Lady of Hay

by Barbara Erskine

  She shrugged. “Perhaps it was on the radio.” She glanced at him uncomfortably. Nick had drunk most of the bottle of wine himself, quickly, without savoring it, which was unusual for him, and she could see that he was still tense and angry, the lines of his jaw taut as he lay back against the sofa cushions.

  “Tell me,” he went on after a moment, “if you remember everything about your visit to Gloucester so clearly, did you meet Richard de Clare again?”

  “Nick. I don’t want to talk about it.” She was filling her cup and did not look at him.

  “I want to know, Jo.” His voice was quietly insistent.

  She sighed. “I did see him, yes. He was a close adviser of the king’s. Once he arrived at Gloucester he was constantly in attendance on him.”

  “But did you see him alone?”

  Jo smiled reminiscently in spite of herself. “Yes, I saw him alone the day after the awful business with the hands. He came to my tent. William had announced that we were going back to Bramber before the weather closed in. He was unnerved by the whole affair and he had given orders that we were to set out the following day.”

  “And Richard came to your tent?”

  Jo glanced up, hearing the undercurrent of anger in his voice. “We said good-bye, yes,” she said cautiously.

  “Did he kiss you?”

  She saw his blue eyes narrow. “Nick. For goodness’ sake—”

  “Did he?” He sat up, watching her intently.

  “Yes,” she said defiantly. “If you must know, he did. It was the first time he had ever held me properly in his arms. The tent was flapping in the wind, the heavy hangings that lined the walls rippling as if they were going to be torn off their hooks—it was so cold. The boy hadn’t kept the brazier outside the door fed properly, and it was smoking, not giving out much heat. Richard came in and I realized Nell must have let him pass. Elen would never have let him come to me alone. William was with the Earl of Gloucester—” She paused, sitting on the floor, hugging her knees, gazing at the table lamp. There was a long silence. Nick’s eyes had not shifted from her face.

  “Go on,” he said at last. “Aren’t you going to tell me what happened next?”

  She glanced up. “He didn’t say anything at all. He just strode in, dropped the heavy curtains across the tent doorway and laced them together, then he took me in his arms. It was the first time we had kissed properly and I remember, for a moment, I was afraid. Then I forgot everything—William, little Will in the next tent with his nurses, the fear that someone might come—everything. I had never known physical desire before, only hints of it whenever Richard came near me, but suddenly I was overwhelmed by it.” She paused and then went on thoughtfully. “I think we had both imagined that the feeling we had for each other could be contained in some courtly flirtation, but suddenly it took fire. I didn’t care what happened. I led him to the bed and he pushed me down on the furs—” She stopped abruptly, seeing Nick’s face, and gave an embarrassed little laugh. “Sorry. I was getting carried away! Anyway, it was quite good, as I remember. Matilda’s first orgasm—”

  She broke off as he lunged forward and caught her wrist, pulling it viciously so that she fell toward him, knocking the tray off the low table. The coffeepot slid to the floor and cracked against the table leg, soaking the carpet with coffee.

  “Nick, stop it!” she cried. She could feel her arm pressing on a sharp piece of broken china. Warm blood flowed over her wrist. “Nick, please—you’re hurting me—please, look, I’ve cut myself—” The blind fury in his face frightened her. “It was only a dream, Nick. It wasn’t real! For God’s sake, what’s the matter with you? Nick!” His hand was on her throat, his eyes murderous. Jo struggled frantically, feeling the pressure on her windpipe slowly increase. Then abruptly his mood seemed to change. He moved his hand from her throat, catching her wrists instead, clamping them above her head while with his free hand he began to pull open her bathrobe. Then he bent over her and began roughly caressing her breasts. He smiled coldly. “That’s better. You like a little medieval violence, don’t you? It reminds you of the good old days—”

  “Please, Nick! Nick—” Jo was terrified by the blind savagery in his face. She had never seen anyone look like that before, except once…For a moment she stopped struggling and lay still, frozen with fear as she remembered the face of the man who had tried to strangle her before—Nick’s other face—then with a last desperate pull she managed to break free of him. She rolled away and staggered to her feet, clutching her robe around her. “Get out! Get out of here,” she shouted. “Get out of this apartment, Nick, and never, ever come back!” Her eyes were blazing with anger. “Don’t you dare lay a finger on me again! I don’t know what the hell you think you’re playing at, but you get out of here. I won’t be treated like this. Not ever, do you hear!” She backed away from him toward the front door, knotting her belt around her waist. “Did you hear me?” she repeated desperately.

