Whither Thou Goest (The Graham Saga Book 7)
Page 40
“Oh my God!” She had to put some distance between them to see his face. “He’s bought back Hillview!” She smoothed the deed, staring at the name Matthew Graham ‘hereby confirmed as sole owner of said property’ and unclenched her hand from the letter and quickly scanned it through.
I could think of no other way to express my eternal gratitude for what you did for my son than to buy for you the place that I suspect still holds your heart. I don’t know if you wish to return yourself, or if perhaps Ian would, or Mark… But at least you have a home in Scotland again – our home. Mayhap there will even be a day when we can sit together under the orchard trees and converse with no other intent than to share the memories we have of a time before it all went sour and warped between us.
“Wow,” Alex said, very impressed.
“Wow, indeed,” Matthew nodded, one long finger tracing the name Hillview over and over again.
“Retirement,” Alex said in an effort to break the emotional mood. It worked, Matthew giving her a quick smile.
“Retirement? I don’t think taking Hillview back will be a restful proposition.”
“So what will you do?” she asked, and felt her stomach turn inside out. How was she to stand it, being separated from her children?
“I have no idea,” he replied, but she could see the yearning in his eyes, how it twisted through his face.
“Once you know, be sure to tell me,” she said and patted his thigh. “After all, where you go, I go, right?” She managed to keep her voice steady while inside of her it was all turmoil. A double-edged gift this, a gift she already wished he had never been given. Damn Luke! Why couldn’t he just have refunded Matthew for his expenses? She was quite convinced he knew exactly the upheaval and heartbreak his generous gesture would cause, no doubt chuckling as he drafted the letter. No, that was probably unfair, but still… She blinked, keeping her eyes hidden.
“Alex?” Matthew drew her close. “I won’t go anywhere without you,” he promised, and kissed her ear. In a gesture similar to a benediction, his hand came down on her head, stroking softly at her hair. “My wife, my Alexandra Ruth, a gift from the Lord himself, a helpmeet and companion to see me through every one of my worldly days and well beyond – no matter where I choose to go.”
“Huh,” Alex said, touched to the heart by his tone. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Nay, only to the ones I want to bed.”
That made Alex laugh, and for a little while the cramp in her stomach abated – a little while, no more.
To Catch a Falling Star
The Graham Saga continues in book eight
Isaac Lind should not have drunk quite as much as he did that evening, but flushed by the success of his latest exhibition, he allowed himself to be dragged along, to be toasted in pint after pint of lager.
By the time he left the pub, he was unsteady on his feet, but in a very mellow mood. He stood for some moments by a high brick wall, sniffing at the lilacs that hung over it into the narrow little street. Late April was a nice time of the year, and even here in London it was difficult to miss the advent of spring, the heady scents of flowering shrubs competing with the permanent smells of stone, exhausts, and muddy tidal waters.
Isaac continued on his way, strolling towards the river. It was going to be a long walk home to Notting Hill, but the night was warm, and Isaac was in no particular hurry. Veronica and Isabelle would be asleep anyway, and knowing Veronica, it might make sense to walk off some of this agreeable buzz before showing up back at their little apartment.
He stood for a moment with elbows on the stone parapet and decided that someday he would paint this – a silhouetted London lapped by the returning waters of the Thames. He yawned and looked at the swirling waters below: multiple little maelstroms, murky waves slapping in irritation at each other as they jostled for space. He yawned again, his mind drifting over to his latest piece. An urge built in him to hurry to his studio, not his bed, and look at it again. So, instead of continuing on his way home, he turned to the right, making for the attic space he rented for his painting.
The eye-scanner at the main gate let him through with a loud peep. He shrugged off his leather jacket as he took the stairs, making for the top floor. Yet more security, and when he swiped his thumb on the keypad, the door swung open on well-oiled hinges. Yet another swipe and the space came alive with lights, a soft whirring informing him his computer was back online. His fingers flew over the screen, and music flowed out of the two narrow speakers, a slow monotonous Gregorian chant.
