Читать книгу Lady of Hay: An enduring classic – gripping, atmospheric and utterly compelling - Barbara Erskine - Страница 20

‘May I have the Maclean file, please?’ Nick’s assistant’s voice was becoming bored. ‘For Jim, if it isn’t too much trouble!’ Behind her the office door swung to and fro in the draught from the open window.

Nick focused on her suddenly. ‘Sorry, Jane. What did you say?’

‘The Maclean file, Nick. I’ll try to get Jo again, shall I?’ Jane sighed exaggeratedly. She was a tall, willowy girl whose high cheek-bones and Roedean accent were at variance with the three parallel streaks of iridescent orange, pink and green in her short cropped hair. ‘Though why we go on trying when she is obviously out, I don’t know.’

‘Don’t bother!’ Nick slammed his pen down on the desk. He bent to rummage for the file and threw it across to her. ‘Jim has remembered that I’m supposed to be going to Paris next Wednesday?’

‘He’d remembered.’ Jane put on her calming voice. It infuriated Nick.

‘Good. Then from this moment I can leave the office in your hands, can I?’

‘Why, where are you going until Wednesday?’ Jane held the file clasped to her chest like a shield.

‘Tomorrow the printers, then lunch with a friend, then I said I’d look in at Carters on my way to Hampshire.’ He smiled. ‘Then the blessed weekend. Then Monday and Tuesday I’m in Scotland.’ He closed his case with a snap and picked it up. ‘And now I’m playing hookey for the rest of the afternoon. So if anyone should want me you can tell them to try again in ten days.’

Three minutes after he had left the building the phone rang. It was Jo.

Each time Nick had phoned her, Jo had put the phone down. The last time she slammed the receiver down she switched off her typewriter and walked slowly into the bathroom. Turning on the light she gathered her long hair up from her neck and held it on top of her head, then she studied her throat. There still wasn’t a mark on it.

‘So. That proves he did not touch me!’ she said out loud. ‘If anyone really had tried to strangle me the bruises would have been there for days. It was a dream. I was delirious. I was mad! It wasn’t Nick, so why am I afraid of him?’

She walked thoughtfully through into the kitchen and poured a glass of iced tomato juice, then she went back to the typewriter. All she had to do was see him. Even his anger was better than this limbo without him, and once he was there in the flesh, and she reminded herself what he really looked like, surely this strange terror would go? The memory of those eerie, piercing eyes kept floating out of her subconscious, haunting her as she walked around the flat. And they were not even Nick’s eyes. She found she was shivering again as she stared at the half-typed sheet of paper in her machine. On impulse she leaned over and picked up the phone to dial Nick’s office.

The phone rang four times before Jane picked it up.

‘Hi, it’s Jo. Can I speak to Nick?’ Jo sipped her juice, feeling suddenly as if a great weight had been lifted off the top of her head.

‘Sorry. You’ve just missed him.’ Jane sounded a little too cheerful.

‘When will he be back?’ Jo put down her glass and began to pluck gently at the curled flex of the phone.

‘Hold on. I’ll check.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘He’ll be back on the twelfth.’

‘The twelfth,’ Jo repeated. She sat bolt upright. ‘Where has he gone?’

‘Scotland on Monday and Tuesday, then back and straight over to France on Wednesday morning for a week.’

Jo could hear the smile on Jane’s face.

‘And today and tomorrow?’ Jo could feel her voice turning prickly.

‘Out. Sorry, I don’t know where exactly.’

Jo put down the phone thoughtfully. Then she picked it up again and dialled Judy Curzon.

‘Listen, Judy, I need to see Nick. Will you give him a message please? Tell him I’m seeing Carl Bennet again tomorrow afternoon. That’s Friday – at three. Tell him I’m going to find out what really happened on Sunday, come hell or high water, and if he wants to know he’d better be there. Have you got that?’

There was a long silence on the other end. ‘I’m not a message service,’ Judy replied eventually. Her tone was frosty. ‘I don’t give a screw who you’re going to see tomorrow afternoon, and obviously Nick doesn’t either or you wouldn’t have to ring him here, would you!’

