Lady of Hay: An enduring classic – gripping, atmospheric and utterly compelling
A story spanning centuries. A long awaited revenge.In London, journalist Jo Clifford plans to debunk the belief in past-lives in a hard-hitting magazine piece. But her scepticism is shaken when a hypnotist forces her to relive the experiences of Matilda, Lady of Hay, a noblewoman during the reign of King John.She learns of Matilda's unhappy marriage, her love for the handsome Richard de Clare, and the brutal death threats handed out by King John, before it becomes clear that Jo’s past and present are inevitably entwined. She realises that eight hundred years on, Matilda’s story of secret passion and unspeakable treachery is about to repeat itself…Barbara Erskine’s iconic debut novel still delights generations of readers thirty years after its first publication.
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd 1986
Published by Sphere Books Ltd 1987 Published by Warner Books 1992 Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996
Copyright © Barbara Erskine 1986
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Barbara Erskine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007250868
Ebook Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 9780007368822
Version: 2017-09-06
‘The author’s storytelling talent is undeniable. Barbara Erskine can make us feel the cold, smell the filth and experience some of the fear of the power of evil men.’ The Times
‘Convincing and extremely colourful.’ The Mail
It was snowing. Idly Sam Franklyn stared out of the dirty window up at the sky and wondered if the leaden cloud would provide enough depth to ski by the weekend.
‘Tape on now, Dr Franklyn, if you please.’ Professor Cohen’s quiet voice interrupted his thoughts. Sam turned, glancing at the young woman lying so calmly on the couch, and switched on the recorder. She was an attractive girl, slender and dark, with vivacious grey-green eyes, closed now beneath long curved lashes. He grinned to himself. When the session was over he intended to offer her a lift back into town.
The psychology labs were cold. As he picked up his notebook and began heading up a new page he leaned across and touched the grotesquely large cream radiator and grimaced. It was barely warm.
Cohen’s office was small and cluttered, furnished with a huge desk buried beneath books and papers, some half-dozen chairs crowded together to accommodate tutorial students, when there were any, and the couch, covered by a bright tartan rug, where most of his volunteers chose to lie whilst they were under hypnosis, ‘as if they are afraid they will fall down’, he had commented once to Sam as yet another woman had lain nervously down as if on a sacrificial altar. The walls of the room were painted a light cold blue which did nothing to improve the temperature. Anyone who could relax comfortably in Michael Cohen’s office, Sam used to think wryly, was halfway to being mesmerised already. Next to him the radiator let out a subterranean gurgle, but it grew no hotter.
Professor Cohen seated himself next to the couch and took the girl’s hand in his. He had not bothered to do that for his last two victims Sam noticed, and once more he grinned.
He picked up his pen and began to write:
Hypnotic Regression: Clinical Therapy Trials
Subject 224: Joanna Clifford 2nd year Arts (English)
Age: 19
Attitude:
He chewed the end of the pen and glanced at her again. Then he put ‘enthusiastic but open-minded’ in the column:
Historical aptitude:
Again he paused. She had shrugged when they asked her the routine questions to determine roughly her predisposition to accurate invention.
‘Average, I suppose,’ she had replied with a smile. ‘O-level history. Boring old Disraeli and people like that. Not much else. It’s the present I’m interested in, not the past.’
He eyed her sweater and figure-hugging jeans and wrote as he had written on so many other record sheets:
