by C F Dunn
“Don’t, Matthew, she’s ill, and she’s been talking to Staahl; he’s one of her patients. Goodness knows what he’s been filling her mind with.”
“Staahl?” He swore again, stabbing a finger in the direction of the burning book. “I didn’t ever want you to have to see anything like that, to be reminded of him, of what he did to you. And for my own granddaughter to flaunt it…” He ground his teeth and I cringed at the grating sound they made.
“You knew about the book?” I asked, disbelieving.
He hunched his shoulders. “That one? No, but ones like it – yes. I wanted to know the mind of a man who could have done such… things to you. His thoughts are perverted, distorted – they make my blood boil. I sometimes wish I had killed him…”
“No, you don’t,” I said firmly, my hands on his forearms. “That would have achieved nothing except trouble, and we wouldn’t be here together now if you had. Did you know Staahl was Maggie’s patient?”
He responded to my touch and began to calm, his tight shoulders easing. “It makes sense, I suppose. She’s head of the psychiatric assessment unit at the hospital. She would normally have told me, so I assumed somebody else had taken on his case. She’s never kept something like this from me before. What did she say to you?”
“Not much that made sense, but she repeated the same nonsense the detectives insinuated about me going to the atrium to meet Staahl, and that it was some kinky game that got out of hand.”
“She should know better than to be taken in by a delusional obsessive.”
The book was taking its time to burn. I willed the flames to hurry and do their job so that I didn’t have to be reminded by its charcoalled carcass any more.
“Matthew, do you think she’ll have said anything to Staahl about you?”
“I don’t know. I’ll see what I can find out when she’s had a couple of days rest. Don’t worry about it.” But, by the concern etched into his face, I knew that – whatever he wanted me to believe – he did.
CHAPTER
12
Some Semblance of Peace
A strange sort of peace fell on us over the next few days, as if learning of Ellen’s imminent death sealed a bond between all the family. For me, there could be no pleasure in the knowledge that her death would release Matthew. Yet, now that the waiting was almost over, the full stop to the sentence of her life would bring with it a sense of fulfilment, a life brought full circle and to its natural conclusion. I knew Matthew yearned for such freedom for himself and that I would deny him his wish if I could, for dread of losing him.
Maggie emerged from her room bewildered and frightened, but sentient enough to understand the implications of what she had said and done. Between them, Henry and Matthew organized discreet assessment and treatment for her in a nearby private residential unit. There, she would be able to rest, and come to terms with her grandmother’s impending death.
Matthew and I spent more time together, often in the study, where I could work with maintained concentration on the research paper I had started the previous term. In between times, we went out on the snowmobile across the brilliant snowfields and further, into the foothills of the mountains beyond the river. And finally, he persuaded me to drive his car.
I ran my eyes along the sleek bodywork, wondering how long it would survive my attempts to drive it. “Do I have to?” I groaned, as he held out his keys to me across the roof. He had not been in the least impressed by my reluctance to drive in a foreign country.
“No, not at all, especially if you don’t want any independence and wish to be forever ferried around by everyone else like a tick on an elephant’s back.”
The image was gross so I blew a raspberry at him. “Cheers, thanks for that – boost my confidence, why don’t you?” He grinned and threw me the keys over the top of the car.
The worst part was getting used to the acceleration of the powerful engine. It had a will of its own like a dominant dog, one touch of the accelerator sending it straining forward, dragging me terrified behind it. But it was fast, and I liked fast. Matthew maintained complete composure while I was behind the wheel; gradually his confidence in my ability to stay on the road calmed me, and I grew used to the feel of the car and began to enjoy driving it, feeling it respond to my commands.
We arrived back at the house in one piece.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Matthew said as I switched off the ignition.
“You can take that smug tone out of your voice, Matthew Lynes. You never know, I might have longed to be a tick in someone’s flesh.”
He swivelled in his seat, fastening me with a rascally look. “Is that the itch I’m always wanting to scratch? I did wonder.”
After that I didn’t protest if he suggested I drive, and he made no further reference to parasitic insects.
Matthew read next to me as we lay in his bed. I had just finished rereading Crime and Punishment, and was reflecting on Raskolnikov’s acceptance of his fate as just retribution for his crimes. I closed the book and laid it on my stomach while I considered it, staring across the room at nothing in particular.
Matthew turned a page. “Have you remembered that we are expected at the New Year’s Eve party at college tomorrow?”
“I hoped you’d forgotten about that. I can’t say that the thought of it fills me with great joy. I suppose it’s compulsory attendance?”
“It is, but it’s not particularly formal so you don’t have to sit and eat and behave yourself.” He hesitated and glanced at me. “Are you worried about the attack in October?”
“A bit,” I admitted. “I keep thinking about it the closer it gets to the beginning of term. Silly, really.”
He closed his own book and put it down next to him. “Not in the least. When have you had the opportunity to come to terms with it?”
I thrummed my fingers, thinking of the weeks spent without him in Stamford, isolating myself in the bedroom of my childhood. I had avoided thinking about Staahl then; I had had better things to do. I shrugged dismissively. “I had plenty of time at home.”
