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

"Have you?"

"Put down the kettle for a moment and look at me. "

"I'm making your coffee. "

"Put it down, Jo. "

She did so, slowly. Then she stared up at him. "Sam—"

"That's right, Jo. Close your eyes for a moment. Relax. You can't fight it. There is nothing you can do, is there? You are already asleep and traveling back into the past. That's it. " Sam stood for a moment staring at her, then he moved forward and took her hand, leading her out into the apartment's short hall. A right turn would take him toward the front of the apartment, the living room with its open balcony doors. To the left was the bedroom and next to it the bathroom.

He turned left. In the bedroom he pushed Jo into a seated position on the end of her bed, then he moved to the windows and closed the heavy curtains. He switched on the lamp. It cast strange synthetic shadows in a room where the evening sunlight was still struggling through between the folds of the heavy material, lighting up a dazzling wedge of gold on the dusty rose of the carpet.

Sam folded his arms. "So, my lady, do you know who I am?"

Jo shook her head dully.

"I am your husband, madam!"

"William?" She moved her head slightly as though trying to avoid some dazzling light.

"William. " He had not moved. "And you and I have a whole night, do we not, to remind you of your duties to your husband. "

Jo stared up at him, her gaze alarmingly direct. "My duties? Of what duties do you intend to remind me, my lord?" Her tone was scornful.

Sam smiled. "All in good time. But first I want to ask you a question. Wait. There is something I must fetch. Wait here until I return. "

Matilda stared at William's retreating back. He slammed the heavy oak door of the bedchamber and she heard the ring of his spurs on the stone as his footsteps retreated. She shivered. The narrow windows of the chamber faced north and the shutters braced across them did nothing to keep out the cold. She went to stand near the huge hearth, drawing her fur mantle around her. Her bones had begun to ache now in the winter and she could feel her soul crying out for the balm of spring sunshine. She must be beginning to feel old! What had William gone to find? Wearily she bent and picked a dry mossy apple bough from the basket and threw it on the fire. It scented the room immediately and she closed her eyes, trying to imagine herself warm.

William returned almost at once. He flung back the door and stood before her, his face closed, his eyes hiding some new anger. She sighed, and forced herself to smile.

"What is it you wish to ask me, William? Let us speak of it quickly, then we can go down to the great hall where it is so much warmer. "

What was it he held behind his back? She stared at him curiously, feeling as she always did now for him a strange mixture of scorn and fear and tolerance and even perhaps a little affection. But he was so hard to like, this man to whom she had been married now for so many years.

William slowly held out the hand he had been keeping behind his back. In it was a carved ivory crucifix. She drew back, catching her breath, recognizing it as coming from a niche in the chapel, where it was kept in a jeweled reliquary. It was reputed to have been carved from the bone of some long-dead Celtic saint.

"Take it. "

"Why?" She clutched her cloak more tightly around her. "Take it in your hand. "

Reluctantly she reached out and took the crucifix. It was unnaturally cold.

"Now, " he breathed. "Now I want you to swear an oath. " She paled. "What oath?"

"An oath, madam, of the most sacred kind. I want you to swear on that crucifix in your hand that William, the eldest child of your body, is my son. "

She stared at him. "Of course he is your son. "

"Can you swear it?"

She stared down at the intricately carved ivory in her hand —the decorated cross, the tortured, twisted figure of the man hanging on it in his death agony. Slowly she raised it to her lips and kissed it.

"I swear it, " she whispered.

William drew a deep breath. "So, " he said. "You told the truth. He was not de Clare's bastard. "

Her eyes flew to his face and he saw the paleness of her skin flood with color. For a moment only, then it was gone and she was as white as the crucifix she had pressed to her lips.

He narrowed his eyes. "You swore!"

"William is your son. I swear, before God and the Holy Virgin. "

"And the others? What of the others?" He took a step toward her and grabbed her wrist. He held the crucifix up before her eyes. "Swear. Swear for the others!"

"Giles and Reginald, they are yours. Can you not see it in their coloring and their demeanor? They are both their father's sons. "

"And the girls?" His voice was frozen.

"Margaret is yours. And Isobel. " She looked down suddenly, unable to hold his gaze.

"But not Tilda?" His voice was barely audible. "My little Matilda is de Clare's child?" He pressed her fingers around the crucifix until the carving bit into her flesh. "Is she?" he screamed suddenly.

Desperately she tried to push him away. "Yes!" she cried. "Yes, she was Richard's child, God forgive me!"

Abruptly William let her go. She reeled back, and the crucifix fell between them in the dried herbs on the floor. They both stared at it in horror.

William laughed. It was a humorless, vicious sound. "So, the great alliance with Rhys is built on counterfeit goods! The descendants of Gruffydd ap Rhys will not be descendants of mine!"

"You must not tell him!"