"Was there something negative in the reading, then?"
"It could be read that way. I'd rather not say just yet. Are you too tired to do some trance work?"
"No. Why?"
"I don't know that, either. Not exacdy, anyway. I did some digging on those other names you gave us at Buckland, and there are several points that aren't clear. I have this nagging suspicion that it all ties in, that there's something we're overlooking."
Graham frowned. "Important enough that we need to look for it tonight?"
"I think so. I know it's awkward." She blew out smoke in a nervous gesture. "I have to ask you to do something even more awkward, too."
"Oh?"
She would not look at him.
"I need to work with you in trance. I don't want to have to worry about him.''
"William? But he's already gone to bed."
"I warn to be certain he stays there."
"That he stays there?" He looked at her in surprise. "What makes you think he wouldn't?"
"I simply don't want us interrupted."
"Well, do you want me to post a guard or just lock him in?" Graham retorted.
"Neither."
"What, then?"
"You managed to deal with his aide and valet at Plymouth, I believe."
With a queasy little turning in the pit of his stomach, Graham slumped back in his chair. He could hardly believe what he was hearing.
"Alix, I can't drug a royal duke."
"Can't you? I'll do it myself, if you can't."
"You know it isn't that," he whispered, troubled. "Is it really necessary, though?"
"I would not ask if I didn't think so. Surely you realize that."
He swallowed with difficulty, still searching for a way out.
"I—don't think I can do it without telling him," he said. "He trusts me."
'That is your decision," she said in a low voice. "The deed is not."
He sat unmoving for several seconds, still rebellious, then " rose wearily, head bowed.
"Very well. He won't like it, though."
"You're damned right I don't like it!" William snapped, glaring at Graham twenty minutes later from his bed, where he sat with the bedclothes pulled up to his waist and his arms folded stubbornly across his bare chest.
Graham sighed and set the offending glass of milk on the bedside table. He had told William exactly what was in it and sketched the reason as best he could. The prince was not convinced.
"Look, William, I don't like it any better than you do, but I don't think you realize how complex all of this is. Alix and I are working on a number of different levels, some of them very delicately balanced. If it will reassure her to know that you're asleep and can't intrude on what she needs to work out with my help, then it seems like you could go along. You said you'd accept her authority. If you're to be a part of this team, that means abiding by that, as you promised."
"Why can't I just promise to stay here? If you'd waited half an hour, I really would have been asleep. Isn't my word good enough?"
"That isn't the point. Now either drink the milk or, let's forget the whole thing. I'll tell her you've changed your mind, arid we'll go back to London tonight, if that's what you want. I didn't have to tell you what it was, you know. I could have just had Jennings bring you your usual nightcap, and you never would have known, any more than Wells and Griffin did."
"Well, why didn't you?"
"Because that isn't the way to build trust, dammit! Because there may be other times when I have to ask you to do something without being able to tell you why. I want the rest to be as honest as I can make it. That's the only reason. If we don't trust one another, we might as well forget the whole thing. It's one of the tenets of the game—perfect trust."
"Is it perfect trust to be so afraid I won't keep my word and stay here, that you have to drug me?" William retorted. "You can't have it both ways, Gray!"
Graham sighed. He had not wanted to go into the whole rationale he suspected behind Aiix's order, but he supposed there was no choice now.
"I don't see it as a matter of not trusting you," he said slowly. 'There are many factors that can influence—what she wants to do with me when I go back downstairs. We already know that there's some kind of psychic link between you and me. You saw it at work at Buckland when I was coming out of trance, even though you weren't aware what you were doing at the time, and still aren't. I think tt.it's what worries her— the unpredictability. SIk.'? probably afraid you might do the same kind of thing again—psychically, not physically, and certainly not deliberately, but it would increase the danger to both of us, nonetheless. She's only trying to protect us, William. That's her job. Why won't you let her do it?"
William thought about that for a moment, then cast a resentful look at the glass.
"It ordinarily comes in a lovely yellow capsule, as I recall," he murmured sullenly. "Did you really have to put it in the milk?"
"You might have palmed the capsule. I taught you how."
William smiled in spite of himself—a quick, ironic grin— then picked up the glass and held it to the light.
"Well, I suppose I can look forward to a terrific head in the morning, like poor old Wells. Do I get the needle, too?"
"I don't think that will be necessary," Graham replied as William sipped cautiously and then began drinking it down. "In fact, that's probably what gave Wells his headache—not what you just drank."
He smiled sympathetically as William made a face and handed back the empty glass.
"I know there isn't any taste—it's the idea," William muttered, sliding further under the blankets and lying back on his pillow.
Graham watched him settle, then went into the adjoining bath and rinsed out the glass. When he came back, the prince's eyes were already dilating slightly, though he resolutely refused to close them.
"Will you stop fighting it?" Graham said, sitting companionably on the edge of the bed. "It's done. You're going to go
to sleep in a few minutes now, whether you want to or not. I can't leave until you're out."
