“I hate her! She stole my life from me, witch that she is! Te odio, Mercedes, te odio!” Hector’s fingers sank deeper into Alex’s skin, and all she could hear was the whoosh of her blood, the throbbing of her imprisoned pulse behind her temples. He’s going to kill me, oh my God, he’s going to strangle me to death! Her arm flapped, she struggled, saw huge circles of black rise before her. Knee him…yes…try…No air, no strength. She clawed at his cheek, tried to draw in air. His face was very close. She was going to die. Her baby! Matthew… Her vision shrank to a narrow funnel. And then the pressure was gone, and Alex crumpled to the ground, sucking air through her mouth, her nose.
She raised her face. Hector was on his feet, backing away from Matthew. His hand went to his sword, and where before Matthew had been advancing, rake in hand, now he was retreating, parrying a flurry of blows. Alex planted one foot on the ground, another, and heaved herself up to stand.
Before her, Hector and Matthew were engaged in a silent deadly battle, and however much of a novice Alex was when it came to sword fighting, she could see Hector was a master at it. Graceful and fast, he thrust and retreated, lunged and danced away, and with every blow the wooden handle of the rake lost in solidity, shredding into an ineffectual defence.
She should do something. Alex took a tentative step in their direction, raised her skirts in preparation. Do what? She was woozy and dazed, her limbs uncoordinated. Kick him; yes, kick this Hector character before he hurt her Matthew. Too late. One well-directed thrust and the rake flew from Matthew’s hand. Hector slowed his movements, his lips curling into a sneer.
“You’ll die,” he said to Matthew.
“Aye; but not today.” Matthew’s eyes never left the by now bloodied sword held so confidently by Hector.
“Oh, I think today.” Hector moved swiftly.
Alex gasped, expecting to see Matthew skewered on that flashing sword. But Matthew rose on his toes and instead of retreating, he jumped towards Hector. He hissed when the sword sliced down his flank, but managed to clamp his hand down on Hector’s wrist. It was like watching someone grab a tiger by the tail – a dangerous tiger that kicked and punched and bit.
A wrench and Hector had his hand free. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion. The sword rose high up in the air, Hector’s fingers tightened around the hilt, and then down it came, whistling through the air. Matthew threw himself to the side, but she heard him exclaim and knew the sword had at minimum nicked him.
Up came the sword again, Matthew kicked Hector in the knee. Not enough to throw Hector to the ground, but enough for him to lose his balance. A low tackle, and Matthew brought Hector down, using his weight to pin the man to the ground.
Hector screamed him in the ear. Matthew reared back and crashed his fist into the smaller man’s face. Hector jerked and went still. Matthew got to his feet, kicked the sword well out of reach, and turned to Alex.
“Are you alright?”
Was she alright? How about him? He was bleeding from gashes all over his arms, his hands, the side of his shirt was wet with blood. She nodded, succeeded in crossing the few yards that separated them.
“…” she said, hands flying over him.
“Don’t try to talk.” Matthew ran a finger over the collar of sore and burning skin that circled her neck. She flinched, swallowed. Had he not arrived when he did, she’d have been dead by now. She rested her face against his chest for an instant. Warm. Alive.
“…” she tried, pulling her brows into a frown. She turned to where Hector was groaning back into life. “He said I burnt it,” she finally enunciated. Jesus that hurt!
“Burnt what?” His hands spanned her belly, as if reassuring himself the baby was still safe.
“Painting.”
“We did.”
Alex gave him an irritated look. “H…?” she croaked. She swallowed, tried again. “How does he know?”
“I heard it shriek,” Hector said, making them jump – Alex away from him, Matthew to more or less land on him.
“Skulking on my land, were you?”
Hector waved a hand at him, as you’d do with an enervating fly. “No. I was on the moor.” Hector attempted to sit, was arrested by Matthew’s grip on his neck.
“Don’t move,” Matthew said. “Don’t provoke me into killing you.”
Hector laughed. “You can’t kill me.”
“Would you have me try?” Matthew sounded as if he really wanted to. She wasn’t about to stop him.
“Do your best,” Hector said, offering him his neck.
Matthew looked taken aback.
Hector’s brows rose contemptuously. “Such hesitation could cost you your life.” He whipped out a small dagger from his boot. Like a viper, Matthew’s hand closed around Hector’s, and the knife landed in the grass.
“Enough of this,” Matthew said, heaving Hector up to stand. “I’ll have you accused of attempted murder.”
“Really? And what do you think will happen when I tell them you’re married to a woman born three hundred odd years in the future?” Hector leaned towards Matthew, eyes like ice. “She’ll burn, Matthew Graham, burn like her grandfather did, like her aunt did, like her mother should have done all those years ago in Seville!” He cackled, the sound cut short when Matthew’s hand closed around his scrawny neck.
“Burn? Why did they burn?” Her voice surprised her, a whispered hoarseness that scarcely carried over the few metres between them. Matthew released his hold on Hector, allowing him to retch and cough air back into his system.
Hector wiped at his wet eyes and sat up. “Why? They were enemies of the Holy Church.” He lifted his lip in a little sneer. “I bet you didn’t know that, huh? Just as you didn’t know that your fucking mother was a witch.” Alex tried to make sense of what he was saying. Her family, burning to death? But no, stuff like that didn’t happen…she brought herself up short. Didn’t happen? It happened all the time in the here and now.
“I didn’t mean to,” Hector said, sliding down to sit on the grass. “Such a bloody mess, all of it.”
“Mean to what?” Alex tried to catch his eyes, but he looked away.
“Never mind. And anyway, what was I to do? I would have hanged! And they were heretics, false converts. They deserved to burn, both of them! Yes, they did, they did. I was only doing my job.”
“Your job?” Alex was very confused; what was he, some sort of inquisitor? He groaned, clutched at himself.
“Dolores, perdóname, Dolores.”
“Forgive you for what?” Alex said.
Hector didn’t seem to have heard, muttering something in Spanish, a rather incoherent rambling where the only thing she could make out was her aunt’s name along with a whispered avowal that he, Hector, had loved her – once, before it all went ugly.
“What did you do to her?” Alex demanded.
“None of your business,” he snarled, reverting to form. He scowled at her, eyes so cold she flinched. “All this is Mercedes’ fault. Damned witch! First she yanks me out of my time, and then she curses me with eternal life unless I make it back. Bruja!”
“My mother?” Alex shook her head in mute denial.
“Well she did, okay? And all because I was a good servant of my queen, Reina Isabel, and my church.”
What? No, she must have misheard. “Isabel? Like in Isabel and Fernando?”
Hector nodded, mouth twisting into a crooked smile.
“But that was ages ago!” Right; her brain just didn’t want to handle this. Too much information – impossible information. Her mother was from medieval Seville? Her family were heretics? No, shove this away, stuff it into a drawer marked FORGET.
“And the painting is important why?” Matthew asked.
“A portal, one of Mercedes’ time tunnels,” Hector replied.
Alex shuddered. Thank God they’d burnt it!
“And do they all lead to long gone Seville?” Matthew sounded impressively matter-of-fact.
“No, unfortunatel
y they don’t. You fall towards what you see in them.” Hector glared at Alex. “I saw my Diego, didn’t I? And why was he here, hey? He was here because of you!”
“Me?” Alex said.
“I sent him to find you.” He narrowed his eyes. “Did he? Find you, I mean.”
Alex nodded. “He’s dead.”
“I know.” Hector threw her a black look. “Your fault.”
“My fault?” She was getting tired of being blamed for all this mess. “How can it be my fault that you send someone to harass me? And what about Ángel? What about what he did to me? Is that my fault too?” She leaned towards him. “Well, is it?” She was awash with anger, wanted nothing so much as to rip into him.
“Ángel acted outside his instructions.” Hector scooted away from her.
“Really?” Alex came after. “Now why don’t I believe that?” Matthew grabbed her by the waist, and she was glad he did, needed his restraining hands to stop her from doing something unacceptable – like kick this bastard in the mouth and watch him spit teeth all over the place.
