Lady of Hay: An enduring classic – gripping, atmospheric and utterly compelling. Barbara Erskine

so real, so very real. I was a child again, Nick. Arrogant, uncertain, overwhelmed and so proud of the fact that I was pregnant, because it made me a woman in my own right and the equal of William’s mother! And I was going to be the mother of that bore’s son!’ She put her face in her hands. ‘That is what women have felt for thousands of years, Nick. Proud to be the vehicle for men’s kids. And I felt it! Me!’ She gave an unhappy laugh.

      Nick raised an eyebrow. ‘Some women are still proud of that particular role, Jo. They’re not all rabid feminists, thank God!’ His voice was unusually gentle. ‘You remember all her feelings then? Even things you don’t mention out loud?’

      Jo frowned. ‘I don’t know. I think so … I’m not sure. I remember that, though. Hugging myself in triumph because I carried his child – and because I had thought of a way to keep him from molesting me. He must have been a bastard in bed.’ Her voice shook. ‘The poor bloody cow!’ She picked up a pot of face cream from the table and turned it over and over in her hands without seeing it. ‘She probably had a girl in the end, not the precious son she kept on about, or died in childbirth or something. Oh God, Nick … It was me. I could feel it all, hear it, see it, smell it. Even taste the food that boy brought me. The wine was thin and sour – like nothing I’ve ever drunk, and the bread was coarse and gritty, with some strong flavour. It didn’t seem odd at the time, but I can’t place it at all, and I could swear I’ve still got bits of it stuck between my teeth.’

      Nick smiled, but she went on. ‘It was all so vivid. Almost too real. Like being on some kind of a “trip”.’

      ‘That follows,’ Nick said slowly. ‘You obviously have had some kind of vivid hallucination. But that is all it was, Jo. You must believe that. The question is, where did it come from? Where have all the stories come from that people have experienced under this kind of hypnosis? I suppose that is the basis of your article.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you think this massacre really did happen?’

      She shrugged. ‘I gave a very clear date, didn’t I? Twenty years of King Henry. There are eight of them to choose from!’ She smiled. ‘And Abergavenny of course. I’ve never been there, but I know it’s somewhere in Wales.’

      ‘South Wales,’ he put in. ‘I went there once, as a child, but I don’t remember there being a castle.’

      ‘Oh Nick! It’s all quite mad! And it was nothing like the experience Mrs Potter had when I watched her being hypnotised by Bill Walton. She was – so vague – so blurred compared with me.’ She pushed her hair out of her eyes.

      ‘What did it feel like, being hypnotised?’ he asked curiously.

      She sighed. ‘That’s the stupid thing. I’m not sure. I don’t think I knew it was happening. I didn’t seem to go to sleep or anything. Except real sleep when I slept in the castle. Only that wasn’t real sleep because the time scale was different. I lived through two days, Nick, in less than two hours.’ She lay back against the pillows again, looking at him. ‘This is what happened before, isn’t it? When Sam was there. They did hypnotise me and they lost control of me that time too!’

      Nick nodded. ‘Sam said you were told not to remember what happened, it would upset you too much. And he said I mustn’t talk about it to you, Jo, that’s why I couldn’t explain –’

      ‘I lived through those same scenes then,’ she went on, not hearing him. ‘I saw the massacre then too.’

      Nick looked away. ‘I don’t know, Jo. You must speak to Sam –’

      ‘It must have been the massacre, because I hurt my hands tearing at the stone archway. But I really bled in Edinburgh. My fingers were bruised and bleeding, not just painful!’ Her voice was shaking. ‘Oh, God, it was all so real. Nick, I’m frightened.’ She stared at her hands, holding them out before her.

      Nick took hold of them gently, standing up. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We need another drink. And something to eat. Is there any food in the flat?’

      She dragged her thoughts back to the present with difficulty. ‘In the freezer. I forgot to buy anything today.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘I was going to go shopping on my way back from Devonshire Place but everything went out of my head.’

      Nick grinned. ‘I’m not surprised. Being a baron’s lady with a castle full of serfs, you can hardly be expected to lower yourself to trundle round Waitrose with a shopping trolley. You must try not to let it upset you too much, Jo. Try and see the amusing side. Think of it as a personalised horror film. You got front row stalls and no ice-cream in the interval. But, apart from that, thank God there’s no harm done this time.’

      ‘That doesn’t sound very scientific.’ She forced herself to smile. Standing up slowly she pulled the belt of her robe more tightly round her. Then she headed towards the kitchen and pulled open the freezer door. ‘There’s pizza in here or steak.’ The normality of her action calmed her. Her voice was steady again.

      ‘Pizza’s fine. What intrigues me is where you dredged all this information up from. The details all sounded so authentic.’

      ‘Dr Bennet and Bill Walton both said that they usually are. That’s one of their strongest arguments in favour of reincarnation of course.’ She lit the grill and put two pizzas under it. ‘Where it is possible to substantiate things, apparently they are usually uncannily accurate. I’m going to check as much as I can. Is there any whisky left?’

      ‘I’ll get it. Have you any books on costume? What is a – what was it, a pelisson, for instance?’

      She shrugged. ‘A pelisse is a kind of cloak I think.’ She took some tomatoes out of the fridge and began to slice them as Nick reappeared with the whisky bottle and a dictionary. Moments later he looked up. ‘Pelisse is here. You’re right. But no pelisson. Perhaps I misheard. Are you going up to the library tomorrow?’

      She nodded. ‘I’m going to check everything, Nick. Absolutely everything.’

      He leant against the worktop watching her, relieved that she seemed calmer and more like herself. Her face was beginning to look less pinched. ‘I wonder if Matilda really existed?’ he said at last. ‘And you read about her somewhere. Either that or she’s a fictional heroine or was in a TV film or a comic or a strip cartoon when you were a child, or perhaps a film you saw when you were about two years old and have completely forgotten with your conscious mind.’

      ‘And all my wealth of detail is pure Cecil B. De Mille?’ She laughed, ruefully. ‘All your theories have been put forward before. Mainly by sceptics like me!’

      ‘Well, if it isn’t any of those what is it?’ He stared down at the glass in his hands. ‘Have you considered the fact that Bennet could be right, Jo? That reincarnation could exist?’

      She shook her head thoughtfully. ‘No, I can’t believe that. There must be a perfectly good explanation which does not strain one’s credulity that much, and I intend to try and find it. Perhaps Matilda is my alter ego. The woman I would have liked to have been. Have you thought of that?’

      He set down his glass and put his arms around her waist. ‘I hope not. All those swords and guts and things. No, you told me the premises you’d be working on in your article, Jo, and that tape hasn’t made me change my mind about a thing you said. It’s all fantasy, you’re right. Whose, I’m not sure. But that is all it is. It’s none the less dangerous for that, but there is nothing supernatural about what happened to you.’

      She released herself with a frown and reached to lower the gas. ‘All the same, I’m not starting to write the article, Nick. Not without asking a great many more questions. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone.’ She reached down two plates and put them to warm. ‘Here, let me make a salad to go with these. Neither Bennet nor Walton was a fake, Nick. I was wrong to think it. They didn’t ask any leading questions. Bennet didn’t influence my “dream” in any way. If he had I’d have heard on the tape. Look, if there is any period of history I would say that I should like to identify with at all it would be the Regency. If he’d been a fraud he would have