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

left me to die, she thought, but she was past feeling any fear. She tried to recite the Paternoster, but the words would not come in the right order and she gave up. How would God ever find his way again to this country? she wondered bleakly, and she closed her eyes to shut out the silver trail of the moon in the water.

But the boy returned with a shaggy mountain pony and somehow he helped her onto it. They forded a narrow river, the pony picking its way sure-footed through water shadowed now by stark overhanging branches entangled with clinging ivy. They passed the dark shape of Crickhowell Castle in the night, but she did not see it, and the boy, apart from detouring slightly to avoid it, did not acknowledge its presence. Somewhere once a fox screamed and Matilda clutched the pony's mane as it shied. They left the river and traveled through black unfriendly forest and over hills where the country was silent except for the occasional lonely hoot of an owl and the wind in the branches of the trees. Closing her eyes, she rode in a daze of pain and fatigue, not caring where she went or what he intended doing with her. Beneath her the pony, confident even in the dark, followed the boy at a steady pace, slowly climbing through the misty rain.

Then she opened her weary eyes in the cold dawn and saw the keep of Tretower at last in the distance. She knew dimly that they must have been seen and been followed by the forest people, but for some reason she had been spared. The boy who held her bridle had been her talisman. He turned as they neared the tower and she studied his face in the colorless light.

He smiled up at her, a sad, fond smile. Then he pointed. "Go, " he said. "There will be your friends. Go with God and be safe, meistress. " He released her bridle and he was gone, gliding back into the woods on silent feet.

The pony stumbled on some rocks as she guided it as fast as she dared along the winding track toward the castle in the broad valley. She fixed her eye on the tower and refused to look to left or right as her mount carried her at a shambling trot along the path. To her surprise the drawbridge was down and she rode across unchallenged. Had everyone gone mad? Did they not know that the warring Welsh must be everywhere?

There was a veil of blood before her eyes as she sat astride her mount in the courtyard of the castle. She didn't dare try to slip from the saddle. The beast hung its head, its flanks heaving, and nuzzled a blown wisp of hay. There appeared to be no one there.

Then, slowly, as though from a great distance, people came. She heard voices and saw lights and she recognized the clanking sound of a bridge being raised behind her. Hands pulled at her dress. People took the reins, gripped her arms, tried to ease her off the horse. The air was full of the sound of someone sobbing and dimly she realized it was her own voice she could hear.

"Do not distress yourself, my dear. " Bennet sat down beside Jo and gently put his hand on hers. His foot touched the small microphone on the floor and it fell over with a rattle. He did not notice. He was staring down at her hand, which was ice-cold and covered in chilblains.

"Is she all right?" Sarah came over and knelt beside them.

After a moment's hesitation he nodded. "Go on, my lady. What happened next?"

Jo withdrew her hand gently from his, rubbing it painfully as she stared past him into the room, her eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance, far away.

"I stayed there at Tretower with the Picards, " she said slowly. "They put me to bed and cared for me and my pains stopped. I was not to lose the baby after all. William sent after me. I was too ill to be moved then, so Nell came with my baggage from Abergavenny. But William did not come. "

Christmas came and was over. Thick snows fell and melted into the swift-running Rhian Goll. Ice locked its water, thawed, and it flowed again.

Slowly, almost unnoticeably, her belly began to swell. The child inside her was doubly cursed by its father's name and by the scene she had witnessed that terrible night, and she still wanted to lose it. But it grew and seemed to flourish. She wanted Jeanne, her old nurse, Jeanne who would have understood the need to be rid of the baby and who would have found for her the juniper berries, pennyroyal, and tansy that, with the right magic words, would produce a miscarriage. Matilda shuddered and crossed herself every time she thought about it, for she knew what she contemplated was mortal sin, but what else could she do when the child within her was blighted?

But blighted or not, the baby grew and her own health improved. Nell tended her as best she could, and with her a new maid, Elen, one of Dame Picard's women, an orphaned Welsh girl with a plump cheery face and an infectious smile who made Matilda laugh and stilled for a while with her stories and songs the deep restlessness within her. There was no word from William.

As the winter weather began to ease its iron grip Matilda longed more and more to leave Tretower. She wanted to travel on to Brecknock where at least she would be her own mistress in her husband's castle. But it was nearly Easter before the weather broke at last and the first chilly primroses began to force their way from the iron ground into the fitful sunshine. Matilda had long given up the idea of taking a horse and riding alone to Brecknock, trusting on speed and surprise