“Well he did, okay?” Hector said.
“You’re lying, I can see it in your eyes.”
Hector inclined his head in a mocking little bow. “So many explicit photographs of you, and each and every one of them I sent to your damned witch of a mother.” Hector laughed. “I don’t think she liked them much, do you?”
“Bastard!” she spat, which only made him hitch his shoulders.
“I should just have grabbed her, once I knew where to find her. Not played out that complicated treasure hunt, however fun it was.” Hector frowned up at Alex. “How?”
“How what?”
“Mercedes disappeared down there. How did she do that? Did she have a painting with her?”
Alex shook her head and backed away.
“You don’t have to tell him,” Matthew said, eyeing the white-haired wreck before them with obvious dislike. “Not after what he did to you.”
“Oh, yes you do!” Hector said, springing to his feet. “I deserve to know, you hear?”
“You deserve nothing!” Matthew said.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll tell everyone she’s a witch!” Hector ducked under Matthew’s arm, slammed an elbow into Matthew’s bleeding side, and there he was, only inches from Alex’s face. “A witch, you hear? A fucking witch! Do you know what they do to witches in the here and now?” He laughed, laughter becoming a croak when Matthew flung him into the stone wall.
“You’ll die before you do that,” Matthew said.
“What is it you don’t understand, you moron? You can’t kill me! I can’t fucking die!”
“She burnt,” Alex broke in. “She set herself alight, and suddenly she was gone.” She folded her arms over her chest.
“What?” Hector stared at her.
Alex swallowed repeatedly. “She just…I don’t know. First she was on fire and then ‘poof’ she disappeared.”
“She went ‘poof’?” Hector threw his head back and laughed, a harsh sound that made the hairs along Alex’s arms rise in alarm.
“And Ángel?” he asked once he’d calmed down.
“She held him in her arms.” It came out a weak whisper.
“Oh.” Hector shrugged, indicating he didn’t really care. “It must hurt.”
“I suppose it does,” Alex agreed, warding off the memory of Ángel’s contorted face, his mouth open in a soundless shriek.
“But maybe it works,” Hector said.
Alex had no idea; she didn’t want to talk about this.
“Self-immolation,” Hector murmured, nodding to himself. “Burn, like Dolores did; how apt. Will you stay and watch?”
“What?” Alex had problems remaining upright. “You’re going to set yourself on fire? But you’ll die!”
“Which is exactly what I want.”
“Matthew! Stop him, lock him up somewhere!”
“Please,” Hector entreated, “please help me die.” His eyes flew to Alex, to Matthew, bright gemstones of desperation.
Matthew nodded, once.
“We can’t be doing this!” Alex had problems breathing, walking, talking. On the edge of the moor, Hector was piling brush and branches into a man-high heap. “I can’t just let him do this! It’s suicide.” And she didn’t want to see a person burning to death again – once had been quite enough, thank you very much.
Matthew continued with what he was doing, offloaded yet another armful onto the pile.
“It’s a sin, to kill yourself is a sin!”
“To curse someone so that they can’t die is also a sin,” Matthew said, with an edge of condemnation in his tone.
“Oh God.” Alex’s knees gave way, and she sat down. Matthew kneeled before her, smoothed back her hair.
“The man can’t go on living forever. Look at him, he’s rotting away while alive.”
Alex peeked at where Hector was applying the final touches to his bonfire. “But what if he doesn’t die? What if he’s right about not being able to die, no matter how, and he sets himself alight and burns and burns and…”
“He’s willing to try.”
“Why not shoot himself? Or slice his wrists? Hang himself?”
“I believe he’s tried all that.”
“You think?” Alex wanted to throw up. What had her mother done, how could she have condemned someone to this wandering existence? “Maybe she wasn’t all good,” she whispered in his ear, “because how can you curse someone like that, no matter how big a bastard he is?”
“You don’t know why she did it, and I scarcely think he’ll tell you the truth, do you?”