“Did you talk to anyone about it? What about your mother or your sister? Or the doctor you saw, the one you said who knew me?”
“No, I didn’t want to talk about it, and it wasn’t what was on my mind at the time, anyway… I just want to forget it.”
“Hmm, I’m not convinced it’ll be that easy. Still, for the purposes of tomorrow, there’s nothing to worry about as I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“Does that mean we’re going as a… couple?”
He rubbed his eyebrow. “Well, we are, aren’t we?”
“It still feels weird. I mean, I find it odd because of Ellen. It feels like we’re two-timing her, even though…” I stopped, not sure whether she had wanted him to know the tenet of our conversation.
“Even though…?” he prompted.
“She said that she wants you to be happy and that… well, to all intents and purposes, she is bequeathing you to me.” I could feel a surge of heat to my face and I studied the end of the quilt where it rose in a mound over my feet. He startled me by laughing, shaking his head from side to side. He saw my bemused look and controlled himself in stages.
“Sorry,” he apologized, “but that is so like my wife. Even from a distance she has always been able to exert a certain influence on the family.” He laughed again. “And how did you react to her kind bequest, given she has absolutely no say in what you choose to do?”
“Um, well, I understood what it must be like for her to relinquish her husband to another woman, so, actually, I didn’t mind her control as much as I might have done in different circumstances.”
He sobered rapidly. “That’s put me thoroughly in my place. That’ll teach me to leave the two of you alone together. However,” he added, ‘I think that it answers your question.”
I wrinkled my forehead. “Which was…? I’ve forgotten.”
“We can count ourselves a couple and anyway, fro
m a public point of view, I’m not married, so it won’t appear untoward. Is that acceptable to you?”
“Definitely… sort of.” I caught myself unawares by a yawn.
Matthew took my book from me and kissed my hair. “Well, definitely… sort of will have to do for now; it’s time you had some sleep.”
“I’m not tired.” I yawned again. “Anyway, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for-ever.” I rubbed my eyes.
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
I snuggled into his side and he pulled the covers over my shoulders, tucking the draughts out from around my back. “No.”
He smiled softly, keeping his arm around me, strong and comforting. “Go on then, if you think you can keep awake long enough.”
“Why did you become a doctor?”
“That’s simple enough – I didn’t want to initially. I went to Cambridge to read divinity, intending, I suppose, to ameliorate some of my uncle’s influence, and it did, to an extent. But it posed more questions than it answered and, being a bit of a restless youth, I joined one of the bands that became the Eastern Association to train in arms…”
“Why?”
Matthew started to rub my back and I fought sleep to hear his reply. “Well, my father had no need of me at home to help run the estate, and with the degree of unrest in the region, it seemed like a good idea at the time.” He started to draw a large circle on my back, spiralling smaller and smaller to a midpoint between my shoulder blades as he spoke. “Then I realized that I did no more than bide my time and that I needed to find something else that would bridge the gap I felt. I went back to Cambridge to take up the study of medicine and while there, met a man – a few years younger than me – who wasn’t like anyone else I’d met from the College of Surgeons. He was quite radical in some of his ideas – a Parliamentarian – but more than that, he believed that medicine should be available for the common weal, not the prerogative of the chosen few in the college. And I agreed with him. Too much custom and prejudice surrounded the study of medicine and it proved a disincentive to research and new ideas. Most of all, it kept it cloistered from those who needed it most.”
“And that mattered to you?”
“Yes!” he shot out, making me jump. “Yes, it did,” he said more quietly. “I had found my calling, if you will, and a good friend in Culpeper, and so…”
“No,” I said, stopping him mid-sentence and raising myself on one elbow. “You cannot keep doing that – mentioning a famous name and then carrying on as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. You were friends with Culpeper?”
He looked sheepish, as well he might. “Yes, Nicholas and I were good friends. Can I continue?” I lay back down again, my head reeling from his latest revelation of a friendship with one of history’s most celebrated herbalists.
“I completed my initial studies in medicine, but the war broke out and I rejoined the Parliamentary force. But my father’s health began to fail and I went back home, and then… then we had that trouble with William.”
I turned my head to look at him again. “That’s one way of putting it, Matthew.”
He smiled grimly. “Quite. Anyway, that put paid to my studies for a while, and then… Emma, will you promise that you won’t overreact?”
Instantly on my guard, remembering his revelation at the cabin that his wife still lived which nearly put paid to any future together, I sat up. “Why, what else haven’t you told me?”
“Before the incident with my uncle, I had been betrothed.” He waited for me to detonate.
I pictured Mrs Seaton’s animated mouse-like face telling my father and me the few known facts of Matthew’s life in Rutland as we sat in the dilapidated grandeur of her once-fine house. “Yes, I know – to a Harrington heiress.” Even without looking I would have sensed his palpable relief.
He parted a strand of hair that had fallen over my eyes. “You know? You never said. We couldn’t marry, not after what had happened to me and anyway, the rumours put paid to the match. I can’t blame her father for breaking the engagement and I wasn’t in any fit state to be a husband to her, but still…” I thought I could hear regret and I had to fight the wave of jealousy for this long-dead girl.
