took her hand gently. ‘Jo, can you hear me? Good. Now, I’m going to tickle your hand slightly, just enough to make you smile. Can you feel me do it?’
Sarah gasped. He had taken a small pin from his lapel and driven it deeply into her palm. Jo smiled, her eyes still closed, still wondering why he didn’t shut out the sun.
Bennet glanced at Sarah. Then he turned back to Jo. ‘Now my dear, I want you to go back to when you were a little girl …’
Some ten minutes later Sarah’s whisper broke into his concentration. ‘Carl, she’s the best subject I’ve ever seen.’
He frowned at her, his whole attention fixed on the figure lying back against the cushions in front of him. ‘I had a feeling she might be,’ he replied in an undertone. ‘I can’t understand why Cohen couldn’t reach her, unless –’ He broke off and looked at her thoughtfully.
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless he gave her a post-hypnotic suggestion that she should not remember for some reason.’ He turned back to Jo. ‘Now, Jo, my dear, I want you to go back, back to the time before you were born, to the dark time, when you were floating free …’
Jo stirred uneasily, moving her head from side to side. Then she lay still again, completely relaxed as she listened to him.
‘Now, Jo. Before the darkness. When you lived before. Do you remember? You are another person, in another time. Do you remember? Can you tell me? What do you see?’
Jo opened her eyes and stared hard in front of her at the arm of the sofa. ‘It’s getting dark,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Dark and cold.’
‘Are you indoors or out, can you see?’ Bennet frowned at the window, which showed that it was indeed getting dark and that a torrential summer rain had begun to fall, streaming down the windows, gurgling from a broken gutter. There was another deep roll of thunder.
Jo spoke hesitantly. ‘It’s the trees. They’re so thick here. I don’t like the forest.’
‘Do you know which forest it is?’ Bennet was watching her intently.
‘No.’
‘Can you tell me your name?’
She frowned, puzzled. ‘I don’t know. Some call me – they call me Matilda – no, Moll … I don’t know.’
‘Can you tell me something about yourself, Matilda? Where do you live?’
Slowly Jo pushed herself up from the cushions till she was sitting bolt upright, staring into space. ‘I live,’ she said firmly, ‘I live far away from here. In the mountains.’ Then she shook her head, perplexed. ‘The mountains fill my eyes. Black and misty, not like at home.’ She began to rub her eyes with her knuckles, like a child. She looked bewildered. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. I want to sleep.’ She lay back and closed her eyes.
‘Tell me something else then, Matilda,’ Bennet prompted gently. ‘What are you doing?’
There was no answer.
‘Are you walking in the forest, or riding perhaps?’
Jo hunched her shoulders rebelliously and said nothing. Bennet sighed, ‘Come now, my dear. Tell me what are you wearing? Are you dressed in your prettiest clothes?’ He was coaxing now. He glanced at his watch and then looked at Sarah. ‘Pity. I thought we were going to get something interesting. We might try again another time –’ He broke off as Jo let out an exclamation.
‘They told me to forget. How can I forget? It is happening now …’
Bennet had not taken his eyes off her face. He leaned forward, every nerve ending suddenly tense.
Slowly Jo was standing up. She took a couple of paces from the sofa and stood looking at the wall, her eyes wide open. ‘When is it going to stop snowing?’ she asked distinctly. She wrapped her arms around herself as if trying to enfold herself more warmly in her thin linen dress and he saw her shiver violently.
‘It is snowing hard,’ Bennet agreed cautiously.
She frowned. ‘I had hoped it would hold off until we reached the castle. I don’t like the snow. It makes the forest so dark.’
‘Can you tell me what the date is, my dear?’
‘It is nearly Yule.’ She smiled. ‘Time for feasting.’
‘And which year, do you know?’ Bennet reached for a notepad and pen. He watched Jo’s face carefully. Her eyes were normal and focusing, but not on him. Her hand, when he reached gently and touched it, was ice-cold.
‘It is the twentieth year of the reign of our Lord King Henry,’ she said clearly. ‘What a foolish question.’ She took another step. ‘Oh Holy Mother of God, we’re nearly there.’ Her voice fell to a whisper. ‘I am going to William.’
‘Who is William?’ Totally absorbed, Bennet stopped writing and looked up, waiting for an answer.
But Jo did not answer. Her whole attention was fixed on something she could see distinctly lying on the road in front of her in the snow. It was the bloody body of a man.
The melting snow was red with blood. Richard, the young Earl of Clare and Hertford, pulled his horse to a rearing halt, struggling to control the animal as it plunged sideways in fear, its ears flat against its head. It had smelled the carcass and the wolves at the same moment and it snorted with terror as Richard tried to force it around the deserted kill at the edge of the track. A buzzard flew up at the riders’ approach leaving all that remained of the mangled corpse in the slush-threaded mud. A few rags of clothing were the only sign that it had once been human.
‘What is it? What’s happened?’ The slim red-haired girl swathed in a fox-fur mantle who had been cantering fast behind him, was concentrating so hard on catching him up that his sudden halt nearly unseated her. Behind her, at a more sedate pace, rode a second young woman and Richard’s twelve knights, wearing on their surcoats the gold and scarlet chevrons of Clare.
The riders formed a semicircle in the cold sleet and gazed down at the torn limbs. One or two of the men crossed themselves fervently and the red-haired girl found herself swallowing hard. She pulled her veil across her face hastily. ‘Poor man,’ she whispered. ‘Who could have done such a thing?’
‘Wolves.’ Richard steadied his horse with difficulty. ‘Don’t look, Matilda. There’s nothing we can do for the miserable bastard. No doubt the men of the village will come and bury what the buzzards and kites leave.’ He turned his horse and kicked it on, forcing it past the body, and the other riders slowly followed him, averting their eyes. Two or three had their hands nervously on the hilts of their swords.
All round them the bleak Welsh forest seemed deserted. Oak and ash and silver-limbed beech, bare of leaves, their trunks wet and shining from the sleet, crowded to the edge of the track. Save for the ringing of the horses’ hooves on the outcrops of rock and the squeak and chink of harness it was eerily silent.
Richard
