Barbara Erskine 3-Book Collection: Lady of Hay, Time’s Legacy, Sands of Time

‘No! Oh no, I don’t believe it. I’ve got enough problems in this life, and I’d have thought you’d have more sense than to encourage her. You of all people who saw the danger right from the start!’

‘I saw the danger.’ Sam swung his feet up onto the coffee table. ‘But as Jo would not sidestep it, neither can we.’

Nick glanced at him sharply. ‘What do you mean exactly?’

Sam had closed his eyes. ‘There is one way of finding out whether you were involved in her past, Nick,’ he said.

‘How?’ Nick paused. ‘Oh no! You think I’m going to Bennet to let him try his regression on me?’

‘There’s no need.’ Sam took a sip from his glass. ‘I can do it.’

Nick’s mouth dropped open. ‘Are you suggesting that I let you hypnotise me?’ he said incredulously. ‘If so, you’re out of your skull!’

‘Why not? I have a feeling you might be surprised by what we find out.’ Sam smiled gently. ‘Have you never wondered why Jo and you were so instantly attracted when you first met? Could it not have been that you were lovers once before? Is it not possible that the Richard she loved so much was your alter ego, eight hundred years ago?’ He was watching Nick’s expression closely. ‘It might be fun to find out,’ he went on persuasively. ‘It couldn’t do any harm, and it might explain a lot of your ambivalence towards Jo now.’

Nick sat down on the edge of a table, one foot on the carpet, the other swinging slowly back and forth. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this. You actually think I am the reincarnation of Richard de Clare?’

Sam shrugged. ‘When dealing with anything like this, Nick, I keep an open mind. I think for Jo’s sake you ought to as well. You owe it to her, if only to find out why you attacked her.’ His eyes narrowed.

‘But why,’ Nick said slowly, ‘if I was Richard de Clare, would I be so jealous of him?’

Sam smiled. ‘Good question. Shall we find out?’

‘You are serious?’

‘Perfectly. If you don’t regress, fair enough. Not everyone does by any means. At least we will have tried. If you do, it will be interesting.’

‘And you expect me to trust you!’ Nick stared at him suspiciously. ‘After what happened to Jo?’

‘What happened to Jo?’ Sam’s voice was hard. ‘She is a deep-trance subject, Nick, you are not. The experience would not be the same for you.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Nick said coolly. ‘There are one or two things you never explained, Sam.’ His knuckles tightened on his glass. ‘Like why it was necessary for Jo to take off her clothes the other night, when you regressed her.’

Sam raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that what she said happened?’

‘That is what she said.’ Nick was watching him closely.

Sam smiled. ‘She experiences the trances so vividly she finds it hard to differentiate between that state and reality, at least for a time, as I told you.’

‘It was reality, Sam, that I found her clothes that night, hidden in the living room –’

‘Perhaps she put them there before I came.’ Sam crossed one knee over the other, his whole body relaxed. ‘I’m not sure what you are implying, Nicholas, but may I remind you that it is you who raped Jo, not I. It is you who needs help. I think you need to try hypnosis.’

Still uncertain, Nick hesitated. ‘I suppose it would do no harm to try. And I’d rather you did it than Bennet,’ he said at last, reluctantly. ‘But I hate the idea. And I doubt if it would work on me, anyway.’

‘Why don’t we try?’ Sam sat up slowly. ‘In fact, why don’t we have a go now? You’re worried. You’re tired. If nothing else, I can help you to relax.’ He smiled. ‘Come and sit down over here, little brother. That’s right, facing the window. Now. Relax. Put the glass down, man. You’re clutching it like a lifebelt! Now, let’s see whether you can do one or two little experiments for me. We’ll start with the lamp.’ Sam leaned forward and switched on the Anglepoise at Nick’s elbow. ‘No, don’t look at the light. I want you to look past it, into the corner of the room.’

Nick laughed suddenly. ‘It’s like having the “fluence” put on you by someone at school. Why don’t you use a watch and chain?’

‘It may have escaped your notice, Nicholas, but I don’t wear a watch and chain.’ Sam moved silently from his chair and gently put his thumb and forefinger on Nick’s eyelids. ‘Now, look towards the lamp again and start counting slowly backwards from one hundred.’

Several minutes later Sam stood up. He was smiling. He walked towards the window and threw it up, staring out for a minute up the narrow street opposite towards the traffic in Park Lane. Then he turned towards Nick, who was lying back in his chair, his eyes closed.

‘Comfortable, little brother?’ he said softly. ‘No, don’t try and answer me. You can’t. I don’t want you to speak at all. I want you to listen.’

20 (#ulink_199702b5-09b2-5fdb-baac-1c02aec18d99)

Janet knocked on Jo’s door as she was undressing late that night. Pushing it open, she hovered for a moment, staring at Jo who, wearing only her bra and briefs, was sitting on the edge of her bed.

