The Prodigal Son

by Belfrage, Anna

  What little energy Alex had she utilised to keep up a front of normality for her children. Her insides were a dark and hollow void, and every now and then a drop of sunlight would flash through, lighting up the absolute dark before it sputtered and died. Like when Daniel crawled over to her and pulled himself up to stand, weaving proudly on his feet before he sat down with a thump, or when Mark offered her a snowdrop, mumbled a quick “I love you,” and darted off. Or Ian, working so hard on being a grown up in this absence of parents, helping his younger cousins with everything he could, and still finding the time to brew her a cup of herbal tea, placing a bony arm around her shoulders.

  Occasionally she was aware of Matthew and his silent, agonising grief, but she had nothing to give him, not now, not yet, so she tried to close off his pain, listening only to her own. Where Matthew escaped into the spring planting, Alex spent hours walking through the woods, sometimes with her sons, but mostly on her own, head cocked in the hope that suddenly she’d hear Rachel’s high voice tell her to come quickly because the sow was doing it again, eating her babies.

  Only when she was alone did she allow herself to cry, sitting for hours on the hilltop with the moss blurring in front of her eyes. It was always a relief afterwards, the grief somehow disarmed into more manageable proportions and for some time she could act normal with her boys, discuss dinner with Sarah or walk over to study the beds of her kitchen garden. And then the teeth of grief were back, tearing at her from the inside and she needed Matthew, but she didn’t know how to tell him, so she’d sit and watch him from a distance, seeing how he would at times stop and falter, his shoulders rounding. Sometimes she stretched out her hand towards him and pretended that she placed it on his back, letting him know that she was, after all, still here.

  Tomorrow they would bury her. Her Rachel, to lie alone in the dark, with no one to hold her hand or shush her if she was afraid. Alex didn’t know how to bear it, so instead she fled away inside her mind to where Rachel was still alive, a green-eyed minx that drove her parents crazy at times, but was so tender at others. She leaned back against a tree trunk and closed her eyes. There, in her head, Rachel would always live.

  “Mama?”

  Alex opened one eye to see Jacob crouched in front of her. It was Jacob who was most affected of the children. Rachel and he were inseparable, spending their entire days together and now she was gone, leaving him very alone and just as confused.

  “Ian says that tomorrow we’re going to dig a hole up in the graveyard and put Rachel in it.” Two huge eyes stared at her. “She doesn’t like dark places,” he said. “So I told him we won’t do that, she’ll be right angry with us if we do.”

  Alex swallowed madly. “But that is what we do. We put Rachel into a coffin and then we bury her. But to her it won’t be cold or dark, to her it’s all fluffy and white. She’s probably somewhere up there now.” She pointed at a small cloud. “See? Over there, swinging on the edge. That’s Rachel and she’ll always be up there, looking down at you.”

  Jacob strained his eyes towards the little cloud. Yes, he nodded eagerly, he could see her foot, with the striped stockings Mama had made her.

  Alex kissed his hair and helped him to stand. “Let’s go and find your brothers.”

  As they crossed the yard she heard the sound of hammering from the woodshed and hesitated. Should she go and talk to him? Hold him? Jacob tugged at her hand and she hurried after him instead.

  Matthew looked down at the finished coffin and ran his hand over the smooth interior. He had sanded it repeatedly until it was soft enough for Rachel to lie on without getting splinters. Now all he had to do was fit the lid and then he was done. No, because he had to carry the coffin over to the shed, and he had to lift the stiff body into it, and then he had to nail the lid shut, sealing her off permanently from sun and light. He rubbed his hand through his hair and sighed.

  “Are you alright?”

  The unexpected voice made Matthew jump and he turned to find Sandy at the door. Moments later he was in his friend’s arms while Sandy patted his back, telling him it was a most terrible loss, but the wee lass was with God now.

  “Don’t tell her mother that,” Matthew said. The thought of Alex made him leap away. “You mustn’t be here! If the soldiers come…”

  Sandy smiled and dug around in his clothing, producing a formal looking document.

