“Is it gone?”
“Aye,” he whispered into her hair. “Aye, Alex, it’s gone.”
She coughed a couple of times, licked at her dirt encrusted lips and sat up.
“Did you see anything?”
He nodded, eyes huge in his ashen face. “Cars, aye? Just as you’ve described them. And there was so much noise…” He hugged her hard, not noticing when she winced, and buried his face in her hair. “I thought I’d lose you.”
“So did I,” she said and began to cry.
“Can you stand?” he asked after a while. She tried, but her legs… She raised her skirts and gasped; bruises covered her calves, her thighs, and one of her knees had swollen as if sprained. Her fingers looked as if she’d stuck them into a shredder, and where Matthew had grabbed her there were two perfect imprints of his hands.
He groaned at the sight of her, ran light hands over her mangled limbs in a futile attempt to soothe and heal. She gave him a weak smile, assured him it wasn’t too bad. Besides, he was looking rather worn as well, his lower legs and arms almost as bruised as hers. He looked down himself in surprise, studied her bedraggled clothes, her dirty face, and looked over to where Samson was still grazing.
“We fell off the horse,” he said, “the girth gave, your skirts caught in the stirrup and dragged us along.” That sounded plausible enough, Alex decided, taking a careful step towards the horse.
“It was just like her paintings,” Alex said once they were back on Samson. “You know, like the one we destroyed.”
“A portal – that’s what Olivares called it.”
Alex rested back against him. “An awful lot of portals, in her studio there were hundreds of those green and blue pictures. What on earth was Mercedes thinking of, to litter our home with potential doors through time?”
“Maybe not all of them worked.”
“Or maybe she was just painting to remember. You know; how it was to fall through time.” Shivers rippled up her leg, her back, and she clenched her fists hard, concentrating on the pain that flowed from her torn fingers. “Crossroads,” she said, looking back at the perfect bisection, “somehow it has to do with crossroads.”
“Aye, exact crossroads – like this one and the one down at the spring where we first met.”
She nodded. In the future she was going to stay well away from those.
“Good,” he said, his arm tightening round her waist.
*
Mrs Gordon listened in silence to Matthew’s description of their accident, took a little turn to peer at the girth, raised both her brows, waited, waited some more and then with a little sigh gave up.
“Just so you know, I don’t believe a word of it,” she said while she set Alex’s hands to soak in a basin of fragrant water.
“I didn’t expect you to.” Alex gave her a weak smile.
“Hmph!” Mrs Gordon said, but the general state of Alex, her apparent exhaustion and her poor, poor hands made her refrain from further questioning. Instead she produced linen bandages and tweezers, and for the coming hour she extracted grains of grit from Alex’s hands and underarms. It hurt like hell, and Alex kept on refilling her pewter cup with whisky.
Once she was done, Mrs Gordon sat back. “The legs are mostly bruises, and the knee will mend in its own good time. But the hands you must be careful with, aye?”
Alex belched, giggled and waved her packaged hands in the direction of Matthew.
“The Return of the Mummy,” she said and giggled again.
“She’s drunk,” Mrs Gordon sighed. “Get her to bed and make sure she stays there.”
*
“It must have been terrible for the ones you left behind,” Matthew said very much later. “To never know. If you’d been swallowed up by the road and me not there, how would I ever have known?” He shook his head. “If you were dead…well, then I’d have a place to go to when I needed you close, just as I do with Mam, but to have you vanish inexplicably…” He gave her an anguished look. “Do you think they know?” he said, lifting a comatose Mark out of her clumsy hold.
Alex sat back against the bed frame, waited until he returned to sit beside her.
“No, of course not; it isn’t exactly the first option that springs to mind, is it?” She rested her head against his solid shoulder and inhaled his warmth, the way he smelled of salty sweat, of earth – always of earth and water – of sun, and the drifting scent of tender greens. He caressed her nape, holding her against his chest.
“Our Lord gave you to me, Alex, and I won’t let Him take you back.”
