Lady of Hay (28 page)

Taking a deep breath, Jo left the churchyard and began to walk up the shallow steps cut in the side of the castle hill, across the overgrown depths of the defensive ditch and on toward the ruins.

The top of the hill was a broad flat area of mown grass in the center of which rose another steep-sided hillock, the motte on which the first William de Braose’s wooden keep had been raised in the days of the Conqueror. It was shrouded now by trees, guarded by ancient yews. Very little of the castle remained. A few areas of crumbling wall around the perimeter of the hill where the only invaders were ash and sycamore, hung with the greenish, scented flowers of wild clematis. Only the one tall finger of wall remained rearing into the sky to remind the visitor of the castle’s former glory.

Jo stood staring round her, lost. She could recognize nothing. Slowly she began to walk, seeing her shadow running before her across the grass, looking south toward the sea. Somewhere out there in the forest she had gone hawking with Richard and fallen at his feet to lie with her head on his lap. The forest had gone. Trees climbed the castle hill now, which then had been bare. Only the gap in the Downs was the same. The river was quite different too. So small. Surely then it had been vastly wider and there had been a jetty right there beneath the hill with ships and bustle and noise. The only noise now was the roar of traffic from the broad sweep of the fast road south, carried on the still evening air.

“Are you all right, Jo?” Nick had been following her silently.

She smiled at him. “The only thing I can recognize is the gap where the Downs aren’t.” She laughed wryly. “And the church. I think the tower was the same, though there used to be something on top then. And there was water all around here.” She waved her arm. “I thought I said an hour?” She looked at him closely.

“I didn’t like to leave you, so I parked in the lane at the bottom of the hill. I was afraid…” He hesitated. “Well, that something might happen.”

“So was I.” She put her hands on a fragment of wall, lightly touching the flints and mortar. “I should be able to feel something. I know I’ve been here before—how often have you heard people say that, joking? I do know it, yet I feel nothing. Why?”

“Perhaps you don’t need to.” He touched the wall himself. “Besides, it’s quite possible that you had no particular affinity with Bramber. You probably have no reason to remember it. Matilda spent most of her time in Wales, didn’t she?”

Jo nodded. “You’re right. I expect all her memories are there.” She sighed. “There was something, though—just for a minute, in the church.” She shivered again. “William was so obsessive about religious observance. Do you know, his clerks had to be paid extra because of all the flowery bits of religious pomposity he insisted on adding to all his correspondence—” She stopped abruptly. “I must have read that somewhere—”

Nick took her arm. “Come on, Jo. Let’s get on to Shoreham.”

She shook off his hand. “You were right. I took my clothes off for Sam.” She was staring into the distance. “I thought he was William. He ordered me to do it, Nick.”

“Are you sure?” Nick stared at her grimly.

“I was in the solar of the castle at Brecknock and he stood in front of me and ordered me to undress while the blind man played the flute.”

“William may have ordered you in your dream, Jo. Not Sam, surely. Sam wouldn’t do such a thing.” Nick swallowed uncomfortably.

“Why did I take my clothes off then?” she cried. “Why? If it was just for William I would have described it, not actually done it!”

He frowned. “You’re making a terrible accusation, Jo.”

“There was no tape of what happened,” she whispered. “No one else there. Just Sam and me. And a pile of crumpled clothes.” She shivered again, looking down at the shadow of the castle wall on the grass. “People can’t be forced to do anything against their will while under hypnosis, I know that. But I was Matilda, and I thought he was my husband—”

“No, that’s crap! You’re talking complete, unmitigated crap.” Nick turned away sharply. “I can quite believe that
you
might do anything. I’ve seen you, remember? But Sam? He’d be crazy to try something like that. Besides, nothing happened, did it? Your husband didn’t rape you?” His voice was harsh.

Jo colored. “No, he didn’t rape me, because someone—presumably you—came. But not before he had humiliated me and mocked me and set out to browbeat me like the sexist pig he was. He threatened to whip me, naked, before everyone in the castle, and no doubt if there had been time he would have had me on my knees before he put me on my back.”

She began to walk swiftly down the way they had come.

Nick followed her. “Well, that proves it wasn’t Sam at any rate,” he said grimly. “I don’t see him as kinky.”

“Don’t you?” Jo flashed back. “You surprise me.”

