Blue Steel Chain (Trowchester Blues Book 3)

by Alex Beecroft

  She sighed with a bitter twist to her lips. “Hush now. I’m going to say one more thing and then I’m going to stop. I promise. But you—you gotta promise to think this over. You gotta promise me.”

  “And then you’ll stop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  “This is my one thing, then.” She passed him a towel, though he hadn’t broken a sweat yet. “Honey, if you stay, he’s going to get worse. And one day, he’s going to murder you. If you’ve still got any part of you that wants to live, you get out. Get out now. You hear what I’m saying?”

  His legs were strangely wobbly. He sat down on the exercise machine and hugged his bruises to warm them.

  “You hear me?”

  What did she know? Things were different for girls. And besides, she didn’t know Piers, didn’t know that he only did these things because he cared so much, and because he kept being disappointed. Aidan would just work harder to be perfect, and it would be fine.

  “Yes, I heard.”

  When he looked up, he found that her smile had a touch of despair to it. It broadened when she caught him looking, and acquired an edge of determined cheer. “All right, then. And now as your personal fitness consultant, I’m going to insist you go to bed for the rest of the day and take it easy for the rest of the week. If you want help to get away, I might be able to help. But while you think about it, I’m going to come ten o’clock every day regular, and I’m going to tell him I came at random times and you were always in. That way, you get your afternoons free.”

  This was better news. He summoned a smile for her in thanks. It wasn’t that he wanted to be defiant, but sometimes he needed to go out in order to be calm enough, happy enough to deal with Piers’s moods. He was doing it for Piers, really, and that’s why he couldn’t stop. He would just remember in future to come home early enough, and it would be fine.

  “Thank you.”

  He ushered her out and went to bed, setting the alarm for four in the afternoon so he could be up and dressed when Piers returned—give the blameless appearance of having been hard at work all day.

  He thought of James as he fell asleep. James examining the bruise under his eye with the same careful delicate touch he had used for his relics. He wondered if the touch would make him feel as his handclasp had—simultaneously more fragile and more real.

  He tucked the thought carefully away, a little ashamed of it. Piers wouldn’t like it, and it was important to give Piers what he wanted. And if he did, everything would be fine.

  Just as Aidan had known would happen, things were good that week. On the first night, Piers returned home with chocolates and an apology. He had ordered in a restaurant dinner, and though Aidan found eating something of a trial, he was able to swallow enough of it to make Piers smile. “You are so wonderful,” Piers had said, tugging slightly on Aidan’s necklace as he sat between Piers’s knees that evening to watch a film in their private theatre. “You always forgive me. I appreciate that, I do. You’re so strong and so beautiful, even like this. Maybe especially like this.”

  There had been sex of course, because that was what Aidan was for, but he had gone into it floating on painkillers and NyQuil, and had even enjoyed parts of it, in a zoned-out, fuzzy sort of way. He’d just been glad that things were all right again between them, and he had at least two weeks ahead of him in which he could breathe deeply.

  By the end of week one, however, he was healed enough to be sick of the house. His trainer was as good as her word and turned up at ten each day to put him through two hours of cardio and weights. But he didn’t encourage her to talk in case she got back on the subject of abuse, and although he looked forward to seeing her every day, their careful chatter about details of his regime wasn’t really enough to satisfy his need for company.

  So on Friday afternoon, he left his phone in the house and went out, just to the back garden. Just to stand on top of the funny hill and feel the sick thrill of having his feet somewhere Piers didn’t like to think about.

  It was hard to say what was so objectionable about the place, particularly on a day like today with the sun shining enough to cut through the cold, the snowdrops on the south of the hill standing up tall and opening their bells to the warmth. This part of the garden was all laid to grass, bright green except around the base of the hill, where it grew several shades darker like a fairy ring. When Aidan passed over the moat of darker grass, he felt he had stepped into another world. A breeze hissed past his ears as he leaned forward to balance against the incline and half walked, half climbed up onto the top of the mound.

  Mound it must be. It must be a made thing. One of those Bronze Age burial chambers James had been writing about on his cards. No natural hill would be so steep or so round, like a balloon covered in turf.

  The side facing the house had crumpled slightly. Longer grasses grew there in clumps around boulders with scratched carvings on them. A spill of dark soil showed where rabbits had been burrowing. He stayed away from there, in case the dirt got on his shoes and gave him away.

  From on top of the hill, he could see over the house’s flat roof and a mile down the road that led to Trowchester and thence to the railway station from which Piers took his daily commute to London. Aidan pulled his hood over his head and sat there cross-legged for a while, watching, feeling the joy that came from being able to see Piers coming from a long distance away so he would not be taken by surprise—he could get back inside before his truancy was suspected.

  He sat there an hour, just watching and appreciating being surrounded by unthreatening air, breathing in the smells of cold water and growing green grass. But gradually it dawned on him that someone was calling, “Hello!” and had been doing so for some time.

  Scrambling to his feet, he turned to look out beyond the garden. The outer span of the mound curved beyond the hedge of hornbeam that was struggling to root in the stony soil. Then there were fields, newly turned by the plough in furrows the colour of milk chocolate. Then the land rose again, through a ribbon of woodland up to a higher hill on which massive earthwork banks still showed. Wednesday Keep, it was called, according to the local websites he had read when they first moved in.

  Halfway through the nearest field and coming closer by the second was James. He seemed at home out here, with his cords stuffed into wellies and his reindeer jumper traded for a creamy Aran sweater that looked soft to the touch and made his skin look tanned by contrast.

  “I thought it was you!” he said when he got close enough, and beamed at Aidan as if his day was made. “Although I can’t say why. I normally am not that great at remembering people, especially not when they’re covered up with . . .” He waved a hand at Aidan’s hood, which was obviously not doing any good in making him invisible, so he put it down. “What can I say? You’re just memorable.”

  James paused outside the hedge, casting an affectionate look of curiosity over the mound. Aidan checked his watch—three hours before Piers was due home—and then over his shoulder. The road was still clear. He probably shouldn’t. But it was sunny and he was in a good mood and could he be blamed if he didn’t actually leave the garden? If he just went down the slope and stood on the other side of the hedge from James? It wasn’t his fault, surely, if a stranger came and stood on land near Piers’s land. There wasn’t anything he could have done about that.

  “Hi,” he said when they were barely a foot apart, the brittle twigs of the leafless fence thigh-high between them. “What are you doing here?”

  James brushed his hands through his hair, dislodging a shower of dust and small stones. Aidan wondered what his hair felt like, given that he seemed to touch it all the time. It shouldn’t be nice, full of ink and dirt, but it would be interesting to find out. He thought it was pretty cool, actually.

  “Well, I’m supervising the dig on Wednesday Keep,” James said, indicating the hill fort. “I’m here a lot. There’s a marvellous view from the walls. I was looking out and . . . um. I saw you. A
nd I thought, ‘That’s my mysteriously polite visitor from the museum. I’ll go over and tell him that the gallery is now open, and he’s welcome to come back.’ There’s even a ‘make your own coil beaker’ activity, if you fancy a bit of pottery.” His eyes twinkled as if he knew exactly how ridiculous he was and relished it. “And who doesn’t?”

  Aidan chuckled, feeling like a vice that’d been untwisted. He hadn’t even known he was under stress, but James seemed to take the pressure off regardless. “I—I enjoy sculpture,” he said, the words just coming by themselves out of the well of a thousand million things he should not have said. He didn’t enjoy sculpture anymore. It was a lie. How could he enjoy it when he knew Piers didn’t like him doing it?

  “Oh, you’re artistic. I could tell.” James smiled up at him. Though he was only a foot away, down the hill, the slope was steep and he had to crane his neck.

  “Really?” Something in Aidan rejoiced at that. Sometimes he caught glimpses of himself—in the mirrored table, in the glass doors at night—and saw only the muscles, the broad back and the wide shoulders, the six-pack and the biceps like rugby balls. There was a swastika scarification on his right hip and tattoos everywhere. He thought he looked like a thug. It was nothing short of amazing that James had seen through all of that to the thing that was starving in his heart.

  “It’s . . .” James ducked his head with an embarrassed laugh. “It’s your eyes. You have a sensitive look. Oh dear. I shouldn’t have said that. Ignore me, I’m blathering. I don’t mean any offence.”

  How could he take offence at that? On a whim, he took a couple of steps back and a short run up, and jumped over the hedge. It was ridiculous to talk with such a difference of altitude anyway. James looked startled as he came down to stand next to him. But then pleased, and Aidan . . . Aidan did love to please. So easily too. He glowed with misplaced satisfaction. “It’s okay. I’m glad you can tell. But I don’t sculpt anymore. My boyfriend doesn’t like it.”

  “What business does he have disapproving of sculpture?” James exclaimed, with a snap of ferocity Aidan hadn’t expected and wasn’t sure he liked. He took a step back until his lower legs pressed against the hedge, and regarded James warily in case he was going to do anything else dangerous.

  James just blinked at him, and rubbed his hands along the dirty streaks on his jacket where he’d evidently rubbed them many times before. His gaze lifted to Aidan’s face and fixed on the scab across the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. I shouldn’t criticise what I don’t understand.”

  His mouth was open, and his soft, worried expression made Aidan fear for a moment that he too was going to start asking prying questions. But perhaps he read the signs that Aidan was preparing to flee, because he switched his attention to the hill and changed the subject. “So is this where you live? Do you have access to this tumulus? I would love to dig here. It’s a burial chamber, you know. I bet there’s someone really important down here. Maybe even a king, with regalia—it doesn’t look at all disturbed. You could have the next Sutton Hoo in your garden.”

  Aidan melted at the man’s enthusiasm, but he also spared a fond thought for Piers. Piers was jumpy at the supernatural and afraid of ghosts. No wonder he didn’t like to look at the rabbit-desecrated tomb of a king. “We came up from London a year ago,” he said. “It’s Piers’s house. He . . .”

  He didn’t like that I was starting to get to know people. He didn’t like that I had friends, or that I was spending more time on my sculpture than on him. He didn’t mind so much that he could sell it for me, but he hated that buyers had begun to wonder who I was, had begun to want to talk to me.

  Aidan’s hands cramped. He shoved them into his armpits to warm them as he was transported there again—the night Piers had had enough. The crash and shatter of pottery and wheel and kiln through the windows as Piers had wrecked the little studio in their London house with a baseball bat. When Aidan had tried to get between him and the dragon sculpture he had been making for a friend, Piers had brought the club down on Aidan’s fingers, breaking three.

  An accident, Piers had said, and at the time he’d believed it, though it certainly put a more effective stop to his art than trashing his studio alone could have. These days he looked back and saw it as the beginning of the punishments. The thing that started it all off. Piers had called him names before that, laughed at him, or been cold, locked him out, locked him in, and once stumbled and knocked him into the grill so he burned his arm. But that night had been the first outright violence. It had shocked him that the sculpture irritated Piers that much. He hadn’t known. But he didn’t complain about it being taken away. It wasn’t—it wasn’t worth complaining about.

  “He wanted an escape from the city. Somewhere quiet and domestic. And this was where he grew up, so . . .”

  “I see.” James’s smile was sympathetic and his grey eyes were far too keen. He looked as though he was about to say something insightful, but then there was a flash like lightning. Both of them turned to look, and it went off five times more. Flashguns from distant cameras. Two bulky figures were wading through the field’s muddy furrows, cameras trained on James.

  James rolled his eyes. “Oh, I am sorry about this.” He gave a shamefaced laugh. “My boyfriend is Dave Debourne. Of, um, Iluvatar’s Angels? They’re a rock band.”

  Aidan couldn’t imagine anyone less likely to be going out with a rock legend. It would have made him laugh had the photographers not been making him twitchy. They didn’t seem to have got close enough to have a decent picture of him yet, but he didn’t want to be here when they were. “I’d better go.”