*
They stood holding hands and watched Hector step into his burning pyre. At the last moment his nerve seemed to fail him, eyes acquiring a sheen of fear, but after several deep breaths he straightened up, squared his shoulders and walked into the fire. Alex crawled into Matthew’s arms, refusing to watch as the flames licked higher and higher.
Not a sound did Hector utter, and Matthew stared slack-mouthed as the burning shape dissolved before his eyes, leaving nothing but a tang of singed hair in its wake. There was no trace of anything human in the smouldering embers. Not a single bone, nor a melted button, not even that deposit of greasy, half-burnt flesh that would generally be found round a stake.
“He went up in smoke,” Matthew said, somewhere between awed and downright terrified.
“He’s gone?” Alex still had her eyes squished together.
“Aye, lass; he’s gone.”
“We never talk about this,” he said to Alex later.
“Never,” she agreed. And they never did.
Chapter 36
Despite being as unwieldy as a whale, Alex struggled up the hill on New Year’s Eve to toast Magnus, and then made her way back down to the barn where the party was in full swing. She’d danced earlier in the evening, but the wild reels and turns made the baby sink down to press on her pelvic bone, so now she sat to the side and watched, smiling at the people that stopped for a word with the impressively pregnant wife of the master.
The master himself was quite drunk, and made his way unsteadily to sit down by Alex’s feet. All evening he had been eyeing the way her breasts seemed on the verge of spilling over the confinement of her modest bodice, noting with possessive pride that quite a few other men were giving his radiant wife appreciative looks.
It suited her, being greatbellied, as it had never suited Margaret. A slight shiver of guilt flew up his spine when he wondered where Margaret and Ian might be, but he pushed the thought away; they were not his responsibility, not anymore. He leaned his head against Alex’s leg and her hand drifted down to smooth his long hair back into place.
“Was he there, then?”
Alex made an exasperated sound. “Of course he wasn’t. But I…I guess I just want him to know that I think of him, that I hope he’s alright – him and John and Isaac. Kind of silly, given that I’m hoping that long before they’ve even been born.�
� She sighed and looked over to where Simon was strutting with the best, a rosy, laughing Joan slung this way and that. “Sometimes I wonder if they’d recognise me, I guess I must have changed a lot.”
He smiled; aye, that she had, he told her, and in particular in her present state.
“Not like that,” she said. “Have I changed as a person?”
He tilted his head to look at her. “You’re a good wife,” he teased, “obedient and submissive, you tend to your husband and his needs.” He laughed at the scowl on her face. “I never have to punish you…”
“You try, mister, and I’ll have your balls in a vice.”
He didn’t doubt that, he assured her, cupping his privates in mock horror.
“Nay, Alex,” he said seriously. “You haven’t changed; not where it counts. You’re still that magic lass that fell out of the sky and landed at my feet, and there’s not a day when I don’t thank the good Lord for that.” He got up on his knees in front of her. “You were sent here because He knew I needed you. And mayhap He knew that you needed me.”
She cradled his head to her as well as she could given her bulk, and kissed his crown.
“Oh God, I do; I need you all the time.”
“Insatiable,” he mock sighed, making her laugh. He placed a hand on her belly and smiled at the responding thumps. “It will be close.”
Alex grinned down at him. “I bet she foals first.”
Matthew made a small noise at the back of his throat. His best mare and his wife, neck to neck…He sincerely hoped they didn’t go into labour at the same time, for between mare and Alex he would be sorely torn, in the first case being needed, in the second being expected to stay close. Alex even wanted him in the room, but both he and Mrs Gordon had been so scandalised by this, that she had agreed to not raise the issue again as long as he promised that he’d be sitting just outside.
Matthew kissed his unborn child through the layers of cloth and skin that covered it and rose to his feet.
“Dance with me.” He extended his hands to her.
“I can’t dance,” she said, getting up to stand beside him. “I can barely move.”
“I’ll be gentle with you.” He led her out into the middle of the dance floor where she shuffled on the spot while he danced and whirled around her. Towards the end he just stood and held her, an island of stillness in the singing, stamping sea of people that surrounded them.
A Rip in the Veil (The Graham Saga) Page 34