  “He came and found me himself, or rather he asked that he be taken to see me.”

  Matthew read the document. “A safe-conduct?”

  Sandy nodded. “Valid for a week. He said you might have need of me.”

  Matthew traced the signature at the bottom of the document.

  “That was kind of him,” he said grudgingly.

  “Aye. It just goes to show that not all papists are rotten to the core. He also promised to ensure there were no raids on Hillview for the week I was here.” Sandy coughed a couple of times. “But just in case, I won’t be staying at the house.”

  “Nay, best not,” Matthew agreed.

  Alex was incensed at the sight of Sandy. Indirectly, all of this was his fault, it was him and his bloody religion that drove a wedge between her and Matthew, it was those damned convictions that led to her Rachel being dead. She stifled a sob.

  “What are you doing here?” she said. “It’s too much of a risk, and…”

  Sandy held out a sheet of thick paper.

  “Captain Howard?” The man must be wallowing in guilt, and he’d done the single thing he could think of to offer Matthew support. By doing it he was risking his career, laying in Matthew’s hands a document that would damn him should it ever come to light. Alex folded the deed together and handed it back to Sandy.

  “This means I can offer you open hospitality,” she said politely but with very little warmth.

  “Aye,” the minister nodded, already at the table. Alex served him food and retreated a few paces. Sandy had grown old over the last few months, gaunt and grey-haired with a permanent cough. He was also dirty, a strong smell emanating from him that made the children shift away. No lice as far as Alex could see, but the skin was grey with grime. Not that she intended to suggest he take a bath; he would probably look at her as if she were the whore of Babylon, suspecting her of evil designs on him. For the first time since Rachel’s death Alex had to suppress a bubble of genuine laughter.

  Sandy burped. “I won’t stay in the house, it’s an unnecessary risk. It’s a fine night so I’ll be staying up by the oak.”

  Alex nodded. She’d send along an extra blanket or two, and a pillow. She stood up to fetch these and stopped when Matthew put a hand on her arm. He hadn’t touched her in almost a fortnight, since well before Rachel’s death, nor she him. He dropped his hand like stung at her look.

  “Do you…” Matthew cleared his throat. “I have the coffin ready, will you help me place Rachel inside?”

  She looked at him for a long time. This wasn’t something she could leave him to do alone, so she inclined her head.

  His hands were trembling so hard when he approached his daughter that Alex wanted to cry. Instead she moved over to the other side of the bench on which Rachel lay, and indicated that she was ready when he was. The body was no longer her child. Cold, beginning to bloat, it was an inanimate thing that only vaguely resembled the happy, laughing girl that populated her mind.

  “Wait,” Alex said when he bent to lift the lid into place. “I have something here, that I want her to have with her.” She closed her hands over a little wooden carving, Matthew’s gift on Rachel’s fourth birthday. A promise he’d said, placing it in her small hands, a promise that one day he would give her a man’s dog. But now he never would, and the least they could do was to send the beautifully carved Deerhound with her to stand over her and protect her.

  Matthew uttered a small moan when he saw what she held and stumbled out of the door. Alex placed the dog beside Rachel’s right hand, smoothed the hair into some semblance of order and arranged the clothes
to lie tidily around the stiff limbs. The soft baby blanket was drawn up to cover her, and Alex spent a long time fussing with it so that it lay just right, snug around her child. Her Rachel… Alex cupped the cold cheek one last time, lifted the lid into place, made sure it slotted, and nailed it down. It was the least she could do for him. On the lid he had carved a heart, with a beautiful ‘R’ in its middle. She traced it with her finger and stooped to kiss it. Tomorrow she would pretend she wasn’t here, she would stand in the little graveyard and pretend she was anywhere else but here.

