Lady of Hay

Bennet frowned. “If you object, I shall ask them all to leave, Jo.” He was watching her anxiously. “I don’t mean this to be an inquisition.”

“No.” Jo sat down resolutely. “No, if I’m a fake, no one wants to know it more than I do.” She gave Sam a tight smile. He was seated unobtrusively in the corner of the room, watching the others. He had nodded to her briefly, then his gaze had gone beyond her, to Nick.

Bennet glanced at Sarah, ready by her tape recorder, then he smiled. Around them the others were arranging themselves, leaving Jo alone, seated in the center of the room. “Shall we begin?” he said gently. He sat down next to her.

Jo nodded. She sat back, her hands loosely clasped in her lap, her eyes on Bennet’s face.

“Good,” he said after a moment. “You have learned to relax. That’s fine. I heard you had been practicing.”

Every eye in the room was on him as gently he talked Jo back into her trance. Within seconds he was content. He looked over his shoulder at Sam. “The self-hypnosis we were discussing has made her easier to regress. She doesn’t really need me, save as a control.” He straightened and looked at the others. “She is ready to be questioned. Who would like to have a go first? Dr. Marshall, what about you? Would you perhaps like to ask her something in Welsh? She has, as we all know, maintained that she has no knowledge at all of the language in this incarnation, and I suspect that would be very easy to prove one way or the other. Easier than questions of historical detail.”

Wendy Marshall nodded. She was a tall, slim woman in her early forties. Her hair, an attractive brown, was drawn back into a clip at the nape of her neck, to fall in undisciplined curls down her back. Its exuberance contrasted sharply with her severe expression and the puritanical simplicity of her linen dress. Picking up the clipboard that had been resting on her knee, she stood up and walked toward Jo.

“ Nawr te, arglwyddes Mallt .” She launched at once into a torrent of words. “ Fe faswn i’n hoffi gofyn ichwi ychydig cwestiynau, os ca i …I have told her that I’m going to ask her some questions,” she said over her shoulder.

The silence in the room was electric. Nick found he was clenching his fists, as, like everyone else, he watched for Jo’s reaction.

“ A ydych chi’n fyn deall i? Pa rydw i’n dweud? Fyng arglwyddes? ” Wendy went on after a moment.

There was a long pause. Jo gave no sign of having heard her. Her attention was fixed somewhere inside herself, far from the room in Devonshire Place. Wendy gave a shiver. She glanced at Bennet. “I just asked her if she understood me,” she said in an undertone. “She looks completely blank. I am afraid it looks as though she has been fooling you.”

Nick stood up abruptly. He walked toward the window and stared out, forcing himself to stay calm. Behind him, Sam’s gaze followed him thoughtfully.

Nick spun around. “You think she’s been lying?” he burst out. “You think the whole thing is a hoax? Some glorious charade we’ve all made up to amuse ourselves?”

“Nicholas, please.” Carl Bennet stood up. “I am sure Dr. Marshall is implying no such thing.” He turned to Jo. “Can you hear me, Lady Matilda?” His tone was suddenly peremptory.

Slowly Jo looked toward him. After a moment she nodded.

“You have told us that you speak the language of the hills,” he said firmly. “I want you to answer the questions this lady asks you. You can see this lady with me, can’t you, Matilda?”

Jo turned to Wendy, looking straight at her. Her eyes were strangely blank.

“Speak to her again now,” Bennet whispered.

Wendy raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

“ Fyng arglwyddes, dywedwch am y Cymry sy’n drigo o gwmpas y Gelli, os gwelych chi’n dda ,” she said slowly, speaking very distinctly. “ Ydych chi’n fyn deall i? ”

Jo frowned. She pushed herself forward in the chair, her eyes focused now intently on Wendy’s face.

“ Y…y Cymry o gwmpas y Gelli? ” she echoed hesitantly.

“That’s it! I’ve asked her to tell me something about the people of Hay-on-Wye,” Wendy said quickly over her shoulder, her face suddenly tense with excitement.

“ Eres ych araith ,” Jo said slowly, fumbling with the words. “ Eissoes, mi a wn dy veddwl di. Managaf wrthyt yr hynn a ovynny ditheu…pan kyrchu y Elfael a oruc Rhys… ”

“I will tell thee of what thou desirest…of Rhys’s attack on Elfael,” Wendy murmured, scribbling in her notebook. “Slowly. Yn araf .” She had forgotten her irritation with Bennet and with Nick as soon as Jo had started to speak. Sitting down close to her, she waited for a moment, her eyes intent on Jo’s face. “ Siaradwch e, yn araf, os gwelych chi yn dda ,” she repeated at last. “Slowly, please. Yn araf iawn .”

Jo gave a little half smile. She was looking beyond Wendy now, toward the windows as if she were watching Nick.

“ Rhys a dywawt y caffei ef castell Fallt a gyrrei ef Wilym gyt a’y veibion o Elfael a Brycheiniog megys ry-e yrrassei wynteu y ymdeith Maes-y-fed .” She paused thoughtfully. There was silence in the room, broken only by a quiet rattle as Sarah dropped her pen on the table in the corner; it rolled unnoticed across the polished surface to fall silently onto the carpet.

“Don’t tell me that’s not real Welsh she’s speaking,” Bennet said triumphantly. “What is she saying now?”

Wendy shook her head. “It is Welsh,” she said quietly, “but it’s hard to understand. The pronunciation is unusual and the syntax…that use of the old perfect form dywawt is striking. It’s an early Middle Welsh form that has disappeared. And also very odd is her use of the verbal particle ry with the pronoun -e, meaning ‘them,’ following it. Such usage is very early.” She looked around at the others. “You would not expect to find it even in the Middle Welsh of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. It is very, very interesting.”

“She is talking to you from the twelfth century, Dr. Marshall,” Sam put in quietly. “You would not, I am sure, expect anything other than twelfth-century speech.”

Wendy swung around to look at him. “She speaks modern English,” she said sharply. “Using your criterion I would expect her to speak the language of Layamon, or even more likely Norman-French. But not the English of the 1980s.”

Sam shrugged. “She has a twentieth-century brain, Dr. Marshall. The memories she is drawing on include the languages she would have spoken at the time. But they are being relayed through the medium of a twentieth- century woman who, until now, has been instructed to answer in the twentieth-century idiom. Why don’t you address her in old French? Or even Latin. See what happens!”

“ Pan dducpwyt chwedyl o’n orchyfygu vi bydwn yngastell Paen ,” Jo went on suddenly, completely oblivious of the exchange going on over her head. “ Gwybuum minheu yna ymladd a wnaem ninneu. Nyt oed bryd inni galw cymhorthiaid …”

“What is she saying now?” Bennet leaned forward urgently.

“Wait! I am trying to understand her,” Wendy snapped. She was frowning intently. “She said she would have to fight. There was no time to summon aid…”

“Where? Where is she?”

“Pain’s Castle is it? She is going to defend Pain’s Castle.”

“ Y glawr mawr - Y bu yn drwmm etto ,” Jo went on.

“The heavy rain, it was still heavy…” Wendy echoed under her breath.

“ Oed goed twe ymhob cyfer -”

“There was thick forest all around-”

“ Y clywssam fleiddyeu pellynnig -”

“We could hear distant wolves.”

Jo was sitting bolt upright suddenly, and she had begun to talk very fast, growing more fluent by the second as her tongue became accustomed to the unfamiliar sounds she was uttering. Her eyes were wide open, the pupils dilated, and she was becoming more and more excited.