It would mean staying longer in Hay. Was that what she wanted really? Pushing away the thought, Jo concentrated on the gentle face of the man in front of her. He was still smiling. “Fair enough. So, do you want to see the farm at all?”
Jo reached into her bag for her notebook and camera. She nodded. “I’m going to take some snaps if I may, then we’ll send down a proper photographer if mine aren’t good enough!”
“Of course they’ll be good enough.” He led the way to the door. “You mustn’t be defeatest, my dear. That won’t do at all.” He turned. “Ann told me you were a formidable lady, whose articles are nearly always very scathing. That true?”
“Often. Does it worry you?”
“Not a bit!” He ducked under the low doorway and preceded her around the farmhouse to the back, where a stone wall surrounded a large vegetable garden. “I’ve had everything thrown at me by the farming guys who think I’m crazy. Luckily more and more people are seeing it my way now, and I think people of the organic persuasion are slowly winning through.”
Quickly and methodically he showed Jo around the smallholding, supervising her notes and taking most of her photographs for her. Then he led the way back inside and refilled her glass.
“Ann’s left a cold lunch for us. Shall we eat outside?” He glanced at her. “I amuse you, don’t I?”
Jo smiled. “No. I was just thinking you might as well have given me duplicated notes at the door. You are too used to giving these interviews.”
“Okay, I stand reprimanded. Now, you interview me.” He carried the plates out to a table outside the back door where the blazing sun was partially deflected from them by a trellis hung with honeysuckle. “Ask me all the questions I haven’t answered yet.”
Jo sat down. “Does your wife get lonely up here?”
“Shouldn’t you ask her that?” His face lit with humor.
“I shall. I just wondered what you thought she felt about it.”
“Well.” He took a huge mouthful of food. “Ann is a remarkable woman. She has enormous inner resources. Of course, I am presupposing her genuine love of the country, but there is more to it than that. She loves the mountains and the rivers and the loneliness. She loves the soil, the joy of making things grow, just as I do. She likes the people, the villages, the towns-we’re not antisocial just because we live up here alone, but neither do we miss people when we don’t see them for a while. Like me, she came to Wales as a foreigner. I’m a north countryman; she, God help her, is American! But we have both been completely absorbed by this country with its people and its traditions, its history. These hills may look lonely to you, but they are full of life and dreams and memories. Fascinating. What is it? What have I said?” His shrewd blue eyes had noticed Jo’s sudden tenseness.
She forced a smile. “Nothing. Go on.”
“You’re a skeptic? A townie?”
“No.” Jo met his gaze. “I’ve lived up here too.”
“Ah. I wondered why they’d sent
Jo hesitated. Now she had said the words she could hardly retract them, and besides, she had an overwhelming urge to confide in him. After glancing across at his face briefly, she looked away across the falling mountainside toward the misty distance and took a deep breath.
“You’ll probably think I am mad. It was a long time ago. In a previous existence.” She paused, waiting for his laughter.
He said nothing, however, watching her intently, and after a minute she went on.
She told him everything. When she fell silent at last he did not speak for several minutes, gazing silently out across the panoramic view.
“That is a truly amazing story,” he said at last. “Truly amazing. I had heard of Moll Walbee, of course. Who hasn’t around here? But to have entered so completely into her life, that is extraordinary.”
“You believe me, then?”
“I believe it has happened to you, yes. As for the explanation-” He shrugged. “I think I must seek for a more mundane explanation than reincarnation.” He smiled enigmatically. “To do with the relativity of time perhaps. I would suggest that you have an area of your brain particularly sensitive to what one might call the echo of time. You have tuned in, as you might say, to Matilda’s wavelength and can, when in a state of receptiveness, ‘listen in.’” He put his head on one side. “How does that theory sound to you?”
Jo grinned. She leaned forward and pulled her plate toward her again, helping herself to a slice of Ann Clements’s crumbling stone-ground bread. “To be honest, my brain has given up asking how and why. The last few times it happened I wanted to fight it. I don’t want it to happen again. And I think I know how to stop it now. One must not let one’s brain be distracted into blankness. It is only receptive when it’s idling, like a car engine out of gear.”
“Fascinating,” Ben said again. “You know, you must talk to Ann about this. She was a psychology major at UCLA and past life recall was a particular interest of hers. She wrote an article about it for one of your sister magazines some time ago. Your editor might even have seen it.”
Jo stared at him. Then she gave a wry smile. “I think she may indeed,” she said. “It would have been almost too great a coincidence, my coming here otherwise, I suppose.” She sighed. “But I am glad I’m here now. Talking about it has helped. Perhaps Bet has done me a favor after all.”
He glanced at her under his heavy eyebrows. “I’m not surprised that it has worried you, though. It would scare the pants off me!” He reached for some bread and applied a rich lump of cheese to the crust, then, munching thoughtfully, he sat back in his chair. “But from what you have said it’s not your journeys into the past that have upset you and put you off repeating the exercise. It is the involvement of other people in the present. If you don’t mind my saying so, it sounds to me as if you’ve allowed yourself to be too much used by people who seem to have points they all want to prove at your expense, from your journalist colleagues to your boyfriend.”
“But they are all involved-”
“Perhaps.” He reached forward and touched her hand. “It’s a nice theory, but don’t be too ready to believe what others say, my dear. Look in your own heart for the answer. That is the only place you’ll find the truth. Now, let me get you some cheese. This is our own cream cheese from Aphrodite and her daughters, or there is a curd cheese from Polyphema, the one-eyed goat.” He twinkled at her mischievously. “You must keep your brain fully alert while you are here, Joanna. I am not sure I could cope with a visitation from a baron’s lady as well as afternoon milking!”
30
Jo took the wrong road at the bottom of the hill and found herself heading northwest instead of back along the Wye Valley toward Hay. She almost stopped to turn, then on a sudden defiant impulse she drove on into the narrow busy streets of Brecon itself, slowing the car to a standstill in the knotted traffic. She found a place to park, then wandered slowly around the town before climbing to the cathedral with its squat tower. By the time she had reached it she had made up her mind.
After pushing open the door, she walked in, staring around. The guidebook was very informative. It was during the lifetime of Bishop Giles de Breos and his brother Reginald that the eastern part of the original Norman church of Bernard of Newmarch had been replaced by the chancel, tower, and transepts that exist today. Her eye traveled down the lines of close print. Reginald was the only Lord of Brecknock to be buried in the Priory Church. She bit her lip, staring around. Reginald was buried there. There, somewhere beneath the lovely arching vault of the chancel… Suddenly she didn’t want to know. Reginald, that sturdy, cheerful boy, her third son, whom she loved in such an uncomplicated way and who had loved her. Her eyes filled with tears, and it was only with an effort that she pulled herself together. After all, she had not needed to come into the cathedral. If she had really wanted no more to do with the de Braose family she should not have gone to Brecon at all. She stood staring up at the high altar with its carved reredos and its offering of flowers below the huge stained-glass window, then forced herself to look back at the guidebook that told about the church of the de Braoses.
There wasn’t much left of the castle. A mound and an ivy-covered fragment of wall, that was all, but she was
