Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine (reading an ebook TXT) 📕

her wrist and the long curved gash on her arm. "Jo, " she said tentatively. "I couldn't help noticing— the bruises and that awful cut—" She colored slightly. "Tell me if it's none of my business, but, well... you sounded in such a state when you called this morning. " She groaned slightly, her hand to her back. "There is more to this sudden trip than just research, isn't there?"

Jo set down the mug and pulled her sash more tightly around her waist.

"A bit of man trouble, " she admitted reluctantly at last.

"And he did that to you?"

Jo sighed. "He was drunk—far more I think than I realized. I've never seen Nick like that before. "

"Nick?"

Jo laughed wryly. "The man in my life. Correction, the man who was in my life. We'd been having lots of fights and we split up a couple of times, then we got back together and I thought everything was going to be all right. Then suddenly—" She paused in midsentence. "It was to do with my regressions. He doesn't approve of my doing it and he became a bit uptight about a lover I—Matilda—had had in the past.... "

"Richard de Clare?" Janet nodded. "I remember him from the article. He sounded really rather a dish. Every woman's fantasy man!" She broke off with an exclamation. "You mean this Nick knocked you about because you talked about a lover in a previous life while you were being hypnotized?"

Jo lay back on the bed, her arm across her face. "I think that was what it was about. The awful thing was, I think I wanted to tell him about Richard. I wanted him to know. "

"And this is the man you mentioned earlier, the one you said had been behaving so strangely you wondered if he had lived before too?"

Jo nodded. She rolled over so that she could see Janet's face. "Isn't it strange? You and I used to talk in school about how it would be. You were the one who was never going to marry or have kids. Now look at you. Elephantine! And I was going to be a woman alone, without men. "

"I always thought that was a stupid idea, " Janet put in humorously. "One has to have men. Lovers. "

Jo stared at the ceiling thoughtfully. "We were so idealistic, so naive! Do you know, I found out through Matilda what it was like to be forced to marry a man you hated. Forced, by a father who doted on you yet who, by custom, because you were a mere woman, had to hand you and your inheritance on to another man. I became a man's property, Janet. He could do what he wanted with me. Threaten me, lock me up, treat me like a slave, and order me into his bed and expect me to obey him. It's been like that for women for centuries and only now are we fighting for liberation. It's unbelievable. " She sat up. "The only way I—I mean Matilda —could keep him out of her bed was to tell him when she was pregnant that a witch had foretold doom for the baby if he touched her. "

Janet chuckled. "I'd like to see Dave's face if I tried that one. Mind you, I like him to touch me. Imagine, in my condition!" She patted her stomach affectionately, then she glanced up. "Did you—did Matilda have the baby?"

Jo nodded. "Do you want to hear the gory details of medieval obstetrics? Perhaps it's not tactful at the moment. The entire range of facilities were available to me—no expense spared. A pile of straw to soak up the blood, a midwife who stank of ale and had all her front teeth missing—I imagine kicked out by a previous client—and I was given a rosary to hold. I broke it, which was considered an ill omen, and I had a magic stone tied on a thong around my neck. I was naked, of course, and the labor went on for a day and a night and most of the next day. "

Janet shuddered. "Spare me. I'm going to have an epidural. Did it hurt terribly?"

Jo nodded. "I was too tired by the end to know what was going on properly. Then afterward, in real life, I began to produce milk for that poor scrap of a baby who was only a dream!"

"You're not serious. " Janet looked shocked.

"Oh, it only lasted a day or two, thank God, but it was rather disgusting at the time. "

Janet was staring at her. "It doesn't seem possible. "

"No. "

"And your Nick. Did he know about all this?"

"Oh, yes. He was, you might say, present at the birth. He was watching while I was describing it all under hypnosis. "

"Then I'm not surprised he's a bit rattled. " Janet shivered again. "The poor man must really feel weird. I'll tell you one thing. If all that had happened to me, I'd never let myself be hypnotized again as long as I lived. Never!" She shuddered theatrically.

"You wouldn't want to know what happened?"

"But you do know what happened, Jo. David showed you, in that book. She died. Horribly. "

Jo drew her knees up to her chin and hugged them. "She died in about 1211. The events I am describing happened around 1176. That's thirty-five years later. "

"And you're going to relive thirty-five years of her life?" Janet's expression dissolved suddenly into her irrepressible smile. "I take it this is a fairly long project, Jo?" The smile faded abruptly. "I think you're mad. Nothing on earth would make me go through with that deliberately. Didn't Dave say she had six children? Are you going to go through another five pregnancies and deliveries like that first one? I'm prepared to bet real money they still hadn't even invented morphine by the turn of the thirteenth century. "

Jo grinned tolerantly. "Perhaps you're right. And it is a pretty thankless task, with no baby at the end