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

get you some cheese. This is our own cream cheese from Aphrodite and her daughters, or there is a curd cheese from Polyphema, the one-eyed goat. " He twinkled at her mischievously. "You must keep your brain fully alert while you are here, Joanna. I am not sure I could cope with a visitation from a baron's lady as well as afternoon milking!"

Chapter 30

Jo took the wrong road at the bottom of the hill and found herself heading northwest instead of back along the Wye Valley toward Hay. She almost stopped to turn, then on a sudden defiant impulse she drove on into the narrow busy streets of Brecon itself, slowing the car to a standstill in the knotted traffic. She found a place to park, then wandered slowly around the town before climbing to the cathedral with its squat tower. By the time she had reached it she had made up her mind.

After pushing open the door, she walked in, staring around. The guidebook was very informative. It was during the lifetime of Bishop Giles de Breos and his brother Reginald that the eastern part of the original Norman church of Bernard of Newmarch had been replaced by the chancel, tower, and transepts that exist today. Her eye traveled down the lines of close print. Reginald was the only Lord of Brecknock to be buried in the Priory Church. She bit her lip, staring around. Reginald was buried there. There, somewhere beneath the lovely arching vault of the chancel.... Suddenly she didn't want to know. Reginald, that sturdy, cheerful boy, her third son, whom she loved in such an uncomplicated way and who had loved her. Her eyes filled with tears, and it was only with an effort that she pulled herself together. After all, she had not needed to come into the cathedral. If she had really wanted no more to do with the de Braose family she should not have gone to Brecon at all. She stood staring up at the high altar with its carved reredos and its offering of flowers below the huge stained-glass window, then forced herself to look back at the guidebook that told about the church of the de Braoses.

There wasn't much left of the castle. A mound and an ivy- covered fragment of wall, that was all, but she was used to that now. She climbed the worn staircase carefully and stood staring out across the rooftops toward the vivid toothed outline of the Beacons. Yes, this view she did remember; the outline in the mist and the sunset behind that faraway bastion of mountains. She dug her nails into the stone blocks of the wall, then, taking a deep, relaxing breath, she deliberately began to empty her mind.

The room was dark and there was a pounding in her temples. She tried to raise her head, then, with a groan, let it fall back on the pillows, lights flashing and searing behind her eyelids. She lay, exhausted, for what seemed a long time, then dazedly she realized there were people in the room with her. Someone helped her to vomit and she lay back again, a cool wet cloth across her burning forehead. She heard Elen's voice, alternately scolding and soothing, and a man's voice intoning something. Was it prayers or a magic charm? She tried to concentrate, but her mind slipped away and wandered again.

Two men in Aberhonddu had died of the plague and one of William's clerks had succumbed, with suppurating boils beneath his armpits. She had visited him, holding a bunch of rue to her nose, and laid a gentle hand on his forehead, trying to ease his pain, before they realized what illness it was that had struck him down.

The summer was cursed. No rain had fallen. The harvest was failing. Heat shimmered and hung over the mountains like an oppressive cloud. Lord Rhys was dead. His sons still fought one another ceaselessly and Gruffydd was imprisoned now at Corfe. There was no news of Tilda, nor of the little son that Gerald had told them she had borne. No news... no news...

Desperately she called for her nurse, but Jeanne did not come, and Matilda could feel the tears wet on her cheek as the delirium swept her once more into darkness.

A cursed summer. A summer where William had quarreled with Trehearne Vaughan, her kind, scholarly friend, their neighbor at Hay, the man who had given her her Welsh bard, a kinsman of the Welsh princes. His face floated in and out of her dreams with William's. William who never came. William, who kept away from the plague-bound castle and left her to her fate.

It was a long while later that she woke and, for a time, looked around. The pain in her head seemed to have eased for a moment and then she became conscious of the terrible burning in her groin. She groaned and closed her eyes. It had been dark beyond the unshuttered window, but the flickering light from the sconce by her bed seared her eyes; the room was pungent with burning herbs from a brazier. She tried to call out and tell them all to go away—to leave her, to save her children, her babies—but her tongue was swollen and dry in her mouth and no words came. One or two angry tears squeezed out between her swollen eyelids and she slid once more into a half-sleeping dream. When she awoke again her bed was wet with sweat and vomit and there seemed to be no one there to help her. "They have left me to die. " The whole of her left side pained her and there was an agonizing cutting pain beneath her arm now as well as on her side.

"Christ! Christ, be with me!" This time she managed a whisper, but at once someone was there, sponging her face. "Be brave, Mother dear. You will be well. " It was Margaret's voice, shaking, pleading. "Please,