***

Nick glanced at Jo from the phone. She was sitting in the corner of the pub nursing a Scotch and ginger. The noise level in the bar was fairly high. After taking out his diary, he found the number he was looking for and dialed it, leaning against the wall so that he could watch her while he waited, change in hand, for the call to connect. He was thinking about Sam.

Carl Bennet had come in from Gatwick Airport only three-quarters of an hour before. He cursed quietly as his wife came to get him out of the bath.

“Nick Franklyn? What the hell does Nick Franklyn want?” he muttered, wrapping a towel around his middle.

“I don’t know, dear, but he’s in a pay phone.” Melissa Bennet smiled fondly at her husband as he tried to clean the steam off his glasses. “Get rid of him, darling, then come down and eat.”

“Eat, she says.” Bennet snorted as his wife ran down the stairs. “What the hell else does she think I did on that plane?” He picked up the receiver. “Yes?” he barked. His glasses had steamed over again.

Within seconds he was reaching for his notepad. “You are right. I should see her as soon as possible. I could fit her in tomorrow here.” He listened again for a few minutes, frowning with irritation as Nick paused to slot more money into the phone.

“Very well, Mr. Franklyn. Monday at ten. I agree a break would do her good. But should this happen again—anything that worries you—I want you to promise to call me, here, at once.”

He hung up at last and sat still, chewing the inside of his cheek. He sighed. Posthypnotic suggestion was always a dangerous field. To do as Nick Franklyn asked and wipe out the girl’s memory of Matilda forever—that was a sad request. But the man was right. The past had to be controlled. It had to be relegated to where it belonged, otherwise it threatened to take Jo Clifford over and, in so doing, destroy her.

17

Sam opened the front door of the apartment to Judy that evening with a scowl. “I’m packing to go to Edinburgh,” he said curtly. “I’m afraid I can’t spare you much time.”

“You can’t?” Judy threw herself down on a chair. “That’s good, because I don’t require much time. You know of course that by now Nick and Jo are back together.”

“I know they’ve gone down to the boat.” He was watching her closely as he sat down opposite her.

“She doesn’t want him. She is using him. You know that as well as I do, I expect.”

Judy was wearing a pink flying suit that clashed violently with the bitter orange of the upholstery in Nick’s apartment. She threw herself back in the chair, pushing her hands deep into her pockets. “I want Nick back and you want Jo.” She studied his face under her eyelashes, but his expression gave nothing away. “I think we should pool our resources, don’t you?” she went on after a moment.

Sam got up and went to the drinks tray. “Assuming you are even remotely right,” he said slowly, “exactly what resources, as you call them, do you have?” He poured out a stiff gin for each of them and began carefully to slice up a lemon.

Judy smiled. “Information. And a suggestion. You have a clinic or something in Edinburgh, don’t you?”

Sam handed her a glass. “You mean I should whisk Jo off and hospitalize her somewhere, preferably behind locked doors, no doubt, thus leaving the field free for you?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have a clinic, Judy. Nor am I attached to one.” He took a sip from his glass reflectively and went to stand in his favorite position by the window. “Besides, Jo doesn’t need hospitalizing.”

“Yet.”

He turned. “What does that mean exactly?”

“She’s going crazy.”

Laughing, he turned away again. “No, not crazy. A little confused, perhaps. A little frightened. But that is all.” He picked the lemon out of his glass and sucked it. “There is no need for Jo to leave London to aid your plans.” He paused. “I can drive a wedge between her and Nick that will put them farther than four hundred miles apart, I can assure you. I can make Jo hate him. I can make her afraid of him.” He hadn’t raised his voice, but Judy stared at him. His tone had been full of venom.

“You don’t like your brother very much, do you?” she said cautiously.

He grinned. “What makes you think that? I would be doing it for you!”

There was a long pause as they looked warily at one another. “I don’t think so,” Judy said at last. “I don’t think you’re even doing it because you like Jo. I think you’re doing it to hurt Nick.”

Sam laughed out loud. “Maybe. Maybe not. But you’ll be there to pick up the pieces and kiss him better, won’t you!”

***

Nick was sitting in the cockpit of the
Moon Dancer
, the tiller tucked beneath his arm, the sun full on his face as he squinted up at the spread of cream canvas.

“Happy?” He glanced at Jo, who was lying on the cabin roof. She was wearing white jeans, rolled up above the knees, and a striped bikini top. She rested her chin on her hands and grinned at him, her hair blowing across her face. “Happy. Better. Sane. Thanks!”

“And hungry?”

She nodded. “Are we going to stop at Bosham?”