  He was smiling as he stood up. A cool, arrogant smile, which turned her anger back to terror.

  “Nick, please. What’s wrong with you?” She had nearly reached the front door. Turning quickly, she scrabbled with the latch, frantically trying to drag the door open, but Nick was close behind her. He slammed the door shut and rammed the bolt home, then he caught her arm. As he swung her to face him Jo screamed. But the sound never came. It was cut off short as he clamped his hand across her mouth, pulling her hard against him. He half dragged, half carried her down the passage to the bedroom and, without turning on the light, flung her on the bed.

  She lay there for a moment, winded, then as she turned, trying to struggle to her feet again, she felt a blinding blow across her face. Half stunned, she fell back as Nick’s weight came down on top of her.

  “Now, my lady,” he breathed, his fingers feeling for the knot of her belt, his face so close to hers she could see the gleam of his eyes in the darkness. “Another sound and I shall have to take steps to silence you.”

  She tried to wriggle sideways as she felt his knee forcing her legs apart, but he held her easily. Eventually realizing that the more she fought him the more he was going to hurt her, she made herself go limp, biting her lip in pain as he forced his way inside her. His mouth ground into hers and she opened her lips helplessly beneath his probing tongue, and suddenly through her fear she felt a little stab of excitement. As if he sensed it, Nick laughed softly, and she felt his grip on her wrists tighten. “So, my lady, you do enjoy violence,” he whispered. “I think in a lot of ways you’ll find I can please you better than Richard de Clare.” And his mouth left hers and traveled down her throat toward her breasts.

  He fell asleep eventually, still spreadeagled over her numbed body, his head between her breasts, his hands, loosened at last, outstretched across the bedcover. Agonized, Jo tried to move. She was crying softly, afraid to wake him as she tried again to dislodge the dead weight that pinned her to the bed. In the end she gave up and lay still, staring toward the window where the heavy curtains cut out the first signs of a beautiful dawn.

  ***

  Nick woke just before seven. For a long time he lay unmoving, feeling the woman’s body limp beneath his, then slowly he eased himself off her and sat up. He grabbed his trousers and staggered to the window, throwing back the curtains with a groan. It was full daylight. He looked at his watch in surprise, and then back at the bed as the stark daylight fell across Jo. She was lying naked on the bedcover, her hair spread across the pillow, her legs apart. There were vivid bruises on her wrists and breasts, and he could see bloodstains on the bedspread. There was a long jagged cut encrusted with dried blood on her forearm, more blood on the inside of her thighs—

  He felt suddenly violently sick. She had not stirred. She did not even seem to be breathing. He threw himself toward the bed. “Jo? Jo! For God’s sake, are you all right?”

  For a moment she did not move, then, slowly and painfully, she opened her eyes, dazzled by the light, and stared around the room.
It was a few moments before she began to remember. He saw the fear flicker behind her eyes as she looked up at him and a wave of nausea shook him again. She still had not moved but he saw her lick her lips experimentally, trying to speak. He reached for her bathrobe, thrown across a chair, and laid it gently over her.

  “I’ll make some tea,” he said softly.

  In the bathroom he tugged at the light pull and stared at himself in the cold, uncompromising electric light. His face looked the same as usual. Tired perhaps, and a little gray, but nothing strange. There was a scratch across his shoulder, otherwise nothing to show for Jo’s fight for her life.

  He walked slowly to the kitchen and made the tea, comforting himself with the familiar sounds as he filled the kettle and fished in the jar for two teabags. Then he walked through to the living room. It was cold; the French doors had been open all night. The grass in the square was still silvered with dew. He pulled the doors closed, then he turned and picked up his shirt. There were coffee stains on the sleeve. And blood. Pulling it on, he went back to the kitchen. He was numb.