She laughed and bit him through his shirt, shifting to take some pressure of her throbbing knee.
“Good to know.” She raised her eyes to his. “If…” she cleared her throat and tried again. “If something like that should ever happen, you’ll know, right? You’ll know that I fought it as hard as I could, that I didn’t want to, because I never want to leave you, Matthew Graham. Not until the day I die for real.” She saw a shimmer in his eyes, and settled back against him. “And that, mister, is going to be years and years from now. So you better get used to me hanging around.”
He laughed unsteadily into her hair and promised that he would.
*
Matthew woke in the middle of the night, and his heart was thumping against his ribcage. So close! He sat up in bed to verify she was lying beside him, that she was real. Her braid had come undone, releasing all those multihued curls to flow over the pillows. He fingered her hair, he traced her brows, her mouth, and she twitched but didn’t wake.
He kissed her cheek and drew in her scent, filling his lungs with her essence. He glued himself to her, his long body shaping itself like an outer peel around her, and still she wasn’t close enough. His hand slid in to cup her breast, he pressed his lips against the point on her neck where her pulse thudded so reassuringly, and slowly the cramp around his heart abated.
Alex moved even closer to him. “Matthew?” she murmured, and he wasn’t sure if she was awake or dreaming. “Matthew?”
“I’m here, I’m always here, my heart.”
*
With a little sigh, Alex relaxed back into deep sleep. She was still here, with him. Nothing else mattered, nothing at all.
Historical Note
I have always found the period of almost ten years when England, Scotland and Ireland were ruled by Cromwell fascinating. Initially, this fascination sprang from the idea of Roundheads and Cavaliers charging each other in honourable but bloody battles, but over the years it is the underlying ideas, the concept of free men ruling themselves under the Argus eye of a stern God, that has permanently hooked my interest.
While I do believe Cromwell acted with the best of intentions, I think it is important to note that he alienated many of his more faithful and level-headed followers when he had Charles I executed. As a consequence of this act and the Civil War, many of England’s more able men fled abroad, leaving the country in the hands of a God fearing and rather brutal government. Nor did it help when Cromwell decided to do without the Parliament, thereby collecting all power to himself.
The Civil War in England would not have been won without the Scottish Army. Lead by battle-hardened men who had learnt the art of modern warfare from Gustavus Adolphus, this well-disciplined force wreaked havoc on the dashing royalist armies – but at a price. The Scottish Army fought for the Covenant, for the right to hold to their Kirk, a kirk that recognised no sovereign power but that of God. It also believed in Scotland as a separate state, and when Charles I was beheaded, sending waves of shock through the Scottish aristocracy, the Scottish Lords decided to crown Charles II as their king, thereby rupturing the alliance with Cromwell. In the early 1650s, Cromwell had to ride out in force and crush these Scottish upstarts, now with his own remodelled army at his heels.
All of the above shaped Matthew Graham. Raised a Covenanter by his devout father, having spent years fighting for the Commonwealth army, he was a man of strong beliefs, a proud member
of the Scottish Kirk and a man with little respect for kings and such. So no wonder that Matthew felt General Monck ultimately betrayed the Commonwealth by engineering the restoration of Charles Stuart. However, it must be remembered that Monck did his country and its people a huge favour in negotiating a (more or less) bloodless Restoration.
For the people in Lowland Scotland, the Restoration was a potential issue. It was the Covenanters who had captured Charles I all those years ago and handed him over to Cromwell, it was Covenanter beliefs that had influenced the politics of the Commonwealth, and there was general unrest in the area – in particular as it was well known Charles II had no regard whatsoever for the Scottish Kirk. The religious strife that was unleashed as a consequence of the Restoration is the theme of the third book in the series, The Prodigal Son.
Some of you may have raised a surprised brow at the fact that Matthew was divorced, but in Scotland divorce on grounds of adultery had been allowed since the year of the reformation, 1560.
I have taken liberties with two things: I seriously doubt a willow would grow to the size and height described on the moor, and as far as I know shop windows were not invented in the seventeenth century. But hey, this is a work of fiction – after all, people don’t drop three hundred years backwards in time. Or do they?