"Well you can jolly well wait another few minutes until I am out," the prince replied, 'I want it noted for the record that I resent this like hell—and you can tell your Lady Selwyn that I said so, too. I don't know where you people get off being so high and mighty. One would think you're the only ones taking any risks. I'm in this now, too, you know."
"I could hardly forget that," Graham said, noting the beginning slur in William's voice. "But right now, this is your part in the battle plan. Hasn't anyone ever told you? They also serve who only lie and sleep?"
"I think I'm being poked fun at," the prince grumbled around a yavMi. "It isn't fair. You wouldn't laugh at Michael or one of the others if they were in this predicament."
"If Michael or one of the others were in this predicament, they wouldn't be fighting the inevitable. They'd be cooperating. Now take a nice deep breath and go to sleep."
As he said it. Graham reached out offhandedly and touched the prince's forehead lighdy, just as he would have done for Michael or any of the others under the circumstances, not .' iking how it might be taken. To his surprise, the blue eyes rolled up under trembling lids and then closed as the prince breathed out in a little sigh—a textbook response to a posthypnotic trigger. Was it possible that William had just gone into a trance?
"That's right," he breathed, watching in amazement as all -he classic signs came across the relaxing face. "Deep asleep "
And William was, and not entirely from the sedative he had just taken.
This was totally unexpected. He and William had spoken of trust, but Graham had not dreamed that the prince would give him such a graphic demonstration of it. Shaken, he stood and gently drew aside the blankets far enough to expose a bare right arm and raise it in the air. However he moved it, it hung suspended in perfect catalepsy—a response that was surely beyond William's ability to fake. Graham straightened the arm and ran his hand along it several times, with
the whispered suggestion that it was becoming rigid—and it would not bend.
Still hardly able to believe what he was seeing, Graham canceled the suggestion and returned the arm to the prince's side, then pulled the bedclothes back into place. He had no sure way of knowing how much of what he was seeing was drug induced and how much was genuine trance, but he decided to proceed as if William still could hear him.
"Deeply relaxed, William," he said in a low voice as he sat on the edge of the bed again. "You've achieved a very good, deep trance, but we haven't much time before your sedative puts you to sleep for real. Before it does, I want you to examine very carefully how it feels to be deep in trance, the way you are now, and remember it.
"Not consciously. In fact, for now I want you to forget everything that's happened in this room tonight. I promise you, there's nothing sinister behind it. I simply don't want you to have to be anxious about it. Remember only that I brought you an ordinary glass of milk before you went to sleep. Wake up refreshed and confident in the morning, with no adverse effects from your medication. Do you understand?"
He heard the prince's faint "yes" and was still surprised. He had not realized that William would be such a good subject, though the sedative certainly had taken the edge off any normal first-time resistance.
"Thank you," Graham whispered. "Now, in case you and I should want to work together with a trance state in the future, as I sometimes do with Michael and the others, I want to give you a posthypnotic trigger. Do you remember the way Michael went into trance for me at Dover?"
"Yes...."
"Fine." He touched his finger tips lightly to William's forehead the way he had before. "In fact, you've already used that trigger once. Remember how it worked then, and this signal, and what it feels like now. And know that you and I can duplicate this state whenever there's need, and you can go even deeper as I guide you. Is that all right?"
"Yes," came the reply, though dragged from greater depths this time.
"Good. Go even deeper now and let go. Your sedative is taking over, so just let it happen. Don't fight it. Go to sleep— and forget all this."
He withdrew and watched for several minutes, checking the pulse in the side of William's neck and the pupils under slack eyelids, then stood and shook his head. He was still shaking it as he rejoined Alix in the library.
"Is everything all right?" she asked as he closed the door and locked it.
A smile quirked at one comer of his mouth, but it was as much a sign of nervous reassurance to himself as an expression of amusement.
"You tell me," he said, settling bonelessly into an easy chair. "After some rather animated discussion in which we touched on the subject of perfect trust—and much against his preference, mind you—he took the sedative. That was only the beginning. He then went into a spontaneous trance—a rather good one, too."
"He what?"
"You heard me." He leaned his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. "I can't think of a single more poignant way he could have chosen to demonstrate his trust of me. It made me feel like a first-class cad. I suppose Michael and I must have made much more of an impression than I thought."
"Michael? Whatever are you talking about?"
"At Dover. Remember I told you he'd watched me put Michael under?" he asked, opening his eyes as she moved a straight chair closer and nodded. "Well, I don't know what possessed me to treat him like Michael, but I did. He was getting drowsy from the drug, and fighting it. He said something about me not treating Michael or the rest of you this way. I told him that Michael wouldn't be fighting the inevitable, and to take a nice deep breath and go to sleep. Then I touched his forehead, just as we usually key one another. He must have remembered that same sequence with Michael, at least on an unconscious level, because the next thing I knew, he was under. I could hardly believe my eyes."
Alix was shaking her head by the time he finished. "Are you sure he was in trance and not just asleep?"
"Are you doubting my ability to tell the difference?"
