In the clearing the officer had dismounted and was inspecting Sanderson’s leg. He kicked at it, recoiling at the muffled yelp, and stood back to study the closest tree.
“A bit low,” he muttered. “Watson,” he called, waving over one of his men. “Will this do?”
The soldier studied the tree dubiously. “Not that high, sir, and the bough looks weak.”
Sanderson was trying to stand, his eyes darting from the tree to the officer and back again.
“You can’t be serious! I’m telling you, I’m not bloody Matthew Graham!”
“Well you would say that, wouldn’t you?” The officer took off his hat to scratch at his short hair. “Damned lice, I’m crawling with them.” He scratched his groin again and shook one of his legs, making the breeches flare out. “No, it’ll have to do, I’m not going to cart a fugitive in that state all the way back to England. He’d hang anyway.” He pouted and braced his hands behind his back, looking at his men. “Well go on then! We haven’t got all day. We have orders to ride back today and you all know that.”
“But…” said Sanderson, and the officer stalked over to him and slapped him in the face.
“One more word from you, sir, and you’ll die gagged as well.”
“But you can’t!” Sanderson bleated. “I haven’t done anything! I’m innocent!”
The officer snorted. “No man is innocent, and if you hang for the wrong sins then I’m sure you’ve done something to merit hanging. Look at you, ruffian every inch of you.”
When Sanderson opened his mouth to protest, the officer produced a grimy handkerchief from his sleeve and stuffed it into Sanderson’s mouth.
“There.”
A rope was slung over one of the boughs, a struggling Sanderson was hoisted onto a horse, a noose fitted round his neck.
“I’m still not sure, sir,” Watson said, shaking his head. He tightened the noose and slid off the horse. Sanderson shrieked through his gag.
“Dear God,” Matthew whispered. “Oh Lord, have mercy on his soul.” He put his lips to Alex’s ear. “Don’t look, close your eyes.”
“I can’t” she whispered back. “I’ve already tried.”
The officer stood at a distance from the tree and nodded in satisfaction.
“Good. Mayhap it will gladden the Protector’s soul to know that yet another royalist lies dead. One less to worry about now that the Protector is dead.”
He inclined his head in command, and the man behind the horse brought down his whip on the hindquarters, making the horse set off. Sanderson was jerked back by the noose, he fell towards the ground and Matthew noted that Watson had been right. The drop was too low, and Sanderson’s feet scraped at the ground in an effort to keep the air whistling down to his lungs.
“Heave him up a bit!” the officer said, and the toes danced in the air. They danced for a long time, the stench from his vacated bowels hanging in the air.
* * *
Hector woke with a start, his mouth filling with acid. Diego! Something had happened to his Diego. He sat up, disoriented, trying to clear his head of what he hoped was a dream. He massaged his neck, a sensation of burning rope making his skin tingle. They had hanged him…Diego’s eyes, frozen into an expression of permanent surprise.
Hector rolled out of the straw, an urgent need for a cigarette rushing out to his fingertips. But there were no cigarettes, not here, not in this dark hovel that stank of pig shit and mould.
He stepped outside, avoiding looking at the dark splotch of blood from where he’d killed his unsuspecting host. His hands smoothed at the unfamiliar clothes, fidgeted with a frayed cuff. He took several long, steadying breaths. He was utterly alone, he was in the wrong time, the wrong place, and the family he had lay inaccessible in the shrouds of time. He had to find a portal; but how on earth was he to do that here, on a godforsaken moor in Scotland?
Chapter 17
They sat where they were for a long time after the men had disappeared down the slope. Before them, the swinging body twirled, tongue protruding from a blue face.
“Oh God, oh my God…” Alex leaned over and threw up, her whole body shaking. The rope creaked, fibres stretching so that Sanderson’s feet scuffed at the grass.
Matthew crawled out and stood. Alex followed him and stuck her hand into his, needing to touch him, make sure he was alive.
“We can’t leave him like that,” she said, “the birds…”
Matthew licked his lips. “He’s dead.”
Alex threw him a sidelong glance. Of course he was dead. For ten minutes he had struggled to stay alive, harsh guttural sounds escaping the makeshift gag, eyes bugging out of his head. Matthew sank down to sit, keeping his back to the hanging man.
“I’m dead as well,” he whispered, rubbing his hands through his beard. “Matthew Graham was hanged today.”
Alex kneeled down beside him. “But you’re not, you’re sitting here.”
“You don’t really know, do you? If I am who I say I am.”
That stumped her, and she sat back on her heels to look at him.
“Aren’t you?”
“Aye I am. But you have to take it on trust, because I can’t prove it.”
“But others can, right? You sister and her husband, your brother…” her voice tailed off at his sardonic smile.
“Luke will have no reason to recognise me, after all, if I’m dead, he’s the new master.” He put a hand on her thigh and squeezed. “But there are others, lass; he’ll not cheat me of what is mine. Not this time.”
It was hard work. Alex’s hands were raw with digging, and her shoulders ached with the weight of Sanderson’s body as they cut him down and dragged him across the slick grass to the hole they’d dug behind a thicket of brambles, a fair distance away.
“It’s too shallow!” she gasped, once they began filling it in. So far she’d managed to keep her eyes from Sanderson’s face, but now she glanced at the head end and his nose was still visible through the dirt. A small beetle scurried across it and Alex stumbled to her feet. She drew in a gulping breath and looked at Matthew.
“If you hadn’t woken up, that would have been you, and I, oh my God, I would’ve had to watch!” She wheeled and ran, away from the tree and the shallow grave, tripped over a stone and fell, all air knocked out of her. Her chin hurt, and she could taste blood in her mouth. Matthew put a hand on her shoulder.
“Are you alright?”
“No.” She ran her tongue over her teeth to check they were all there. She sat up, frowning at the blood that seeped through her jeans.
Matthew hunched down and extended his hand towards her, index held aloft.
“Can you bend it?” He crooked his finger in demonstration. There was a soft light in his eyes, halfway between amusement and tenderness as he watched her raise her finger and bend it.
“Good,” he smiled, “then you’ll be fine.”
Alex looked from her forefinger to him and back again.
“How can me bending my finger have anything to do with my skinned knee or my bitten lip?”
“I have no notion, but Mam did that when we were bairns.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “She did that as well, and that always helped.”
Alex wiped her hand across her face and smiled unsteadily.
“Smart woman.”
*
They made very little progress that day. After their third near encounter with a troop of southbound soldiers, Matthew decided it was best to lie low for the remainder of the day. Only once the sun had set, did they venture out of their hiding place.
“He’s dead then,” Matthew said out of nowhere. “The Protector,” he clarified, “the soldiers, they said he was dead.” He sighed and used a branch to dig at the small fire, sending sparks flying in all directions. “He was a good man – harsh, mayhap, but good – but he leaves an unsteady legacy behind.”
Alex looked up from where she was scrubbing at the bloodied knee of her breeches.
“They’ll invite the king to come back, you know.”
Matthew looked at her in surprise. “They will?” He laughed at himself. “Well, he’s been the King of Scotland for some years already, quite the spectacle that was, with his royal person being fought over by the Covenanters and the Engagers.” He grew serious. “So the Commonwealth will die then?”
“Yes. The British have a thing about their kings; you’re stuck with them.” She spread the djeens to dry, and wound her shawl round her bare legs before coming over to join him by the fire. She leaned her head against his shoulder.
“They’ll dig Oliver Cromwell up and cut his head off,” she said. “Seems a bit overboard to do that to someone who’s already dead, don’t you think?”
Matthew didn’t reply, but inclined his head in agreement. They’d do far worse than that, he reckoned, to the Commonwealth leaders left alive.