Paintings leaned against the walls, bursts of vivid colours that implacably drew the beholder’s eyes into whatever little detail was hidden in the depth of the heaving colours. One was a study in reds and oranges, and in their midst, one could vaguely make out a burning twisting figure, mouth wide as it screamed out its anguish to the world. Isaac extended a finger to touch it and laughed nervously. He could feel his skin blistering with the heat.
“How can you do this?” his agent had said, shaking his head in admiration. “How on earth do you make it so vibrant? Hell, I can even smell the stench of roasting flesh!”
Isaac wasn’t sure how he did it. His fingers worked, and he slipped into a subconscious state where colours flowed together on the canvas, and all according to an inner voice. It scared the hell out of him, but that wasn’t something he was about to admit – not even to himself.
He flicked off the old sheet that covered his latest work, a painting that was very different from anything else in the room. Just looking at his depicted somnolent courtyard filled him with unwelcome sensations of vertigo, a niggling feeling that he was walking a tightrope over forbidden zones – like he’d done all those years ago when, as a boy, he had painted the picture that allowed his grandfather, Magnus Lind, to dive from this time to another. Impossible, of course, and yet it had happened.
He caressed the wooden frame of the picture, a depiction of an empty, stone-flagged space, surrounded by arched walkways in whitewashed stone. In the middle, a fountain, a constant welling of water, and Isaac knew exactly what the water would taste like and how cool it would feel to his fingers. In olive greens and muted browns, with the odd dash of whites and startling blues, the water spilled over the fountain’s edge to fall in transparent drops towards the ground.
Isaac reared back, and in his head he heard a mocking little laugh. Too afraid to look deep into your own work? Well, yes, he was. Sweat broke out across his forehead, beaded his upper lip, and made him wipe his damp hands against his jeans. He tried to break eye contact with the falling water, but now he heard it as well, the pitter-patter of drops on wet stone, the trickling sound of water running through a narrow channel, and there, just where he had painted it, a minute point of white beckoned and promised, entrapping his eyes in a shaft of dazzling light.
*
Carlos Muñoz was walking back to his room when he saw the stranger lying sprawled half in, half out of the fountain. With a soft exclamation, he hurried as well as he could to the groaning heap of a man. Carlos wrinkled his nose. The man was drunk, but how on earth had he ended up here in the monastery’s secluded courtyard? He swept the cloister walks but they were empty, most of the monks hastening back to their beds from matins for a few more hours of sleep.
Carlos kneeled clumsily on account of his peg leg, and turned the stranger over. He yelped and dropped the man back onto the cobbles, scrambling back a few feet. Ángel? Here? But no, it couldn’t be – his cousin had died two years ago on Jamaica, hanged by the neck for spying on behalf of his royal Spanish majesty.
“Fucking hell,” the stranger groaned, and Carlos scooted backwards, got back to his feet.
“¿Inglés?” He hadn’t spoken English since he returned from the New World. “¿Es Usted inglés?”
“No,” the stranger moaned and sat up, “if anything, I’m Scots.” He spoke passable Spanish, understandable but heavily accented, and looked about himself with trepidation. “Bloody fuck
ing hell,” he cursed in English, and Carlos thought the young man reminded him of someone – apart from being a disconcerting copy of himself.
He extended his hand to help the man stand, and they were nose to nose, of identical build – albeit that the stranger was a couple of inches taller – both with a soaring quiff of dark hair over the right brow, both with dark, lustrous eyes that were saved from being doe-like by strong, dark brows.
The stranger gaped. At one level, Carlos supposed it was most droll, this meeting between two men so alike as to seem twins, no doubt with identical expressions of disbelief painted on their faces. At another level, it was so disquieting it made Carlos’ good leg dip somewhat, causing him to have to hop for a couple of steps to regain his balance. The stranger inhaled, barked a laugh, and to Carlos’ bemusement, pinched himself – multiple times.
“Where am I?” the stranger finally said.