  Slowly he carried the two mugs back to the bedroom. Jo had not moved. Sitting on the bed beside her, he proffered one of the mugs tentatively.

  “Jo—”

  She turned her head away and closed her eyes.

  “Jo, please. Let me explain.”

  “There is nothing to explain.” She did not look at him. “Please, just go.”

  He stood up. “All right.” He leaned forward as if to touch her shoulder, but he changed his mind. “I’ll come back this evening, Jo. I’ll make it up to you somehow,” he whispered.

  Leaving the two cups of tea untouched beside the bed, he walked slowly to the door. After unbolting it, he let himself out onto the quiet landing.

  As he tiptoed down the stairs toward the street he heard the distant sickly wailing of a baby.

  For a long time after he had gone Jo did not move. She lay rigid, listening to Will crying. Her fists clenched, her eyes dry, she stared at the wall, feeling the ache of her body where Nick had bruised her. Suddenly she sat up. She threw herself out of bed and ran to the bathroom, turning both bath taps on full, then she went to find her address book. She fumbled in her canvas bag in her haste, then pulled the book out and began flipping through the pages with a shaking hand, trying not to notice the mess of bloodstains that had soaked into the pale carpet in the middle of the room.

  ***

  She stopped at Leigh Delamere service station on the M4, pulling into the crowded parking lot and resting her head for a moment on the rim of the wheel. She had thrown in her bags, typewriter, and camera barely fifteen minutes after calling Janet Pugh.

  She pulled the rearview mirror toward her and studied her face. Her lips were still swollen and her eyes were puffy from crying so much in the night. She had dabbed makeup over her white skin and used lipstick and eyeshadow. It made her feel better. The long sleeves and high neck of her Victorian blouse covered the worst of her bruises.

  She pulled herself painfully out of the car and swung her bag over her shoulder. It was only another twenty miles, if that, to the Severn Bridge. Then she would be in Wales.

  ***

  Tim stood for a long time outside the house in Church Road, staring up at the gray slate roof with its dentillation of wrought-iron decoration. The house was identical to its neighbors, save for the front door, which was cream with a brightly polished knocker. The windows were hung with fresh, plain net curtains, like old-fashioned muslin, he thought, as at last he raised his hand to the knocker.

  Sylvia Walton opened the door at his second knock. She had plaited her hair and wound it around her head in a silvery braid. It made her look like an Austrian peasant. His fingers itched for his camera, but he had not brought it with him. He grinned at her. “It was very good of you and Bill to let me come back and talk to you.”

  Sylvia smiled as she led him up the long flight of stairs. “He was pleased to hear from you again. Miss Clifford isn’t with you this time?”

  Tim shook his head. He followed her into the room they had been in before, but this time the lines of chairs were missing. Instead a small wheeled table that had been set for three was standing near the fireplace. Bill Walton was writing at his desk. He rose as his wife ushered Tim into the room and held out his hand. The prominent green eyes surveyed Tim shrewdly. “So, Mr. Heacham, you want to try a little regression yourself,” he said with a smile. “I’m glad you found your previous visit so interesting.”

  ***

  Jo drew the car up in a narrow lane and stared ahead of her through a stone arch. Her stomach muscles knotted. Abergavenny Castle. After climbing out of the MG, she walked slowly through the arch and stared around her.

  The sleepless night and the long drive from London were catching up with her fast now and she ached all over with exhaustion. Her mind was mercifully blank whenever she thought about Nick. All she knew was that she did not want to be in London and that if anyone could comfort her it would not be Nick but Richard—a Richard she might never see again but for whom she longed with an almost physical ache. She drew a deep painful breath of air into her lungs and walked on.

  This castle too was a ruin but there was far more of it left than at Bramber. She stepped onto a grass lawn strewn with daisies and stared up at a mock-Gothic stone keep, somehow garishly out of place on the motte at the center of the bailey where the Norman tower had stood. Around her rose high pinkish-gray ruined walls while below the hillside the river elbowed in a lazy curve through the valley. Beyond it lay the soft Welsh hills, shrouded in heat haze. One of the massive walls was covered in scaffolding and she could hear the soft lilt of conversation from high on the ladders near the top of the masonry, where a tree cast its shade over the stone.