"No, but—"
"He doesn't know enough to have been faking, Alix—and certainly not with the drug in him. I ran several tests, and he passed them all." He paused. "I suppose the true test will be in the morning. I told him to forget the whole sequence of the sedation and trance. I also set up our standard posthypnotic trigger. It seemed a shame to waste the opportunity—and one never knows when one will need such a thing."
She shook her head, looking not at all reassured. "1 hope you know what you're doing. Has he asked you about hypnosis before, other than the time he saw you and Michael?"
"Yes, on the way back from Buckland. He wanted to know how I'd gone into trance without words being spoken. He understood my explanation. He also expressed an interest in past-life regression. You can bet I put him off on that one."
"Well, you may want to continue putting him off on that," she murmured, still oddly ill at ease, Graham thought. "Have you given any more thought to your own regressions?"
"Only the ones about Drake," he replied, pulling a footstool closer and propping up his feet. "I was hoping you'd managed to come up with something further on those, and that was why you wanted to work with me tonight."
"It was. Now I'm not so sure. This whole thing with William bothers me."
"Then why did you let me agree to have him become further involved? And what about those last two cards?"
"I'd rather get back to your regressions first," she replied, collecting several closely typed sheets of foolscap from a drawer and returning to sit by his chair.
He reached for them, but she shook her head.
"No, I don't want you to read this yet. I'd like you to go into trance and see what further you can recall, now that you've made the initial contacts. David rang me about your hits on Drake and Elizabeth, and you've told me what you and William uncovered. Let's see what you'll come up with on the others without prompting. I have some background for guiding you now and asking the right questions."
"All right," he agreed, removing his already loosened tie and draping it over the chair arm. "At least this isn't as emotionally loaded as the other. Any special approach you'd like me to use, or shall I just settle in and wait for instructions?"
"Go ahead and get comfortable. I want to scan my notes one more time," she said.
With the ease of the well-trained subject, Graham closed his eyes and went into trance, feeling the familiar, fluttery sensation, over an inmieasurable instant, that signaled its dee|>-
ening to a normal working level. He paid brief attention to his body, making certain it was comfortable, letting his breathing settle into the slow, shallow pattern that would sustain him while he turned to other considerations. Then he simply let himself drift in anticipation.
"Take another deep breath and let go," came her voice as her hand finally touched his forehead in familiar cue.
He obeyed and felt himself settling into yet a deeper level, lethargy stealing across his limbs and further cushioning him from outside distractions as he focused on her touch and waited. The touch disappeared, to become discernible again on his left wrist. He could feel her fingertips resting lightly over the pulse point. Concentrating on the strong, steady beat took him deeper yet.
"That's fine," he heard her say. "Find a depth where you can still hear and speak to me. Are you there?"
"Yes."
He breathed the answer almost inaudibly, all his awareness concentrated in her voice and the touch of her hand on his wrist.
"Good. Now, in a few seconds, I want you to begin casting back in time as you've done before. Then I'm going to read you the list of names you gave us after your last regression. I want you to flow back with those names and try to focus in on one of them. Are you ready?"
"Yes."
"All right. Begin going back now. Back to your childhood and beyond... your birth... and before that. Go back to I>rake... and keep going. Someone named George... and Sir William Wallace... a monk named John..
. Sir Reginald FitzUrse... Sir Walter Tyn-el...."
He could feel himself hurtling back past the years in response, each name conjuring brief, bright memories that flashed and lingered only in after image by the time he could try to focus on them. Some were evoked by the names he heard, others admitted of no naming he could recall, yet he knew that all of them were a part of him.
He let them flow, not even trying to hold to any one of them, until he sensed a slowing. Abruptly, with an almost physical jolt, he was in another awareness, another body, another set of memories.
Chapter 14
HE WORE MAIL AND LEATHER. HIS MAILED FIST WAS wrapped around the hilt of a sheathed sword, ready, as he and the others stepped through the narrow transept door. Spurs jangled against the threshold, and steel-shod boots echoed against the grey stone floor.
Incense hung heavy on the air, along with the scent of candle wax and the musty pungence of damp vaults and moldering tombs. He could feel the pulse beat throbbing m his temples— and at his wrist, where a human touch kept some part of him anchored other-when—but he was not Graham any longer. He was Sir Reginald FitzUrse, the King's man and bearer of a sacred obligation.
Keen in the dimness, he looked out past the nasal of his Norman helm and waited for his eyes to adjust to the inner twilight, every sense straining against the silence, against the anticipation. Grey against the greyer walls, he could make out arches springing from a clerestory level and the paler jewel-gleam of windows high over his left shoulder. Ahead, candlelight played on column, wall, and a chapel beyond. A voice niggled at the edges of his consciousness, wanting words from him, but he was too deeply involved to pay it mind or describe what he saw to the disembodied presence that somehow was with him, yet not with him. It was sunset—the appointed hour. It was time to move.
He glided forward like a beast of prey unshackled. Two others flanked him, one to either side, and a third lingered at the door behind them to guard against intruders. Ahead, beside the great support pillar of the north transept, the sacred victim emerged from shadow, a young monk at his side bearing the heavy processional cross as if it were some great knight's standard. Clearly, the monk had not the eyes to see what was about to happen.
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