*
Three weeks later, both foal and baby announced their intention to enter the world – at more or less the same time. Alex shooed a harried Matthew off in the direction of the stables, and for the first few hours or so found all of this a rather agreeable experience. Even when the intensity increased, she was more fascinated than afraid, aware of every breath she took, every step she walked across the room. Not at all as she remembered it, but then she’d been drugged out of her mind when Isaac was born, terrified at the thought that she’d soon be face to face with the son of the man who’d…well.
Five hours later, and it was not quite as much fun.
“How much longer?” she panted. She was glazed with sweat, her legs quivering with the strain of the last contractions.
“Not much,” Mrs Gordon soothed, “not much at all.” She helped Alex to sit up straighter on the birthing stool.
“Epidural,” Alex muttered under her breath. “Or a planned caesarean.” Mrs Gordon gave her an odd look and Alex smiled weakly. “Ramblings.” And then she was swept by one, two, three – Jesus, how many were they? – huge contractions. She was overwhelmed by an urgent need to go to the bathroom, something hung between her legs, she pressed down with all her might, and it was over.
Mrs Gordon handed her the baby; bloody, covered in white goo, face a mottled red and eyes squished shut, and Alex had never seen anything so lovely in her life.
*
When Matthew was at last let inside, all he could see was her, sitting back against fresh pillows in a clean, embroidered shift, hair brushed out to frame her head. Her face was bent in silent adoration towards the wean nursing at her breast, and Matthew felt his knees weaken so abruptly at the joy that rushed through him that he would have fallen if Mrs Gordon hadn’t grabbed him.
“A son, a bonny, healthy son. And big – everywhere. Must take after his sire, no?” She chuckled and nudged him towards the bed. “Go on, Rosie will bring you something to eat later.”
“Do you want to look at him?” Alex sounded shy.
Matthew didn’t trust himself to speak, so he just nodded. Alex disengaged the wean from her nipple and unfolded the blankets around him.
“She’s right,” Matthew said, a finger hovering just over the dark genitalia. “He’s big there.”
“Just like his sire,” Alex murmured. “I think it looks bigger just after birth – it’s all to do with hormones or something.”
“Hormones?”
Alex waved a hand at him. “I’ll explain some other time. Right now my brain is a mush.” She wrapped the wean up, smoothing the blanket tight around the little body.
“Here, come and sit beside me and hold him.”
Matthew sat mute with his son in his arms. Alex smiled and stretched out a finger to rub the wean softly over its head.
“He’s perfect, isn’t he?”
Matthew scrubbed at his eyes with his free hand and nodded. “Aye,” he breathed.
“What will we call him?”
“Mark, Mark Magnus.”
“Mark Magnus,” she whispered to the lad, “welcome to the world, young master Graham.”
“Next time I want you to be there,” she said against his chest. Wee Mark was fast asleep in his cradle, and the fire in the hearth was a glowing heap of embers, throwing the whole room in a weak reddish light that glinted off her hair.
“Mmhm,” he prevaricated.
“I need you there, and I guess there will be quite a few more.”
Oh, aye, Matthew smiled, drawing her even closer; five, mayhap even seven.
“Well, unless we give up on sex altogether, but that’s not on the books, is it?” she said.
He assured her that it definitely wasn’t, and then he just had to pad out of bed to look down at his new-born son again.
“He looks like a wee toad,” he said, drawing a finger down the little spine. Alex came to stand beside him, her hands clutching his arm.
“A very hairy toad.” A shock of dark hair stood like a halo round the little skull. “From his father,” she said, “both the hair and the similarity to a toad. Oh, and the huge…you know.” She laughed as he kissed her, laughed when he swept her off her feet to carry her back to bed, groaning theatrically under his burden. But when he placed his head between her breasts and thanked her for his son, she didn’t laugh – she wept.
