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

meet there, certainly. " He strode down off the dais. "He seemed to think we could discuss our differences and part friends. Ha! He misjudged me!"

Matilda raised an eyebrow. "So, I think, do a lot of people, William, " she murmured in disgust. "Have you thought of the repercussions that will follow? Trehearne was well liked by others as well as me, and he has powerful kinsmen. "

"So he couldn't stop telling me. The man blabbed like a coward. He thought you could stop me. He thought Gwenwynwyn would avenge his death and that the Marches will be alight from Chester to Monmouth with revenge for his scrawny bones. " He turned and spat viciously into the rushes. "I doubt if he's as important as he thinks.

"Page!" he yelled at the boy who was listening, open-mouthed, by the serving screens. "Help me off with my hauberk before I send you after Gwenwynwyn, you imp!" He threw back his head and laughed, then he hurled his goblet at the wall, where it struck and rolled away, dented, into a corner.

Lying taut and sleepless in bed that night next to her snoring husband, Matilda could not close her eyes.

The picture of Trehearne's pitiful death kept rising before her, and with it the sight of her husband's laughter. William seemed to care neither for the death of a neighbor and her friend nor for his broken word—for he had, it appeared, given Trehearne safe conduct to travel through his lands— nor for the revenge that would undoubtedly follow. His conceit and his overweening arrogance were complete.

And, though it didn't seem important anymore, she could not help but notice that he had not once inquired for her health or excused his own flight from Brecknock in the summer. When they had finally gone to bed he had been incapably drunk.

There were tears on her cheeks when Jo came to. She remained quite still, leaning against the wall, her eyes fixed on the mighty summit of Pen y Fan, and for a moment she did not dare move, wondering, with a shudder of disgust, if she still had the marks of the plague sores on her body. Then suddenly, below her in the street, she heard some children laughing. The sound acted like a charm, easing away the awful realities of the stench and filth and misery of her trance. She stood upright, feeling the sun beating down on her head. There was a throbbing in her temples and the perspiration trickling down between her shoulderblades was aggravating the raw whiplash across her back, but other than that there was no pain. She shuddered violently. William had indeed much to answer for.

Margiad Griffiths was in the kitchen when Jo arrived back at the house. She glanced at Jo in concern. "There, now, it's ill you're looking again, girl, " she said. "Come you in and sit down. And have a glass of my sherry, won't you? I'm all alone here. You're doing too much driving up and down, you are. Why don't you try and stay down here for a bit?"

Jo sat down gratefully on a kitchen chair. "I would like to, " she said. "I'm doing two jobs at once, that's the trouble. " She sipped the sherry and closed her eyes.

"Do you want to go and have a sleep, girl? I'll get you some supper later. " Margiad eyed her closely. She could see the exhaustion on Jo's face, the gray pallor beneath her tanned skin, the lines of pain that had not been there two weeks before when she had first seen her.

Jo shook her head slowly. "Do you believe in destiny, Mrs. Griffiths?"

"Destiny, is it?" Margiad thought for a moment. She pulled out the chair opposite Jo and eased herself into it.

"Fate, you mean? No. I don't. Life is what you make of it yourself. We've no one to blame but ourselves in the end. It's depressed you are, isn't it?"

Jo nodded. "I suppose I am. " She reached for the bottle unthinkingly and refilled her empty glass. Margiad, who had not yet sipped her own sherry, said nothing.

"I think I'm being haunted, " Jo said softly.

Margiad raised a brisk eyebrow. "Who by?"

"A woman who died nearly eight hundred years ago. "

"You mean you've seen her?"

Jo frowned. "She's not a ghost. Not an external thing at all. She's inside me. Somewhere in my mind—memories. ... " She put down her glass and put her hands over her eyes. "I'm sorry. You must think I'm mad. "

Margiad shook her head slowly. "I told my Doreen that you had a fey look about you when first I saw you. You've Welsh blood in you, haven't you, for all your English way of talking?"

Jo groped in her pocket for a tissue. Not finding one, she stood up and tore a paper towel from the roll over the sink. "I think I must have, " she said slowly.

"It is like that with a lot of Celtic people, " Margiad said comfortably. "They have the sight. It is not easy for those who cannot control it, but you must learn to live with it. Don't fight what's in you, girl. Accept it as a gift from God. "

"But I'm not foreseeing the future, " Jo said in anguish. "Though, God knows, perhaps that would be even worse. I'm seeing the past! In great detail. "

"Then, there's a reason for it. A truth to be learned, an injustice to be righted—who knows?" Stiffly Margiad stood up. She disappeared into her sitting room and Jo could hear her rummaging around in a drawer. A moment later she returned. In her hands was an old leather-covered Bible. She thrust it at Jo. "Pray if you can, girl. If you can't, just put it under your pillows. It'll ward off the bad dreams. Now, I've a nice stew cooking. It'll be ready in an hour, so you go up and have a hot bath and put all this