“Is it important to you?” Alex asked, startling him out of his thoughts.
Matthew looked down at her. “What?”
“The not having a king, being part of a republic.”
“Aye. But the republic has been dead for some years. These last few years…” He broke off to shake his head. “…it has been one man, and one man alone, at the helm.”
“Like a dictator.”
“Aye – a good dictator.”
“A contradiction in terms if you ask me,” Alex said.
“It doesn’t greatly matter now, does it? He’s dead, and as you say it, things will revert to how they were – before men like Cromwell and Fairfax. A kingdom, not a commonwealth.”
“And you don’t care?”
“I do,” he said, “of course I do. But…”
“But what?”
“I’ve lost so many years of my life to this conflict already, and now I just want to live in peace, tend to my lands, my beasts.”
“Oh.” Her blue eyes were very close to his, and there was something in them that made him flush, an insinuation that he was going back on his beliefs.
“Maybe that’s what happens when for one thousand, one hundred and thirty-nine days you’ve lived like an animal in a cage.” He shoved her aside and stood up, his back to her.
They hadn’t believed in him when he’d protested his innocence. Men who’d known him, fought with him, had chosen to listen to Luke instead. It tore like a canker at his gut, even now, three years on.
“You counted?” She placed a hand on his back.
“I counted every hour, every day.” He wheeled to face her, and she backed away from him. “I never want to live through something like that again, it near on killed me. I just couldn’t bend, and instead I was broken, and the pieces don’t fit together as they used to.”
He rubbed at his wrists. “Of the men I was locked up with, more than half died the first year. We were all beaten and underfed, cold and constantly ill of one thing or the other, but the ones who died were the ones whose inner light failed them, who woke one day to a hollow chest and the despairing knowledge that there was nothing worth the effort to keep on living for.”
He was silent for a while, overwhelmed by memories of long, endless days. “My light still burns, but at times it gutters on the brink of extinction. I wouldn’t survive another time in prison, I’d just curl up and die. And so…” He shrugged, giving her a crooked smile. “I still hold to my beliefs, but I’ll be far more selective as to what battles to fight. It’s called adapting to your circumstances.”
“Adapting is good, that’s what all of us have to do to survive.” She cleared her throat, hugged herself. “And if you don’t, you die.”
“Aye,” he said, realising she was talking just as much about her own situation as his. “I’m here, I’ll be here for you, lass.” She brushed at his face, stepped up close enough to meet his eyes.
“And I’ll be here for you, and two lights burn much, much brighter than one, right?”
“They do,” he agreed hoarsely. When she rose on her toes to kiss him, he kissed her back. When her arms came round his neck, his arms wrapped themselves around her waist. No more talking; not tonight. He lifted her into his arms and carried her over to their makeshift bed.
*
Alex woke to find him already awake. She rolled in his direction, stretched, and gave him a lazy smile.
“Did I?” A gentle finger traced what she was sure was a bright red love bite on her throat.
“Well, no one else did, I would definitely have noticed.”
“I hope I wasn’t too…” he said, inspecting a blue spot on her breast.
“Oh, you were, but I didn’t exactly mind.” And he did sport a few bruises of his own, she smiled, a puddle of warmth expanding through her at the thought of last night.
“Hoyden,” he murmured, using his long toes to caress her shin.
“Well, aren’t you the lucky one?” She sat up, ran her hands through her hair in a useless effort to comb it into some sort of order.
He got to his feet, eyes narrowing as he studied his surroundings. “We’re nearly home.”
She came to stand in front of him, and at their feet the landscape shifted from greys to gold and brilliant green wherever the sun touched it.
“It’s as if there was only us,” she said, her eyes on the threads of fog that glistened and glowed in the returning light. She drew in a breath of cold, clear air and held it in her lungs before letting it out. Never had she felt as alive as she did in this minute. Behind her stood her man, before her stretched a new, unfamiliar world, and with a twinge of guilt she realised that she hadn’t thought about John, not like that, for the last few weeks. Matthew chuckled and leaned forward to bite her ear.