*
“There.” Alex smiled down at her baby, smoothed down his smock and handed him over to his proud father who more or less pranced out of the kitchen, son held to his chest.
“Crooked,” Mrs Gordon muttered from behind her. “Mark my words, the laddie will grow up all crooked what with you leaving him unswaddled.” She’d been saying that for the last month or so, and as always Alex just shrugged before sitting down to finish her interrupted meal.
“Is it alright now?” she asked instead, receiving a nonplussed look in response. “To…you know.”
“Itching is it?” Mrs Gordon laughed out loud and then leaned forward to pat her hand. “Aye, it’s five weeks, no?”
“Almost six,” Alex corrected, making Mrs Gordon smile. “Do you…err…is it, well, should I, or is it him…” Alex stumbled over the words.
“Don’t you think he wants to?”
Alex knew he wanted to, but so far he hadn’t tried to touch her like that, and she wasn’t sure if he was waiting for her to make the first move.
Mrs Gordon gave her an amused look. “If you want to, then you have to let him know that, no?”
Alex was taken aback by this very modern approach, and was even more surprised when Mrs Gordon confided that most women, in her considerable experience, were as hot for it as their husbands, and that there was nothing wrong with that.
That evening, Alex carried her replete son over to his cradle and tucked him in, patting the little bum. She sat down at her primitive dressing table and released her hair, taking a very long time to brush it. In the mirror she could see her husband. Naked, he was lying on his side, eyes golden in the candlelight. She remained on the stool and let the shift drop off one shoulder, the soft worn linen sliding down her arm.
“Take it all off.”
She did, and when his eyes met hers in the mirror, there was a command in them that made her insides contract. She walked over to the bed and sat down. Slowly he traced her breasts, her belly. He laid his head between her legs, rubbing his unshaven cheeks hard against the inside of her thighs. He kissed her there, sending shockwaves of tickling electricity through her body, all the way from her curled toes to her heating cheeks.
“I’ve missed you,” she said, which made him laugh.
“I’ve been here all the time.” His fingers were moving in teasing circles that made her breathing pick up, a ragged, demanding sound.
“But not like this.” She dragged a nail up his penis, felt him shudder in response, and when her fingers closed around him he inhaled loudly.
“Nay, not like this. But now I’m back.”
For a flashing instant it hurt, a straining of membranes that had grown unaccustomed to this. He noticed, and held himself still, waiting until she raised her hips towards him before he began to move. It had been too long, and as a consequence it was over far too quickly. Alex laughed and patted him on his bare buttocks.
“Is that all?”
“For now.” He rose on his arms and smiled down at her. “But if you give me a minute or two, I’m sure I’ll have recovered sufficiently to make you squeak.”
“Squeak? I don’t squeak!”
“Aye you do, but I don’t mind. I find it rather sweet.”
“Huh.” Alex pretended to be affronted. He chuckled, bent his head to nuzzle her neck, the sensitive spot just below her ear.
“Do you want me to make you squeak?” he murmured against her skin.
“I don’t squeak.”
But much later she admitted she did – sometimes.
Chapter 37
It was May, and after months of hard work Ma
tthew had decided he and Alex had earned themselves a few days of lassitude with Simon and Joan in Cumnock. Not that Alex was all that impressed, grumbling that Cumnock wasn’t her idea of a holiday get away. But where her mood improved with every day spent in Cumnock, Matthew’s deteriorated. Alex sighed, clearly annoyed by his moping. She’d told him, hadn’t she?
“It’s different to hear you tell it than to see it happening.” He made a face. “They’re all falling over their feet in their haste to welcome the returning majesty to his throne.” He placed an arm around his wife and drew her close enough that he could peek at his son, fast asleep in his carrying shawl.
“That’s not true,” she said, “at most people are relieved, no more.” He grunted, but admitted she was right. Cumnock was not a hotbed of royalist fervour, and now that Luke had ridden south taking most of his vociferous companions with him, the small market town had reverted to being what it had always been; somnolent and more concerned with Kirk and business than with the going on’s in far away London.
