Sam stood still for a moment staring at him, his face alight with malicious amusement. “She slept with Heacham, you know,” he said suddenly. “In Wales. I recognized him at once. De Clare. He still has a hold over her, of course, but he knows he will lose her.” He laughed. “He’s weak. He was too weak to save her then, and he’s too weak now.” He picked a few books off the table and collected some loose change off the desk into his pocket. Then he looked up. “You don’t believe me, do you, Nick? But it’s true, you know. I really did regress you. You were-you are John Plantagenet,” he said.
Nick did not move. The sweat was standing out on his forehead as Sam left the room. He steadied himself with an effort, then with deliberate slow movements, as if he were in a dream, he went to the pile of phone books and reached for A-H.
“Tim?” His mouth was dry. “This is Nick Franklyn.”
“Hello, Nick.” Tim sounded subdued.
“I have reason to believe you may know where Jo is.” Nick controlled his voice with an effort. “She is not at her apartment.”
There was a moment’s silence. “She went to Wales. Bet Gunning talked her into doing an interview with some guy about organic farming.”
“About what?” Nick exploded.
“I know it sounds unlikely,” Tim responded. “It was obviously a ruse to get her back there. But I don’t think it’ll work. She wants to give it all up, you know. She tore up the contract to write the story for
“I have indeed.” Nick glanced at the door. He could hear the closets in the spare bedroom opening and closing as Sam took out his clothes and threw them on the bed. “I think you can take it that my brother will have no more say in Jo’s affairs,” he said grimly. “No more at all. And neither will you.”
The sun had broken through the haze early and its heat baked the ground. Jo pushed her typewriter away on the table outside the back door and stood up. Ann was dyeing wool, pressing the loose skeins into the onion-skin water again and again. She pushed her fair hair back from her face with the back of her wrist. “Finished the article?”
Jo smiled. “The first draft. I’d like you and Ben to read it and make suggestions.” She took a deep breath of the hot mountain air. “It’s so peaceful up here, I’m even amenable to criticism today!”
Ann laughed. She hooked a skein out of the water and began to wring it out. “If your piece is too sweet and nice, won’t your editor hurl it back at you and ask you to anoint it with vitriol?”
“You’ve obviously heard about me!” Jo sat down on the close-cropped grass and after a moment stretched out full length, her arms flopping above her head. “Don’t worry. I’m rude enough to upset you both quite a bit if you take it the wrong way.” She sat up again and shaded her eyes. “And I don’t want you to take it the wrong way, Ann. You’re living a pastoral idyll up here, but you just cannot claim it has any relevance to real life.”
Ann raised an eyebrow as she pegged the skein on the line to drip. “Says who? Why should real life be ‘down there’ and ‘up here’ be unreal?”
“Because real is what ninety-nine percent of the population have to live. Mass produced, mass packaged, and mass managed. It’s the only way for there to be progress. It’s sad, but it’s true.”
“So we should conform? Help to starve the land, poison the waterways, pollute the air? No, Jo. We are pioneers, prophets. Leading people back to common sense, health, and sanity.” Ann gave a gurgle of laughter suddenly. “Go on. Write that down, too.”
“What’s it like in winter?” Ignoring the comment, Jo wrapped her arms around her knees.
“Lonely. Hard. Sometimes frightening.”
“Like it was eight hundred years ago for everyone.” Jo’s voice was suddenly bleak. “The disease then. The squalor, the poverty of life! That is why we have to move on, Ann. To end all that. To make it less hard. You know, I…that is, Matilda, just accepted it. It made her unhappy-she was full of compassion and she used her medical knowledge such as it was, as best she could-but she never questioned. No one questioned anything. It was as God wished.”
“‘The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate. God made the high and lowly, he ordered their estate,’” Ann recited quietly. “I can still remember singing that in church!”
“God!” Jo buried her head in her arms. “William did everything in the name of God.”
“It is man’s blessing that he does learn from his mistakes, Jo,” Ann said gently. “Not all of them, and not fast, but he does learn. And he progresses, as you say. Did Will de Braose have TB? From what you told me it sounds like it…We’ve learned to control that. And you talked about the plague in Aberhonddu. That doesn’t haunt the people there anymore. I’d be the first person to praise that kind of progress, but in some things man has been too clever. He has rejected good things as well as bad. Now he has to swallow his pride and retrace a few steps, that’s all. Learn to listen quietly to the beat of the universe as his ancestors did. Learn to listen to nature and take her in partnership, not try and make her a robot slave.”
Jo looked up, squinting in the sun. “I stand rebuked,” she said softly. “Write that down, Ann. I’ll print it.”
Ann grinned. “It’s a deal.” She turned to go into the house, then she stopped and glanced at Polly and Bill, who were playing in a sandpit near them. “If the kids have a sleep after lunch, Jo, I’ll take you back again if you like.”
Jo hesitated. “I think I’m going to have to go on, Ann,” she agreed at last. “On to the end of the story. That is the only way I’ll be free of her. And I’d like it to be with you there.”
Ann frowned. “You don’t mean you want to go on, until her death?”
“I think I have to.”
“Are you sure?” Ann was looking doubtful. “I know it’s often done, but you don’t know how she died. Death scenes can be pretty traumatic, even under deep hypnosis.”
“I do know how she died.”
“How?” Ann sat down at the table near Jo, her elbows spread, her chin propped on her hands, her eyes fixed on Jo’s face.
“John had her thrown into a dungeon and starved to death.”
“Sweet Jesus!” Ann caught her breath.
Jo smiled bleakly. “It’s knowing about it when she doesn’t that is so terrible. I watch her with part of myself, antagonizing John, antagonizing him almost deliberately, from the first day they met.” She clenched her fists suddenly. “He loved her, Ann. I really think he loved her, and she found him attractive once he had grown to manhood, and yet they never managed to communicate. They just seemed to knock sparks off each other all the time.”
“None of this was in that article you showed me.”
“Pete obviously doesn’t know his history. He just thought it would be fun linking the name of a king to the story of Matilda. Linking Nick’s name-” She bit her lip and turned abruptly away to study the view. “I just want to get it over with, Ann,” she said after a moment over her shoulder, “so I can get on with my own life. Matilda is an intrusion! A parasite, feeding off me, sucking my…not my blood, exactly, but something.”
“Your life force.” Ann stood up again. “I’ve had an idea. Come and help me prepare the salad, then later we’ll try a new approach. It may be that you’ve put your finger on something. I’d like to try an experiment. I’d like to see if Matilda really is a memory-or if she is a spirit, using you for some purpose. A spirit who is not at rest.”
Jo gasped. “You’re not serious? You mean I’m possessed?”
Ann laughed. “It’s always a possibility. Come on. Don’t worry about it. Later we’ll try to find out what this poor lady wants from you.”
Worn out by the heat, the two small children went to bed in their cool north-facing bedroom without their customary protest. Outside, Ben had moved the table into the shade of one of the ancient yew trees near the house. He sat down on the wooden chair and looked solemnly at his wife. “Take care, Annie. You are sure you know what you’re doing?”
Ann sat down opposite Jo. “I know,” she said. “You trust me, Jo, don’t you?”