  Shivering, she began to walk around the perimeter path. Somewhere here, in the bailey below the motte, the Welsh dead had lain in terrible disarray, and in their midst Seisyll and his son. She stood still again, staring around. Surely something of the horror must remain? The stench of blood? The screams? She felt the warm wind from the south lift her hair slightly on her neck. A patch of red valerian in the wall near her stirred, but nothing more. The echoes were still. William de Braose was dead and Seisyll long ago avenged.

  ***

  She parked her car outside Janet and David Pugh’s neat white-painted house and rang the doorbell, staring back up the empty street, as she listened to the sound of footsteps running down the stairs and toward the door. For a moment after the door opened she and Janet stood staring at each other incredulously. Janet saw a tall, elegant young woman with long, dark hair wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved blouse and well-cut slacks, most of her face obscured by dark glasses. Jo saw a very pregnant, fair-haired woman in a sleeveless summer dress and Scholl sandals. She grinned. “My God, you’ve changed since school!”

  “So have you.” Janet reached forward tentatively and kissed her cheek. “Come in. You must have had a hell of a drive from London.”

  From her bedroom at the top of the house Jo could see the castle ruins. She stood staring out across the low huddle of rooftops, her hand on the curtain, before turning to her hostess, who was hovering in the doorway. “It was good of you to let me come like this, with no warning,” she said. “I had forgotten you lived in Abergavenny, then when I knew I had to come here something clicked in my mind and I remembered your Christmas card.”

  “I’m glad you did. You’re working on an article, you said?” Janet’s eyes went to the typewriter standing in its case at the foot of the bed. “David was very impressed when I called the school and told him you were coming here. You’re famous!”

  Jo laughed. “Infamous is a better word these days, I fear.” She took a brush out of her bag and ran it down her hair, which crackled with static. “You really don’t mind my coming?”

  Janet shook her head. Her eyes sparkled with sudden irrepressible giggles. “I’m thrilled. Really. You’re the most exciting thing that’s happened
to us for months!” She sat down on the end of the bed with a groan, her hand to her back. “Well, what do you think of Wales, then?”

  Jo sat down beside her. “I haven’t seen much so far, but what I’ve seen is beautiful. I think I’m going to love it here.” How could she explain that already it felt like coming home? Impatiently she pushed the sentimental phrase aside and pulled off her dark glasses at last, throwing them on the bed. Beneath them her face was very pale.

  David Pugh came home at about six. He was a squat, florid, sandy-haired man with twinkling eyes. “So you’ve come to see where it all happened,” he said cheerfully as he handed Jo a glass of sherry. “We were intrigued when we read the article about you in the paper.” He stood staring at her for a moment, the bottle still in his hand. “You’re not like her, are you? Not how I imagined her, anyway.”

  “Who?” Jo was looking around the small living room curiously. Books and records overflowed from every shelf and flat surface onto the floor.

  “Our Moll Walbee.” He was watching her closely. “You know who that is, surely?”

  Jo frowned. She took a sip of sherry. Out of the back window across the small garden there was a hedge and more roofs and behind them she could still see the pink-gray stone of the strange Gothic keep in the castle grounds. “Moll Walbee,” she repeated. “It’s strange. I seem to know the name, but I can’t place it.”

  “It is what the Marcher people called Maude de Braose. You seem to prefer the name Matilda, which is, I grant, more euphonious, but nevertheless she was, I think, more often known as Maude.”

  He poured a glass of sherry for his wife, and pushing open the hatch into the kitchen, passed it through to her. Janet, a plastic apron over her dress, was chopping parsley. She looked slightly flustered as she dropped the knife and took the glass from him. “Shut up about that now, David,” she said in an undertone, glancing at Jo.

  “No.” Jo had seen the challenge in David’s eyes. “No, don’t shut up. I’m interested. If you know about her I want to hear it. I can see you’re skeptical, and I don’t blame you. You’re a historian, I believe?”