“I don’t see why not. Lunch at the Anchor Bleu and back out on the tide. Or we can spend the rest of the day there. Leave tomorrow. Whichever.”

He adjusted the sheet a little, watching the mainsail wing out before the wind as the huge orange spinnaker flapped for a moment, then ballooned full once more.

Jo licked her lips, tasting the salt from the spray. “Let’s wait and see.” Already she could see the little pointed roof on the tower of Bosham church at the head of the creek. The tide was nearly high, brimming to the edge of the saltings, where a cloud of terns danced over the sparkling ripples. She turned to watch a huge ocean racer draw smoothly past them under power. “I haven’t thanked you for last night,” she said suddenly.

“For what? As I remember, nothing happened.”

“Exactly.” She pushed her sunglasses up into her hair. “You gave me space, Nick. It was what I needed. A super meal, enough Scotch to float the
Titanic
,
and oblivion.”

He laughed. “You certainly look a little less tense.”

“I am. Once out of that apartment I seem to be able to think straight. I’ve behaved like an emotional idiot, allowing myself to be influenced by all this business. Can you imagine? Jo Clifford, cool, businesslike, imperturbable Jo Clifford, allowing herself to be so affected that my body reacted psychosomatically. I shall write the story next week and get it out of my system completely, then I intend to forget all about it.”

Nick glanced at her. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said quietly. “Welcome back, Jo Clifford.”

They anchored in Bosham creek and paddled ashore in the inflatable dinghy. After walking across the long lush grass of the quay meadow, they strolled past the church, breathing in the air heady with honeysuckle and roses, intoxicatingly sweet after the sharp salt of the sea wind, laughing as they dusted aside drifts of white petals from the hedge. They ate a ploughman’s lunch sitting outside the pub in the sun, then walked on slowly through the village hand in hand, watching the tide lap up over the road and slowly draw back, leaving a shining trail of mud and weed. They hardly spoke at all as they walked along the point then back across the causeway to lie for a while side by side on the grass, dozing in the sun.

It was dark before they once more found their dinghy and paddled out beneath the stars to find
Moon Dancer
swinging at her buoy. Jo lay back against the rounded rubber sides of the little boat and stared up at the sky. “Do you know the names of all the constellations?” she asked lazily in the silence.

Nick looked up. “I used to. I’m always meaning to brush up on my astral navigation in case
Dancer
and I decide to head for deep water.”

“Seriously?” She raised her head and looked at him.

“Why not? I can think of worse things to do for a year. Let Jim take over the business.”

She bit her lip silently, watching as he came alongside the boat and reached up to knot the painter to a stanchion. They climbed on board and Nick opened the hatchway to the cabin. Jo did not follow him below. She stood for a moment quite still in the cockpit, staring across the darkly gleaming water. Then she shivered.

Nick had turned on the lights. “A nightcap before bed?” he called.

She did not answer. She was watching the line of orange lights strung like beads along the main A27 at the end of the creek in the distance. With the wind off the sea she couldn’t hear the traffic. All she could hear was the occasional dull slap of water against the planking and a splash as a fish jumped in the darkness. Once more she looked up at the glitter of stars above them, with the broad swathe of the Milky Way like an untidy scarf of samite dragged across the midnight velvet of the sky.

A cold breath of air touched her cheek and she heard the immediate chatter of the halyards against the mast and the chuckle of rippling water beneath the bow. As the wind came around,
Moon Dancer
turned a little across the tide. Somewhere in the dark a nightbird screamed.

Jo climbed down into the cabin. Nick had put the kettle onto the little stove and was sitting on the bunk in the cramped cabin studying a chart of the Solent.

“Would you like to dig out a couple of mugs?” He didn’t look up.

She didn’t move for a moment then slowly she began to unbutton her shirt. She reached for the light switch and flipped it off.

Nick looked up startled. “Hey!” He stopped.

She took off her shirt and then her bra. He could see her breasts by the tiny light from the gas flame beneath the kettle. Holding his breath, he watched as she slipped off her jeans. Then she came and knelt in front of him.

“I’m frightened, Nick,” she whispered. “It’s not all over. It all happened, all those years ago, and the echo of it is still out there.” She nodded toward the sky beyond the open hatch. “My destiny is somehow linked with a woman who lived and died eight hundred years before I was born. I can’t turn my back on her.”

Nick was slowly unbuttoning his own shirt. Gently he reached out and touched her breasts.