‘God, I’m sorry! I didn’t think – shall I come back?’ Flustered, Janet backed away. ‘I brought us some cocoa. I thought you might like to chat a bit. Old Welsh custom!’

Jo laughed. ‘Come in.’ She reached for her thin silk dressing-gown hastily and drew it round her.

Janet sat down on the stool in front of the kidney-shaped dressing table, manoeuvring her heavy body with difficulty. ‘Jo, I wanted to apologise for David. He can be a bit belligerent at times. He shouldn’t have given you the third degree like that. He tends to think all Welsh history is his special province and he almost resents anyone else who is interested in it, besides which, as you can’t have failed to gather, he is a rabid nationalist –’

‘Quite apart from thinking that I am completely mad anyway.’ Jo smiled wearily. ‘He could be right at that. I’m glad he didn’t order me out of your house. I really did want to know about Matilda, though – his Moll Walbee.’ She reached for the mug and sipped it slowly. ‘It was so odd to hear him talk about her with such knowledge. He knew so much more about her than I do, and yet at the same time, he didn’t know her at all.’

Janet gave a rueful laugh. ‘That could apply to David on a lot of subjects.’ She was silent a moment, watching as Jo sipped again from her mug. The pale blue silk of Jo’s sleeve had slipped back to her elbow, showing clearly the livid bruising round her wrist and the long curved gash on her arm. ‘Jo,’ she said tentatively. ‘I couldn’t help noticing – the bruises and that awful cut –’ She coloured slightly. ‘Tell me if it’s none of my business, but well … you sounded in such a state when you rang this morning.’ She groaned slightly, her hand to her back. ‘There is more to this sudden trip than just research, isn’t there?’

Jo set down the mug and pulled her sash more tightly around her waist.

‘A bit of man trouble,’ she admitted reluctantly at last.

‘And he did that to you?’

Jo sighed. ‘He was drunk – far more I think than I realised. I’ve never seen Nick like that before.’

‘Nick?’

Jo laughed wryly. ‘The man in my life. Correction, the man who was in my life. We’d been having lots of rows and we split up a couple of times, then we got back together and I thought everything was going to be all right. Then suddenly –’ She paused in mid-sentence. ‘It was to do with my regressions. He doesn’t approve of my doing it and he became a bit uptight about a lover I – Matilda – had had in the past …’

‘Richard de Clare?’ Janet nodded. ‘I remember him from the article. He sounded really rather a dish. Every woman’s fantasy man!’ She broke off with an exclamation. ‘You mean this Nick knocked you about because you talked about a lover in a previous life while you were being hypnotised?’

Jo lay back on the bed, her arm across her face. ‘I think that was what it was about. The awful thing was I think I wanted to tell him about Richard. I wanted him to know.’

‘And this is the man you mentioned earlier, the one you said had been behaving so strangely you wondered if he had lived before too?’

Jo nodded. She rolled over so that she could see Janet’s face. ‘Isn’t it strange? You and I used to talk in school about how it would be. You were the one who was never going to marry or have kids. Now look at you. Elephantine! And I was going to be a woman alone, without men.’

‘I always thought that was a stupid idea,’ Janet put in humorously. ‘One has to have men. Lovers.’

Jo stared at the ceiling thoughtfully. ‘We were so idealistic, so naive! Do you know, I found out through Matilda what it was like to be forced to marry a man you hated. Forced, by a father who doted on you, yet who by custom because you were a mere woman, had to hand you and your inheritance on to another man. I became a man’s property, Janet. He could do what he wanted with me. Threaten me, lock me up, treat me like a slave and order me into his bed and expect me to obey him. It’s been like that for women for centuries and only now are we fighting for liberation. It’s unbelievable.’ She sat up. ‘The only way I – I mean Matilda – could keep him out of her bed was to tell him when she was pregnant that a witch had foretold doom for the baby if he touched her.’

Janet chuckled. ‘I’d like to see Dave’s face if I tried that one. Mind you, I like him to touch me. Imagine, in my condition!’ She patted her stomach affectionately, then she glanced up. ‘Did you – did Matilda have the baby?’

Jo nodded. ‘Do you want to hear the gory details of medieval obstetrics? Perhaps it’s not tactful at the moment. The entire range of facilities were available to me – no expense spared. A pile of straw to soak up the blood, a midwife who stank and had all her front teeth missing – I imagine kicked out by a previous client – and I was given a rosary to hold. I broke it, which was considered an ill omen, and I had a magic stone tied on a thong around my neck. I was naked, of course, and the labour went on for a day and a night and most of the next day.’

Janet shuddered. ‘Spare me. I’m going to have an epidural. Did it hurt terribly?’