fine.” Her voice had lost its tension as she gained confidence. “Good, now relax. Relax, Nick, and listen. Just listen to my voice. Don’t shut your eyes-you can’t shut your eyes. Good.” She saw the strain on his face begin to fall away as he stared at the light. “Good, that’s fine. Now, I want to go back in time, Nick, back to when you were a child…”
Ben looked up from the leg of the cow over which he had been bending. He ran his hand gently down it, then stood up and smacked the cow affectionately on the hindquarters.
“Is that my coffee? Bless you, my dear.”
Jo sat down on a hay bale, her own mug cupped between her hands. “Ann is trying to hypnotize Nick.”
“She told me she tried last night to no avail.” Ben sat down comfortably next to her. “What have you done to your hand?” His sharp eyes had missed nothing.
“I caught it against the wall, that’s all.” She looked away from him. “Oh, Ben. What’s happened to him?”
Ben patted her shoulder. “He confided in Annie last night, my dear, that he is very worried. If Ann cannot help him we both feel he should consult your hypnotherapist without delay. He is, after all, a professional, and he knows the background to your case.” He smiled. “I think it would be best if Nick went back to London, Jo.”
She nodded slowly. “I suppose so.” She was about to drink the last of her coffee when she lowered the mug again. “He thinks he’s going to try to kill me, Ben. But why? Why should Sam do this to us? Why? He can’t really believe he was Matilda’s husband. And if he does, why should he want Nick to hurt me? It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Things that make sense to the insane mind are seldom obvious to others,” Ben said soberly. “And it sounds to me as if Nicholas’s brother must be insane.”
He put down the mug at his feet. He was about to stand up when from the house they both heard the sound of a frightened scream.
Ben was on his feet first. With Jo close behind him he raced toward the kitchen door and flung it open.
Ann was lying on the floor; there was no sign of Nick.
Ben flung himself on his knees beside her as she struggled to sit up, her face white. “Ann, for God’s sake, are you all right? What happened?”
“I-I annoyed him,” she said shakily. She clung to the table leg for support. “It was my own fault. I shouldn’t have attempted to regress him. I don’t know enough about it-”
“What did he do, Ann?” Jo had gone cold all over. She stared at Ann for a moment, incapable of moving, then, galvanized into action, she found a cloth. After wringing it out under the tap, she knelt beside Ann, holding it gently to the bruise that was rising on her temple.
“He didn’t attack me or anything. He just pushed me, that’s all, and I slipped. I must have caught my head on the table or something. It was my own silly fault.” Ann took the cloth from Jo’s hand and pressed it more firmly against her head. “I shouldn’t have interfered. It was crass stupidity. I should have known his brother would be too clever for us, but I still thought I could somehow cancel out the hypnotic suggestion. I had Nick under-he was responding well and I took him back to his childhood. I asked him one or two questions about when he was little. He seemed to realize Sam’s hostility when he was a child and he steered clear of him-worshipping from afar. Then I took him back further. I wanted to find out if the idea of his being King John came from deep within his own unconscious or from his brother’s suggestion.” She shook her head. “He regressed easily. Once he was under he went into what seemed like total recall of a succession of lives. I wasn’t prompting him. He was one man who lived around the turn of the century and who died at the age of twenty-four from typhoid.” Ann, still sitting on the floor, hugged her knees. “Then he said he had lived in the reign of Queen Anne as a sailor, and he said…he said he’s waited for Matilda, but the time was wrong.” She glanced up as Jo caught her breath. “He said he waited again and again and then he produced another incarnation some one hundred and fifty years before that and he talked what sounded like French. That time he died of plague in Paris. Then there was a long gap.” Ann paused. For a moment she didn’t seem able to speak. “Then there was John, the youngest son of King Henry II of England.”
Jo had gone white as a sheet. “You mean it is true?” she whispered. “He really was John? It wasn’t Sam at all?” She closed her eyes, still kneeling at Ann’s side. “He’s followed me. Followed me from the past. But why? John hated Matilda. He-” Her voice broke. “He sentenced her to death.” She looked up in despair. “Is that why he’s here? To pursue me even beyond the grave? I knew, Ann. I recognized him. Weeks ago, I saw it in his eyes, but I didn’t understand. I didn’t realize what was happening-”
“No, Jo. That’s rubbish. For God’s sake, you are not the same people! You keep on emphasizing that yourself.” Ann pulled herself to her feet. “And Nick loves you. He
“What made him push you over, Annie?” Ben asked gently. His face was grim.
Ann gave a shaky smile. “I questioned his royal prerogative. I’m a republican, don’t forget. I don’t know how to handle kings. He didn’t mean to knock me-he just didn’t know I was there. I asked him about the de Braoses and why he had chosen to persecute them. He got angry-furiously angry-and began pacing up and down. Then he-well, I guess you’d say he flung out of the room, and it was just bad luck I was in the way. It was the year 1209. He told me that William had burned the town of Leominster in Herefordshire. One moment he was apoplectic-then suddenly he laughed…”
Ben patted Jo on the shoulder, then he walked slowly to the door. “Did he go out this way?”
Ann nodded.
“You two stay here, I’ll see if I can find him.”
The kitchen was very silent. Neither Ann nor Jo said a word. In the stove a log fell, hitting the iron door with a rattle, and they both turned to look at it. Then Jo spoke in a whisper. “Ann, I must know what happened next. I have to know what the king did.”
“You do know.” Ann turned on her. “Jesus, Jo! Can’t you leave it alone? You know what he did!” She sat down at the table and put her head in her hands. “Hell, I’m sorry. That’s not fair. I guess I’m a bit rattled, that’s all. I’ll help you if I can. I said I would. But I’m no good at this, Jo. I’m in over my head.”
“You don’t have to do anything, Ann. Just be here with me.”
“Now? But they’ll come back any moment-”
“I don’t care. I have to know what he’s thinking. Don’t you see?”
“No. I don’t see. Jo, you’re upset. It probably won’t work anyway-”
“It will. All I need is a trigger, you said so yourself. So I’ll find a trigger.” Jo looked around wildly. “That lamp- that’s fine-a lamp and a bowl of water. I’ll look into the reflections.”
She stood up and went to the sideboard, staring along the shelves. Her arm caught a glass, sweeping it to the floor with a crash. She didn’t even notice. She reached up and took down one of Ann’s black earthenware mixing bowls and turned back to the sink. “I have to do it, Ann. Don’t you see? I have to look into the past so that I can go on living in the present!”
She filled the bowl with clear water and put it on the table, then she sat down opposite Ann, who reached out and gently touched her hand. In silence they both looked down into the depths of the water.
Matilda had been staring out of the high window toward the shadowed distances of Radnor Forest. She turned and stared at her steward in frozen disbelief as he stood, shuffling his feet uncomfortably, in the center of the high, echoing stone chamber.
“But William left to try to recapture Radnor Castle from the king!”
“He failed, my lady.” Stephen looked at her, his shoulders slumped with despair. “The king holds every de Braose Castle save Hay now. There was nowhere for Sir William to go after his assault was beaten back by the king’s constable at Radnor-I suspect he did not care to come back here defeated, my lady-” Stephen glanced up at her under his eyelashes. “So he marched to Leominster and sacked the place. He burned it to the ground. The king will never forgive this, Lady Matilda,” he went on gravely. “I fear your husband has now gone too far ever to turn