“Did you love her?”
A smile lifted his mouth. “Love her? She was pretty, young, rich, eminently marriageable – all told an excellent union for my family. What was there not to love?”
Frustration born of envy burst from me. “How should I know?” I fumed, exasperated. “I wasn’t there.”
“No,” he said, musing as he stroked my bare foot closest to him. “You weren’t. Now that would have been an interesting scenario.”
I faced him, crammed together on the bed as we were, all tiredness evaporated. “Get to the point: did you or didn’t you love her?”
“Does it matter now? After all these years and after everything you and I have been through in these last few months, does what happened between me and this girl have any bearing on our relationship now?”
I pulled the bed covers over my shoulders, leaving only my foot protruding. “I know it’s stupid of me, but yes, it does matter because it’s still part of you, however long ago it was.”
He tilted his head on one side in the appealing way he had, regarding me with irises darkened by the dim light of the room. “I admit to having been fond of her, Emma, but I hadn’t yet come to love her; I didn’t know her well enough for that.” His quiet reassurance rendered my thoughts irrational. “But she did partially influence me in my determination to follow medicine as a vocation.”
“How so?”
He watched his own hand travel from my foot to my ankle, then just above, pushing the leg of my pyjamas up my calf, running his hand back down the front of my leg and repeating the action.
“I left home after all the trouble in the village, but before it reached a point where the authorities became involved. The rumours about me were considered to be idle gossip although it was gathering momentum, and it was only a matter of time before it grew out of hand. It caused my father distress and made it difficult for members of our household to come and go in the community without some comment or other being made about my oddity.” His hand ceased its travels up and down my leg. “And then when some of the women started wearing mistletoe sprigs around their necks when they came to the house or even in church – can you believe it, in church – when I was there…” His eyebrows drew together.
“Matthew…” I leaned forward and tried to prise his fingers from where they dug into my ankle. He released me, mortified, staring at the red marks appearing on my pale skin. I put my hand over it, breaking through his field of vision. “No, it’s fine. Tell me, what was it about the mistletoe? I don’t understand the significance.”
He took my hand away from my ankle, and gently covered the area with his own.
“Mistletoe: it remedies witchcraft – if you read Culpeper’s thoughts on it in his Herbal. It reflects folklore. So you see, I had to leave before it went any further. You know what happened to people accused of witchcraft and sorcery – I don’t need to spell it out.” He winced as I smiled. “The pun was unintentional.”
“Yes, but quite funny. What did that have to do with the Harringtons?”
“I left but I kept an eye on what was happening at home…”
“How?”
“Through Nathaniel – oh, you won’t have found anything written in the journal. I swore him to an oath of secrecy, which he kept, and once my father died and Nathaniel had gone to the New World, I lost all my connections to home and I left for ever.”
I wriggled impatiently. “The Harringtons?”
“Patience, my love, I’m getting to that. Lucie Harrington married my cousin – my aunt Elizabeth’s eldest boy. Through Nathaniel I heard when she had children – two girls – and the ups and downs of the family. I know it sounds as if I used Nathaniel to spy, but it wasn’t like that, it was more…”
“That you neede
d to keep in touch with reality. I understand,” I finished.
“Yes, I thought you might. Well, anyway, there was a minor outbreak of pestilence and Lucie caught it. It took her two weeks to die a horrible, lonely death. She had isolated herself to protect her husband and children. I could do nothing for her, nor… nor for all the others I met who caught the plague, or who had ague, or were bitten by a snake or a mad dog. For them all, for the good that I could do, I became a doctor. For some salve for my own soul, I became a doctor. I knew I could kill effectively enough – it’s so easy to take a life – but to heal, to give life where none could reasonably be expected, that’s different, that’s verging on miraculous.”
“And do you include yourself in those who require healing?”
Matthew frowned fractionally. “You know I do, because I want to understand the process that caused this.” He used his hands to indicate his body.
“So that you can find a cure…” I grouched.
“Emma, don’t start,” he warned.
“And then you will change, and then…”
“Emma, leave it.” He leaned towards me.
“And then you won’t be you, and you…”
He didn’t let me finish, putting his hand over my mouth against my protestations and his other arm around my waist so that I couldn’t writhe away. He rested his forehead against mine as I squeaked and wormed to get free, cross with him for restraining me, but more so for wanting to change who he was, and absolutely petrified for what that might mean.
“Emma… sweetheart…” He lowered his voice and I found I couldn’t resist his balm, and gradually ceased struggling. “Why are you so frightened? Where is all this fear coming from?” He took his hand from my mouth and placed it against the side of my face instead, looking at me in a way that made me want to melt into him, to absorb him, so that he would never be free of me, forever bound molecule by molecule for the rest of time. How could I begin to put into words what he meant to me when the very thought of it engulfed me in feelings so intense that they threatened to break through my reserve at any moment? I felt tears, heated by the intensity of emotion, sting the corners of my eyes.