“I think you must, Jo. And I think you can.”

He drew her between his knees, the angles of his face harsh in the blue light of the gas. “I’ll make you forget. If it’s the last thing I do, I shall make you forget.”

***

“Are you sure you don’t mind being hypnotized with Mr. Franklyn present?” Carl Bennet looked at Jo closely. Outwardly she was more relaxed than he had yet seen her. She was tanned and smiling, and yet he could sense a tension deep inside her that worried him.

She nodded as she sat down. “I want Nick here, and you do understand I don’t want to be regressed anymore, Dr. Bennet. I want you to blot the whole thing out. Make me forget.”

He nodded slowly. “It is the best thing, I think, my dear, although I must admit I am sorry in many ways. I had wanted an American colleague of mine to see you. I was talking to him in the States and he was hoping to fly over and see you himself—”

“No!” Jo clenched her fists. “I’m sorry too, in a lot of ways. I wanted to know what happened, but I can’t take any more. I really can’t.” She looked at him earnestly. “It’s affecting my health and my work and, for all I know, my sanity as well, so please, put a stop to it now.”

Bennet nodded. “Very well. I agree. So let us begin. I should like you to close your eyes, Joanna, and relax.” He was watching her hands, fisted in her lap. “Completely relax, beginning with your toes…”

“It takes longer each time,” Sarah commented when Jo was at last in a deep trance.

Carl nodded. “She is becoming more and more afraid of what might happen and fighting it. I doubt if we could have progressed much further with her in this state of mind anyway.”

Jo was lying back in her chair passively, her eyes closed, her hands hanging loosely over the armrests. Nick had seated himself unobtrusively in a corner of the room, his eyes fixed on Jo’s face.

“Do you think this will work?” he asked softly.

Bennet shrugged. “It will if it is what she really wants.”

He pulled up a chair next to Jo’s and took her hand gently. “Joanna, can you hear me?”

Jo moved her head slightly. It might have been a nod.

“And you are relaxed and comfortable, still thinking about your weekend at sea?”

She smiled. This time the nod was more definite.

“Good. Now I want you to listen to me, Jo. It is twenty-five days since I first saw you here and you were first regressed. Since then the regressions have caused you much unhappiness and pain. I want you to forget them now, because you yourself want to forget them. When you wake up you will remember only that you had a few strange unimportant dreams and in time even that memory will fade. Do you understand me, Joanna?”

He paused, watching her closely. Jo was motionless but he could see the tension had returned to her hands. Abruptly she opened her eyes and looked at him. “I can’t forget them,” she said softly but distinctly.

Bennet swallowed. “You must forget, Joanna. Matilda is dead. Let her rest.”

Jo smiled sadly. “She cannot rest. I cannot rest…The story has to be told…” Her gaze slipped past him. “Don’t you see, I have to go back, to find out why it all happened. I have to remember. I have to live again that first meeting with John…”

“Stop her!” Nick had jumped to his feet. “Stop her! She’s regressing on her own. Can’t you see?” He grabbed Jo by the shoulders. “Jo! Wake up! For God’s sake, wake up. Don’t do it!”

“Leave her alone!” Bennet’s peremptory order cut through his shout. Jo had gone rigid in her chair, looking straight through him.

“Jo.” It was Bennet who took hold of her now, forcing her to turn her head toward him. “Jo, I want you to listen to me…”

***

“Listen to me! Listen!” William de Braose was standing in front of her, furious. “You will say nothing to the king of what happened on our journey, nothing, do you understand me?”

For a moment Matilda felt the familiar surge of defiance. She met his gaze squarely, mocking his fear, then she looked away. If she fought with him now he would refuse to take her to the king’s presence, and that, above all, she wanted. Meekly she lowered her eyes. “I shall say nothing, my lord,” she whispered.

Gloucester was crowded. The encampment of the king’s followers was laid out between the royal castle and the king’s palace north of the city where King Henry habitually held his Christmas courts, a colorful array of tents with the leopards of the king’s standard rippling from the flagstaff on the great central keep.

As they had arrived they had glimpsed the gleaming Severn River with the fleet of royal galleys moored in lines to the quays, but it was evening before they reached it and the castle, and the de Braose tents were raised next to those of their Marcher neighbors, who had come to attend the betrothal of the king’s youngest son, John, to the Earl of Gloucester’s daughter, Isabella; and it was even later before William, arrayed in his finest clothes, took Matilda at last to wait upon the king.