Like Chaff in the Wind
The Graham Saga continues in book two
Matthew Graham congratulated himself yet again on not having brought his wife Alex or wee Mark along to Edinburgh. Not a welcoming city at its best, Edinburgh was cold and dreary in the icy January winds, the tall tenement buildings hunching under clouds the colour of pewter.
The city swarmed with people; in every window, in every narrow close, spectators crowded together, and for all that Matthew was both tall and broad he had to constantly use elbows and feet to avoid being trodden on. He shivered and pressed his hat down harder on his head in a feeble attempt to keep his ears from falling off with cold. His brother-in-law, Simon Melville, laughed and mock punched him.
“It sticks in your craw, doesn’t it? To be obliged to witness the proud occasion of the laying to rest of the Marquis of Montrose.”
Matthew didn’t reply. He had nothing against James Graham, a noble man and a warrior of great talent and bravery, and he had not liked it that he was hanged several years ago, victim to the double dealing of Charles the Second. He did, however, resent being forced to pay his dues at this mockery of a burial where the Marquis, ten years after his death, was brought to lie in state at Holyrood Palace, at the say so of the king who had so cruelly betrayed him.
He shifted on his feet in a vain attempt to escape the pressure of the sharp stone ledge digging into his back. Slowly, the sumptuous coffin made its way down from the direction of St Giles, preceded by banners and blaring trumpets as if it were indeed a whole man lying there, instead of all the bits and pieces that had been brought back to be interred together. The bleached skull had been lifted off its spike on the Tolbooth only this morning, and Matthew doubted if anybody knew whether the body parts now lumped together did in fact belong to the same man.
“Do you think he cares?” Simon asked him.
“Who?”
“Montrose. Do you think it matters to him, all this?”
Matthew pursed his lips. “He might be laughing some. But nay, I don’t think it much matters to him how he’s buried.” He indicated the procession with his head. “It may matter to his wife, though. And his son.”
Matthew smiled at the thought of his own son, safe at Hillview – a lad who with every day grew more and more like his sire, from his hazel eyes to the dark hair that fell in soft wisps to frame his face. He stretched as well as he could in his cramped space, and closed his eyes, seeing first Mark as he had seen him last, fast asleep in his trundle bed, then his wife.
His wife. Just thinking of Alex sent spurts of heat rippling through him. He had woken her in the dark pre-dawn the day he set out, and she had been a sinuous warmth under him. When he got out of bed, she had propped herself up on one elbow to look at him, hair escaping in curls from her thick night braid. His woman, his heart…
“Look!” Simon hissed.
Matthew opened his eyes only to meet those of his brother. Wearing a splendid fur-lined cloak, Luke Graham sat astride a fiery chestnut mare. The rings on his hands, the golden collar round his neck, and the royal badge decorating his hat, screamed to the world that this was a man high in the king’s favour, an impression further underlined by the fact that he was riding side by side with the Governor. Where Matthew had expected to see a disfigured nose, he saw instead an elegant silver covering that elicited surprised murmurs from the crowd.
Luke set a finger to the gleaming metal, letting Matthew know that he well remembered who it was that had so damaged him and had not forgiven, nor ever would. He narrowed his eyes, made a slitting motion over his throat, and spurred his horse on, all the while turning to stare at Matthew who stood unmoving until horse and rider disappeared.
“The sooner we leave the better,” Simon muttered as they hurried away from the crowds. They took a sharp left, having to lean backwards so as not to topple down the slippery, steep close that led into Cowgate. Matthew agreed, still shaken by the naked hatred that shone out of Luke’s eyes.
“I want you to do something for me.”
Simon looked at him with a certain caution but nodded.
“I want you to draw up a document, today, that makes you the guardian of Mark should anything happen to me.”
“Nothing will happen to you.”
