The Prodigal Son (32 page)

“Not the girl,” Howard said. “I never meant to kill the little girl.”

Nay; you meant to kill me, Matthew thought fuzzily, provoking me into anger over a horse.

“Leave,” Ian said, his voice harsh. “You’ve done enough damage for today, and I would have you gone, aye?”

Matthew raised his face. Ian let go of him and stood in front of him, arms spread out as if to shield them all with himself. Captain Howard backed away, hands raised in apology? Supplication? Matthew didn’t care. On the cobbles a few feet away was a dark stain and one of the soldiers had picked up the small cap, handling it as if uncertain what to do with it. Ian walked over to him and snatched it back.

“Go!” he said, pointing up the lane. “And you leave the horse,” he added, shaking the cap at the captain.

“Of course, of course we will.” Was that tendril of a voice the captain’s? Matthew squinted at him. The man looked devastated, near on about to burst into tears. Too late; Rachel… and Alex; oh dearest Lord, his Alex, and the look on her face as she cradled Rachel to her chest while she rocked and rocked in a desperate attempt to bring her back to life.

“I’m so sorry, Mr Graham,” the captain said again. “I’m so sorry that your daughter is dead. It was never my intention.”

“Go,” Matthew forced the words over his lips. “You can come back and plague us some other day. But now I want you off my land. I have a bairn to grieve and a wife to comfort and God help me, I don’t know how to do that.” He stared yet again at the stain left behind by Rachel, set his hands to the ground and staggered to his feet, using Ian as his prop.

“Go to Aunt Alex,” Ian said. “I’ll take care of the rest, aye?”

Matthew drew in a long, ragged breath and began the long walk up towards the house.

It took him an eternity to traverse his yard. People; so many people, and he heard sobs and mumbled condolences. Halfway across he stopped, looked back to where Ian still stood, a gangling lad with his arms crossed over his chest as he saw the soldiers off. He trudged on. There was a weight in his chest, a constriction that made it difficult to breathe, and when he wiped at his bloodied face he realised he was weeping. He cleared his throat, coughed a couple of times and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Not now; weep he could do later, now he had to somehow comfort his wife.

When Matthew entered the house the first thing he saw was his daughter, laid out on a blanket on the kitchen table.

“She’s not dead,” Alex told him. “Look, she’s still breathing.”

To his shock he saw she was, irregular, shallow breaths that barely lifted her chest. He shifted his eyes to her head and was violently sick in the basin. Not dead… Oh, Lord, do not let her linger, do not let her mother begin to hope and then lose her yet again. He poured some water from the pitcher into his shaking hands and scrubbed them over his face before turning round.

Rachel was still breathing. The crushed mass of her head was oozing blood and other secretions to run into her hair, collecting just below her ear in a stain that seeped slowly into the blanket below her. Alex was boiling water, and Matthew saw that it was too late; his wife believed their daughter’s life might be saved.

“Alex… it’s… she’ll die, aye?” His Rachel; his ray of sun, his adored daughter, reduced to this, this… He groaned.

“I know.” She placed a hand on Rachel’s forehead. “But I can’t let her lie like this, can I?”

Together they washed their child, together they combed the fine dark hair to lie in bouncing curls around the pale and immobile face, already no longer Rachel, because Rachel was never this still, not even when she slept. Together they sat, waiting as she slowly died, and together they folded her arms across the narrow chest when her heart thudded to a stop.

Chapter 27

Matthew threw the hammer away from him. The carefully chosen boards of pale oak lay taunting him and he raised his foot to kick one of them into splinters but stopped at the last moment. A coffin for his lass, for the bairn closest to his heart… And now bright, vibrant Rachel was to be buried in the cold, dark earth. He closed his eyes, trying in vain to block out the image of his Rachel eaten by maggots. How unbearable would it be for her mother it if was like this for him? He picked up his hammer and went back to his work.

Five days since Rachel died, five days in which the silence between him and Alex had grown. The unresolved conflict regarding his willingness to risk life for faith lay festering between them, and now with wee Rachel dead… It was his fault; he should’ve let them take the horse, he should have thrown himself into Rachel’s path, he should…

He scratched at the sword cut. Every time it began to scab he broke it open, staining his clothes with yet another seeping line of red. If Alex saw she didn’t say, sunk so deep into herself that only rarely did she seem to notice him at all. He needed her, but he didn’t know how to tell her so, and he stood a mute supplicant before her but she didn’t see, she didn’t even look at him.

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.