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

it back. " She watched as he removed the cassette and turned it over; then she stood up. "I'll go and get some clothes on while you listen. "

Nick glanced at her. "Don't you want to hear it again?"

"I did. Just before you came home, " she said quietly. "We'll talk when you've heard it. "

It was a long time before Nick appeared. She was lying on the bed. She had not got dressed. She watched him quietly as he walked across the carpet and sat down beside her. He looked grim.

"How much of that do you remember?" he asked at last. "All of it. "

"And you weren't fooling?"

She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. "Did I sound as if I were fooling? Did he?"

"All right, I'm sorry. I had to be sure. Do you want to talk about it now?"

"I don't know. " She hugged her bathrobe around her. "Nick, this is crazy. I'm a journalist. I'm on a job. A routine, ordinary sort of job. I'm going about my research in the way I always do, methodically, and I am not allowing myself to become involved in any personal way. Part of me can see the whole thing objectively. But another part—" She hesitated. "I was sure that it was all some kind of a trick. But it was so real, so very real. I was a child again, Nick. Arrogant, uncertain, overwhelmed, and so proud of the fact that I was pregnant, because it made me a woman in my own right and the equal of William's mother! And I was going to be the mother of that boor's son!" She put her face in her hands. "That is what women have felt for thousands of years, Nick. Proud to be the vehicle for men's kids. And I felt it! Me!" She gave an unhappy laugh.

Nick raised an eyebrow. "Some women are still proud of that particular role, Jo. They're not all rabid feminists, thank God!" His voice was unusually gentle. "You remember all her feelings then? Even things you don't mention out loud?"

Jo frowned. "I don't know. I think so... I'm not sure. I remember that, though. Hugging myself in triumph because I carried his child—and because I had thought of a way to keep him from molesting me. He must have been a bastard in bed. " Her voice shook. "The poor bloody cow!" She picked up a pot of face cream from the table and turned it over and over in her hands without seeing it. "She probably had a girl in the end, not the precious son she kept on about, or died in childbirth or something. Oh, God, Nick... It was me. I could feel it all, hear it, see it, smell it. Even taste the food that boy brought me. The wine was thin and sour—like nothing I've ever drunk, and the bread was coarse and gritty, with some strong flavor. It didn't seem odd at the time, but I can't place it at all, and I could swear I've still got bits of it stuck between my teeth. "

Nick smiled, but she went on. "It was all so vivid. Almost too real. Like being on some kind of a 'trip. '"

"That follows, " Nick said slowly. "You obviously have had some kind of vivid hallucination. But that is all it was, Jo. You must believe that. The question is, where did it come from? Where have all the stories come from that people have experienced under this kind of hypnosis? I suppose that is the basis of your article. " He hesitated. "Do you think this massacre really did happen?"

She shrugged. "I gave a very clear date, didn't I? Twenty years of King Henry. There are eight of them to choose from!" She smiled. "And Abergavenny, of course. I've never been there, but I know it's somewhere in Wales. "

"South Wales, " he put in. "I went there once, as a child, but I don't remember there being a castle. "

"Oh, Nick! It's all quite mad!"

"What did it feel like, being hypnotized?" he asked curiously.

She sighed. "That's the stupid thing. I'm not sure. I don't think I knew it was happening. I didn't seem to go to sleep or anything. Except real sleep when I slept in the castle. Only that wasn't real sleep because the time scale was different. I lived through two days, Nick, in less than two hours. " She sat down on the bed again, looking at him. "This is what happened before, isn't it? When Sam was there. They did hypnotize me and they lost control of me that time too!"

Nick nodded. "Sam said you were told not to remember what happened, it would upset you too much. And he said I mustn't talk about it to you, Jo, that's why I couldn't explain—"

"I lived through those same scenes then, " she went on, not hearing him. "I saw the massacre then too. "

Nick looked away. "I don't know, Jo. You must speak to Sam—"

"It must have been the massacre, because I hurt my hands tearing at the stone archway. But I really bled in Edinburgh. My fingers were bruised and bleeding, not just painful!" Her voice was shaking. "Oh, God, it was all so real. Nick, I'm frightened. " She stared at her hands, holding them out before her.

Nick took hold of them gently, standing up. "Come on, " he said. "We need another drink. And something to eat. Is there any food in the apartment?"

She dragged her thoughts back to the present with difficulty. "In the freezer. I forgot to buy anything today. " She gave a rueful smile. "I was going to go shopping on my way back from Devonshire Place but everything went out of my head. "

Nick grinned. "I'm not surprised. Being a baron's lady with a castle full of serfs, you can hardly be expected to lower yourself to trundle around the supermarket