“Like man before the fall from grace,” he said, his hot breath tickling her. “And this is our Eden spread before us.” He turned her to face him. “This is your life now, here, with me. It’s time, Alex, to let the old life go.”
She didn’t understand, but Matthew let go of her hand and extracted the bundle that Mrs Gordon had given him and placed it on the ground. He threw some more wood on the fire until it burnt a ferocious blue and beckoned for her to come close.
“Here.” He handed her the jeans.
She looked at her pants and back at the fire.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Burn them, they don’t belong here, they belong there, and you’re not going back are you?”
She laughed nervously. “I suppose not, not unless I sit around and wait for a new thunderstorm.”
“If you could, would you?” His eyes were very, very green and very, very close.
“No,” she breathed, and threw her jeans in the fire.
All of it he made her burn; the jacket, her shirt and the bra. She had the sensation of performing some sort of sacrificial ritual, watching as the remnants of her old life went up in smoke.
He smiled at her as she stood naked in the chilly wind, her skin stippling into goose bumps, and bent his head to kiss her on her nose.
“So, my little heathen, I think it’s about time you’re baptised.”
“But you’re not a priest, and this isn’t exactly a church.”
“It’ll do, God is as present here as He is in a church, and I don’t think He’ll mind if I give you a name in His presence.”
“And what were you planning on? Edwina?”
“No, I was thinking of Alexandra. Alexandra Ruth.”
“And now what?” she asked as he helped her into what he said was a petticoat and handed her a skirt in dark brown wool. “How am I supposed to dress myself with all these lacings at the back?”
“I’ll help you,” he grinned, standing back to give her an appraising glance. “You look very nice,” he said before pulling on his shirt, adjusting the worn cuffs and neckline. Alex gave him a doubtful look. She felt padded, her breasts kept in place by the lacings of the bodice, and when she moved her hips the skirt swung around her. She liked that, trying out different walks to make the heavy cloth dance.
�
��Why did she give you all this?” Alex pinched at the skirts. “That was very nice of her.”
Matthew rolled his eyes at her. “I bought it. We can’t go down to Cumnock looking like tramps, can we?” It had been Mrs Gordon’s idea, he explained, her insisting that the lass couldn’t very well go about looking like a wee lad. And she hadn’t taken much money either, saying the ear-bob well covered the cost.
“Cumnock? Why are we going there?” She didn’t like the idea of going into a town, and what if there were soldiers? He adjusted something at her waist, rolled their few belongings together and gave her his hand.
“To get married. I can’t go on bedding you without giving you my name.”
“Oh,” said Alex Lind, and gripped his fingers hard.
Chapter 18
It was a shock to walk into the little market town. From a distance, Cumnock had looked quaint, if very small, but as they got nearer, all Alex could think of was the stench. The privies, the animals on the street, the people – all of them smelled. In comparison, she felt like a rose in a pigsty.
The few paved streets were covered in filth; discarded bedstraw, contents of upended chamber pots, the odd dead cat. Women in dirty mended skirts hurried by, tagged by equally dirty children, a piece of burnt bread was lobbed outside and immediately a fight for it ensued between several dogs and two boys, all of them rolling round in the muck.
“What date is it today?” She held on tight to Matthew’s hand, disgusted at having to walk barefoot through the stinking slurry that coated the streets.
“September twelve, I reckon.” He helped her as they crossed a muddied stretch. It had begun to rain when they were halfway down the hill, and Alex pulled the shawl tighter round her shoulders, longing for the weatherproof qualities of her jacket. Matthew more or less ran up the streets, nodding in passing at the odd, curious shopkeeper.
“Matthew?” Alex hated having to puff. The bloody lacings were cutting her in half, and things weren’t exactly helped by Matthew’s pace.
A Rip in the Veil (The Graham Saga) Page 18