  “I know what you mean.” James shrugged apologetically as if to say, What can you do? “I’ll head them off. But do come back to the museum and show us how a real artist would make a Bronze Age beaker. I would . . .” His smile turned shy, and he dropped his gaze to the grass, a faint pinkness to the tips of his ears. “I would love to see it. Love to see you work. It would be a privilege.”

  The photographers were close enough now that Aidan could hear the whirr of their shutters. He pulled his hood up and turned his back on them, trying to think of something to say.

  “Well, I’d better lead these blokes away,” James said behind him, as if expecting a good-bye. But Aidan was choked up for some reason and could not force speech out. By the time he could whisper, “Thank you,” James had gone and it was too late.

  Sunday and Piers’s presence filled the whole house. He sat peaceably enough at the kitchen table, reading the Sunday papers and picking at the remains of the breakfast Aidan had cooked him, while Aidan washed up and kept an eye on Piers’s coffee cup so he could replenish it before Piers was forced to ask.

  He felt sure he was a terrible person. Not only had he started to wish for weekdays, but last night he had dreamed of James. The man had knocked at his bedroom window—which had been on the ground floor for some reason—waited until Aidan slid out of bed, and then tried to open the casement. It had stuck, and even in his dreams Aidan had been terrified that Piers would hear them both rattling it in its frame, would wake up and see, and stop them.

  But he hadn’t, and between them he and James had raised the sash enough so Aidan could worm his head through, then an arm. He’d struggled out through it like a birth, nagged, dogged, tormented by the fear of Piers waking. But Piers hadn’t. And for one moment Aidan had had his feet down outside, and James’s hand was on his elbow, guiding him, and they had begun to walk away.

  Aidan had woken to a feeling of joy and anguish so strong he couldn’t believe it came from him. It had left him unsettled and vulnerable as though he’d sloughed off several layers of skin during the night.

  It hadn’t been a subtle dream. Now as he tried to enjoy the glister of cold spring light on soapsuds, the warmth of steaming plates under his fingers, he felt guilty and grimy and overaware of the silence he didn’t dare break.

  Piers sipped his coffee and slipped the Sunday supplement magazine out of his pap
er. The sound of him turning pages was monumental in the quiet. The clock on the wall ticked as Aidan tried to rewind the spiderwebs of his numbness, his wonderful, insulating layer of resignation.

  He poured himself coffee in a cacophony of splashes and clinks and clicks of milk jug on countertop. Tried to eat toast but gave up halfway through because the noise of his jaw working felt like he was selfishly sounding a bullhorn in Piers’s ear. It felt like something he couldn’t expect the man to tolerate.

  He glanced at the clock. Piers usually went to the bathroom at about half nine, and then there would be an hour as he luxuriated. If Aidan was lucky, he might then go into his office and spend another two or three hours checking his stocks and shares. Aidan could eat then, when he could do it without causing trouble. When he could swallow. His throat didn’t feel bruised anymore, but it still didn’t seem to work right. It hadn’t worked right for years.

  “Ugh, these people,” said Piers, turning the page of his magazine. From where he was, Aidan could see an upside-down spread of photos from some kind of music festival. Multicoloured lights shining through the silhouettes of long-haired dancers, the crisscross of girders above a stage on which someone was playing an electric violin. “Don’t they know the seventies are over? And they were shit when they were happening. Strikes, unions holding the country to ransom. Fucking empire being sold off wholesale. Shipyards and mines being closed. Nothing to celebrate. Look at them, fucking hippies. Never done a day’s work in their lives.”

  Invited—maybe even ordered—to look, Aidan took a step away from the refuge of the sink so he could lean forward and try to decipher some of the headlines. He wasn’t quite sure what was so reprehensible about people enjoying themselves in whatever way they liked, but he wasn’t going to say so.

  A picture taken from just below the stage caught his eye—the elongated forms of a blond guitarist in tight leather trousers leaning his naked back against the chest of what must be the lead singer so they could share a microphone. The lead singer had a mane of tawny hair and a tie-dyed T-shirt artfully ripped all over, and a look of theatrical adoration on his face.