Another shower was on its way, the heavy cloud throwing racing shadows over the rooftops on the far side of the gardens. She turned towards the kitchen. Collecting a glass of apple juice from the carton in the fridge, she carried it along to the bathroom, set it carefully down on the edge of the bath and turned on the shower. Stepping out of her clothes, she stood beneath the tepid water, letting it cascade down onto her upturned face, running it through her aching fingers. She stood there a long time, not allowing herself to think, just feeling the clean stream of the water wash over her. Soon she would slip on her cool cotton bathrobe, sit down at her desk and write up her notes, just as she always did after an interview, whilst it was still absolutely fresh in her mind. Except that this time she had very few notes, and instead the small tape recorder which was waiting for her now on the chair just inside the front door. Slowly she towelled her hair dry, then, sipping from her glass, she wandered back into the living room. She ran her fingers across the buttons of the machine, but she did not switch it on. Instead she sat down and stared blankly at the carpet. In the top drawer of her desk was the first rough typescript of her article. She could remember clearly the introduction she had drafted: Would you like to discover that in a previous life you had been a queen or an emperor; that, just as you had always suspected, you are not quite of this mundane world; that in your past there are secrets, glamour and adventure, just waiting to be remembered? Of course you would. Hypnotists say that they can reveal this past to you by their regression techniques. But just how genuine are their claims? Joanna Clifford investigates … Jo got up restlessly. Joanna Clifford investigates, and ends up getting her fingers burned, she thought ruefully. On medieval stone. She examined her nails again. They still felt raw and torn, but nowhere could she see any sign of damage; even the varnish was unchipped. She had a vivid recollection suddenly of the small blue-painted office in Edinburgh. Her hands had been injured then too. She frowned, remembering with a shiver the streaks of blood on the rush matting. ‘Oh Christ!’ She fought back a sudden wave of nausea. Had Cohen hypnotised her after all? Had she seen that bloody massacre before, in his office? Was that what Sam had wanted to tell her? She rubbed her hands on the front of her bathrobe and looked at them hard. Then, taking a deep breath, she went over and picked up the tape recorder, setting it on the low coffee table. Kneeling on the carpet she pressed the ‘rewind’ button and listened to the whine of the spinning tape. She did not wait for the whole reel. Halfway through she stopped it. Somewhere in the flat there must be some cigarettes. Nick might have left some lying about – perhaps if she went to look. But she did not move. Outside she could hear the highpitched giggle of a child playing in the garden square, and in the distance the constant hum of the traffic in Gloucester Road. They were twentieth-century sounds. Whatever had happened this afternoon had no more relevance than a dream, or a TV movie watched on a wet Saturday afternoon with the curtains drawn against the rain. So why was she afraid to hear the tape? She pressed the ‘play’ button and closed her eyes as Carl Bennet’s voice filled the room, made thin and tinny by the small machine. ‘– and now, tell me about your dress. What colour is it?’ Then came her own voice, mumbling, a little hesitant. ‘My best surcoat, for the feast. It is scarlet – samite – trimmed with gold thread and, below, its gown of green and silver, and I shall wear my pelisson lined with squirrel fur if Nell can find it. My boxes are not all unpacked.’ Her voice had dropped until it was so quiet it could hardly be heard. ‘And now you are going down to the great hall. Are you not afraid your husband will be angry?’ Bennet asked. There was a moment’s silence, broken only by the hiss of the tape. ‘A little,’ she replied at last. ‘But he will do nothing. He will not want people to think his wife does not obey him and he will not dare touch me because of the child.’ ‘Are you going downstairs now? Describe it to me.’ Bennet sounded as if he was talking to a child of five, his voice patient and clearly enunciated. ‘The stairs are dark and cold. There ought to be a light. The wind must have blown it out. But I can hear them laughing now below in the hall.’ She was speaking in a strangely disjointed fashion. I sound drunk, Jo realised suddenly and smiled grimly as she listened. The voice went on, describing the scene, pausing now and then for what seemed interminable silences before resuming unprompted. Closing her eyes, Jo found she could see it all so clearly. A nerve began to leap in her throat. She did not have to hear what came next, to listen again to the screams and the agonising crash of metal. She drew up her knees and hugged them as her voice began to speak more quickly. ‘William is reading the letter now and the prince is listening to him. But he is angry. He is interrupting. They are going to quarrel. William is looking down at him and putting down the parchment. He is raising his dagger. He is going to … Oh no, no NO!’ Her voice rose into a shriek. Jo found she was shaking. She wanted to press her hands against her ears to cut out the sound of the anguished screaming on the tape, but she forced herself to go on listening as a second voice broke in. It was Sarah and she sounded frightened. ‘For God’s sake, Carl, bring her out of it! What are you waiting for?’ ‘Listen to me, Jo. Listen!’ Bennet tried to cut in, his patient quiet voice taut. ‘Lady Matilda, can you hear me?’ He was shouting now. ‘Listen to me. I am going to count to three. And you are going to wake up. Listen to me …’ But her own voice, or the voice of that other woman speaking through her, ran on and on, sweeping his aside, not hearing his attempts to interrupt. Jo was breathing heavily, a pulse drumming in her forehead. She could hear all three of them now. Sarah sobbing, ‘Carl, stop her, stop her,’ Bennet repeating her name over and over again – both names – and above them her own hysterical voice running on out of control, describing the bloodshed and terror she was watching. Then abruptly there was silence, save for the sound of panting, she was not sure whose. Jo heard a sharp rattle as something was knocked over, and Bennet’s voice very close now to the microphone. ‘Let me touch her face. Quickly! Perhaps with my fingers, like so. Matilda? Can you hear me? I want you to hear me. I am going to count to three and then you will wake up. One, two, three.’ There was a long silence, then Sarah cried, ‘You’ve lost her, Carl. For God’s sake, you’ve lost her.’ Bennet was talking softly, reassuringly again, but Jo could hear the undertones of fear in his voice. ‘Matilda, can you hear me? I want you to answer me. Matilda? You must listen. You are Jo Clifford and soon you will wake up back in my consulting room in London. Can you hear me, my dear? I want you to forget about Matilda.’ There was a long silence, then Sarah whispered, very near the microphone. ‘What do we do?’ Bennet sounded exhausted. ‘There is nothing we can do. Let her sleep. She will wake by herself in the end.’ Jo started with shock. She distinctly remembered hearing him say that. His voice had reached her, lying half awake in the shadowy bedchamber at Abergavenny, but she – or Matilda – had pulled back, rejecting his call, and she had fallen once more into unconsciousness. She shivered at the memory. The sharp clink of glass on glass came over the machine and she found herself once more giving a rueful smile. So he had to have a drink at that point, as, locked in silence where he could not follow her, she had woken in the past and begun her search of the deserted windswept castle. For several minutes more the tape ran quiet, then Sarah’s voice rang out excitedly, ‘Carl, I think she’s waking up. Her eyelids are flickering.’ ‘Jo? Jo?’ Bennet was back by the microphone in a second. Jo heard her own voice moaning softly, then at last came a husky, ‘There’s someone there. Who is it?’ ‘We’re reaching her now.’ Bennet’s murmur was full of relief. ‘Jo? Can you hear me? Matilda? My lady?’ There was a hiss on the tape and Jo strained forward to hear what followed. But there was nothing more. With a sharp click it switched itself off, the reel finished. She leaned back against the legs of the chair. She was trembling all over and her hands were slippery with sweat. She rubbed them on her bathrobe. Strange that she had expected to hear it all again – the sound effects, the screams, the grunts, the clash of swords. But of course to the onlooker, as to the microphone, it was all reported, like hearing someone else’s commentary on what they could see down a telescope. Only to her was it completely real. The others had been merely eavesdroppers on her dream. Slowly she put her head in her hands and was aware suddenly that there were tears on her cheeks. At his office in Berkeley Street Nick was sitting with his feet on his desk, staring into space, when Jim Greerson walked in. ‘Come on, Nick, old son. I’m packing it in for the day. Time for a jar?’ He sat down on the edge of Nick’s desk, a stout, red-faced balding young man, his face alive with sympathy. ‘Is it the fair sex again? You look a bit frayed!’ Nick laughed ruefully. ‘I’ve been trying to reach Jo on the phone. About this.’ He picked up a folded newspaper and threw it down on the desk in front of Jim. ‘It must have hurt her so much.’ Jim glanced down. ‘I saw it. Pretty bitchy, that new bird of yours. Poor Jo. I always liked her.’ Nick glanced at him sharply. Then he stood up. ‘I think I’ll look in on her on the way back. Just to make sure she’s OK. I’ll have that drink tomorrow.’ ‘I thought she told you to get out of her life, Nick.’ Nick grinned, picking up his jacket. ‘She did. Repeatedly.’ He swung out of the office and ran down the stairs to the street. The skies had cleared after the storm, but the gutters still ran with rain as he sprinted towards the car park. Jo’s door was on the latch. He pushed it open with a frown. It was unlike her to be careless. ‘Jo? Where are you?’ he called. He walked through to the living room and glanced in. She was sitting on the floor, her face white and strained, her hair still damp from the shower. He saw at once that she had been crying. She looked at him blankly. ‘What is it? Are you all right?’ He flung down the jacket he had been carrying slung over his shoulder and was beside her in two strides. Crouching, he put his arms around her. ‘You look terrible, love. Nothing is worth getting that worked up about. Ignore the damned article. It doesn’t matter. No one cares a rap what it said.’ He took her hand in his. ‘You’re like ice! For God’s sake, Jo. What have you been doing?’ She looked up at him at last, pushing him away from her. ‘Pour me a large drink, Nick, will you?’ He gave her a long, searching look. Then he stood up. He found the Scotch and two glasses in the kitchen. ‘It’s not like you to fold, Jo,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘You’re a fighter, remember?’ He brought the drinks through and handed her one. ‘It’s Tim’s fault. He was supposed to warn you last night what might happen.’ She took a deep gulp from her glass and put it on the table. ‘What are you talking about?’ Her voice was slightly hoarse. ‘The paragraph in the Mail. What did you think I was talking about?’ She shook her head wearily. ‘I haven’t seen any papers today. I was here all morning, and then this afternoon I went … out.’ She fumbled with the glass again, lifting it with a shaking hand, concentrating with an effort. ‘They printed it, did they? The great slanging match between your past and present loves. That must have done a bit for your ego.’ With a faint smile she put out her hand. ‘Show me what it said.’ ‘I didn’t bring it.’ He sat down on the edge of the coffee table. ‘If you are not upset about that, Jo, then what’s happened?’ ‘I went to see a hypnotherapist.’ ‘You what?’ Nick stood up abruptly. ‘The man you saw with Tim Heacham, you mean? You saw him again?’ She shook her head slowly. ‘No. Someone else. This afternoon.’ He walked across to the French windows and stared out over the square. ‘What happened?’ She did not answer for a moment and he swung back to face her. ‘I warned you, Jo. I told you not to get involved. Why in God’s name did you do it? Why couldn’t you listen? God knows, you promised.’ ‘I promised you nothing, Nick.’ Wearily she pulled herself to her feet. ‘You must have known I’d go. How could I write that article unless I’d been to a session myself?’ She threw herself onto the sofa and put her bare feet up onto the coffee table in front of her. ‘You did go to a session and you watched someone else being regressed. Tim told me.’ ‘Well, it wasn’t enough. Have you got a cigarette, Nick?’ ‘Oh great! Now you’re smoking again as well!’ Nick’s voice was icily controlled. ‘You’re a fool, Jo. I told you it was madness to mess about with this. Damn it, isn’t that the very thing you want to prove in your article?’ ‘A cigarette, Nick. Please.’ He picked up his coat and rummaged through the pockets. ‘Here.’ He threw a packet of Consulate into her lap. ‘I’ve always credited you with a lot of sense, Jo, and I warned you. Hypnotism is not something to undergo lightly. It’s dangerous. There is no knowing what might happen.’ ‘We’ve been through this before, Nick,’ she retorted furiously. ‘I’ve got a job to do and I do it. Without interference from you or anyone else.’ She was fumbling with the cellophane on the pack. ‘And I’m just here to pick up the pieces, I suppose?’ Nick said, his voice rising. ‘And don’t tell me you’re not in pieces. I’ve never seen you upset like this. And scared. What have you done to your hand?’ He was watching her efforts with the cigarettes. ‘Nothing.’ Clenching her teeth she ripped the packet open and shook one out. ‘Nothing?’ he repeated. He gave her another close look. Then he relented. ‘Go on, you’d better tell me what happened.’ He found a matchbox and struck one for her, steadying her hand between his own. ‘You let him hypnotise you, I presume?’ She nodded, drawing on the cigarette, watching in silence as the cellophane she had thrown down onto the table slowly unfolded itself. The sound of it set her teeth on edge. ‘You know, it isn’t a fraud,’ she said at last. ‘I can’t explain it, but whatever it was, it came from me, not from him.’ She balanced the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray and picked up her glass. ‘It was so real. So frightening. Like a nightmare, but I wasn’t asleep.’ Nick frowned. Then he glanced at his watch. ‘Jo, I’m going to phone Judy – I’ll tell her I can’t make it this evening.’ He paused waiting for her to argue, but she said nothing. She lay back limply, sipping her drink as he dialled, watching him, her eyes vague, as, one-handed, he slipped his tie over his head, and unbuttoned his shirt. The whisky was beginning to warm her. For the first time in what seemed like hours she had stopped shaking. Nick was brief to the point of curtness on the phone then he put the receiver down and came back to sit beside her. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s hear it all from the beginning.’ Leaning forward he stubbed out her abandoned cigarette. She did not protest. ‘I take it you’ve got it all on tape?’ He nodded towards the machine. ‘All but the last few minutes.’ ‘Do you want me to hear it?’ She nodded. ‘The other side first. You’ll have to wind it back.’ She watched as he removed the cassette and turned it over, then she stood up. ‘I’ll go and get some clothes on while you listen.’ Nick glanced at her. ‘Don’t you want to hear it again?’ ‘I did. Just before you came home,’ she said quietly. ‘We’ll talk when you’ve heard it.’ She carried her glass through to the bedroom and closed the door. Then she walked across to the mirror and stood staring into it. Her eyes were strained, but clear. There was nothing in her face to show what had happened. She looked exactly the same as usual. She realised suddenly that she was listening intently, afraid that the sound of voices would reach her from the front of the flat, but the door was thick and Nick must have turned down the volume. The room was completely silent. She went to open the blind which she had drawn earlier that day against the sun, and looked down into the cobbled mews which lay behind the house. On a flat roof nearby someone had put out rows of window-boxes. Petunias, brilliant jewelled colours, their faces wet with raindrops, blazed against the grey London stone. Overhead, a jet flew soundlessly in towards Heathrow, the wind currents carrying the roar of its engine away. It all looked so familiar and comforting, so why did she find the silence unnerving? Was it that at the back of her mind she kept remembering the white windswept silence of the Welsh hills? She closed her eyes and at once she felt it, pressing in around her, the vast desolate spaces beneath their blanket of snow and again she felt the ache of the cold in her feet. Shivering, she lay down on the bed and pulled the quilt over her. Then she waited. It was a long time before Nick appeared. She lay watching him quietly as he walked across the carpet and sat on the bed beside her. He looked grim. ‘How much of that do you remember?’ he asked at last. ‘All of it.’ ‘And you weren’t fooling?’ She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. ‘Did I sound as if I were fooling? Did he?’ ‘All right, I’m sorry. I had to be sure. Do you want to talk about it now?’ ‘I don’t know.’ She hugged her bathrobe around her. ‘Nick, this is crazy. I’m a journalist. I’m on a job. A routine, ordinary sort of job. I’m going about my research in the way I always do, methodically, and I am not allowing myself to become involved in any personal way. Part of me can see the whole thing objectively. But another part.’ She hesitated. ‘I was sure that it was all some kind of a trick. But it was so real, so very real. I was a child again, Nick. Arrogant, uncertain, overwhelmed and so proud of the fact that I was pregnant, because it made me a woman in my own right and the equal of William’s mother! And I was going to be the mother of that bore’s son!’ She put her face in her hands. ‘That is what women have felt for thousands of years, Nick. Proud to be the vehicle for men’s kids. And I felt it! Me!’ She gave an unhappy laugh. Nick raised an eyebrow. ‘Some women are still proud of that particular role, Jo. They’re not all rabid feminists, thank God!’ His voice was unusually gentle. ‘You remember all her feelings then? Even things you don’t mention out loud?’ Jo frowned. ‘I don’t know. I think so … I’m not sure. I remember that, though. Hugging myself in triumph because I carried his child – and because I had thought of a way to keep him from molesting me. He must have been a bastard in bed.’ Her voice shook. ‘The poor bloody cow!’ She picked up a pot of face cream from the table and turned it over and over in her hands without seeing it. ‘She probably had a girl in the end, not the precious son she kept on about, or died in childbirth or something. Oh God, Nick … It was me. I could feel it all, hear it, see it, smell it. Even taste the food that boy brought me. The wine was thin and sour – like nothing I’ve ever drunk, and the bread was coarse and gritty, with some strong flavour. It didn’t seem odd at the time, but I can’t place it at all, and I could swear I’ve still got bits of it stuck between my teeth.’ Nick smiled, but she went on. ‘It was all so vivid. Almost too real. Like being on some kind of a “trip”.’ ‘That follows,’ Nick said slowly. ‘You obviously have had some kind of vivid hallucination. But that is all it was, Jo. You must believe that. The question is, where did it come from? Where have all the stories come from that people have experienced under this kind of hypnosis? I suppose that is the basis of your article.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you think this massacre really did happen?’ She shrugged. ‘I gave a very clear date, didn’t I? Twenty years of King Henry. There are eight of them to choose from!’ She smiled. ‘And Abergavenny of course. I’ve never been there, but I know it’s somewhere in Wales.’ ‘South Wales,’ he put in. ‘I went there once, as a child, but I don’t remember there being a castle.’ ‘Oh Nick! It’s all quite mad! And it was nothing like the experience Mrs Potter had when I watched her being hypnotised by Bill Walton. She was – so vague – so blurred compared with me.’ She pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘What did it feel like, being hypnotised?’ he asked curiously. She sighed. ‘That’s the stupid thing. I’m not sure. I don’t think I knew it was happening. I didn’t seem to go to sleep or anything. Except real sleep when I slept in the castle. Only that wasn’t real sleep because the time scale was different. I lived through two days, Nick, in less than two hours.’ She lay back against the pillows again, looking at him. ‘This is what happened before, isn’t it? When Sam was there. They did hypnotise me and they lost control of me that time too!’ Nick nodded. ‘Sam said you were told not to remember what happened, it would upset you too much. And he said I mustn’t talk about it to you, Jo, that’s why I couldn’t explain –’ ‘I lived through those same scenes then,’ she went on, not hearing him. ‘I saw the massacre then too.’ Nick looked away. ‘I don’t know, Jo. You must speak to Sam –’ ‘It must have been the massacre, because I hurt my hands tearing at the stone archway. But I really bled in Edinburgh. My fingers were bruised and bleeding, not just painful!’ Her voice was shaking. ‘Oh, God, it was all so real. Nick, I’m frightened.’ She stared at her hands, holding them out before her. Nick took hold of them gently, standing up. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We need another drink. And something to eat. Is there any food in the flat?’ She dragged her thoughts back to the present with difficulty. ‘In the freezer. I forgot to buy anything today.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘I was going to go shopping on my way back from Devonshire Place but everything went out of my head.’ Nick grinned. ‘I’m not surprised. Being a baron’s lady with a castle full of serfs, you can hardly be expected to lower yourself to trundle round Waitrose with a shopping trolley. You must try not to let it upset you too much, Jo. Try and see the amusing side. Think of it as a personalised horror film. You got front row stalls and no ice-cream in the interval. But, apart from that, thank God there’s no harm done this time.’ ‘That doesn’t sound very scientific.’ She forced herself to smile. Standing up slowly she pulled the belt of her robe more tightly round her. Then she headed towards the kitchen and pulled open the freezer door. ‘There’s pizza in here or steak.’ The normality of her action calmed her. Her voice was steady again. ‘Pizza’s fine. What intrigues me is where you dredged all this information up from. The details all sounded so authentic.’ ‘Dr Bennet and Bill Walton both said that they usually are. That’s one of their strongest arguments in favour of reincarnation of course.’ She lit the grill and put two pizzas under it. ‘Where it is possible to substantiate things, apparently they are usually uncannily accurate. I’m going to check as much as I can. Is there any whisky left?’ ‘I’ll get it. Have you any books on costume? What is a – what was it, a pelisson, for instance?’ She shrugged. ‘A pelisse is a kind of cloak I think.’ She took some tomatoes out of the fridge and began to slice them as Nick reappeared with the whisky bottle and a dictionary. Moments later he looked up. ‘Pelisse is here. You’re right. But no pelisson. Perhaps I misheard. Are you going up to the library tomorrow?’ She nodded. ‘I’m going to check everything, Nick. Absolutely everything.’ He leant against the worktop watching her, relieved that she seemed calmer and more like herself. Her face was beginning to look less pinched. ‘I wonder if Matilda really existed?’ he said at last. ‘And you read about her somewhere. Either that or she’s a fictional heroine or was in a TV film or a comic or a strip cartoon when you were a child, or perhaps a film you saw when you were about two years old and have completely forgotten with your conscious mind.’ ‘And all my wealth of detail is pure Cecil B. De Mille?’ She laughed, ruefully. ‘All your theories have been put forward before. Mainly by sceptics like me!’ ‘Well, if it isn’t any of those what is it?’ He stared down at the glass in his hands. ‘Have you considered the fact that Bennet could be right, Jo? That reincarnation could exist?’ She shook her head thoughtfully. ‘No, I can’t believe that. There must be a perfectly good explanation which does not strain one’s credulity that much, and I intend to try and find it. Perhaps Matilda is my alter ego. The woman I would have liked to have been. Have you thought of that?’ He set down his glass and put his arms around her waist. ‘I hope not. All those swords and guts and things. No, you told me the premises you’d be working on in your article, Jo, and that tape hasn’t made me change my mind about a thing you said. It’s all fantasy, you’re right. Whose, I’m not sure. But that is all it is. It’s none the less dangerous for that, but there is nothing supernatural about what happened to you.’ She released herself with a frown and reached to lower the gas. ‘All the same, I’m not starting to write the article, Nick. Not without asking a great many more questions. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone.’ She reached down two plates and put them to warm. ‘Here, let me make a salad to go with these. Neither Bennet nor Walton was a fake, Nick. I was wrong to think it. They didn’t ask any leading questions. Bennet didn’t influence my “dream” in any way. If he had I’d have heard on the tape. Look, if there is any period of history I would say that I should like to identify with at all it would be the Regency. If he’d been a fraud he would have found that out in two minutes.’ She poured vinegar and oil into a jar and reached for the pepper mill. ‘I dare say I could have re-enacted a dozen Georgette Heyer novels. I read everything of hers I could lay my hands on when I was a teenager. But he didn’t ask. He didn’t guide me at all. Here, give this a shake. Instead I find myself in medieval Wales. With people talking Welsh all round me, for God’s sake!’ Nick shook up the dressing and poured it over the salad. ‘If it was Welsh,’ he said quietly, ‘God knows what it was you said. If you had jumped up and down shouting Cymru am byth I might have been able to substantiate it!’ ‘Where did you learn that?’ she laughed. ‘Rugger. I don’t mess about when I go to Twickenham you know, it’s very educational.’ He touched her cheek lightly. ‘Good to see you laughing. It’s not like our Jo to get upset.’ She pushed a plate at him. ‘As Dr Bennet pointed out, it’s not every day that “our Jo” witnesses a full-dress massacre, even in a nightmare,’ she retorted. They ate in the living room. ‘Bach to eat by,’ said Nick, putting his plate down and riffling through the stack of records. ‘To restore the equilibrium.’ She did not argue. It meant they didn’t have to talk; it meant she needn’t even think. She let the music sweep over her, leaving her food almost untouched as she lay back on the sofa, her feet up, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again the sky was dark outside the French windows onto the balcony. The music had finished and the room was silent. Nick was sitting watching her in the light of the single desk lamp. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ she asked indignantly. ‘What time is it?’ ‘Eleven. Time you were in bed. You look exhausted.’ ‘Don’t dictate, Nick. It’s time you went, for that matter,’ she said sharply. ‘Wouldn’t you like me to stay?’ She pushed herself up on her elbow. ‘No. You and I are finished, remember? You have to go back to your cosy love nest with the talented Miss Curzon. What was it you said on the phone, “working late” – she won’t believe it, you know, if you stay away all night!’ ‘I don’t much care what she believes at the moment, Jo. I am more concerned about you,’ Nick said. He stood up and turned on the main light. ‘I don’t think you should be alone tonight.’ ‘In case I have nightmares?’ ‘Yes, in case you have nightmares. This has shaken you up more than you realise, and I think someone should be here. I’ll sleep here on the sofa if the idea of me in your bed offends you, but I’m going to stay!’ She stood up furiously. ‘Like hell you are!’ Then abruptly her shoulders slumped. ‘Oh God, Nick, you’re right. I do want you to stay. I want you to hold me.’ He put his arms round her gently and caressed her hair. ‘The trouble with you, Jo, is that when you’re nice, you’re very, very nice, but –’ ‘I know, I know. And when I’m horrid you hate and detest me. And I’m usually horrid.’ She forced herself to smile. ‘Well, tonight I’m being nice. But it is only for one night, Nick. Everything will be back to normal tomorrow.’ In bed they lay for a long time in silence. Then Nick raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her in the faint light which filtered through the blind from the street lamp in the mews. ‘Jo,’ he said softly. ‘You haven’t told me yet about Richard.’ She stiffened. ‘Richard?’ ‘Your lover in that castle. He was your lover, wasn’t he?’ Restlessly she moved her head sideways so he could not see her face. ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t me, Nick! He left the castle. He wasn’t there at the end. I don’t know what happened next. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.’ Agitated, she tried to push him away, but he caught her wrist, forcing it back against the pillow so that she had to face him. ‘You’re planning to see Bennet again, aren’t you?’ She shook her head violently. ‘No, of course I’m not.’ ‘Are you sure?’ Something in his voice made her stare up into his face, trying to see the expression in his eyes. ‘For God’s sake don’t do it. It’s dangerous. Far more dangerous than you or Bennet realise. Your life could be in danger, Jo.’ His voice was harsh. She smiled. ‘Now that is melodramatic. Are you suggesting I could be locked in the past forever?’ She reached up and tugged his hair playfully. ‘You idiot, it doesn’t work that way. People always wake up in the end.’ ‘Do they?’ He lay back on the pillow. ‘Just make sure you’ve got your facts right, Jo. I know it’s your proud boast that you always do, but just this once you could be wrong.’ 10 (#ulink_85383388-6384-5434-9a92-5905fbc72f79) Early next morning Sam paid off the taxi and stood for a moment on the pavement staring round him, Judy’s address scribbled on a scrap of paper in his hand. He looked up at the house then, slinging his case over his shoulder, he ran easily up the long flights of steps until he reached the shadowy landing at the top of the stairs. It was some time before the door opened to his ring. Judy stared at the rangy figure in the rumpled cord jacket and her eyes hardened. ‘What do you want?’ ‘Hello there.’ He grinned at her easily. ‘I’m Sam Franklyn.’ ‘I guessed that. So – what do you want?’ Her tone was icy. With paint-stained fingers she pushed back the scarf which covered her hair. ‘May I come in?’ ‘Please yourself.’ She turned away and walked back into the studio. Picking up a rag, she began to scrub at her fingertips with some turps. ‘What have you come here for?’ she asked after a minute. She did not bother to turn round. Sam dropped his case in the corner and closed the door. ‘I rather hoped Nick would be here,’ he said mildly, ‘but I can see I’ve goofed. Where is he, do you know?’ ‘I don’t.’ She flung down the rag. ‘But I can guess. He stood me up last night.’ She folded her arms and turned to face him. He could see now in the harsh revealing light of the studio windows that her eyes were red and puffy. There was a streak of viridian across her forehead. ‘Any chance of some coffee while you tell me about it?’ Sam said gently. ‘I’ve come straight from Heathrow and I’m parched.’ ‘Help yourself. But don’t expect me to make polite conversation, least of all about Nick. I’m busy.’ She turned her back on him again. Sam frowned. He watched her for a moment as she picked up a brush and attacked the canvas in front of her. Every muscle in her body was tense, the angle of her shoulders set and defensive beneath the faded green denim of her smock. ‘Do you know,’ she said suddenly, ‘I hate her. I have never actually hated anyone like that before. Not so much that I would like to see them dead. Do you think I’m paranoid or something?’ Her tone was almost conversational as with cool deliberation she loaded her brush with cadmium red and blotted a small figure out of the painting. Sam watched her thoughtfully. ‘It sounds pretty normal to me,’ he said evenly. ‘Do I gather we are talking about Jo?’ ‘Why don’t you make me some coffee too, while you’re at it,’ she returned sharply, ‘and shut up about Jo.’ Once again she pushed back the scarf which covered her hair. Sam gave a small grimace. He found his way across to the kitchen by instinct and pushed open the door, then he stopped and surveyed the scene. There was broken glass all over the floor. Two saucepans of food had been left upside down in the sink. Staring down at the mess, he sniffed cautiously. One had contained asparagus soup, the other some kind of goulash. Sam frowned. In the bucket below the sink were two china plates with the salad that had been on them. She had hurled out what appeared to him to have been a cordon bleu meal, complete with crockery. Glancing over his shoulder, he watched for a moment in silence as she worked, then he began to hunt for some coffee and set the kettle on the gas. ‘What do you call that picture?’ he asked several minutes later when he handed her a mug. She took it without looking at him. ‘What you mean is, what the hell is it?’ she said slowly. She stepped closer to the painting, eyes narrowed, and added a small touch of red to the swirl of colours. ‘I had better not tell you. You’d have me taken away in a strait-jacket.’ She gave a taut smile. ‘You’re the psychiatrist. Why don’t you tell me what it means?’ She rubbed at the canvas with her little finger and stared thoughtfully at the smear of red it left on her skin. Then she swung round to face him again. ‘On second thoughts, why don’t you drink your coffee and get out of here?’ Sam grinned. ‘I’m on my way.’ ‘Good.’ She paused. ‘I told her, you know. In front of the whole bloody world.’ ‘Told her what?’ Sam was still studying the canvas. ‘What Nick said to you on the phone. That she would crack open if she were hypnotised again. That she is more or less out of her mind.’ She threw down the brush and crossed to the untidy desk by the window. Pulling open a drawer she extracted a newspaper clipping. ‘This was in yesterday’s Mail.’ Sam took it. He read the paragraph, his face impassive, then he handed it back. ‘You certainly made a good job of that bit of scandal.’ Judy smiled. She turned back to her canvas. ‘So, hadn’t you better rush over to Cornwall Gardens and see if Nick can spare you one of her hands to hold?’ ‘That’s what I’ve come for.’ Sam drank the last of his coffee, then he put down his empty mug. ‘I take it,’ he added carefully, ‘that you think that Nick spent last night with her.’ ‘Unless he got run over and is in the mortuary.’ ‘And you were expecting him here to dinner.’ ‘As you plainly saw.’ ‘I am sorry.’ Sam’s face was carefully controlled. ‘Nick’s a fool. You deserve better.’ She went back to the painting and stood staring at it. ‘That’s right. And I mean to get it. Make no mistake about it, Dr Franklyn, I mean to see that Nick leaves her for good. So if it’s your mission in life to comfort Jo Clifford and see that she keeps calm and safe and sane, I suggest you move in with her, and send your brother to me, otherwise I’ll see to it that she regrets the day she was born.’ Sam turned and picked up his case. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said. He pulled open the door. ‘But if you’ll take a piece of advice from me, I suggest you use a little more subtlety with Nick. If you behave like the proverbial fishwife he’ll go off you for good. I know my brother. He likes his ladies sophisticated and in control. If he sees the mess in your kitchen he’ll leave, and I wouldn’t altogether blame him.’ He didn’t wait to hear the string of expletives which echoed after him as he began to run down the stairs. Jo was sitting on the cold concrete steps outside the library watching a pigeon waddling along in the gutter. Its neck shimmered with iridescent purples and greens as it moved unconcerned between the wheels of the stationary cars intent on gathering specks of food from the tarmac. The roar of traffic in the High Street a few yards away distracted it not at all. Nor did the scream of an accelerating motorbike a few feet from it. Behind her the library doors were unlocked at last. Jo did not move. The events of the previous afternoon, and the restless tormented night which had followed, had receded a little, dreamlike, now that it was day. Standing in the kitchen drinking a hasty cup of tea before Nick woke up, Jo had stared out of the window and scowled. Somehow Carl Bennet had managed to influence her. There was no other explanation. She would go to the library, look up the few facts she had, draw a complete blank there, and return to begin work on an article which would ridicule out of existence the whole idea of hypnotic regression. Now standing up slowly, she brushed the dust off her skirt, watching as the pigeon, startled into sleek slimness by her sudden movements, took off and swept with graceful speed up and over the rooftops towards the park. As she ran up the echoing staircase to the library she became aware suddenly that she could hear her own heartbeats drumming in her ears. The sound was disconcerting and she stopped outside the glass swing doors to try to steady herself. Her head ached violently and her eyes were heavy with lack of sleep. Taking a deep breath, she pushed through the doors and turned towards the reference section, skirting the tables where already students and newspaper readers were establishing their base camps for the day. As she pulled the notebook from her bag she realised that her hands had begun to shake. Begin with The Dictionary of National Biography. It was unlikely she would find Matilda there, but it was a place to start. She approached the shelf, her hand outstretched. Her fingers were trembling. ‘Braos?’ she murmured to herself. ‘Breos? I wonder how they spelled it?’ There was a rustle of paper beside her as a large bespectacled priest turned to the racing page. He looked up and caught her eye. His wink was comforting. She walked slowly along the shelf, squinting at the gold-lettered spines of the books, then she heaved out a volume and carried it to a table, perching uncomfortably on the very edge of the chair as she began to leaf through the pages. Don’t let it have been real … Please don’t let it have been real … I can’t cope with that … She shook her head angrily. The thick paper crackled a little, the small print blurring. A slightly musty smell floated from between the covers as the riffling pages stirred the hot air of the room. … Bowen … Bradford … Branston … Braose, Philip de (fl. 1172), two inches of print, then Braose, William de (d. 1211). There were more than two pages. She sat still for a moment fighting her stomach. She could taste the bile in the back of her throat. Her forehead was damp and ice-cold and her hands were burning hot. It was a while before she became conscious that the priest was watching her closely and she realised suddenly that she had been staring at him hard, oblivious of everything but the need not to be sick. Somehow she forced herself to smile at him and she looked away. All it meant was that she must have read about them somewhere; she had a good memory, an eye for detail. She was a reporter after all. And that was what she was here for now, her job made easier because the characters she was searching for were obviously at least moderately well known. She took a deep breath and stared down at the page. Was Matilda there, in the article, which she could see at a glance was full of place names and dates? Had she lived long enough to make her mark on history and have her name recorded with her cruel overbearing husband? Or had she flitted in and out of life like a shadow, leaving no trace at all, if she had ever existed? The priest was still watching her, his kind face creased with concern. Jo knew that any minute he was going to stand up and come over to her. She looked away again hastily. She had to look up Richard de Clare, too, and Abergavenny and make notes on them all. Then, perhaps, she would go and have a cup of coffee and accept the consolations of the Church if they were offered. It was several minutes before the intercom on the doorstep below Jo’s flat crackled into life. Sam bent towards the display board. ‘Nick? It’s Sam. Let me come up.’ Nick was waiting on the landing as Sam walked slowly up the carpeted stairs. ‘You’re too late,’ he said brusquely. ‘She went to a hypnotist yesterday and let him regress her.’ Sam followed him into the brightness of the flat and stared round. ‘What happened? Where is she?’ He faced his brother coldly, taking in the dark rings beneath Nick’s eyes, and the unshaven stubble. ‘She had gone before I woke up.’ Nick ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I think she was OK. She was last night. Just shocked and rather frightened. She had a long session which seemed to get out of control. The hypnotist couldn’t bring her back to consciousness. She seemed to get so involved in what was happening, it was so real to her.’ ‘You were with her?’ Sam turned on him sharply. ‘Of course not! Do you think I’d have let her go! No, she brought back a tape of what happened and I heard it last night.’ Nick shook his head wearily. ‘She was in a terrible state – but not in danger as far as I could tell. She never stopped breathing or anything. I stayed the night with her and she spent most of it tossing and turning and pacing up and down the floor. She must have got up at dawn and gone out. She did say she’d go to the library first thing. Maybe she went there to see if she could find any of these people in a history book.’ Sam took off his jacket and threw it on the back of the sofa. Then he sat down and drew the tape recorder towards him. ‘Right, Nick. May I suggest you return to your titian-haired artist friend and try to apologise for last night’s ruined meal? Leave Jo to me.’ ‘Like hell I will!’ Nick glared at him. ‘I mean it. Go back to Miss Curzon, Nick. She is your new love, is she not? I went there straight from the airport under the impression that you would be there. She is not pleased with you, little brother. If you value your relationship with her I should go and make amends as fast as you can. Meanwhile I shall listen to the tape and talk to Jo when she returns. I shan’t want you here.’ Nick took a deep breath. ‘Jo asked me to stay.’ ‘And I am asking you to go.’ Sam turned his back on Nick, his shoulders hunched as he searched for the ‘play’ button on the machine. ‘She is my patient, Nick.’ Nick hesitated. ‘You’ll ring me after you’ve spoken to her?’ ‘I’ll ring you. Better still, do you still have your flat in Mayfair?’ ‘You know I do.’ ‘Give me the key then. I’ll stay there for a night or two. And I’ll see you there some time no doubt.’ He switched on the tape and sat back on the sofa thoughtfully as Jo’s voice filled the room. It was four hours before Jo came home. She stopped dead in the doorway, her keys still in her hand, staring at Sam. He had long ago finished playing the tape and was lying on the sofa, his eyes closed, listening to the soft strains of the ‘Concierto de Aranjuez’. ‘How did you get in?’ He did not immediately open his eyes. Jo sighed. She dropped her shoulder bag on the floor and banged the door behind her. ‘Where’s Nick?’ Sam’s eyes narrowed. ‘He felt he should return to make his peace with Judy. I’m sorry.’ ‘I see.’ Jo’s voice dropped. ‘And he’s left you here to pick up the pieces. I suppose I should be grateful he stayed at all last night. I hope he told you I don’t need you, Sam. Nothing awful happened. I’m perfectly all right. I did not become incurably insane, nor did I kill anyone as far as I know.’ She unbuttoned her jacket wearily. ‘When did he leave?’ ‘Soon after I arrived. He was worried about you Jo.’ Sam was watching her closely. ‘Nick’s a nice bloke. Even if it is all over between you both he wouldn’t have left you alone, you know that.’ Jo dropped her jacket on a chair and reached for the Scotch bottle on the table by the phone. ‘That’s right. Good old St Nicholas who never leaves a friend in the lurch. Want one?’ Sam shook his head. He watched as she poured; she did not dilute it. ‘Have you heard it?’ Her eyes had gone past him to the cassette lying on the coffee table. ‘Twice.’ Her face was pale and drawn he noted, her hair tied back into an uncompromising pony-tail which showed new sharp angles to her cheekbones and shadows beneath her eyes. ‘It all happened, Sam.’ She raised the glass to her lips. ‘I found it so easily. William de Braose, his wife – most books seem to call her Maude – I didn’t even know it was the same name as Matilda – their children, the massacre of Abergavenny. It was all there for anyone to read. Not obscure at all.’ She swallowed a mouthful of whisky. ‘I must have read about it somewhere before, but I swear to God I don’t remember it. I’ve never studied Welsh history, but all that detail in my mind! It doesn’t seem possible. Christ, Sam! Where did it all come from?’ Sam had not taken his eyes from her face. ‘Where do you think it came from?’ She shrugged, flinging herself down on the sofa beside him, turning the glass round and round in her fingers. Sam eyed the length of lightly tanned thigh exposed where her skirt caught on the edge of the cushions. He moved away from her slightly. ‘Where would you like it to have come from?’ Jo frowned. ‘That’s a loaded question. Yesterday morning I wouldn’t have hesitated to answer it. But now. Matilda was so real to me, Sam. She was me.’ She turned to face him. ‘Was it the same in Edinburgh? Did the same thing happen then too?’ He nodded slowly. ‘You certainly reacted dramatically under regression. A little too dramatically. That was why we decided it would be better if you remembered nothing of what happened afterwards.’ Jo jumped to her feet. ‘You admit it! So you told me to forget it, as if it had never happened. You took it upon yourselves to manipulate my mind! You thought it would be bad for me to know about it, so bang! You wiped it clean like a computer program!’ Her eyes were blazing. Sam smiled placatingly. ‘Cool it, Jo. It was for your own good. No one was manipulating you. Nothing sinister happened. It was all taped, just as it was for you yesterday. It’s all on the record.’ ‘But you deliberately destroyed my memory of what happened!’ She took a deep breath, trying to control her anger. ‘Was I the same person? Matilda de Braose?’ ‘As far as I remember you didn’t tell us what your name was,’ Sam said quietly. ‘Well, did I talk about the same events? The massacre?’ Sam shook his head. ‘You were much more vague with us.’ He stood up abruptly and walked over to the windows, looking up through the net curtains towards the sky. ‘You must not go back to this man, Jo. You do understand that, don’t you? ‘Why not?’ Her voice was defiant. ‘Nothing terrible happened. And he at least is honest with me. He has professional standards.’ She threw herself down on the sofa again, resting her head against the cushions. ‘Oh sure, it was a bit nerve-wracking for him, as it obviously was for you, but I was all right, wasn’t I? I didn’t seem hysterical, my personality didn’t disintegrate. Nothing happened to me.’ She looked down at her hands suddenly then abruptly she put them behind her. ‘What’s wrong?’ Sam had seen her out of the corner of his eye. He went over to her and, kneeling, he took both her hands in his. He studied the palms intently. Then he turned them over and looked at her nails. She tried to pull away. ‘Sam –’ ‘Your hands aren’t hurt?’ ‘No, of course they’re not hurt. Why should they be?’ He let them go reluctantly, his eyes once more on her face. ‘They were injured last time, in Edinburgh,’ he said gently. ‘They started to bleed.’ She stared at him. ‘There was blood on the floor, wasn’t there?’ she whispered after a moment. ‘I remembered that. And when I got home I found I was covered in bruises.’ She stood up, pushing past him. ‘I thought I’d had an accident. But somehow I never bothered to ask you about it, did I?’ She bit her lip, staring at him. ‘That was your post-hypnotic suggestion too, I suppose. “You will not remember how you were injured, nor will you question why.” Is that what you said to me? God it makes me so angry! All this has happened to me before and I did not know about it. You snatched an hour or so of my life, Sam, and I want it back.’ She looked down into her glass, her knuckles white as she kneaded it between her fingers. ‘It’s the thought that these memories, this other life has been lying hidden in me, festering all these years, that frightens me … Wherever they come from, whatever they are, they must mean something special to me, mustn’t they?’ She paused then she looked away from him. ‘Do you know how she died?’ Sam’s jaw tightened. ‘Who?’ ‘Matilda, of course. They think she was starved to death.’ Jo drank the rest of her whisky quickly and put down the glass. She was suddenly shuddering violently. Sam stood up. He caught her arm. ‘Jo –’ ‘No, Sam, it’s all right. I know what you’re going to say. I’m not about to get obsessive about her. It’s me, remember. Level-headed Jo Clifford. I’m over the shock of it all now, anyway. Reading about it has put it in perspective. All those dry dates and facts. Ugh! Funny how history never seemed to be to do with real people, not to me anyway. At least not until now …’ Her voice tailed away. ‘When you and Professor Cohen finished your experiments, Sam, did you reach any conclusions?’ ‘We were able to float various hypotheses, shall we say,’ Sam smiled enigmatically. ‘And they were?’ ‘Roughly? That different subjects reacted in different ways. We tabulated almost as many theories as there were regression sessions. You must read his book. Some people faked, there was no question about that. Some openly re-enacted scenes from books and films. Some produced what they thought we hoped we would hear. And some were beyond explanation.’ ‘And which was Joanna Clifford?’ ‘I think one of the latter.’ He gave a wry smile. Jo eyed him thoughtfully. ‘I had a feeling you were going to say that. Tell me, Sam, do you believe in reincarnation?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then what do you think happens?’ ‘I have one or two ill-formed and unscientific theories about, shall we say, radio waves trapped in the ether. Some people, when in a receptive state, tune into the right wavelengths and get a bit of playback.’ ‘You mean I was actually seeing what happened in 1174?’ ‘An echo of it – a reverberation, shall we say? Don’t quote me, Jo, for God’s sake. I’d be drummed out of every professional body there is. But it does go some way to explain why more than one person gets the same playback on occasions. It explains ghosts as well, of course. A good all-round theory.’ He laughed. ‘Have you seen a ghost?’ The strain, he noted with satisfaction, had lessened in her face; her neck muscles were no longer so prominent. ‘Never! I’m not the receptive type, thank God! You haven’t any coffee I suppose, Jo?’ He changed the subject thankfully. ‘I need a regular fix every two hours or I get withdrawal symptoms and it’s been twice that at least.’ ‘Why not? Sam –’ She paused in the doorway, running her fingernail up and down the cream-painted woodwork. ‘Can you hypnotise people?’ ‘I can. Yes.’ ‘And regress them?’ ‘I haven’t gone on with Cohen’s experiments,’ he replied carefully. ‘There are others chasing that particular hare now. My field is rather different.’ Jo grinned. ‘You didn’t answer my question, Dr Franklyn. Can you regress people?’ ‘I have done, yes.’ ‘And would you do it to me?’ ‘Under no circumstances. Jo –’ He paused, groping for the right words. ‘Listen, love. You must not contemplate pursuing this matter. I meant it when I said you should not see Carl Bennet again. You must not allow anyone to try and regress you. I am not so concerned about the drama and the psychological stress that you are put under, although that is obviously not good for you. What worries me is the fact that you are prone to physiological reaction. You reflect physically what you are describing. That is very rare. It is also potentially dangerous.’ ‘You mean if William beat me … her up, I’d wake up with bruises?’ ‘Exactly.’ Sam compressed his lips. ‘And if she starved to death?’ The question came out as a whisper. There was a pause. Sam looked away. ‘I think that is unlikely.’ He forced himself to laugh. ‘Nevertheless, it would obviously be foolish to put yourself deliberately at risk. Now, please – coffee?’ For a moment Jo did not move, her eyes on his face. Then slowly she turned towards the kitchen. It was dark when Dorothy Franklyn arrived at the flat carrying an armful of roses. A tall, striking woman in her mid-sixties, she habitually wore tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses and immaculate Jaeger suits which made her look the epitome of efficiency. She was in fact always slightly disorganised and invariably late for whatever she was trying to do. Jo was enormously fond of her. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind me dropping in like this, Jo?’ she said apologetically as she came in. ‘I came up for a matin?e and then I had supper but I wanted to leave you the flowers.’ She eyed Jo surreptitiously. ‘You look tired my dear. Would you rather I just left them and went?’ Jo shook her head. She caught the other woman’s arm and pulled her into the room. ‘Sit down and I’ll put the kettle on. You’ve just missed your son. That’s why I’m tired, he took me out to dinner.’ Dorothy smiled, her whole face lighting with pleasure. ‘Jo! I’m so glad. It broke my heart when you and he split up –’ ‘No –’ Jo interrupted. ‘I meant Sam.’ ‘Sam?’ Dorothy frowned. ‘I thought he was in Switzerland.’ ‘He was. He’s stopped off in London for a few days – mainly to do a quick psychoanalysis of me, I think.’ Jo grinned wryly. ‘He’s staying at Nick’s flat if you want to see him. Nick’s not there of course, so the flat is free.’ She could feel the other woman’s eyes on her face, bright with embarrassment and sympathy, and she forced herself to go on smiling somehow. ‘How is Sam?’ Dorothy asked after a long pause. ‘Fine. He’s been giving a paper on some terribly obscure subject. I was very impressed. He took me to tea at the zoo.’ She laughed. Dorothy smiled. ‘He always says the zoo teaches one so much about people.’ She hesitated, eyeing Jo thoughtfully. ‘He has always been very fond of you, you know, Jo. I don’t think you and Nick ever realised how much it hurt Sam when Nick walked off with you. Nick has always found it so easy to have any girl he wanted – I’m sorry, that sounds dreadful, and I know you were different – you were special to him. But you have been special to Sam too.’ Jo looked down guiltily. ‘I think I did know. It’s just that we met under such strange circumstances. I was a guinea pig in one of his experiments.’ She shivered. ‘Our relationship always seemed a little unreal after that. He was so concerned about me, but I always had the feeling it was a paternal concern, as if he were worried about my health.’ She paused abruptly. ‘He was, of course. I know that now. Anyway, he was twenty-six or -seven and I was only nineteen when we first met. We belonged to different worlds. I did rather fancy him –’ She was staring at the roses lying on the table. ‘If I’m honest I suppose I still do. He’s an attractive bloke. But then Nick came along …’ She stood up abruptly. ‘Let me put these in water or they’ll die before our eyes. And I’ll make you some coffee.’ ‘Is it serious, this thing with Judy Curzon?’ Dorothy’s voice was gentle. ‘It sounds like it. She is much more his type than I ever was. She’s domesticated and artistic and a redhead.’ Jo forced herself to laugh. ‘Perhaps I should cultivate old Sam now. Better late than never and we seem to have quite a bit in common after all. It might even make Nick jealous!’ Scooping up the flowers, she buried her face in the velvet blooms, then she carried them through to the kitchen and dropped them into the sink. Turning the cold tap on full, she turned and saw Dorothy had followed her. She was frowning. ‘Jo. Please don’t just amuse yourself with Sam. I know it must be tempting to try and hurt Nick, but that’s not the way to do it.’ She leaned past Jo as water began to splash off the flowers and onto the floor and turned off the tap. ‘There’s too much rivalry between those two already.’ ‘Rivalry?’ Jo looked astonished. ‘But they hardly see each other so how could there be?’ ‘Sam has resented Nick since the day he was born.’ Dorothy absentmindedly picked the petals off a blown rose and threw them into the bin. ‘I used to think it was normal sibling rivalry and he’d grow out of it. But it was more than that. He learned to hide it. He even managed to fool Nick and their father that he no longer felt it, but he never fooled me. As he grew up it didn’t disappear. It hardened. I don’t know why. They are both good-looking, they are both confident and bright. Sam is enormously successful in his own field. There is no reason for him to resent Nick at all. At least, there wasn’t until you came along.’ Jo stared at her. ‘I had no idea. None at all. I thought they liked each other. That’s awful.’ Wearily she pushed the hair off her face. ‘I’m sure Nick likes Sam. He told me that he used to worship him when they were children, and I sometimes think that secretly he still does. Look at the way he turned to him when he was worried about me.’ She stopped. Had Nick really turned to Sam for help, or was he merely using him cynically to take her off his hands? She closed her eyes unhappily, trying to picture Sam’s face as he kissed her goodnight. It had been a brotherly kiss, no more. Of that she was sure. Dorothy had not noticed Jo’s sudden silence. With a deep sigh she swept on after a minute. ‘I used to wonder if it was my fault. There was a six-year gap between them, you know, and we were so thrilled when Nick came along. Elder children sometimes think such funny things, that somehow they weren’t enough, or that they have failed their parents in some way …’ ‘But Sam is a psychiatrist!’ Jo burst out in spite of herself. ‘Even if he felt that when he was six, he must be well enough read by now to know it wasn’t true. Oh come on, Dorothy, have some coffee. This is all too Freudian for me at this time of night.’ She plugged in the coffee pot and switched it on. Dorothy reached into the cupboard and brought out two cups. ‘Are you seeing Sam again?’ Jo nodded. ‘On Wednesday evening.’ Dorothy frowned. ‘Jo. Is it over between you and Nick? I mean, really over?’ Jo turned on her, exasperated. ‘Dorothy stop it! They are grown men, not boys fighting over a toy, for God’s sake! I don’t know if it’s over between me and Nick. Probably, yes. But we are still fond of each other, nothing can change that. Who knows what will happen?’ After Dorothy had gone Jo sat staring into space for a long time. Then slowly she got up and poured herself a drink. She glanced down at the books and notes piled on the table, but she did not touch them. Instead, restlessly, she began to wander round the room. In front of the huge oval mirror which hung over the fireplace she stopped and stared at herself for a long time. Then solemnly she raised her glass. ‘To you, Matilda, wherever you are,’ she said sadly. ‘I’ll bet you thought men were bastards, too.’ The answerphone was to the point: ‘There is no one in the office at the moment. In a genuine emergency Dr Bennet may be reached on Lymington four seven three two zero. Otherwise please phone again on Monday morning.’ Jo slammed down the receiver. She eyed the Scotch bottle on the table, then she turned her back on it and went to stand instead on the balcony in the darkness, smelling the sweet honeyed air of the London garden, cleansed by night of the smell of traffic. It was a long time before she turned and went back inside. Leaving the French windows open she slotted her cassette back into the machine, and switched it on. Then, turning off the lights, she sat down alone in the dark to listen. 11 (#ulink_924ee77c-6b14-5aa1-b93e-857fd31f7b04) ‘Is he here?’ Judy was standing in the darkened hallway outside Jo’s door with her hands on her hips. She was wearing a loosely belted white dress and thonged sandals which made her look, Jo thought irrelevantly, like a Greek boy. ‘Come in and shut up or you’ll wake the whole house.’ Jo stood back to allow her to enter, as Judy’s furious voice wafted up and down the stairwell outside the flat door. It was barely nine o’clock on Sunday morning. The flat was untidy. Cassettes littered the tables and the floor; there were empty glasses lying about and ashtrays full of half-smoked cigarettes. Jo stared round in distaste. Beside the typewriter on the coffee table there was a pile of papers and notes where she had been typing most of the night. Books were stacked on the carpet, and overflowing onto the chairs. She threw open the French windows and took a deep breath of cool morning air. Then she turned to Judy. ‘If it’s Nick you’ve lost, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. He’s not here. I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning.’ She went through into the kitchen and reached into the fridge. ‘Do you want some coffee?’ she called. Judy looked taken aback. ‘He said he was coming back here.’ She followed Jo into the kitchen uncertainly. ‘Well he plainly didn’t come.’ Jo reached down a large jug off the cupboard and stuffed the roses from the sink into it. ‘Aren’t these lovely? Nick’s mother brought them up from Hampshire for me yesterday.’ Judy’s jaw tightened fractionally. ‘I have never met his mother.’ ‘Oh you will. She is already on your trail. Every girlfriend has to be vetted and approved and then cultivated.’ Jo leaned against the counter and looked Judy straight in the eye. ‘Have you come for a fight? Because if you have, I’m in the right mood. I haven’t slept for two nights, I’ve a foul headache and I am fed up with people coming here to look for Nick Franklyn.’ ‘Do you still love him?’ Judy tried hard to hold her gaze. Jo snorted. ‘What kind of naive question is that? Do you really think I’d tell you if I did?’ Behind her the coffee began to perk. She ignored it. ‘At this moment I wish both Sam and Nick Franklyn at the other end of the earth, and if it makes you happy I will cordially wish you there with them. But I should like to say one thing before you go there. If you decide to make any more inventive little statements to the press about my sanity or lack of it, be very careful what you say, because I shall sue you for slander and then I shall come to your happy love nest in Fulham and knot some of your oh so original and outstandingly beautiful paintings around your pretty little neck.’ Judy retreated a step. ‘There is no need to be nasty about it. I didn’t know anyone was listening. And I only repeated what Nick said –’ ‘I am well aware of what Nick said,’ Jo said quietly. She turned and took two mugs out of the cupboard. ‘You’ll have to have your coffee black. I haven’t been out for milk yet.’ ‘I don’t want any coffee.’ Judy backed out of the kitchen. ‘I don’t want anything from you. I’m not surprised Nick couldn’t wait to get away from here!’ She turned to the front door and dragged it open. Behind them the phone in the living room began to ring. Jo ignored it as she unplugged the coffee pot. ‘Shut the door behind you,’ she called over her shoulder. Judy stopped in her tracks. ‘Sam told me you’re schizophrenic,’ she shouted, ‘did you know that? He said that you’ll be locked up one of these days. And they’ll throw away the key!’ She paused as if hoping for a response. When none came she walked out into the hall and slammed the door. Jo could hear her footsteps as she ran down the stairs outside. Moments later she heard the porch door bang. Behind her the phone was still ringing. Dazed, Jo moved towards it and picked up the receiver. Her hands were shaking. ‘Jo? I thought you weren’t there!’ The voice on the other end was indignant. Jo swallowed. She was incapable of speaking for a moment. ‘Jo dear? Are you all right?’ The voice persisted. ‘It’s me, Ceecliff!’ Jo managed to speak at last. ‘I know, Grandma. I’m sorry. My voice is a bit husky. Is that better?’ She cleared her throat noisily. ‘How nice to hear you. How are you?’ ‘I am fine as always.’ The tones were clipped and direct. Celia Clifford was a vivacious and attractive woman of seventy-six who, in spite of the alternate cajoling and threats of her town-dwelling daughter-in-law and granddaughter, lived completely alone in a rambling Tudor farmhouse in the depths of Suffolk. Jo adored her. Ceecliff was her special property; her refuge; her hidden vice; the shoulder that tough abrasive Jo Clifford could cry on and no one would ever know. ‘You sound a bit odd, dear,’ Ceecliff went on briskly. ‘You’re not smoking again, are you?’ Jo looked ruefully at the ashtray beside the phone. ‘I’m trying not to,’ she said. ‘Good. And nothing is wrong?’ Jo frowned. ‘Why should anything be wrong?’ There was a chuckle at the other end of the line. ‘There shouldn’t. I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t have any excuses up your sleeve. You’re coming to lunch here, Jo, so you’d better get ready to leave within half an hour.’ Jo laughed. ‘I can’t come all the way to Suffolk for lunch,’ she protested. ‘Of course you can. Take off those dreadful jeans and put on a pretty dress, then get in the car. You’ll be here by one.’ ‘How did you know I had jeans on?’ Jo had begun to smile. ‘I’m psychic.’ Ceecliff’s tone was dry. ‘Now, no more talking. Just come.’ There was a click as she rang off and Jo was left staring down at the receiver in her hand. Bet Gunning turned over in bed and ran a languid hand over Tim Heacham’s chest. ‘Much drunker, and you wouldn’t have been able to make it, my friend.’ Tim groaned. ‘If I had been much drunker, you could have been accused of necrophilia! If you have any sense of decency at all, Ms Gunning, you’ll fix me one of your magic prairie oysters in the kitchen and shut up.’ Laughing, Bet sat up and lazily pulled on Tim’s discarded shirt over her lean figure. She wrinkled her nose fastidiously. ‘My God. This stinks!’ ‘Sweat, I expect.’ Tim closed his eyes. ‘Your fault for getting me so excited. Stick it under the shower and turn the tap on it. You can have special dispensation to wear my monogrammed bathrobe.’ He stretched luxuriously and grinned. Bet gave him an old-fashioned look as she padded out to the kitchen but she said nothing. She was too content. In a few moments she was back with a tray containing two coffee mugs and a glass. She watched as Tim drank down the mixture pulling a series of agonised faces, then she held out her hand for the glass. ‘Now. Coffee and then a cold shower. That will get you compos mentis.’ ‘Sadistic bitch.’ Tim patted her knee fondly as she sat down next to him. ‘Is this what makes you such a good editor? Rouse them, satisfy them, give them their medicine, kiss them better and send them away!’ She laughed. ‘So you think I sleep with my staff as well?’ ‘It’s the general word. And all your ancillary acolytes – like me. But only the men, of course, as far as I know.’ Bet reached forward and tugged his hair. ‘Shut up, Tim! Now if you want to talk shop tell me how you are getting on with Jo’s pictures. Have you started on them yet?’ ‘Of course. But I thought the deadline wasn’t for months.’ ‘It isn’t.’ Bet inserted her legs beneath the sheet next to his and ran an exploratory finger across his solar plexus. Tim flopped back against the pillows and pushed her hand away. ‘No go, love. Don’t even hope. I’ve had it!’ He grinned at her fondly. ‘I took some super pictures of a woman being hypnotised to think she was a nineteenth-century street girl. I’ll show you the contacts. The only trouble with that article from my point of view is that however glamorous and exciting the stories these people are telling, basically they are still just Mr and Mrs Bloggs sitting there in a chair. But it is a tremendous challenge – to catch those faces and make your readers see in them the reflection of whatever character is inhabiting the person’s mind at that moment.’ ‘If anyone can do it, you can.’ Bet lay back on her elbow beside him and reached for her cup. ‘You know Jo was regressed herself once?’ ‘Yes. She told me about it. It was a failure. All that guff Judy sounded off was jealous rubbish.’ Bet shook her head. ‘Not so. Nick talked to me about it a couple of weeks back. He begged me to kill the article. According to him Jo nearly died under hypnosis.’ Tim sat up. ‘For Christ’s sake –’ Bet smiled. ‘He overreacts. It would make a better article, you must admit, if Jo could say it had happened to her. I have a feeling it could be a tremendous story when she gets round to it. Jo is nothing if not honest. If something strange happens to her she’ll write about it.’ ‘Even if it’s published posthumously?’ Tim swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. ‘My God, Bet! I thought you were Jo’s friend! Would you really want something awful to happen to her just to make a good story?’ He reached for his trousers and pulled them on. ‘Bloody hell!’ Bet laughed. ‘Don’t be so dramatic. I want some action. I want to see Jo up against something she can’t debunk, just for once. I want to see how she handles an article which really stirs her up. It’ll do her good. I suspect Nick resents her success. He’s jealous of her independence. That’s why they split up, so a plea from him to call off the article comes over to me as very suspicious. She doesn’t need his help – or his hindrance. Oh yes, I am her friend, sweetie, probably her best friend.’ ‘Then God help her.’ Tim tugged open a drawer and pulled out a black cashmere sweater, drawing it down awkwardly over his head. ‘With you and Judy Curzon for friends who else does she need!’ ‘Well there’s always you, isn’t there?’ Bet took another sip from her coffee. ‘You wouldn’t be entertaining me so enthusiastically if you thought you could lay your sticky little hands on our Jo, would you, my love?’ Tim flushed a dusky red as he turned away. ‘Crap. Jo’s never had eyes for anyone but Nick since I’ve known her.’ He stared into the mirror and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘More fool her then, because Nick is playing the field. Where are you going?’ ‘Sunday or not, I have work to do. Are you going to cook me lunch?’ Bet stretched, snuggling back under the covers. ‘Why not? Who were you in your previous life, Tim, do you know?’ Tim turned and looked down at her. ‘Funnily enough I think I do.’ Bet’s eyes grew round. ‘You are joking?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well?’ She sat up, the sheet pulled up tightly round her breasts. ‘Who were you?’ He grinned. ‘If I told you that, my love, I’d regret the indiscretion for the rest of my life. Now, you may go back to sleep for exactly forty-one minutes, then you get up and put the joint on. I should be finished in the darkroom in an hour.’ With a wave he ducked out of the bedroom and ran down the spiral stairs to the studio below. The north London traffic was heavy, and Jo was impatient, but she was so preoccupied she barely noticed the queueing cars and the heavy pall of fumes under the brassy blue sky. It was not until eventually the road widened and the cars began to thin that she started to relax and look round her. The air became lush with country summer: blossom, thick and scented on the trees, rich new green leaves, hedgerows smothered in cow parsley and hawthorn, while overhead the sky arched in an intensity of blue that never showed itself in London. Jo smiled to herself, turning off the main road to make her way through the lanes towards Long Melford. She always felt light-headed and free when she arrived in Suffolk. Perhaps it was the air or the thought of seeing Ceecliff, or perhaps it was only the fact that she was nearly always faint with hunger by the time she reached her grandmother’s house. She turned down the winding drive which led towards the mellow, pinkwashed house and drew up slowly outside the front door. Nick’s Porsche was parked in the shade beneath the chestnut tree. She sat and stared at it for a moment, then angrily she threw open the car door and climbed out. Nick must have heard the scrunch of her car tyres on the gravel for he appeared almost at once around the corner of the house. He was in shirt-sleeves, looking relaxed and rested as he grinned at her and raised his hand in greeting. ‘You’re just in time for a drink.’ ‘What are you doing here?’ Her anger had evaporated as fast as it had come and there was a strange tightness in her throat as she looked at him. Hastily she turned away to pull her bag out of the car. She held it against her chest and wrapped her arms around it defensively. ‘I needed to talk to your grandmother, so I rang her up and came down last night.’ He stopped six feet from her, looking at her closely. She had unfastened her hair, letting it fall loosely over her shoulders in an informal style which suited her far better than her usual severe line, and she had changed into a soft clinging dress of peacock-blue silk before leaving home. She looked, Nick thought suddenly, very fragile and very beautiful. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch her. ‘She’s in the garden at the back with the sherry bottle. Come on round.’ ‘What was so important you suddenly have to drive out to Suffolk to talk about it?’ Jo asked mildly. Nick was silent for a moment, still staring at her. Then he shook his head slowly. ‘I thought I’d do some research for you.’ He grinned. ‘Guess who came from Clare, just round the corner?’ He began to lead the way across the gravel. Jo followed him. ‘You came here to check on that?’ she said in disbelief. Nick shrugged. ‘Well no, not exactly. I wanted to talk mainly. And I admit it, I told Ceecliff not to say anything about me when she rang you. I wanted to talk to you too and I thought you might not come if you knew I was here.’ ‘It’s a pity she didn’t mention you,’ Jo retorted. ‘Your girlfriend was with me when she rang. You could have had a word with her and put her mind at rest. She clearly thought I had hidden you under my bed.’ ‘Judy was at your flat this morning?’ Nick frowned. Jo had begun to walk towards the garden at the back of the house. The grass was soft, scented beneath her sandals, with patches of damp velvety moss and strewn with daisies. ‘She was just telling me that your brother had confided to her that I was schizophrenic and would need to be locked up soon.’ Nick laughed. ‘I hope you didn’t believe her. I’m afraid you seem to bring out the worst in Judy.’ He was following her now, round the corner of the house. ‘Jo, I think there’s something I should explain. Wait a minute, please.’ He caught her arm. ‘There’s no explaining to do, Nick.’ Jo turned to him, pulling herself free. ‘You and I have split up. You have a new woman in your life. The night before last you were kind enough to help me out for old times’ sake, when I was feeling a bit frayed, but as soon as someone else turned up to sort me out, you went back to Judy. End of story. Lucky Judy. Only I wish you would explain to her she need not feel so insecure.’ She could feel a sudden warm breeze stirring her hair as she walked on towards the walnut tree near the willow-shaded pond where her grandmother was sitting in a deckchair. On the horizon white cumulus was beginning to mass into tall thunderheads. She bent and kissed Ceecliff’s cheek. ‘That was unfair to trap me into coming here. Nick and I have nothing to talk about.’ Ceecliff surveyed her from piercingly bright dark eyes. ‘I would have thought you had a great deal to talk about. And if he hasn’t, I have! Nick has told me about your amazing experiences, Jo.’ She reached up and took her granddaughter’s hand. ‘I want to hear all about them. You mustn’t be frightened of what happened. You have been privileged.’ Jo stared at her. ‘You sound as if you believe in reincarnation.’ ‘I think I must. Of a kind.’ Ceecliff smiled. ‘Come on. Sit down and have a sherry and relax. You’re as taut as a wire! Nicholas came up last night to talk to me about you. He was worried that you’re trying to do too much, Jo. And I agree with him. From what he’s told me, I think you need to rest. You must not try and venture into your past again.’ ‘Oh, so that’s it.’ Jo levered herself back out of the deckchair she had settled into. ‘He came here to get you to talk me out of going on with my researches. Part of the great Franklyn conspiracy. I wish you would all get it into your heads that this is no one’s business but mine. What I do with my mind and my memory, or whatever it is, is my affair. I am a sober, consenting, rational adult. I make my own decisions.’ Ceecliff was looking up at her as she talked. She grinned impishly. ‘There you are, Nicholas. I told you she’d say that.’ Nick shrugged ruefully. ‘You did. But it was worth a try.’ He handed Jo a glass. ‘So come on, Jo. You haven’t told us whether you found anything out in the library yesterday. We are all agog.’ Jo stared at him in feigned astonishment. ‘Are you telling me now that you’re interested? You amaze me! You weren’t so interested yesterday when you couldn’t wait to leave and go back to Judy!’ She had forgotten her grandmother, seated between them. ‘I only went because Sam said I had to, for God’s sake!’ Nick’s face was flushed with anger. ‘Don’t you think I wanted to stay? If he hadn’t pulled rank and reminded me you were his patient I’d have waited all day to make sure you were all right.’ Jo put her glass down on the tray so abruptly the sherry spilled onto the silver, spattering into amber droplets. ‘He said I was his patient?’ she echoed. Her face had gone white. Ceecliff had been watching them both intently. ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it literally, dear,’ she put in hastily. ‘I expect he meant that as you had both called him in for his advice he would like the opportunity of talking to Jo alone.’ ‘I didn’t call him in!’ Jo glared at Nick repressively. ‘It was Nick’s idea.’ ‘Because he is obviously enormously concerned about you.’ Stiffly Ceecliff pulled herself to her feet. ‘Now, no more fighting, children. I wish to enjoy my lunch. Come inside and later Jo can tell us what she found out about her Matilda.’ They took their coffee in the conservatory at the back of the house as huge clouds massed and foamed over the garden, blotting out a sky which had become brazen with heat. Ceecliff sent Nick out to bring in the garden chairs as the rain began to fall in huge sparse drops, pitting the surface of the pond. Then she turned to Jo. ‘You’re going to drive that young man straight into her arms, you know!’ Jo was pouring the coffee, frowning with concentration as she handled the tall silver pot. ‘It’s where he wants to be.’ ‘No, Jo, it isn’t. Can’t you see it?’ Ceecliff leaned forward and helped herself to a cup from the tray. ‘You are being very stubborn. Especially as you obviously love him. You do, don’t you?’ Jo sat down on the window-seat, her back to the garden. ‘I don’t know,’ she said bleakly. Her hands were lying loosely in her lap. She stared blankly down at them, suddenly overwhelmingly tired. ‘I’m not sure what I feel any more about anyone. I’m not sure I even know what I feel about myself.’ ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Ceecliff leaned forward and picking up Jo’s cup put it into her hands. ‘Drink that and listen to me. You’re getting things out of perspective.’ ‘Am I?’ Jo bit her lip. ‘Either Nick or Sam lied to me and I don’t know which.’ ‘All men are liars, Jo.’ Ceecliff smiled sadly. ‘Haven’t you discovered that yet?’ The rain was growing stronger now, releasing the warm scents of wet earth which reached them even through the conservatory windows. Jo could see Nick hastily stacking the deckchairs in the summerhouse. ‘That’s a bit cynical, even for you, Grandma.’ She reached forward and touched the old woman’s hand as Nick sprinted back towards them across the grass. Behind him the horizon flickered and shifted slightly before Jo’s eyes. She blinked, watching as he opened the door and came in, shaking himself like a dog. He was laughing as she handed him a cup of coffee. ‘You’re soaked, Nick,’ she said sharply. ‘You’d better take off your shirt or you’ll get pneumonia or something.’ He spooned some sugar into the cup and sat down beside her. ‘It’ll soon dry off, it’s so hot. Go on with what you were telling us at lunch, Ceecliff, about Jo’s grandfather.’ Ceecliff leaned back against the cushions on her chair. ‘I wish you remembered him better, Jo, but you were only a little girl when he died. He used to love talking about his ancestors and the Clifford family tree, which was more of a forest, he used to say. The trouble is I never used to listen all that carefully. It bored me. It was about yesterday and I wanted to live today.’ She paused as another zigzag of lightning flickered behind the walnut tree. ‘I didn’t realise how soon the present becomes the past. Perhaps I’d have listened more if I had.’ She laughed ruefully. ‘Sorry. You’ll have to allow for an old lady’s maudlin tendencies. Now, what I was saying was that hearing you talking about your William de Braose being a baron on the Welsh borders reminded me that of course that is where the Clifford family originally came from. I’ll find Reggie’s papers and give them to you, Jo. You might as well have them and you may find them interesting now you have decided the past could have something to recommend it, even if it is only a handsome son of the Clares.’ Again the impish twinkle. She sighed. ‘But now you are going to have to excuse me because I am going to lie down for a couple of hours. One of the compensations of old age is being able to admit to being tired and then do something about it.’ With Nick’s help she pulled herself out of the low chair in which she had been sitting and walked back slowly through into the house. ‘She’s not tired,’ Jo said as soon as she was out of hearing. ‘She has ten times more energy than I have.’ ‘She thinks she is being tactful.’ Nick stooped over the tray and poured himself another cup of coffee. ‘She thinks we should be given the chance to be alone.’ ‘How wrong she is, then,’ Jo said quickly. She flinched as another shaft of lightning crossed the sky. It was followed by a distant rumble of thunder. ‘There’s nothing we need to talk about that she wouldn’t be welcome to join in.’ The heaviness of the afternoon was closing over her, dragging her down. Her eyelids were leaden. She forced them open. Nick was standing with his back to her, looking at the rain sweeping in across the garden. ‘I do have to talk to you alone,’ he said slowly. ‘And I think you know it.’ Jo moved across to her grandmother’s vacated chair and threw herself into it. ‘Well, now is not the moment. Oh God, how I hate thunder! It’s thundered practically every day this week!’ Nick turned and looked at her. ‘You never used to mind it.’ ‘Oh, I don’t mean I’m afraid of it. It just makes me feel so headachy and tense. Perhaps I’m just tired. I was working all last night.’ She closed her eyes. Nick put down his cup. He moved to stand behind her chair and, gently resting his hands on her shoulders, he began to massage the back of her neck with his thumbs. Jo relaxed, feeling the warmth of his fingers through the thin silk of her dress, the circling motion easing the pain in her head as a squall of wind beneath the storm centre sent a flurry of rain against the glass of the conservatory. Suddenly she stiffened. For a moment she could not breathe. She tried to open her eyes but the hands on her shoulders had slipped forward, encircling her throat, pressing her windpipe till she was choking. She half rose, grasping at his wrists, fighting him in panic, clawing at his face and arms, then, as another rumble of thunder cut through the heat of the afternoon she felt herself falling. Frantically she tried to catch her breath, but it was no use. Her arms were growing heavy and there was a strange buzzing in her ears. Why, Nick, why? Her lips framed the words, but no sound came as slowly she began the long spiral down into suffocating blackness. 12 (#ulink_8baa2fd0-0b06-5911-b1de-ce15c2010cdb) Two faces swam before her gaze. Absently she tried to focus on them, her mind groping with amorphous images as first one pair of eyes and then the other floated towards her, merged, then drifted apart once more. The mouths beneath the eyes were moving. They were speaking, but she couldn’t hear them; she couldn’t think. All she could feel was the dull pain of the contusions which fogged her throat. Experimentally she tried to speak, but nothing happened as she raised a hand towards one of the faces – the blue eyes, the red-gold moustache, the deep furrowed lines across the forehead coming sharply into focus. It drew back out of reach and she groped towards the other. It was younger, smoother, the eyes lighter. ‘I’ve phoned Dr Graham.’ A woman’s voice spoke near her, the diction clear, echoing in the hollow spaces of her head. ‘He was at home, thank God, not on that damn golf course! He’ll be here in five minutes. How is she?’ Jo frowned. Ceecliff. That was Ceecliff, standing close to her, behind the two men. She breathed in slowly and saw her grandmother’s face near hers. Swallowing painfully, she tried once more to speak. ‘What happened?’ she managed to murmur after a moment. As Ceecliff sat down beside her Jo realised she was lying on the sofa in the dimly lit living room. Her grandmother’s cool, dry hand took hers. ‘You fainted, you silly girl. Just like a Victorian Miss!’ ‘Who’s there?’ Jo looked past her into the shadows. ‘It’s me, Jo.’ Nick’s voice was taut. ‘Why is it so dark?’ Jo levered herself up against the cushions, her head spinning. ‘There’s the mother and father of a storm going on, dear,’ Ceecliff said after a moment. ‘It’s dark as doomsday in here. Put the lights on, Nick.’ Her voice sharpened. The three table lamps threw a warm, wintry light in the humid bleakness of the room. Through the window-panes the sound of the rain was deafening on the broad leaves of the hostas in the bed outside. ‘Where’s the doctor?’ Jo stared round. ‘He’s not here yet, Jo.’ Ceecliff smiled at her gravely. ‘But I saw him –’ ‘No, dear.’ Ceecliff glanced at Nick. ‘Listen. That must be his car now.’ Above the sound of the rain they could all hear the scrunch of tyres on the gravel. Moments later the glass door of the entrance hall opened and a stout figure let himself into the hall. Ceecliff stood up. She met David Graham in the dim, heavily beamed dining room, which smelled of pot pourri and roses, and put her finger to her lips. ‘It’s my granddaughter, David,’ she murmured as he shook himself like a dog and shed his Burberry on the mellow oak boards. David Graham was a fair-haired man of about sixty, dressed, despite the heat, in a tweed jacket and woollen tie. He kissed her fondly. ‘It’s probably the storm, Celia. They affect some people like this, you know. Unless it’s your cooking. You haven’t been giving her that curry you gave Jocelyn and me, have you?’ He did not wait to see her mock indignation. His case in his hand, he was already moving towards the door of the living room. Nick smiled down at Jo uncertainly. ‘I’ll leave you both to it, shall I?’ ‘Please.’ David Graham looked at him searchingly for a moment, noting the tension of Nick’s face – tension and exhaustion, and something else. Putting down his case beside Jo, he waited until Nick had closed the door behind him. Guilt, that was it; Nick Franklyn had looked guilty. He sat down beside Jo and grinned at her, picking up her wrist. ‘Do you make a habit of this sort of thing, my dear?’ he asked quietly. Jo shook her head. ‘It’s never happened before. I’m beginning to feel such a fraud. It’s just the storm, I’m sure. They always make me feel strung up and headachy.’ ‘And you’re not pregnant as far as you know?’ He smiled. ‘Certainly not! And before you ask I’ve given up smoking. Nearly.’ ‘There’s something wrong with your throat?’ She moved away from him slightly on the sofa. ‘A bit painful, that’s all. I expect I’m getting a cold.’ ‘Humph.’ The doctor bent to open his bag. He withdrew a wooden spatula. ‘Open up. Let’s have a look, shall we?’ Her throat was agony. Not sore. Not raw, but bruised and aching. Without registering any emotion at all the doctor put down the spatula and reached for a thermometer. When it was in her mouth he brought his hands up gently to her neck and, brushing aside her hair, he felt beneath her ears and under her chin with cool impersonal fingers. Jo could feel her hands shaking. ‘What is it?’ she said as soon as she could speak. He held the thermometer up to the green-shaded table lamp and squinted viciously as he tried to see the mercury. ‘I’m always telling Celia to get some proper lights in this damn room. In the evening you can’t tell your gin from the goldfish water. It is thirty-seven which is exactly what it ought to be. Your pulse is a bit above average for a Sunday afternoon, even in a storm, though. Let’s try some blood pressure shall we?’ ‘But my throat?’ Jo said. ‘What’s wrong with my throat?’ ‘Nothing that I can see.’ He was rummaging in his case. ‘Where does it hurt?’ ‘It aches. Here.’ She raised her hand to her neck while her eyes focused on the little pump in his hand as he inflated the cuff around her arm. It was all coming back to her. She had been in the conservatory with Nick. He had stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders, then slowly he – or somebody – had slid them up around her throat and begun to squeeze … She could remember what happened quite clearly now. It was Nick. It had to have been Nick. No one else was there. Nick had tried to kill her! She felt sick. Nick wouldn’t hurt her. It wasn’t possible. It must have all been some hideous nightmare. She swallowed painfully. But it was too real for a nightmare. She realised suddenly that the doctor was watching her face and turned away sharply. ‘Is it high?’ she asked as he folded away his equipment. ‘A little, perhaps. Nothing to get excited about.’ He paused. ‘Something is wrong, my dear, isn’t it? You look worried. Is there something you ought to be telling me?’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing, Dr Graham. Except that perhaps I should own up to a few late nights, working. I expect that could make me feel a bit odd, couldn’t it?’ He frowned. ‘I expect it could.’ He waited as though he expected her to say more. When she didn’t he went on, ‘I can’t explain the throat. Perhaps you’re getting one of these summer viruses. Gargle. That will help, and I suggest you take it easy for a bit. Spend a few days here, perhaps.’ Smiling, he stood up. ‘Not that Celia is my idea of a peaceful companion, but this is a good house to rest in. It’s a happy house. Better than London, I’ll be bound. If it happens again, go and see your own doctor.’ ‘Thank you.’ Pushing herself up, Jo managed to stand. Outside the window there was another pale flicker of lightning. ‘I’m sorry my grandmother called you out in this.’ He laughed as he picked up his case. ‘If she hadn’t I’d have slept through it and kicked myself for not closing the vents in the greenhouse, so she did me a favour! Now, remember what I said. Take it easy for a bit. And do see your own doctor if you go on feeling at all unwell …’ He gave her a piercing glance, then with a nod he turned to the door. As soon as he had stepped out into the hall Jo turned to the sideboard. The lamp shed a green, muted light behind it towards the mirror, and tipping the shade violently so that the naked light of the bulb shone onto her face Jo stood on tiptoe, peering at the glass. Her reflection was white and stark, her eyes shadowed and huge in the uncompromising light. Leaning forward she held her hair up away from her neck and peered at it. Her skin looked normal. There were no marks there. ‘Jo! You’re burning the silk on that shade!’ Ceecliff’s cry made her jump. Hastily she put it straight, noticing guiltily the brown mark already showing on the lining. She could smell the scorched fabric. ‘What on earth were you doing?’ ‘Just looking at my throat.’ Jo glanced behind her grandmother. ‘Where is Nick?’ ‘He’s holding an umbrella over David while he gets in the car. I suppose you won’t do what David suggests and stay here for a few days?’ Jo sighed. ‘You know I can’t. I’m too busy.’ ‘Then you’ll have some tea before you let Nick drive you home –’ ‘No!’ Ceecliff stared at her in astonishment. ‘Jo dear –’ ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so abrupt.’ Jo swallowed. ‘It’s just that I don’t want Nick to drive me.’ ‘Well you can’t drive yourself, Joey. David was quite clear about that.’ Ceecliff’s tone was surprisingly firm. ‘You stay here or you go with Nick.’ Jo glanced towards the door. Her lips had gone dry. She took a deep breath. ‘Who was the man in here as I came round?’ Ceecliff had turned away, patting her injured lampshade with a proprietorial hand. ‘There was no one else in here, Jo. Only Nick and I.’ Jo crossed to the door, steadying herself with her hand on the back of a chair. Swiftly she closed it. Leaning against it she looked at Ceecliff. ‘Someone tried to strangle me this afternoon.’ Her grandmother pursed her lips. ‘Jo, dear –’ ‘I am not imagining it. Out there in the conservatory. Nick was massaging my shoulders. Then –’ She shrugged wildly. ‘Someone tried to kill me!’ ‘Nick was the only person there, Jo.’ Ceecliff came towards her slowly and put her hands on Jo’s arms. ‘Are you accusing Nick?’ She was scandalised. ‘No, of course not.’ Jo’s voice had fallen to a whisper. ‘Did you tell David all this?’ ‘I said my neck hurt.’ Jo shook her head. ‘I think he would have been able to tell, Jo, if anyone had tried to kill you. There would have been bruises on your throat for one thing.’ Ceecliff moved towards the sofa and sat down on the edge of it. ‘I think Nick was right to be worried about this hypnosis, Jo. You are too susceptible –’ Jo flung herself away from the door. ‘This has nothing to do with the hypnosis! I wasn’t imagining it! You would know if someone had tried to kill you!’ She put her hands to her throat. ‘There was someone else there. Someone else, Ceecliff. It can’t have been Nick. He wouldn’t … He wouldn’t want to kill me. Besides, there was someone else in the room when I woke up. You must have seen him. You must! For God’s sake, he was standing right behind Nick!’ ‘Joey, there was no one there,’ Ceecliff said gently. ‘If there had been, I would have seen him.’ ‘You think I’m imagining it?’ ‘I think you’re tired, emotionally upset, and what we as children used to call thunder-strung.’ Ceecliff smiled. She turned as Nick pushed open the door. He went straight to Jo, who had tensed nervously as he came into the room. ‘How are you?’ he asked. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’ She forced herself to smile at him. ‘But she is going to let you drive her back, Nick, after you’ve both had some tea,’ Ceecliff said firmly. ‘She can come and pick up her car another time.’ Jo swallowed. Her eyes had gone automatically to Nick’s hands, resting on the back of the chair. They were firm, strong hands, tanned from sailing, slightly stained now with lichen from the rain-soaked wood of the summerhouse door. As if feeling her gaze on them Nick slipped them into the pockets of his jeans. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ he asked. ‘I’ve never had a woman faint at my feet before. It was all very dramatic. And you still look very pale.’ Ceecliff stood up. ‘She’s fine,’ she said firmly. ‘You know where the kitchen is, Nick? Go and put the kettle on for me, there’s a dear. I’ll be out in a minute.’ As he left the room, Jo caught her hand. ‘Don’t tell Nick what I said, will you. He’ll think it is something to do with the hypnosis too, and I’m not going to fight with him all the way back to London.’ Ceecliff smiled. ‘I shan’t tell him, Jo. But I think you should,’ she said slowly. ‘I really think you should.’ The storm crackled viciously across Hyde Park, highlighting the lush green of the trees against the bruised sky. Sam stood looking out of the window of Nick’s flat in South Audley Street feeling the claustrophobia of London all around him. He sighed. If it weren’t for that keyhole glimpse of the park up the narrow street in front of the flat, he would not be able to stay here. It calmed and restored the quiet sanity of self-perception. He spared a moment’s regretful thought for his high-ceilinged flat in Edinburgh with its glorious view across the Queen’s Park towards the Salisbury Crags, then turning from the window he drew the curtains against the storm and switched on the light. Throwing himself down on the sofa, he picked up his third glass of Scotch and reached for the pile of books stacked on the coffee table. The first which came to hand was A History of Wales by John Edward Lloyd, M.A., volume two. Turning to the index he began to look for William de Braose. ‘What the hell is wrong, Jo?’ Nick glanced across at her as he swung the car at last onto the M11. The windscreen wipers were cutting great arcs in the wet carpets of rain which swept towards them off the road. For the second time, as he reached forward to slot a new cassette into place, he had noticed her shrink away from his hand. And she was obviously having trouble with her throat. With an effort she smiled. ‘Sorry. I’m still feeling rather odd. My head is splitting.’ She closed her eyes as the car filled with the bright cold notes of Vivaldi. Don’t talk. Don’t let him see you’re afraid. It did not happen. It was a hallucination – or imagination. Nick is no killer and the other … the face with the hard, angry blue eyes and the beard. It was not a face she knew. Not from this world, nor from that other time of wind and snow and spinning distances. It was not William, nor the young and handsome Richard. It was a double vision; a dream. Part of the dream where someone had tried to kill her. Something out of her own imagination, like the pain. ‘The traffic is building.’ Nick’s voice hung for a moment in the silence, coming from a long way away as the tape came to an end. He leaned forward and switched it off before it had a chance to start playing again. ‘You should have stayed with Celia. You’re worn out, you know.’ She forced her eyes open, realising that the engine was idling. Cars were round them on every side; the end-of-weekend rush back to London, earlier than usual because of the bad weather, had brought the traffic to a standstill. ‘You’ve been asleep.’ He glanced across at her. ‘Do you feel any better?’ The light in the sky was already fading. Jo eased her position slightly in the seat. ‘I’ll be OK. I’m sorry I’m being such a nuisance. I can’t think what came over me.’ ‘That damn hypnosis came over you.’ Nick eased the car forward a few yards behind the car in front and braked. His elbow out of the open window, he drummed his fingers in irritation on the roof above his head. ‘I hope this has finally convinced you, Jo, of the idiocy of persisting with this research. Sam must have spelled out the risks for you.’ Jo coloured angrily. ‘What the devil has my fainting to do with the fact that I was hypnotised a couple of days ago? Oh Nick, drop the subject, please!’ She hunched her shoulders defensively. How was it possible to feel so many conflicting emotions for the man sitting next to her? Love. Anger. Despair. And now fear. Real fear, which would not listen to the reason which told her it was groundless. She knew Nick had not tried to kill her. The thought was farcical. But if not his, then whose were the hands which had encircled her neck? And if they had been imaginary, then why had she imagined them? Perhaps he was right. Perhaps being hypnotised had some delayed effect. Some dangerous, delayed effect. She shuddered violently. Half of her wanted to beg Nick to pull onto the hard shoulder and put his arms around her and hold her safe, but even as she glanced towards him she felt again that irrational shiver of fear. It was another hour before they turned into Cornwall Gardens. She had already extricated her key from her bag and was clutching it tightly in her hand as the car drew to a halt and she swung the door open. ‘Please, Nick, don’t come in.’ She almost threw herself onto the pavement. ‘I’m going to take an aspirin and go to bed. I’ll call you, OK?’ She slammed the door and ran towards the steps, not looking round to see if he followed. She had banged the front door shut behind her before he had levered himself out of the car. Nick shrugged. He stood where he was in the middle of the road, his hand resting on the car’s roof, waiting until he saw the lights go on in the room behind the first-floor balcony doors, then he climbed back in and drove away. He was very worried. Jo double-locked the door behind her. Throwing down her bag she went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Flu. It had to be flu. That would explain everything. A horrible, vicious summer flu which had given her a few fleeting moments of delirium before changing direction and locating in her throat. She found a Beecham’s Powder in the back of the cupboard and tipped it into a glass, filling it up with hot water. Carrying the glass into the bathroom, she turned on the taps full and began to take off her dress. The mirror steamed over. As she stepped into the warm silky water she could feel her headache already beginning to relax its grip and cautiously she sipped the liquid. It made her feel slightly sick, but she forced herself to drink it all and then she lay back, staring up at the fawn patterned tiles on the bathroom walls with their delicate misty swirls. It was twenty minutes before she walked slowly into her bedroom, wrapped in her bathrobe, and pulled the heavy sash windows up. Outside, the night was very warm and still. Darkness had come early with the heavy cloud and there was an almost tropical humidity about the air. She could hear the sound of flamenco coming from the mews and, suddenly, a roar of laughter out of the dark. Half drawing the curtains, she switched on her bedside light with a sigh and untied her bathrobe, slipping it from her bare shoulders. The light was dim and the small antique mirror which stood on her low chest was the other side of the room, but even from where she stood she could see. Her body was evenly tanned save for the slight bikini mark, but now there were other marks, marks which had not been there before. Her neck was swollen, and covered with angry bruises. For a moment she could not move. She could not breathe. She stood transfixed, her eyes on the mirror, then she ran naked to the bathroom, dragging the main pull-switch on, flooding the room with harsh cold light from the fluorescent strip in the ceiling. She grabbed her bath towel and frantically scrubbed at the condensation which still clung to the large mirror, then she looked at herself again. Her neck was violently bruised. She could even make out the individual fingermarks in the contusions on the front of her throat. She stared at herself for a long time before walking slowly to the living room and, kneeling down beside the phone, which still lay on the coffee table, she did not even realise she had memorised Carl Bennet’s number until she had dialled it. There was a series of clicks, then the answering machine spoke. Jo slammed the receiver down and glanced up at the clock on her desk. It was nearly midnight. For a moment she contemplated ringing Sam. Her fingers hovered over the dial, then her hands dropped to her sides. Nick might have gone back to the flat, and besides, she knew without a shadow of doubt that whatever Sam or Nick might think she had made up her mind to return to Carl Bennet. Slowly she made her way back towards her bedroom. She was shaking violently, beads of perspiration standing out on her forehead. Somewhere in the distance she heard a rumble of thunder. The storm was coming back. She walked to the window and stood looking out at the London night. It was only at the sound of a soft appreciative whistle from somewhere in the banks of dark windows behind the mews that she realised she was standing there naked in the lamplight. With a wry smile she turned away and switched off the light, then she climbed into bed and lay staring up at the darkness. It was very early when she woke and the room was cold and fresh from the wide-open windows. Shivering, Jo got up and put on her robe. For a moment she did not dare look at her reflection in the mirror. The pain in her throat had gone as had her headache and all she felt now was an overwhelming longing for coffee. In the bathroom she dashed cold water over her face and reached for her toothbrush. Only then did she raise her eyes to the mirror. There wasn’t a single mark on her throat. At the flat in South Audley Street the following evening Nick threw himself down into the armchair facing the windows and held out his hand for the drink Sam had poured for him. ‘I see it didn’t take you long to find my booze,’ he said with weary good humour. ‘You can afford it.’ Sam looked at him enquiringly. ‘So, what did you want to see me about? It must be important if it brings you here from the lovely Miss Curzon.’ Nick sat forward, clasping his glass loosely between his fingers. He sighed. ‘I haven’t seen Judy for two days, Sam. If you want to know, I spent last night in an hotel. I went to Judy’s then I couldn’t face going in.’ He paused. ‘I want to talk to you about Jo. How did you find her on Saturday?’ ‘Tense. Excitable. Hostile.’ Sam was thoughtful. ‘But not, I think, in any danger. She was thrown by what happened at Dr Bennet’s, but quite capable of handling it, as far as it went on that occasion.’ ‘But you are worried about her being hypnotised again?’ Sam swirled the ice cubes around in his glass. ‘I am worried, yes, and I spoke to Bennet this morning about it.’ He glanced at Nick. ‘Unfortunately the man was on the defensive. He seemed to think I was trying to interfere and spouted a whole bag of crap about medical ethics at me. However, I shall persevere with him in case Jo goes back to him. Tell me, why are you still so interested? I should have thought the beautiful Miss Curzon took up most of your time these days, and if she doesn’t, she ought to!’ Nick stood up. ‘I still care for Jo, Sam, and there is something wrong. On Sunday she and I went to Suffolk. She was taken ill –’ He stood staring out of the window towards the park as he drained his glass. ‘There was something very strange about what happened. We were talking during a violent thunderstorm and she had some kind of fit. The local quack said it was exhaustion, but I’m not so sure he was right.’ Putting his glass down, he held his hands out in front of him, flexing the fingers one by one. ‘I think it was in some way related to what happened at Bennet’s on Friday.’ Slowly Sam shook his head. ‘I doubt it. What were you doing in Suffolk anyway?’ He was watching Nick carefully. ‘Just visiting Jo’s grandmother.’ ‘I see.’ Sam stood up abruptly. ‘So, you’re still in with the family, are you? Nice, rich, respectable Nick! Does grandma know you’re living with someone else?’ ‘I expect so.’ Nick stared at him, astonished at his sudden vehemence. ‘Jo tells her most things. Sam, about Jo’s illness –’ ‘I’ll go over and see her.’ ‘You can’t. She’s taken the phone off the hook and she’s not answering the door.’ ‘You tried?’ ‘Earlier this evening.’ ‘She wasn’t ill –’ Nick laughed wryly. ‘Not too ill to tell me to bugger off over the intercom.’ Sam smiled. ‘In that case I should stop worrying. The whole thing will have blown over in another few days. She’ll write her article and forget all about it. And I’ll have a word with Bennet to make sure he won’t see her again, just in case she does take it into her head to try. But I’m not taking any of this regression bit too seriously and neither should you. As to the fainting fit, it probably was heat exhaustion. A day’s rest and she will be right as rain.’ Nick did not look particularly convinced as he turned his back on the sunset and held out his glass for a refill. ‘That is what she said when I dropped her off on Sunday night.’ ‘Then she’s a sensible girl. Hold on, I’ll get some more ice.’ Sam disappeared towards the kitchen. With a sigh Nick walked over to the coffee table and picked up the top book on the pile which was there. It was a biography of King John, borrowed from the London Library. Surprised, he flipped it open at the place at the back, marked by an envelope. There, in the voluminous index, underlined in red pencil, was the name Briouse, Matilda of. Putting the book down, he glanced curiously at the others. A two-volume history of Wales, the Everyman edition of Gerald of Wales’s Itinerary and Poole’s volume of The Oxford History of England. ‘Phew!’ Nick let out a quiet whistle. Gently he put the books back in place and moved away from the table. ‘So, you’re not taking it seriously, brother mine,’ he whispered thoughtfully. ‘Like hell you’re not!’ It was Tuesday morning before Carl Bennet could see Jo. Sarah Simmons was waiting, as before, at the head of the stairs, her restrained manner barely hiding her excitement as she led Jo through into Bennet’s consulting room. He was waiting for her by the open window, his glasses in his hand. ‘Joanna! I am so glad you came back.’ He eyed her as she walked towards him, noting the paleness of her face beneath her tan. Her smile, however, was cheerful as she shook hands with him. ‘I explained what happened on the phone,’ she said. ‘I had to come and find out why. If it had anything to do with the past, that is.’ He nodded. ‘Your throat was bruised, you said.’ Putting on his glasses he tipped her chin gently sideways and peered at her neck. ‘No one else saw this phenomenon?’ ‘No. It was gone by yesterday morning.’ ‘And there has been no recurrence of pain or any of the other symptoms?’ ‘None.’ She threw her canvas bag down on the chesterfield. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if I imagined the whole thing.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘We can’t be sure that it had anything at all to do with your regression, Joanna. It is, to be honest, so unlikely as to be almost impossible. It presupposes a degree of self-hypnosis on your part that I find hard to credit and even if that were possible, we had no intimations that anyone tried to strangle you in your previous existence. However –’ he drew his breath in with a hiss ‘– what I suggest is that we try another regression, but very differently this time. I propose to regress you to an earlier period. Your Matilda was scarcely more than a child when we met her last. Let us try and find her again when she is even younger, and when, hopefully,’ he grinned disarmingly, ‘the personality is less strong and more malleable. I intend to keep a tight control of the session this time, and before we start, whilst we drink our first cup of coffee – please, Sarah –’ he laughed in suppressed excitement, ‘I suggest that you and I draw up a list of questions which I can ask her. Knowing who she is and the period to which she belongs makes everything so much easier.’ He picked up a volume from his desk and held it out. ‘See.’ He was as pleased as a child. ‘I have brought a history book. Last night I read up the chapter on the reign of King Henry II and there are pictures, so I even know roughly about her clothes.’ Jo laughed. ‘You’ve done more research than me, then. Once I knew she was real, and what happened to her –’ She shivered. ‘I suppose I was more interested with the technicalities of regression originally and I never considered that it would really happen to me. Or how I would feel if it did. But now that it has, it’s so strange. It’s an invasion of my privacy, and I’m conscious all the time that there is someone else there in my head. Or was. I’m not sure I like the feeling.’ ‘I can’t say I’m surprised. People react in different ways. Interest, fear, resentment, complete disbelief, mild amusement. By far the most common reaction is to refuse to have anything more to do with regression.’ ‘For fear of becoming involved,’ Jo nodded almost absently. ‘But I am involved. Not only professionally, but, somehow, inside myself. Because I’ve shared such intimate emotions with her. Fear … pain … horror … love.’ She shook her head deprecatingly. ‘Am I being very gullible?’ ‘No,’ Bennet smiled. ‘You are sensitive. You empathise with the personality.’ ‘To the extent where I develop the symptoms I’m describing.’ Jo bit her lip. ‘But then while it’s happening I am Matilda, aren’t I?’ She paused again. ‘I don’t understand about my throat, but after Friday’s regression …’ She stopped in mid-sentence. If she told Bennet about Sam’s warning, he might refuse to risk hypnotising her again, and she did want very much to go back to Matilda’s life. She wanted to know what happened. ‘You’ve had other symptoms?’ Bennet persisted quietly. She looked away. ‘My fingers were very bruised. I hurt them on the stones of the castle wall, watching William kill those men …’ Her voice died away. ‘But they only felt bruised. There was nothing to see.’ He nodded. ‘Anything else?’ She could feel his eyes on her face as she took her coffee from Sarah and sipped it. Did the ability to hypnotise her mean he could read her thoughts as well? She bit her lip, deliberately trying to focus her attention elsewhere. ‘Only stray shivers and echoes. Nothing to worry about.’ She grinned at him sheepishly. ‘Nothing to put me off, I assure you. I would like to go back. Amongst other things I want to find out how she met Richard de Clare. Is it possible to be that specific in your questions?’ Had he guessed, she wondered, just how much, secretly, she longed to see Richard again? Bennet shrugged. ‘We’ll see. Why don’t we start and find out?’ He watched as she took out her tape recorder and set it on the ground beside her as she had done before, the microphone in her lap. She switched on the recorder then at last she lay back on the long leather sofa and closed her eyes. Every muscle was tense. She was hiding something from him. He knew that much. And more than that understandable desire to see Richard again. But what? He thought once again about the phone call he had had from Samuel Franklyn and he frowned. The call had come on Monday morning before Sarah had arrived and Sarah knew nothing about it. He had not allowed Franklyn to say much, but there had been enough to know that there was some kind of problem. He looked at his secretary, who had seated herself quietly once more in her corner, then he turned back to Jo. He licked his lips in concentration and taking a deep breath he began to talk. Jo listened intently. He was talking about the sun again. Today it was shining and the sky was clear and uncomplicated after the weekend of storms. But there was no light behind her eyelids now. Nothing. Her eyes flew open in a panic. ‘Nothing is happening,’ she said. ‘It isn’t going to work again. You’re not going to be able to do it!’ She pushed herself up against the slippery leather back of the sofa. The palms of her hands were damp. Bennet smiled calmly. ‘You’re trying too hard, Jo. You mustn’t try at all, my dear. Come, why not sit over here by the window?’ He pulled a chair forward from the wall and twisted it so that it had its back to the light. ‘Fine, now, we’ll do some little experiments on you to see how quick your eyes are. There’s no hurry. We have plenty of time. We might even decide to leave the regression until another day.’ He smiled as he felt under his desk for a switch which turned on a spotlight in the corner of the room. Automatically Jo’s eyes went towards it, but he had seen already that her knuckles on the arm of the chair were less white. ‘Is she as deeply under as before?’ Sarah’s cautious question some ten minutes later broke into a long silence. Bennet nodded. ‘She was afraid this time. She was subconsciously fighting me, every inch of the way. I wish I knew why.’ He looked at the list of questions in his hand, then he put it down on his desk. ‘Perhaps we’ll discover eventually. But now it just remains to find out if we can re-establish contact with the same personality at all! So often one can’t, the second time around.’ He chewed his lip for a second, eyeing Jo’s face. Then he took a deep breath. ‘Matilda,’ he said softly. ‘Matilda, my child. There are some things I want you to tell me about yourself.’ 