But her own voice, or the voice of that other woman speaking through her, ran on and on, sweeping his aside, not hearing his attempts to interrupt. Jo was breathing heavily, a pulse drumming in her forehead. She could hear all three of them now. Sarah sobbing, saying “Carl, stop her, stop her,” Bennet repeating her name over and over again-both names-and above them her own hysterical voice running on out of control, describing the bloodshed and terror she was watching.

Then abruptly there was silence, save for the sound of panting, she was not sure whose. Jo heard a sharp rattle as something was knocked over, and then Bennet’s voice very close now to the microphone. “Let me touch her face. Quickly! Perhaps with my fingers, like so. Matilda? Can you hear me? I want you to hear me. I am going to count to three and then you will wake up. One, two, three.”

There was a long silence, then Sarah cried, “You’ve lost her, Carl. For God’s sake, you’ve lost her. ”

Bennet was talking softly, reassuringly again, but Jo could hear the undertones of fear in his voice. “Matilda, can you hear me? I want you to answer me. Matilda? You must listen. You are Jo Clifford and soon you will wake up back in my consulting room in London. Can you hear me, my dear? I want you to forget about Matilda.”

There was a long silence, then Sarah whispered, very near the microphone, “What do we do?”

Bennet sounded exhausted. “There is nothing we can do. Let her sleep. She will wake by herself in the end.”

Jo started with shock. She distinctly remembered hearing him say that. His voice had reached her, lying half awake in the shadowy bedchamber at Abergavenny, but she-or Matilda-had pulled back, rejecting his call, and she had fallen once more into unconsciousness. She shivered at the memory.

The sharp clink of glass on glass came over the machine and she found herself once more giving a rueful smile. So he had had to have a drink at that point, as, locked in silence where he could not follow her, she had woken in the past and begun her search of the deserted windswept castle.

For several minutes more the tape ran quiet, then Sarah’s voice rang out excitedly. “Carl, I think she’s waking up. Her eyelids are flickering.”

“Jo? Jo?” Bennet was back by the microphone in a second.

Jo heard her own voice moaning softly, then at last came a husky “There’s someone there. Who is it?”

“We’re reaching her now.” Bennet’s murmur was full of relief. “Jo? Can you hear me? Matilda? My lady?” There was a hiss on the tape and Jo strained forward to hear what followed. But there was nothing more. With a sharp click it switched itself off, the reel finished.

She leaned back against the legs of the chair. She was trembling all over and her hands were slippery with sweat. She rubbed them on her bathrobe. Strange that she had expected to hear it all again-the sound effects, the screams, the grunts, the clash of swords. But of course to the onlooker, as to the microphone, it was all reported, like hearing someone else’s commentary on what they could see through a telescope. Only to her was it completely real. The others had been merely eavesdroppers on her dream.

Slowly she put her head in her hands and was aware suddenly that there were tears on her cheeks.


***

Nick swung out of the office and ran down the stairs to the street. The skies had cleared after the storm, but the gutters still ran with rain as he sprinted toward the parking lot.

Jo’s door was on the latch. He pushed it open with a frown. It was unlike her to be careless.

“Jo? Where are you?” he called. He walked through to the living room and glanced in. She was sitting on the floor, her face white and strained, her hair still damp from the shower. He saw at once that she had been crying. She looked at him blankly.

“What is it? Are you all right?” He flung down the jacket he had been carrying slung over his shoulder and was beside her in two strides. Crouching, he put his arms around her. “You look terrible, love. Nothing is worth getting that worked up about. Ignore the damned article. It doesn’t matter. No one cares what it said.” He took her hand in his. “You’re like ice! For God’s sake, Jo. What have you been doing?”

She looked up at him at last, pushing him away from her. “Pour me a large drink, Nick, will you?”

He gave her a long, searching look. Then he stood up. He found the Scotch and two glasses in the kitchen. “It’s not like you to fold, Jo,” he called over his shoulder. “You’re a fighter, remember?” He brought the drinks in and handed her one. “It’s Tim’s fault. He was supposed to warn you last night what might happen.”

She took a deep gulp from her glass and put it on the table. “What are you talking about?” Her voice was slightly hoarse.

“The paragraph in the Mail. What did you think I was talking about?”

She shook her head wearily. “I haven’t seen any papers today. I was here all morning, and then this afternoon I went…out.” She fumbled with the glass again, lifting it with a shaking hand, concentrating with an effort. “They printed it, did they? The great quarrel between your past and present loves. That must have done a bit for your ego.” With a faint smile she put out her hand. “Show me what it said.”

“I didn’t bring it.” He sat down on the edge of the coffee table. “If you are not upset about that, Jo, then what’s happened?”

“I went to see a hypnotherapist.”

“You what?” Nick stood up abruptly.

She nodded, and fumbling for a cigarette, watched him in silence.

“You know, it isn’t a fraud,” she said at last. “I can’t explain it, but whatever it was, it came from me, not from him.” She balanced the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray and picked up her glass. “It was so real. So frightening. Like a nightmare, but I wasn’t asleep.”

Nick frowned. Then he glanced at his watch. “Jo, I’m going to phone Judy-I’ll tell her I can’t make it this evening.” He paused, waiting for her to argue, but she said nothing.

She lay back limply, sipping her drink as he dialed, watching him, her eyes vague, as, one-handed, he slipped his tie over his head and unbuttoned his shirt. The whisky was beginning to warm her. For the first time in what seemed like hours she had stopped shaking.

Nick was brief to the point of curtness on the phone, then he put the receiver down and came back to sit beside her. “Right,” he said, “let’s hear it all from the beginning.” Leaning forward, he stubbed out her abandoned cigarette. She did not protest. “I take it you’ve got it all on tape?” He nodded toward the machine.

“All but the last few minutes.”

“Do you want me to hear it?”

She nodded. “The other side first. You’ll have to wind it back.” She watched as he removed the cassette and turned it over; then she stood up. “I’ll go and get some clothes on while you listen.”

Nick glanced at her. “Don’t you want to hear it again?”

“I did. Just before you came home,” she said quietly. “We’ll talk when you’ve heard it.”

It was a long time before Nick appeared. She was lying on the bed. She had not got dressed. She watched him quietly as he walked across the carpet and sat down beside her. He looked grim.

“How much of that do you remember?” he asked at last.

“All of it.”

“And you weren’t fooling?”

She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Did I sound as if I were fooling? Did he?”

“All right, I’m sorry. I had to be sure. Do you want to talk about it now?”

“I don’t know.” She hugged her bathrobe around her. “Nick, this is crazy. I’m a journalist. I’m on a job. A routine, ordinary sort of job. I’m going about my research in the way I always do, methodically, and I am not allowing myself to become involved in any personal way. Part of me can see the whole thing objectively. But another part-” She hesitated. “I was sure that it was all some kind of a trick. But it was 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 boor’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 flavor. 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?”