  But she couldn’t; her eyes glued themselves to the hole, to the heaped soil beside it, and she tightened her hold on her sons. By Matthew stood Ian, close enough to touch should Matthew need it, far enough apart that he didn’t impose. Even in her present state of panic Alex marvelled at the maturity of the boy, at how he’d shouldered a role that wasn’t really his in the broken family of his uncle. Uncle? By his behaviour alone Ian had proved beyond any remaining doubt that he was Matthew’s son. Alex looked at him, dark chestnut hair curling at the overlong tips, brows dark and straight over eyes of that magical hazel he shared with his father. Nothing at all of his mother, nowhere was there a trace of Margaret, it was all Matthew, Matthew, Matthew.

  Jacob’s sob recalled her to the present, and she bent to pick him up, allowing him to hide his face against her shoulder while she hid hers against his hair. She didn’t watch as the earth was shovelled back into place, but however hard she shut her eyes she couldn’t close out the sound.

  “She lies well here.” Sandy’s voice interrupted Alex from where she was planting a rose by Rachel’s headstone. She slid him a look, keeping her back to him.

  “You think? Personally I would prefer it if she were lying in her bed at night and running through her days.” She continued with her work, hoping he would have left by the time she was done, but he was still there when she got off her knees.

  “You’ll have more lasses,” Sandy said, coming to stand beside her.

  Alex slapped him. “Is that a comfort? Do you truly believe that I can replace Rachel with another child?”

  Sandy rubbed at his reddening cheek, his eyes full of a compassion that she didn’t want to see in them. “Nay, of course not. Rachel was Rachel; wild and bonny and with the heart of a lion, rushing to her father’s defence. In many ways very like her mother.”

  Alex dug her fingers into the flesh of her upper arms to stop herself from crying.

  “You’ll never forget her, and nor will her da. All that knew her have been touched by her, by the little piece of God that lived in her.”

  “God!” Alex spat. “What do I care about God? He let her die, didn’t he?” Shit; now she was crying again, and she was so tired of these damn tears, of how her chest hollowed out into a constant ache for her, for her Rachel.

  “God does as well as he can, lass. But sometimes it might be a bit too much for him too.”

  Alex gave him a surprised look. “So God is fallible?”

  Sandy gave her a faint smile. “Nay, not as such. But mayhap overwhelmed by events…” He regarded her in silence for a while. “She’s with God now and that is not a bad thing.” His smile widened. “And she’ll make sure that heaven is somewhat livened up. Can you not see her, scurrying across the skies, chasing after an angel and asking why, why, why…”

  Alex wiped at her eyes, half laughing, half crying at the notion of her wild, wayward girl turning the orderly existence of Heaven upside down.

  “I don’t want her to be with God,” she said through her tears. “I want her to be here, with me. With me!” For the first time ever, Sandy touched her, holding her in a light embrace.

  “I know that, aye? And so does God.”

  “Matthew and I had argued before all this,” Alex said as they sat on the little bench under the rowan. “About God and all that stuff.”

  “All that stuff?” Sandy sounded disapproving. Alex nodded and gnawed at her lip.

  “I told him that if he was arrested, I’d kill the children and myself rather than risk that other fate.”

  “That would be a terrible thing to do,” Sandy said.

  “In my book it’s equally terrible for the father of four to risk his life and those of his children,” she said. “I have no intention of witnessing my man and my babies sold into permanent servitude before being dragged off somewhere else myself.” She stared off across the water meadow, tracking the narrow ribbon of water as it appeared and disappeared between stands of alders and hazels.

  “Previously, all I’ve asked of him has been that he not put his home at risk and that he be careful. I know how important his faith is to him, and I don’t want to come between him and God. But this time I’m too scared, and this time I’ll insist he puts me first.” Because if he dies my heart will lie in splinters on the ground, she thought. “Am I a totally depraved person, do you think?”

  Sandy raised his brows. “Nay, not totally,” he said drily. He patted her on her thigh. “God doesn’t want us to squander our lives; he has given us life that we live it to the full, that we rejoice at the miracles he populates the world with. The perfection of a dandelion, the cold nose of a dog, the magic colours of a sunset…” He looked at Rachel’s fresh grave and back at Alex. “You’re within your rights to ask him, but you’ve placed him in a difficult position; his God or his wife.”