13 (#ulink_dcadf127-1e9e-5d85-b11b-cb5d0d484fa7) The candle on the table beside his bed was guttering as Reginald de St Valerie lay back against his pillow and began to cough again. His eyes, sunk in the pallid hollows of his face, were fixed anxiously on the door as he pulled another rug round his thin shoulders. But it made no difference. He knew it was only a matter of time now before the creeping chill in his bones reached his heart, and then he would shiver no more. His face lightened a little as the door was pushed open and a girl peered round it. ‘Are you asleep, Father?’ ‘No, my darling. Come in.’ Cursing the weakness which seemed to have spread even to his voice, Reginald watched her close the heavy door carefully and come towards him. Involuntarily he smiled. She was so lovely, this daughter of his; his only child. She was tall, taller than average. She had grown this last year, until she was a span at least higher even than he, with her dark auburn hair spread thickly on her shoulders and down her back and the strange green eyes flecked with gold which she had from her dead mother. She was all he had left, this tall graceful girl. And he was all she had, and soon … He shrugged. He had made provision long ago for the future when he had betrothed her to William de Braose. And now the time had come. ‘Sit here, Matilda. I must talk to you.’ Feebly he patted the rugs which covered him and the lines of his face softened as she took his hand, curling up beside him, tucking her long legs under her. ‘Will you eat something today, Father? If I prepare it myself and help you with the spoon?’ she coaxed, nestling close. ‘Please?’ She could feel the new inexorable cold in his hand and it frightened her. Gently she pressed it to her cheek. ‘I’ll try, Matilda, I’ll try.’ He pushed himself a little further up on the pillows with an effort. ‘But listen, sweetheart, there is something I must tell you first.’ He swallowed, trying to collect his thoughts as he gazed sadly into her anxious face. So often he had hoped this moment would never come. That somehow, something would happen to prevent it. ‘I have written to Bramber, Matilda. Sir William de Braose has agreed that it is time the marriage took place. His son could have married long since, but he has waited until you were of age. You must go to him now.’ He tried not to see the sudden anguish on her face. ‘But Father, I can’t leave you, I won’t.’ She sat up straight, her eyes bright with tears. ‘Nothing will make me leave you. Ever.’ He groped for her hand again, and held it gently. ‘Sweetheart. It is I who must leave you, don’t you see? And I couldn’t die happy without knowing that you were wed. Please. To please me, go to him. Make him an obedient wife.’ He was seized by another fit of coughing and Matilda slipped from the end of the bed and ran to the pillow, cradling his head on her breast. Her eyes were full of tears as she clutched him, desperately clinging to him. ‘You can’t die, Father, you can’t. You’ll get well. You will. You always have before.’ The tears spilled over and dropped onto her father’s grey head. He looked up, trying to smile, and raised a shaky hand to brush her cheek. ‘Don’t cry, darling. Think. When you marry William you will be a great lady. And his mother will take care of you. Come, please don’t be so unhappy.’ ‘But I want to stay with you.’ She still clung to him stubbornly. ‘I hate William, you know that. He’s ugly and he’s old and he smells.’ Reginald sighed. So often he had given her her way, this girl of his, and he longed to do so again. But this time he had to stand firm. For her own sake. He closed his eyes, smelling the lavender of her gown, remembering. She was so like her mother had been: wilful; beautiful; wild … Sleep came so suddenly these days. He could feel his lids drooping. There was no way of fighting it. He supposed death would come like that and he welcomed the thought. He was too old now, too racked with pain to regret the young man’s dream of death on the field of battle. Smiling a little he relaxed against her, feeling the soft warmth of her body, the gentle brush of her lips on his hair. Yes. She was very like her mother … Instinctively Matilda ran first to the chapel for comfort. She pushed open a heavy door and peered in. It was empty. She could see the statue of Our Lady, lit by the single flickering candle which stood on the altar. Running to it she crossed herself and knelt. ‘Please, Holy Mother, don’t let him die. You mustn’t let my father die. I won’t marry William de Braose, so there’s no point in trying to make me.’ She gazed up at the serene stone face of the statue. It was cold in the chapel. A stray draught coming from the slit window high in the stone vault above the altar sent a shiver of cold down her spine and she wondered suddenly with a tremor of fear if anyone was listening to her at all; if there was anyone there to care. She pushed away the thought and, ashamed, she crossed herself again. ‘You must help me, Holy Mother, you must.’ Her tears were blinding her again and the candlelight hazed and flickered. ‘There is no one else. If you don’t help me, I’ll never pray to you again. Never.’ She bit her lip, scared by what she had said. She shouldn’t have done it, but the chapel held such echoing emptiness … Scrambling to her feet, she crept out, closing the door softly behind her. If she could find no comfort there, there was only one other thing to do. Ride. When you galloped fast into the wind you could forget everything but the speed and the cold and the power of the horse between your legs. She ran to the chamber she shared with her nurse and the two maidens who were supposed to be her friends, and rummaged through the rail, looking for her heaviest mantle. ‘Matilda, come to your embroidery now, ma p’tite.’ She could hear her nurse Jeanne’s voice from the garderobe where she was sorting clothes. ‘Tilda?’ The tone sharpened. Grabbing a fur-lined cloak, Matilda threw it round her shoulders and tiptoed to the door. Then, deaf to Jeanne’s indignant shouts she pelted down the spiral stairs. ‘Shall I come with you, young mistress?’ The groom who held her excited horse knew as well as she that her father had forbidden her to ride alone. She flung herself into the saddle. ‘Not this time, John. Blame me if anyone’s angry.’ She raised her whip and set the horse across the high slippery cobbles of the courtyard at a canter. Once beyond the crowded muddy village she pushed the animal into a gallop, feeling her hair stream behind her in the cold wind. Galloping like this, fast, she didn’t have time to think. Not about her poor, sick father, or about the squat, red-haired man at Bramber who was destined to become her husband. Nothing mattered out here. Here she was free and happy and alone. At the top of the hill she reined in breathlessly, pushing her tangled hair back as the wind tugged it across her eyes. She turned to look back at the village far away in the valley, and her father’s castle behind it. I need never go back, she thought suddenly. If I don’t want to, I need never go back. I could ride and ride and ride and they would never find me. Then she thought of Reginald lying so pale in his chamber, and imperceptibly she straightened her shoulders. For his sake she would go back. For his sake she would marry William de Braose. For his sake she would go to the end of the world if he asked it of her. Sadly she turned the horse and began to pick her way back down the steep track. For two days before the wedding the attendants of the de Braose household crowded them out, overspilling from the small castle and its walls into tents and marquees on the edge of the village. Old Sir William, a wiry hawklike man with piercing grey eyes, spent much of his time closeted with Matilda’s father, while his son hunted across the hills, sparing no time for his betrothed. Matilda was extremely glad. She had been horrified by her glimpse of the younger William, whom she had barely remembered from their introduction at their betrothal years before. She had forgotten, or perhaps then he had been different. His reddish hair and beard now framed a coarse heavily veined face with an uncompromisingly cruel mouth. He had kissed her hand once, running his eye expertly up her body, judging her, Matilda thought furiously, as if she had been a filly he was contemplating buying for his stable, then he turned away, more interested in his host’s hunting dogs than in his bride. Reginald was too ill even to be carried in a litter to the wedding ceremony, so he summoned his daughter and new son-in-law to his room as soon as they returned from the parish church. Matilda had spent the first part of the day in a frozen daze. She allowed herself to be dressed in her finest gown and mantle without interest. She followed Jeanne down to the hall and gave her arm to old Sir William without a flicker of emotion on her face. Then she walked with him to the church without any sign that she heard or even saw the gay procession of men and women who followed them. But her fists were bunched so tightly into her skirt that her nails had bitten into her palms. ‘Please, Holy Mother, don’t let it happen. Please, Holy Mother, don’t let it happen.’ She was murmuring the phrase over and over again under her breath like a magic charm. If she kept on saying it, without stopping, it would work. It must work. She scarcely saw when Sir William left her side in the church porch and his son took his place. She didn’t hear a word of the service as the old half-blind priest gabbled the form, shivering in his surplice as the autumn leaves tossed round them and a few drops of icy rain splattered in under the porch roof. Even later, as she knelt to kiss her father’s hand, she was dazed. It was not until he put gentle fingers beneath her chin and tilted it a little to look into her face, murmuring, ‘Be happy, sweetheart, and pray for your old father,’ that her control broke. She flung herself at him, clinging to him, her fingers wound into the wool of the blankets. ‘Please, please don’t die. Darling, darling Papa, don’t make me go with him, please –’ Hastily William stepped forward, his hands on her arms, and he dragged her off the bed. ‘Control yourself, madam,’ he hissed at her sharply. ‘Come away. Can’t you see your father’s upset? Don’t make it worse. Come quickly.’ His voice was rough. Tearing herself free of his grip, Matilda rounded on him. ‘Don’t touch me!’ she almost spat at him, her eyes blazing. ‘I’ll stay with my father as long as I please, sir!’ William was taken aback. He stepped forward awkwardly, frowning. ‘You must do as I say, Matilda. You’re my wife now.’ ‘Yes, I’m your wife, God pity me,’ she whispered in anguish, ‘but I’m his daughter first.’ She was shaking with fear and anger. ‘Matilda, please.’ Reginald stretched out painfully to lay his fingers on her arm. ‘Obey your husband, sweetheart. Leave me to sleep now.’ He tried to smile, but his lids were falling. The familiar blackness was closing round him. ‘Go, sweetheart,’ he mumbled. ‘Please go.’ With one longing agonised look at him Matilda turned away. She glanced at William as he reached forward to take her arm and then dodged past him, gathering her skirts in her hands and, blind with tears, she ran towards the door. The wedding feast was interminable. She only nibbled at the food on the platter in front of her which she shared with her husband. He was drinking vast quantities of wine, roaring with laughter at the bawdy jokes of the men near him, rocking towards her every so often, trying to plant a kiss on her cheek or her shoulder. She gritted her teeth and reached for her own goblet, and, trying not to let the tiny seed of panic inside her grow, she kept thinking of the peaceful warm glow of the candle in her father’s room, and of the gentle, lined face on the pillow and the loving reassuring touch of his hands. The bed was strewn with flowers. Matilda stood, clutching her embroidered bedgown tightly round her, not daring to look at her husband as he chased the last of the giggling women out of the room. His face was blurred with wine and lust as he turned triumphantly to her at last. ‘So. My wife.’ He leered a little, his own fur-trimmed gown held round his waist by a gilded leather girdle. She stood transfixed, her back to the high shuttered window, her hands once more tight fists at her sides. She was much taller than he, but so slight he could have snapped her in half with one blow from his enormous fist. Her heart was beating very fast as he raised his hands to her shoulders. She wanted to push him away, to run, to scream, but somehow she forced herself to stand still as he loosed her girdle and thrust the gown back from her shoulders. She made no attempt to hold it as it fell, sliding from her unresponsive arms to the floor, billowing out in blues and silvers around her knees, leaving her standing before him, naked. Almost wonderingly he raised a hand and touched her shoulder, drawing his calloused fingers down across her breast. Then he seized her, crushing her to him, running his hand down her back, over her buttocks, fondling, caressing. Her hair fell in a dark auburn curtain across her face as he lifted her onto the bed and she made no attempt to push it away. She lay limp after a first involuntary struggle of protest at what he did, biting her lips in pain, trying not to cry out as the agony of his thrusting tore through her and the first dark drops of blood stained the bridal sheets. Then at last with a grunt he rolled off her and lay still. She remained dry-eyed in the dark and tried to ease her aching body on the hot mattress, not seeing the embroidered tester which hung over the bed. Some of the flowers had been caught beneath them and crushed, and their sweet scent mingled with the reek of sweat and drying blood. Reginald de St Valerie died at dawn. Lying sleepless in her chamber watching the pale light in the stuffy room, Matilda had ceased to hear the regular snores of her husband. It was as if some part of her had slipped away to hover over the deathbed, watching her father, seeing his face relax without struggle at last into peace. ‘He waited to see me married,’ she whispered into the dark. ‘He only waited for that.’ And then she turned at last to her pillow and began despairingly to cry. The day after the funeral the long procession of horses and waggons set off across a bleak autumnal southern England towards Sussex. Matilda rode, upright and proud, beside her husband, her face set. She was determined not to weep now, not to show any emotion to her husband or his followers. Somewhere behind her in the train of riders was Jeanne, her nurse. Jeanne had understood, had cradled her head and rocked her as she watched beside her father’s body. Jeanne had mixed her wine and herbs to drink, ‘pour le courage, ma p’tite,’ and muttered magic words over the bed in which Matilda and William had slept, to help ease the girl’s troubles. Each night had been the same. He had not spared her for her father’s sake, nor had she expected it. The pain, after the first time, had not been so bad. The elder William rode in front of them, the chestnut rump of his horse glistening beneath its gay caparison in the pale autumn sunlight. They were nearing a wayside chapel when Matilda, keeping her eyes fixed resolutely on her father-in-law’s broad back, was surprised to see him raise his hand, bringing the long procession to a halt. Then he turned in the high saddle. ‘I’ll wait, my son,’ he announced curtly. Matilda glanced at her husband, who was dismounting. He ducked under his horse’s head, and came to her side. ‘I always pray at Holy Places,’ he announced self-righteously. ‘I should like you to accompany me.’ He helped her down from the horse and taking her arm ushered her into the chapel. Puzzled, she glanced over her shoulder. No one else had made a move to join them. The entire cort?ge stood in the settling dust, uninterested, bored, as their lord’s eldest son and his bride ducked into the dark chapel. For some reason Matilda felt suddenly afraid. She knelt reluctantly beside her husband as he prayed. No words came to her own lips; her throat was dry. The Virgin had not heeded her supplications when her help had been needed so much. Now it was too late. What was the point of praying? She glanced sideways at William. His eyes were closed, the short sandy lashes veiling the pale irises, the coarse folded flesh of his chin resting on the thick wool of his blue mantle. On his shoulder there was a large circular brooch, at its centre a purple amethyst. The stone caught a little spark of light from the candle at the shrine. They stopped a dozen times like this on the long journey and each time Matilda, too afraid to refuse, alone dismounted with her husband. But not once did she try to pray. Bramber Castle was built high on a hill overlooking the seamarshes which flanked the River Adur. From far away they could see the tall keep rising against the burnished blue sky while gulls circled the towers, their laughing cries echoing across the salty reed beds. Bertha, daughter of Milo of Gloucester, heiress of Brecknock and Upper Gwent, the wife of Sir William de Braose and Matilda’s mother-in-law, was waiting for her husband and son in the lofty great hall. She was a stout woman of middle height, some years older than her husband, with white hair falling in long plaits to her waist. Her eyes were brown as hazelnuts and very shrewd. She kissed Matilda coolly and then held her at arms’ length, scrutinising her closely until the girl felt herself blushing uncomfortably beneath the uncompromising gaze. ‘So, my son’s bride,’ Bertha announced at last. ‘Welcome to Bramber, child.’ The words were not softened by a smile. Then Bertha turned aside, drawing her son with her, and Matilda was left standing alone. After a moment, William’s father joined her. He smiled. ‘I hope it won’t seem too strange, my dear,’ he murmured. ‘My son is a good man. Harsh sometimes, but good.’ Matilda lifted her green eyes to his and forced herself to return his smile, which was friendly enough. ‘Thank you, sir,’ she whispered. ‘I am sure I shall do very well with William.’ Happiness, they both knew, was not part of the marriage contract. She became conscious slowly that Sir William’s eyes had strayed beyond her. Someone was standing behind her near the hearth. ‘Lord de Clare! My wife told me you were here. Greetings.’ The old man stretched out his hands with sudden warmth. Turning, Matilda saw he was addressing a slim young man, dressed in a scarlet mantle caught at the shoulder with gold. He had laughing hazel eyes and a shock of corn-coloured hair. ‘Sir William, I was persuaded by Lady Bertha to wait for you.’ Lord de Clare stepped forward to clasp his host’s hands. Then he turned to Matilda. He bowed smiling. ‘Madam?’ ‘This is my daughter-in-law,’ Sir William put in hastily. ‘Matilda, Lord de Clare has threatened this long time to ride over from his castle at Tonbridge to see my mews, haven’t you, my boy?’ The old man was plainly delighted to see his visitor. ‘Lord de Clare.’ Matilda curtseyed and her heart inexplicably began to beat a little faster as she surveyed the young man’s handsome face. He grinned. ‘Do you enjoy hawking, madam? It should be an exciting day. I’m told there is good sport on these marshes.’ ‘Indeed there is!’ Sir William put in good-naturedly. ‘You must join us, Matilda. Watch my birds trounce this young fellow’s, eh?’ He chuckled broadly. Matilda didn’t hear him. She was drowning in the young man’s gaze. ‘So, it was too late when they first met,’ Sarah whispered softly. ‘She was already married to that bore! See if she and Richard ever managed to meet alone. Please, Carl. Ask her.’ Bennet frowned. Nevertheless he leaned forward a little as he put the question. ‘Did you go hawking with Lord de Clare, Matilda? Did you manage to speak to him again?’ Jo smiled. Her eyes, open and dancing, were the eyes of a carefree girl. ‘We rode away from the others, south towards Sompting. The forest over the Downs is thick with oak trees there and their leaves were gold and brown with autumn. Richard flew his peregrine when we got to the chalk fields and I pretended to fall from my horse. I knew he would dismount and come to help me. I wanted him to hold me in his arms so much …’ ‘My lady! My lady, are you hurt?’ Richard’s face was near hers as she lay still on the ground. He glanced behind him for help, then gently he cradled her head on his knees. ‘My lady?’ His voice was sharper now. ‘For the love of Christ, speak to me!’ She moved slightly, letting out a small moan. His face was close to hers. She could see, through scarcely opened eyes, the fine hairs growing again on his chin where he had been shaved that morning, and feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek. He smelled of leather and horse-sweat, quite unlike the musty reek her husband habitually exuded. She nestled a little closer in his lap and felt suddenly his hands inside her mantle. Was he feeling for her heart, or for her breast beneath the pale linen? She stiffened imperceptibly and at once he straightened, moving his hand. ‘My lady?’ he said again. ‘Speak to me. Tell me if you are hurt.’ She opened her eyes and smiled at him, her breath catching in her throat as she found his face so very close to her own. ‘I must have fallen,’ she whispered. ‘Can you rise?’ He was trying to push her up as, behind them, the sound of horses’ hooves thundering on the hollow chalk announced the rest of the party. ‘I can manage! Thank you.’ Crossly she jumped to her feet, brushing leaves from her mantle, then she turned from him in a flurry of skirts and ran to scramble back onto her horse alone. ‘Why didn’t you let me go on longer?’ Jo asked when Bennet woke her from her trance. She glanced down at the spool on her tape recorder, which was barely a quarter used. ‘I want to know what happened. I wanted to see Richard again.’ Bennet frowned. ‘It was going well, Jo, and we have learned a lot from this session. I don’t want you to grow tired.’ She intercepted the worried look he cast in her direction. ‘Did you find out if someone tried to strangle me?’ she asked. She was watching his face closely. He shook his head. ‘At the period you described today you were scarcely more than a child – you didn’t seem to know quite how old you were yourself. But if anyone tried to strangle Matilda it was at some time far in her future, Jo. Not when she was riding on the Downs with Richard de Clare.’ ‘But something did go wrong. Something worried you?’ ‘Nothing at all. Nothing.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘In fact I would like to pursue our experiment further with you, if you agree.’ ‘Of course I agree. I want to know more about Matilda and Richard. And what happened after the massacre … just a bit more.’ Jo grinned as she picked up her recorder and stuffed it into her bag. ‘But I warn you now, I’m not going to chase her story endlessly. There’s no point in that and I have no intention of getting obsessive about all this. But just one or two more sessions as soon as you can fit me in.’ Sarah rose and went to fetch the diary. As she did so Bennet came round the desk. He was frowning again. ‘Joanna. I must tell you that I had a phone call yesterday from a colleague who says he is treating you, a Dr Franklyn.’ Jo straightened abruptly, swinging her bag onto her shoulder. She tightened her lips. ‘Oh?’ she said suspiciously. ‘He has asked me for a meeting to discuss your case.’ ‘No!’ Jo threw the bag down on the sofa. ‘No, Dr Bennet. Sam Franklyn is not “treating” me as you put it. He is interested in this business because he worked for Michael Cohen years ago. He wants me to stop the regressions because he doesn’t want me to write about them. Believe me, he is not treating me for anything.’ Bennet took a step backwards. ‘I see.’ He glanced at her beneath his eyebrows. ‘Well, I told him I had to ask your permission, of course.’ ‘And I will not give it. I have already told him to leave me alone. I am sorry he rang you, I really am. He should not have bothered you.’ ‘That is all right, Jo.’ Bennet took the diary from Sarah and frowned at it through his spectacles. ‘Friday afternoon at three o’clock. Would that suit you? I shall make it my last appointment and then we need not be hurried. And I shall tell Dr Franklyn if he rings again that you would rather I did not speak to him.’ After she had gone Sarah turned to Bennet. ‘She is hiding something, isn’t she?’ He shrugged. ‘I suspect so.’ Sarah raised an eyebrow. ‘So. Will you talk to this Dr Franklyn?’ Carl Bennet smiled. He tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger. ‘I’m sure that in the course of events he and I will meet. It is unthinkable that I should not run into him, because a colleague of Cohen’s would be an invaluable person with whom to discuss my work.’ He closed the diary and handed it back to Sarah. ‘I would not discuss Joanna with him, of course, unless I thought it to be in her best interests.’ Sarah smiled thinly. ‘Which it would be, of course. Tell me. What do you really think about the bruises she told us about? Do you think they were real? No one else saw them.’ ‘Oh, I’m sure they were real.’ He walked to the window and glanced down into the street. ‘But you think they were of hysterical origin?’ Sarah’s voice was hushed. ‘She’s not the type, surely?’ ‘Who can tell who is the type?’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘Who can ever tell? And if she isn’t the type, and the bruises were there …’ He paused. ‘If she isn’t,’ Sarah echoed quietly, ‘then the man she was with really did try to strangle her.’ As arranged, Jo met Sam on Wednesday evening at Luigi’s. He took one look at her and grinned across the table. ‘Let’s order before you hit me with your handbag, Jo.’ ‘I’ll hit you with more than a handbag if you try a trick like that again,’ Jo said. Her voice was cool as she glanced at him over the menu. ‘I absolutely forbid you to talk to Carl Bennet about me. What I do is none of your business. I am not your patient. I have never been your patient, and I don’t intend to be. What I do and what I write is my own affair. And the people I consult in the course of my research have a right to privacy. I do not expect you to harass them, or me. Is that quite clear?’ ‘OK. I surrender. I’ve said, I apologise.’ He raised his hands. ‘What more can I do?’ ‘Don’t ever go behind my back again.’ ‘You must trust me, Jo. I’ve said I’m sorry. But I am interested. And I do have a right to worry about you. I have more right than you’ll ever know.’ He paused for a moment. ‘So, you decided to defy me and see him again. You’d better tell me what happened. Did you learn anything more about your alter ego?’ ‘A bit.’ Jo relented. ‘About her marriage to William …’ She was watching his face in the candlelight. The restaurant was dark, crowded now at the peak evening hour, and very hot. Sam was sweating slightly as he looked at her, his eyes fixed on her face. The pupils were very small. Without knowing why, she felt herself shiver slightly. ‘Nothing dramatic happened. It was all rather low key after the first session.’ Her voice tailed away suddenly. Low key? The violence! The rape! The agony of that man thrusting his way into her child’s resisting body, silencing her desperate screams with a coarse, unclean hand across her mouth, laughing at her terror. She realised that Sam was still watching her and looked away hastily. ‘Jo?’ He reached across and lightly ran his thumb across her wrist. ‘Are you all right?’ She nodded. ‘Of course. It’s just a bit hot in here.’ She withdrew her hand a little too quickly. ‘Let’s eat. I’m starving.’ They waited in silence as the waiter brought their antipasto. As they were starting to eat, Sam said thoughtfully, ‘William was very close to King John, did you know that?’ Jo stared up at him. ‘You’ve been looking it up?’ ‘A bit. I have a feeling William was much maligned. Historians seem to doubt if the massacre was his idea at all. He was a useful pawn, the man at the sharp end, the one to carry it out and take the blame. But not quite as bad as you seemed to think.’ ‘He enjoyed it.’ Jo’s voice was full of icy condemnation. ‘He enjoyed every moment of that slaughter!’ She shuddered violently and then she leaned forward. ‘Sam. I want you to do something for me. I want you to do whatever you have to do to lift that post-hypnotic suggestion that I forget that first session in Edinburgh. I have to remember what happened!’ ‘No.’ Sam shook his head slowly. ‘No. I’m sorry. I can’t do that.’ ‘You can’t, or you won’t?’ Jo put down her fork with a clatter. ‘I won’t. But I probably couldn’t anyway. It would involve rehypnosis, and I’m not prepared to try and meddle with something Michael Cohen did.’ ‘If you won’t, I’ll get Carl Bennet to do it.’ Jo’s eyes were fixed on his. She saw his jaw muscles tighten. ‘That wouldn’t work, Jo.’ ‘It would. I’ve been reading up about hypnosis. Believe me, I haven’t been sitting around the last few days wondering what is happening to me. There are hundreds of books on the subject and –’ ‘I said no, Jo.’ Sam sat back slowly, moving sideways slightly to ease his long legs under the small table. ‘Remember what I told you. You are too suggestible a subject. And don’t pretend that you are not reacting deeply again because you have proved you are. Not only under hypnosis either. It is possible that you are susceptible to delayed reaction. For instance, Nick has told me what happened at your grandmother’s house.’ Jo looked up, stunned. ‘Nick doesn’t know what happened,’ she said tightly. ‘At least –’ She stopped abruptly. ‘Supposing you tell me what you think happened.’ Sam did not look at her. He was staring at the candle flame as it flared sideways in the draught as someone stood at the next table and reached for their coat. Jo hesitated. ‘Nothing,’ she said at last. ‘I fainted, that’s all. It had nothing to do with anything. So, are you going to help me?’ For a moment he did not answer, lost in contemplation of the candle, the shadows playing across his face. Then once more he shook his head. ‘Leave it alone, Jo,’ he said softly. ‘Otherwise you may start something you can’t finish.’ 14 (#ulink_05634863-a3f0-54ae-aa65-cc7694d0f5d6) ‘May I have the Maclean file, please?’ Nick’s assistant’s voice was becoming bored. ‘For Jim, if it isn’t too much trouble!’ Behind her the office door swung to and fro in the draught from the open window. Nick focused on her suddenly. ‘Sorry, Jane. What did you say?’ ‘The Maclean file, Nick. I’ll try to get Jo again, shall I?’ Jane sighed exaggeratedly. She was a tall, willowy girl whose high cheek-bones and Roedean accent were at variance with the three parallel streaks of iridescent orange, pink and green in her short cropped hair. ‘Though why we go on trying when she is obviously out, I don’t know.’ ‘Don’t bother!’ Nick slammed his pen down on the desk. He bent to rummage for the file and threw it across to her. ‘Jim has remembered that I’m supposed to be going to Paris next Wednesday?’ ‘He’d remembered.’ Jane put on her calming voice. It infuriated Nick. ‘Good. Then from this moment I can leave the office in your hands, can I?’ ‘Why, where are you going until Wednesday?’ Jane held the file clasped to her chest like a shield. ‘Tomorrow the printers, then lunch with a friend, then I said I’d look in at Carters on my way to Hampshire.’ He smiled. ‘Then the blessed weekend. Then Monday and Tuesday I’m in Scotland.’ He closed his case with a snap and picked it up. ‘And now I’m playing hookey for the rest of the afternoon. So if anyone should want me you can tell them to try again in ten days.’ Three minutes after he had left the building the phone rang. It was Jo. Each time Nick had phoned her, Jo had put the phone down. The last time she slammed the receiver down she switched off her typewriter and walked slowly into the bathroom. Turning on the light she gathered her long hair up from her neck and held it on top of her head, then she studied her throat. There still wasn’t a mark on it. ‘So. That proves he did not touch me!’ she said out loud. ‘If anyone really had tried to strangle me the bruises would have been there for days. It was a dream. I was delirious. I was mad! It wasn’t Nick, so why am I afraid of him?’ She walked thoughtfully through into the kitchen and poured a glass of iced tomato juice, then she went back to the typewriter. All she had to do was see him. Even his anger was better than this limbo without him, and once he was there in the flesh, and she reminded herself what he really looked like, surely this strange terror would go? The memory of those eerie, piercing eyes kept floating out of her subconscious, haunting her as she walked around the flat. And they were not even Nick’s eyes. She found she was shivering again as she stared at the half-typed sheet of paper in her machine. On impulse she leaned over and picked up the phone to dial Nick’s office. The phone rang four times before Jane picked it up. ‘Hi, it’s Jo. Can I speak to Nick?’ Jo sipped her juice, feeling suddenly as if a great weight had been lifted off the top of her head. ‘Sorry. You’ve just missed him.’ Jane sounded a little too cheerful. ‘When will he be back?’ Jo put down her glass and began to pluck gently at the curled flex of the phone. ‘Hold on. I’ll check.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘He’ll be back on the twelfth.’ ‘The twelfth,’ Jo repeated. She sat bolt upright. ‘Where has he gone?’ ‘Scotland on Monday and Tuesday, then back and straight over to France on Wednesday morning for a week.’ Jo could hear the smile on Jane’s face. ‘And today and tomorrow?’ Jo could feel her voice turning prickly. ‘Out. Sorry, I don’t know where exactly.’ Jo put down the phone thoughtfully. Then she picked it up again and dialled Judy Curzon. ‘Listen, Judy, I need to see Nick. Will you give him a message please? Tell him I’m seeing Carl Bennet again tomorrow afternoon. That’s Friday – at three. Tell him I’m going to find out what really happened on Sunday, come hell or high water, and if he wants to know he’d better be there. Have you got that?’ There was a long silence on the other end. ‘I’m not a message service,’ Judy replied eventually. Her tone was frosty. ‘I don’t give a screw who you’re going to see tomorrow afternoon, and obviously Nick doesn’t either or you wouldn’t have to ring him here, would you!’ Jo sat looking at the phone for several minutes after Judy rang off, then she smiled. ‘Hoist with your own petard, Miss Clifford,’ she muttered with wry amusement. ‘You walked right into that one!’ ‘Pidwch cael ofon.’ The voice spoke to Matilda again as she stood once more outside the moon-silvered walls of Abergavenny. Then it tried in words she understood. ‘Do not be afraid, my lady. I am your friend.’ His French was halting but dimly she recognised before her the dark Welsh boy who had brought her food the night before. But he was no longer afraid; it was her turn for terror. She did not speak. She felt the hot wetness on her face and she felt him brush the tears away with a gentle hand. ‘You did not know then?’ he stammered. ‘You did not know what was planned at the feast?’ Wordlessly she shook her head. ‘It is not safe for you here, whatever.’ The boy spoke earnestly. ‘My people will seek revenge for the massacre. You must go back into your castle.’ Taking her elbow he tried to turn her back but she found her feet scrabbling agonisingly on the sharp stones of the river path as she fought against him on the slippery ground. ‘No, no. I can’t go back there. I’ll never go back there, never.’ She broke from him and ran a few steps further on, towards the moon. Before it lay the mountains. ‘Where will you go then?’ The boy caught up with her in three strides and stood in front of her again. ‘I don’t know. I don’t care.’ She looked around desperately. ‘I will take you to Tretower.’ The boy spoke, suddenly making up his mind. ‘You will be safe there.’ He took her firmly by the hand and strode out along the river and in a daze, oblivious of her torn and bleeding feet, she followed him. She never knew how long she stumbled on behind him. At one point her strength gave way and she sank onto the ground unable to go further along the steep rough bank of the river. The water ran mockingly pure and silver near her as though no blood had ever stained it. Bending she scooped some of it, icy and clean, into her mouth and then she lay back on the wet grass, her eyes closed. The boy came back for her and coaxed and pleaded, but she was unable to rise. Her back pained spasmodically. She realised suddenly that she was going to lose her baby and she was glad. The boy tugged at her hand, begging her to go with him, continually glancing over his shoulder, obviously worried that they were being followed, and then suddenly he seemed to give up the struggle and he disappeared as quickly and silently as he had come. He has left me to die, she thought, but she was past feeling any fear. She tried to recite the Paternoster, but the words would not come in the right order and she gave up. How would God ever find his way again to this country? she wondered bleakly, and she closed her eyes to shut out the silver trail of the moon in the water. But the boy returned with a shaggy mountain pony and somehow he helped her onto it. They forded a narrow river, the pony picking its way sure-footed through water shadowed now by stark overhanging branches entangled with clinging ivy. They passed the dark shape of Crickhowell Castle in the night, but she did not see it and the boy, apart from detouring slightly to avoid it, did not acknowledge its presence. Somewhere once a vixen screamed and Matilda clutched the pony’s mane as it shied. They left the river and travelled through black unfriendly forest and over hills where the country was silent except for the occasional lonely hoot of an owl and the wind in the branches of the trees. Closing her eyes she rode in a daze of pain and fatigue, not caring where she went or what he intended doing with her. Beneath her the pony, confident even in the dark, followed the boy at a steady pace, slowly climbing through the misty rain. Then she opened her weary eyes in the cold dawn and saw the keep of Tretower at last in the distance. She knew dimly that they must have been seen and been followed by the people of the forest, but for some reason she had been spared. The boy who held her bridle had been her talisman. He turned as they neared the tower and she studied his face in the colourless light. He smiled up at her, a sad, fond, smile. Then he pointed. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘There will be your friends. Go with God and be safe, meistress.’ He released her bridle and he was gone, gliding back into the woods on silent feet. The pony stumbled on some rocks as she guided it as fast as she dared along the winding track towards the castle in the broad valley. She fixed her eye on the tower and refused to look to left or right as her mount carried her at a shambling trot along the path. To her surprise the drawbridge was down and she rode across unchallenged. Had everyone gone mad? Did they not know that the warring Welsh must be everywhere? Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/barbara-erskine/lady-of-hay-an-enduring-classic-gripping-atmospheric-and-u/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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