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

Janet heaved herself to her feet and came and put her arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry, Jo. I didn't mean to upset you—"

"You haven't. " Jo pulled away from her and stood up. "Besides, if I'm honest I have a particular reason for wanting to go back. Not just to see Will, though I want to hold him so much sometimes it hurts. " She gave an embarrassed smile. "I have to go back to see Richard again. I need him, Janet. He's gotten under my skin. To me he is completely real. "

"Supposing Matilda never saw him again?" Janet said thoughtfully after a moment.

"Then I'll have to learn to live without him. But until I know for sure, I have a feeling I shall go back. Come on. " She reached for the bedcover and pulled it down. "I need my beauty sleep, even if you don't. Tomorrow I am going to Hay and Brecon and places to see if I can lay Matilda's ghost. If I can, then there will be no more regressions. No more Richard. Just an article in Women in Action that will be of passing interest to some and total boredom to others and then it will all be forgotten. "

She climbed into bed and lay back tensely after Janet had gone, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, half afraid that all the talk of babies might once more conjure up the sound of crying in the echoing chambers of that distant castle, but she heard nothing but the gentle sighing of the wind.

Outside the window the clouds streamed across the moon and shadowed silver played over the ruins. If Seisyll's ghost walked, she did not see him. Within minutes she was asleep.

The breezes of Sussex were gentle after the frosty mornings of the west and the trees were still heavy with leaves as yet untouched by frost. As Matilda's long procession slowly traveled the last miles to Bramber, she could see from far away the tall keep of the castle, standing sentinel on its height above the River Adur. They rode slowly down the long causeway into the small village that clung among the saltings around the foot of the castle hill. The parish church and the castle looked out across the marshes and the deep angle of the river toward the sea. The tide was in and the deep moat full of water as they clattered across the drawbridge, with gulls swooping and wheeling around them and diving into the slate-colored ripples below.

Her beloved nurse Jeanne greeted them outside the towering gatehouse with tears of joy, but she had news of death.

"What is it, Jeanne, dear? Is it the old lord?" Matilda gazed around as she slipped from her horse, dreading suddenly any visitation of sickness that might come near her son. He was so little and vulnerable. She ached sometimes with love for the little boy and with the terrible fear of what might become of him.

"It's Sir William's mother, the Lady Bertha. " Jeanne's wrinkled old face was suddenly solemn. "She slipped on the stairs and broke her thigh two months since. She lived on for weeks in terrible pain, poor soul, and then she died at last a week ago, God rest her. The bones were too old to knot properly. " The old woman crossed herself and then looked up shrewdly under her heavy eyelids. "I wonder you didn't meet the messengers we sent after Sir William. You'll be mistress of your own now, ma p'tite. I'm glad for you. "

Secretly Matilda felt no sorrow for the domineering old woman, but she felt a moment's regret for William, who had cared for his mother in an embarrassed way.

William had left Gloucester with the king, taking with him most of his fighting men, save her escort, after a brief, futile inquiry into the murder of the three missing knights. It would be some time before he returned to Bramber.

Matilda suppressed the smile of relief that kept wanting to come. It might not be seemly, but a great weight had been lifted from her mind. She had dreaded her meeting with Bertha. The old woman's bitter tongue would not have spared her a lashing for her impropriety and disobedience in leaving Bramber the year before, nor would she have allowed Matilda to continue ordering her husband's household. She glanced around at Bernard, who was sitting slackly on his roan gelding behind her, apparently lost in thought. He would have lost all his respect for her if he'd heard Bertha. Now there was no danger. Bramber was hers. Breathing a silent prayer of gratitude, she raised her arm in a signal and the tired procession of horses and wagons moved slowly under the gatehouse into the steeply cobbled bailey within.

After dismounting once more, Matilda followed Jeanne into the cool dimness of the great hall and looked around with a quiet sigh of satisfaction at the beautiful arched windows, trimmed with delicately carved flintstone borders, and the intricate carving that adorned pillars and doorways. Bramber was beautiful compared with Brecknock. Beautiful, civilized, and safe.

She forced herself to go at once to look at the recumbent body of her father-in-law. It was because he still lived that Bertha had remained mistress of Bramber. Had he died as God, she was sure, had intended, Bertha would have gone to her dower lands and left Matilda in charge of the castle. It was because he still lived too that William was in such a strange position, a baron in all but title. She looked down at old William's face. He had changed not at all since she had left Bramber. The skin was perhaps more shrunken, the eye sockets more hollow as his dimmed eyes still gazed sightlessly at the ceiling. The only sign of life was the clawed hand that grasped incessantly at the sheet drawn up