Barbara Erskine 3-Book Collection: Lady of Hay, Time’s Legacy, Sands of Time. Barbara Erskine
Читать онлайн книгу.
swears not.’ Pete raised his hand to the young man hovering in the background and ordered fresh drinks. ‘So. Shoot. Tell me about your other self.’
It was a relief to talk about it again. Relaxed and reassured by Pete’s quiet interest, Jo talked on. They finished their drinks and moved to their table in the grotto dark of the restaurant and she went on with the story. She only kept one thing back. She could not bring herself to mention her baby, or what had happened after his birth. When at last she had finished Pete let out a long, low whistle. ‘My God! And you’re telling me that you intend to let it go at that? You’re not going back?’
Jo shook her head. ‘If I go back again, I’ll go a thousand times. I’ve got to make myself drop it, Pete.’
‘Why? What’s wrong with knowing what happened? For God’s sake Jo! It’s better than Dallas!’ He grinned. ‘I wouldn’t stop. I’d go back again and again till I had the whole story, whatever it cost. To hell with where she comes from. Whether she’s a spirit from the past or a part of your own personality fragmenting up for some reason, or you in a previous existence, she is a fascinating woman. Think of the people she might have known.’
Jo smiled wryly. ‘She knew King John.’
‘Bad King John?’ He rocked back on his seat. ‘What a story that would be, Jo. Think – if you could interview him, through her! You can’t leave it there. You can’t. You must see that. You have to go back and find out what happened next.’
Judy was in the shower when Sam rang next morning. Wrapped in a towel she picked up the phone, shaking her wet hair out of her eyes, watching the drops lying on the studio floor. The water was still running down her legs making pools around her feet. She dropped the towel and stood in the rectangle of stark sunshine from the window.
‘Yes, Dr Franklyn, of course I remember you,’ she said grinning. ‘What can I possibly do for you?’
Sam heard the grin the other end of the phone. ‘I want you to do something for Nick,’ he said slowly. ‘He was feeling pretty low last week – I expect you know. And now he is in France and he could use some company. Supposing I give you his address. How soon could you be at Heathrow?’
‘Assuming I ever want to see him again, and that I’m not busy and that I have a passport and enough money for a ticket and nothing better to do …’ Judy stared at her naked reflection in the full length mirror on the wall in front of her.
‘Assuming all that. Except that I shall pay for your ticket. And I’ll even drive you to the airport if you like. I’ve got Nick’s car.’
Judy raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re very anxious I should go, Dr Franklyn. If I weren’t such an innocent I might wonder why.’
He laughed out loud. ‘Then I’m glad you’re an innocent, Miss Curzon. I wouldn’t want you any other way.’
Ceecliff met Jo at Sudbury on Saturday morning and bore her home in an elderly Land Rover. The old house was full of dappled sunlight, every door and window open onto the garden and Jo looked round her with enormous pleasure and relief. Somewhere deep inside she had been afraid the tension of that weekend two weeks ago might return.
Triumphantly Ceecliff produced a bottle of Pimms. ‘Nick is in France, you say?’ She poured out two glasses as they sat down beneath the willow.
Jo nodded.
‘And did you make it up before he went?’
‘We parted friends, I suppose,’ Jo said cautiously. What was the point of telling Ceecliff that he had left her frightened and alone in her flat and gone straight round to Judy? That he hadn’t been there when she needed him and that she hadn’t seen him since? She felt her grandmother’s eyes on her face and forced a smile. ‘I’ve decided to go back to the hypnotist again. No more hysteria, no more involvement. Just to find out, objectively, what happened.’
Ceecliff pursed her lips. ‘That is madness, Jo. How can you possibly be objective? How could anyone?’
‘Because Dr Bennet can tell me to be. That is the beauty of hypnosis, one does what one is told. He can use my own mind to hold everything at arm’s length.’
Ceecliff raised an exasperated eyebrow. ‘I think you’re being naive, Jo. Extraordinarily naive.’ She sighed. Then, heaving herself out of her chair, she turned towards the house. ‘But I know better than to argue with you. Wait there. I’m going to fetch Reggie’s papers for you.’
She returned with an attaché case. Inside was a mass of papers and notebooks.
‘I think you should have all these, Jo. The Clifford papers. Not much compared with some families’ archives, but better than nothing. Most of it is about the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. You can look at that another time. Here. This is what I wanted to show you.’ She unfolded an old letter, the wafer which had sealed it still attached to the back, the spidery scrawls of the address faded to brown.
Reverently Jo took it and screwed up her eyes to read the unfamiliar copperplate hand. It was dated 12 June 1812. Jo read aloud. ‘My dear Godfon and Nephew – he’s using long s’s! – I was interested in your remarks about Clifford Castle, near Whitney-on-Wye, as I too visited the place some years back. I have been unable to trace a family connection with those Cliffords – Rosa Mundi, you will remember, was poisoned by the indomitable Eleanor, wife to King Henry II, and I should dearly have wished to find some link to so tragic and romantic a lady. There is a legend, however, which ties us with the land of Wales, so close to Clifford. I have been unable to substantiate it in any way, but the story has persisted for many generations that we are descended from Gruffydd, a prince of south Wales – though when and how, I know not. Let it suffice that perhaps somewhere in our veins there runs a strain of royal blood –’ Jo put down the letter, laughing. ‘Oh no! That’s beautiful!’
Ceecliff grimaced. ‘Don’t go getting any ideas above your station, my girl. Come on, put it all away. You can look at it later. Let’s eat now, before the food is spoiled.’
Whilst her grandmother rested, Jo drove to Clare. She parked near the huge, beautiful church with its buttresses and battlemented parapets, and stood gazing at it, watching the clouds streaming behind the tall double rank of arched windows. Had Richard de Clare stood looking at that same church? She could picture him now, the last time she had seen him, in the solar at Abergavenny, his hazel eyes full of pain and love and courage, the deep green mantle wrapped around him against the cold, clasped on the shoulder by a large round enamelled brooch.
She shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans and stared at it morosely; then, hitching her bag higher on her shoulder, she let herself in through the gate and began to walk towards the south porch.
Richard de Clare had never stood in this church. One look round the fluted pillars and high windows told her it had been built long after Richard’s time. In disappointment she began to walk up the broad aisle looking around her. There were several other people wandering around with guide books, talking in muted tones. Ignoring them, she made her way slowly up the chancel steps and stood staring at the altar, thinking of the last time she had stood before a shrine – was it at Brecknock? – with Gerald, saying mass. She remembered the mingling of the incense and the candles, their acrid smoke blown by the cold wind off the mountains which filtered through every corner of the castle. She remembered looking up at a carved, painted statue of the Holy Virgin and praying for her unborn baby, praying with a faith suddenly so intense, so absolute that it had filled her at the time with a calm certainty that her prayers would be heard. I wonder how long Matilda kept that faith, she thought grimly, her eyes on the cross which stood on the altar. Did she still have it when she died? She had not told Pete Leveson that she already knew the end of the story, nor Ceecliff.
She was conscious suddenly of someone watching her as she gazed at the cross, and embarrassed she turned away. In this so Puritan, so Spartan church, the memories of her Catholic past seemed almost indecent, and to the agnostic, twentieth-century Jo, the urge to go down on her knees and then cross herself as she turned away from