Carlos studied this double of his in silence while smoothing down his cassock. Might the man be an English spy? But no, if anything the stranger seemed utterly confused.
“En Sevilla,” Carlos said.
The stranger groaned, tore at his hair and groaned some more. “Bloody, bloody, bloody hell! This can’t be happening. I’m just drunk – really drunk – and soon…oh God!” The man swayed, steadied himself against the nearby wall, thereby coming to stand in a patch of moonlight.
Carlos had never seen a man dressed like this before. With interest, he took in the long wet breeches, the odd footwear in some kind of fabric, and the rather more normal shirt, even if it was very narrow in fit and had small buttons along the front rather than laces. One of the sleeves was burnt, the skin below looking very red and irritated. A leather belt but no knife, no sword – not even a pouch; no cloak, no hat, and hands as narrow and long as his own but with the fingers liberally smudged with ink and paint.
The stranger folded his hands together under Carlos’ open inspection. “I can’t get it off,” he muttered.
“Are you a painter?”
The man nodded and looked about the courtyard. “I got it just right,” he muttered, and a shiver ran through him. “The arches, the fountain – shit, even the crumbling plaster is just as I painted it.”
Painted it? Carlos followed the man’s gaze round the small courtyard, smiling as he always did as he took in this his favourite place: the arches in soft sandstone, worn to smoothness through very many years, the whitewash of the walls, the irregular stones of the walkways – all of it spoke of permanence. A huge stand of ivy clambered its way up to the latticed first floor shutters, in a circle surrounding the fountain grew straggling roses and high tufts of lavender, and set into a niche in the wall stood the abbot’s pride and joy: an ancient statue of the Virgin.
“What is this place?” the man asked.
“A Dominican monastery,” Carlos said “San Pablo el Real.” He shifted into English, and the stranger’s eyes grew round with astonishment. “My home for the past two years, a resting place for a battered soul.” He nodded at the man. “It would seem you are in need of some rest as well.”
“Rest? No way! I have to find a way back home.” The stranger scowled at the surrounding walls and went over to stare intently into the waters of the fountain, as if he were looking for something in the shallow basin.
“Hmm,” Carlos said, and then recalled his original question at finding the man. “How did you get here?”
The man shrugged. “I have no idea, I just—” He broke off. “I just fell.”
“Fell?” Carlos looked at the sky. There was nothing to fall from.
“I know,” the stranger said, his eyes full of anguish. He shook himself like a wet dog, and extended his hand. “I’m Isaac, Isaac Lind.”
“Carlos Muñoz,” Carlos replied, and grasped the hand. Isaac Lind? He recognised the name. He tried to place it but came up with a blank.
“Muñoz, you say?” Isaac said, and it seemed to Carlos the name had some relevance for him. Ah well, in truth, not an uncommon name.
“Yes, Carlos Benito Muñoz.” Not Muñoz de Hojeda, like his uncle and his cousins, not for a bastard this illustrious name.
“Pleased to meet you,” Isaac said.
“Likewise,” Carlos replied.
Isaac shoved his hands into his pockets and turned his back on Carlos, the slow, casual pivoting of a man taking in new surroundings.
“This may seem a strange question,” he said, “but what year is it?”
Carlos gave the slender back a surprised look, and all along his arms his hair rose to bristle in fear. What was this man, dropping out of nowhere in strange vestments to land in their courtyard? He crossed himself.
“1688,” he answered as calmly as he could.
Isaac closed his eyes. A strangled sound escaped him, and his frame bowed. Carlos was well familiar with dejection, and saw it now in every line of the man before him. His heart filled with compassion, and he decided that for now the important thing was to get this unexpected visitor dry and out of the beady eyesight of the abbot, who no doubt would shortly be about.
For More…
For a Historical Note and more information about Matthew and Alex, please visit Anna Belfrage’s website at www.annabelfrage.com
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Published in 2014 by the author using SilverWood Books Empowered Publishing®
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Copyright © Anna Belfrage 2014
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