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?’
Jo nodded. ‘I was too tired by the end to know what was going on properly. Then afterwards, in real life, I began to produce milk for that poor scrap of a baby who was only a dream!’
‘You’re not serious.’ Janet looked shocked.
‘Oh, it only lasted a day or two, thank God, but it was rather disgusting at the time.’
Janet was staring at her. ‘It doesn’t seem possible.’
‘No.’
‘And your Nick. Did he know about all this?’
‘Oh yes. He was, you might say, present at the birth. He was watching while I was describing it all under hypnosis.’
‘Then I’m not surprised he’s a bit rattled.’ Janet shivered again. ‘The poor man must really feel weird. I’ll tell you one thing. If all that had happened to me, I’d never let myself be hypnotised again as long as I lived. Never!’ She shuddered theatrically.
‘You wouldn’t want to know what happened?’
‘But you do know what happened, Jo. David showed you, in that book. She died. Horribly.’
Jo drew her knees up to her chin and hugged them. ‘She died in about 1211. The events I am describing happened around 1176. That’s thirty-five years later.’
‘And you’re going to relive thirty-five years of her life?’ Janet’s expression dissolved suddenly into her irrepressible smile. ‘I take it this is a fairly long project, Jo?’ The smile faded abruptly. ‘I think you’re mad. Nothing on earth would make me go through with that deliberately. Didn’t Dave say she had six children? Are you going to go through another five pregnancies and deliveries like that first one? I’m prepared to bet real money they still hadn’t even invented morphine by the turn of the thirteenth century.’
Jo grinned tolerantly. ‘Perhaps you’re right. And it is a pretty thankless task, with no baby at the end of it …’ She blinked rapidly, aware of a sudden lump in her throat.
Janet heaved herself to her feet and came and put her arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, Jo. I didn’t mean to upset you –’
‘You haven’t.’ Jo pulled away from her and stood up. ‘Besides, if I’m honest I have a particular reason for wanting to go back. Not just to see Will, though I want to hold him so much sometimes it hurts.’ She gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I have to go back to see Richard again. I need him, Janet. He’s got under my skin. To me he is completely real.’
‘Supposing Matilda never saw him again,’ Janet said thoughtfully after a moment.
‘Then I’ll have to learn to live without him. But until I know for sure I have a feeling I shall go back. Come on.’ She reached for the bedcover and pulled it down. ‘I need my beauty sleep, even if you don’t. Tomorrow I am going to Hay and Brecon and places to see if I can lay Matilda’s ghost. If I can then there will be no more regressions. No more Richard. Just an article in Women in Action which will be of passing interest to some and total boredom to others and then it will all be forgotten.’
She climbed into bed and lay back tensely after Janet had gone, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, half afraid that all the talk of babies might once more conjure up the sound of crying in the echoing chambers of that distant castle, but she heard nothing but the gentle sighing of the wind.
Outside the window the clouds streamed across the moon and shadowed silver played over the ruins. If Seisyll’s ghost walked, she did not see him. Within minutes she was asleep.
The breezes of Sussex were gentle after the frosty mornings of the west and the trees were still heavy with leaves as yet untouched by frost. As Matilda’s long procession slowly travelled the last miles to Bramber she could see from far away the tall keep of the castle, standing sentinel on its height above the River Adur. They rode slowly down the long causeway into the small village which clung among the saltings around the foot of the castle hill. The parish church and the castle looked out across the marshes and the deep angle of the river towards the sea. The tide was in and the deep moat full of water as they clattered across the drawbridge, with gulls swooping and wheeling around them and diving into the slate-coloured catspaws below.
Her beloved nurse Jeanne greeted them outside the towering gatehouse with tears of joy, but she had news of death.
‘What is it, Jeanne dear? Is it the old lord?’ Matilda gazed round as she slipped from her horse, dreading suddenly any visitation of sickness which might come near her son. He was so little and vulnerable. She ached sometimes with love for the little boy and with the terrible fear of what might become of him.
‘It’s Sir William’s mother, the Lady Bertha.’ Jeanne’s wrinkled old face was suddenly solemn. ‘She slipped on the stairs and broke her thigh two months since. She lived on for weeks in terrible pain, poor soul, and then she died at last a week ago, God rest her. The bones were too old to knit properly.’ The old woman crossed herself and then looked up shrewdly under her heavy eyelids. ‘I wonder you didn’t meet the messengers we sent after Sir William. You’ll be mistress of your own, now, ma p’tite. I’m glad for you.’
Secretly Matilda felt no sorrow for the domineering old woman, but