  Alex squirmed. She’d regretted her comment about their marriage the moment it had flown out of her mouth, and now it was too late to take it back.

  “His wife will win – this time,” Sandy concluded. “I’ll talk to him.”

  Chapter 28

  “I leave on the morrow,” Sandy said, a couple of days after Rachel’s funeral.

  “So soon?” Matthew frowned down at the little wooden figurine he was carving and slashed it in two. “I can’t get her face right, it’s as if she eludes me, hiding herself from me.”

  “You’re trying too hard to remember.”

  “I fear that I’ll forget what she looked like. In my head I can see her move, I can hear her laugh, but her face, the way her eyes would narrow when she was planning something she shouldn’t be doing… I know what she looked like, but I can’t see her!” He picked up a new piece of wood, and notched his knife through it, creating a rough outline of a running, faceless lass. “She would still be here, if it weren’t for me, she would still be alive.”

  He saw Sandy’s grimace; for the last few days his friend had tried to move him away from this self-flagellation, but it was true, wasn’t it? His lass died in his defence. His hand shook, the knife sank too deep, and Matthew swore. Sandy’s hand on his arm forced him to put the piece of wood down.

  “Wait some weeks and then try,” Sandy said.

  They walked together up to the millpond, talking in low voices about the present conflict.

  “It will get worse, won’t it?” Matthew said.

  Sandy sighed. “Aye, I think it will. Scotland will be an unwelcoming place for many years to come. Strife, famine, more strife…” His eyes glazed over. “We’ll be trod underfoot, our Highland brothers unleashed on us and we unleashed on them…” He shook himself like a wet dog. “She’s right at times, your foreign wife. We’ve been intolerant toward others and now we’re reaping what we have sown. God’s punishment, one might think.” He chuckled to himself. “But you must not tell her that, I wouldn’t want her to think me going soft.” He looked around at the greening shrubs and smiled down at an early windflower, bending down to pluck it. “God won’t think less of you for staying away.”

  “Staying away?” Matthew looked at him warily.

  “You heard; Alex told me she fears you’ll be led into a trap.”

  Had she told him everything, her awful threat as well?

  Sandy nodded that she had. “She’s a woman. She sets the safety of her offspring first, as she should. Women are weak and must be protected and cared for, they aren’t as spiritually resilient as a man is, and we must forgive them when th
ey play out the single most powerful card they have; their love for us.” He laughed at Matthew’s face, elbowing him hard. “Aye I know; she wouldn’t agree that women are weak.”

  “Nay, and she could prove it to you,” Matthew muttered, seeing a rather entertaining image of Alex kicking Sandy hard enough to send him flying. He wondered if she still could do that; he hadn’t seen her practising for well over a year. Sandy did not seem unduly worried, rather the reverse. He gave Matthew a fond look.

  “She loves you.”

  Matthew kicked at the dried leaves underfoot, muttering that he wasn’t all that sure of that – not lately.

  “You’re a wee fool at times. She loves you so much that a life without you would be a living death.” He clapped Matthew on the back. “God will forgive; this year you’ll do as she says and stay away.”

  Matthew felt a physical relief at his words, his shoulders dropping down from their constant tenseness for the first time in weeks.

  Once they were settled on the makeshift bench by the millpond, Matthew turned the conversation to his suspicions regarding Mrs Brown.

  “You think?” Sandy frowned down at the water.

  “Aye I do.” Too many coincidences, and then Mrs Brown slipping so discreetly through the door to the temporary barracks.

  “But why?” Sandy said. “Tom Brown is a man of staunch faith. Would his wife be acting for her own reasons, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. You know them much better than I do, just as you know the brother.”

  “John? Aye, John I know very well. He wouldn’t betray me.” Sandy sucked in his cheeks, looking very much like a narrow faced trout. “Ah, well,” he said, slapping himself on the thighs. “First we must make sure. Then we find out why.” He looked rather grim. “It better be a good why.”

  That evening they sat in the kitchen for a long time after supper had been cleared away. The early March evening hung pale outside the window, a promise of light returning to the land.