“Mayhap not,” Matthew shrugged. “But unless I draw up such a deed, then both Mark and Alex may find themselves in the not so tender care of my brother. After all, Luke’s my closest male relative – unfortunately.” Matthew’s gut twisted at the thought and it was apparent wee Simon agreed, an uncharacteristic scowl settling on his round face.
“I’ll do it when we get back to our room, and you can sign it and have it witnessed by the landlord.”
When Matthew prepared to leave for the evening, Simon frowned.
“Should you go abroad alone? What with Luke being here…”
“I’m invited to dine with Minister Crombie and his brother,” Matthew said. “I don’t think I’ll be in any danger there.”
Simon grunted. “Not there, no. But in the going and the coming you might be.”
Matthew strapped on his sword. “I’ll be careful.” And damn if his brother was going to stop him from partaking of the company of men he respected and liked.
It was a long evening, an evening of discussion and far too much wine, and Matthew felt comfortably mellow when he made his way back to the inn. Tomorrow he’d be on his way home, rid of this damp, dark and teeming city, and soon he’d be at Hillview, with wife and bairn around him.
Something clattered against the cobbles and he threw a look over his shoulder, squinting through the dark. He frowned and blinded his lantern, standing very still as he listened. Soft rustling noises and a cat ran across the narrow close.
Matthew wanted to laugh out loud with relief. Still, he chose to not unblind his lantern and increased his pace. His skin prickled, his pulse thudded loudly. You’re being fanciful, he berated himself, it was just a cat, aye? There was a sound behind him and he wheeled, a hand on his sword. He never managed to pull it free. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something and then his head exploded with pain.
*
Alex woke with a gasp, convinced that something had happened to Mark. From his trundle bed came snuffling noises, and she sank back against the pillows, trying to bring her heart rate under control. For some reason she was still agitated, and after an hour of turning in bed she gave up on sleep. It was just some silly dream, she told herself, running a hand over Matthew’s pillow before rising to pace up and down the room. She stood by the window and stared out into the dark, arms coming up to cross her chest. Something was very wrong and she had no idea what it was, but her whole body was clanging
with alarms.
“Bad night?” Joan, her sister-in-law, asked next morning.
Alex yawned and handed over Mark into Joan’s waiting arms.
“I couldn’t sleep.” She nodded a good morning to their housekeeper, Mrs Gordon, but shook her head at the bowl of porridge. Her insides were clenched tight around a pebble of nagging concern, and just the thought of food made her queasy.
With each passing day, Alex grew more nervous, making both Joan and Mrs Gordon jumpy as well. He should be back by now, and Alex spent far too many hours with her eyes glued to the lane. When she finally heard the sound of horses, she dropped the basket she was carrying, bunched up her skirts, and flew up the lane to meet him.
She saw Samson riderless and turned, bewildered, to Simon. Her heart came to a screeching halt before it started up again, and she moved towards the horse, her hands stretched out to touch the man who wasn’t there.
“Matthew?” Her eyes nailed themselves to Simon’s and the expression she saw in them turned the air in her lungs to lead, a dragging weight that threatened to suffocate her. He was dead, her Matthew was dead, and oh my God, how was she to go on without him? “Matthew?” she repeated, hoping that there was another explanation for the haunted look on Simon’s face.
“Ah, Alex,” Simon said in a choked voice. “I’m so sorry, lass.”
She shook her head; she didn’t want him to be sorry, please don’t let him be sorry. The household congregated around them; Joan and Mrs Gordon, Rosie with Mark in arms as well as Sam, Gavin and Robbie. She didn’t see them, she saw only the empty saddle where Matthew should have been, and all she wanted was to die.
“What?” She cleared her thickening throat. “What has happened to him, where is he?” Simon dismounted and Alex flew at him.
“Answer me! Where’s my husband? Why isn’t he here, with you?”
“He’s gone,” Simon said, grabbing at her flailing arms. “Dearest Lord, he’s gone.” He began to cry. Alex was taken over by a slow seeping cold, a thickening of her blood that began at her feet and worked itself upwards.
A Rip in the Veil (The Graham Saga) Page 36