Jo sat looking at the phone for several minutes after Judy rang off, then she smiled. ‘Hoist with your own petard, Miss Clifford,’ she muttered with wry amusement. ‘You walked right into that one!’

‘Pidwch cael ofon.’ The voice spoke to Matilda again as she stood once more outside the moon-silvered walls of Abergavenny. Then it tried in words she understood. ‘Do not be afraid, my lady. I am your friend.’ His French was halting but dimly she recognised before her the dark Welsh boy who had brought her food the night before. But he was no longer afraid; it was her turn for terror.

She did not speak. She felt the hot wetness on her face and she felt him brush the tears away with a gentle hand.

‘You did not know then?’ he stammered. ‘You did not know what was planned at the feast?’

Wordlessly she shook her head.

‘It is not safe for you here, whatever.’ The boy spoke earnestly. ‘My people will seek revenge for the massacre. You must go back into your castle.’

Taking her elbow he tried to turn her back but she found her feet scrabbling agonisingly on the sharp stones of the river path as she fought against him on the slippery ground.

‘No, no. I can’t go back there. I’ll never go back there, never.’ She broke from him and ran a few steps further on, towards the moon. Before it lay the mountains.

‘Where will you go then?’ The boy caught up with her in three strides and stood in front of her again.

‘I don’t know. I don’t care.’ She looked around desperately.

‘I will take you to Tretower.’ The boy spoke, suddenly making up his mind. ‘You will be safe there.’ He took her firmly by the hand and strode out along the river and in a daze, oblivious of her torn and bleeding feet, she followed him.

She never knew how long she stumbled on behind him. At one point her strength gave way and she sank onto the ground unable to go further along the steep rough bank of the river. The water ran mockingly pure and silver near her as though no blood had ever stained it. Bending she scooped some of it, icy and clean, into her mouth and then she lay back on the wet grass, her eyes closed.

The boy came back for her and coaxed and pleaded, but she was unable to rise. Her back pained spasmodically. She realised suddenly that she was going to lose her baby and she was glad.

The boy tugged at her hand, begging her to go with him, continually glancing over his shoulder, obviously worried that they were being followed, and then suddenly he seemed to give up the struggle and he disappeared as quickly and silently as he had come.

He has left me to die, she thought, but she was past feeling any fear. She tried to recite the Paternoster, but the words would not come in the right order and she gave up. How would God ever find his way again to this country? she wondered bleakly, and she closed her eyes to shut out the silver trail of the moon in the water.

But the boy returned with a shaggy mountain pony and somehow he helped her onto it. They forded a narrow river, the pony picking its way sure-footed through water shadowed now by stark overhanging branches entangled with clinging ivy. They passed the dark shape of Crickhowell Castle in the night, but she did not see it and the boy, apart from detouring slightly to avoid it, did not acknowledge its presence. Somewhere once a vixen screamed and Matilda clutched the pony’s mane as it shied. They left the river and travelled through black unfriendly forest and over hills where the country was silent except for the occasional lonely hoot of an owl and the wind in the branches of the trees. Closing her eyes she rode in a daze of pain and fatigue, not caring where she went or what he intended doing with her. Beneath her the pony, confident even in the dark, followed the boy at a steady pace, slowly climbing through the misty rain.

Then she opened her weary eyes in the cold dawn and saw the keep of Tretower at last in the distance. She knew dimly that they must have been seen and been followed by the people of the forest, but for some reason she had been spared. The boy who held her bridle had been her talisman. He turned as they neared the tower and she studied his face in the colourless light.

He smiled up at her, a sad, fond, smile. Then he pointed. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘There will be your friends. Go with God and be safe, meistress.’ He released her bridle and he was gone, gliding back into the woods on silent feet.

The pony stumbled on some rocks as she guided it as fast as she dared along the winding track towards the castle in the broad valley. She fixed her eye on the tower and refused to look to left or right as her mount carried her at a shambling trot along the path. To her surprise the drawbridge was down and she rode across unchallenged. Had everyone gone mad? Did they not know that the warring Welsh must be everywhere?