“Do you think he’ll be back?” Alex asked, apparently having caught a whiff of his thought.
“Luke? Nay, I think it most unlikely. He has a life to build for himself at the royal court.” He stretched, relieved that his brother was gone out of his life – hopefully for good.
“A few days, no more,” Simon said one evening after supper.
“Aye,” Matthew agreed morosely. Any day now the king would land, returning to take up his crown at the express invitation of the Parliament.
“You must admit it has been skilfully handled.” Simon poured them both a tot of whisky.
“Aye,” Matthew said. “It’s General Monck. It was him, no doubt, that urged Charles to write the Declaration.”
It stuck in his craw to have to recognise that a man he had considered devoted to the Commonwealth cause was the architect of its destruction, all the way from disbanding the Rump Parliament and calling a new election earlier in this the year of our Lord 1660, to this final little masterpiece, the Declaration of Breda, in which Charles Stuart promised to be lenient to all former Parliament supporters.
“Mayhap for the best. A peaceful restoration is to be preferred, is it not?” Simon said.
“You think? I personally think there should be no king, restored or otherwise,” Matthew said.
“The alternative would have been war, and that would have been worse all round.”
“Aye,” Matthew agreed, but with no real enthusiasm.
“It won’t really change things, will it?” Alex asked.
“Not up here. The king will have plenty to occupy him in the southern parts of his kingdom,” Simon said, “and for all that his grandsire was Scots, I doubt Charles Stuart has any particular fondness for this our corner of the earth. Dour, damp and dirty, he found it, and far too full of Covenanters for his liking.”
“Aye it will,” Matthew disagreed. “It all changes. We’re back to a world where one man’s word counts for more than the rest’s, a world where blood and birth carry more weight than ability and commitment.” He smiled crookedly. “But other than that you’re right; nothing will change.” He got to his feet and left the room.
*
“Longing for home?” Alex teased next morning. Matthew grunted and went back to inspecting girths and harnesses. Only once he had repeatedly tested the pannier basket did he allow Alex to place Mark in it, muttering to Gavin that he’d flay him if he didn’t ensure the wean rode safely all the way back home. Gavin gave him a surly nod, looking rather disgruntled after having been torn from a much needed sleep.
They were at the crossroads with the Lanark road when Alex asked Matthew to stop.
“What’s the matter?” Matthew held in Samson.
“I’m not sure, I just feel strange.” She dropped off the horse and went to sit in the shade of the huge crossroads oak. “Maybe it’s the heat.”
It was hot, unseasonably so, and she tugged with irritation at her woollen bodice. She was feeling nauseous, and her head was banded by pain, making red swirls dance before her eyes.
“I think I need to sit here a while,” she said and undid her hat, flapping it to create a cooling breeze. Matthew studied her with some concern and went over to talk to Gavin.
“I told him to ride on,” he said once he returned to sit beside her.
“Mmm.” All of her was itching, sweat was breaking out in the most unusual places, and she licked her lips, surprised to find them so dry. She sniffed; there was a strange stench to the air, an acrid top note that reminded her of seaweed rotting under a baking sun.
“You’re looking very pale,” Matthew helped her to sit back against the trunk.
“I feel pale – and thirsty.”
He retrieved a stone flask of cider from one of the saddlebags, and they sat in silence, sharing it.
“Better?”
“A bit,” she lied. Her eyelids weighed a ton. A nap, a short little nap, and then she’d feel much better. She barely registered when Matthew eased her down on the ground, his coat rolled into a makeshift pillow under her head.
When she woke a few minutes later she was alone. A swift scanning of her surroundings indicated Matthew had led Samson off to graze along the verge, and if she squinted she could make out the general shape of her husband, a few yards further in among the bushes. She needed to pee, and with an effort she levered herself onto her feet, standing like a swaying beanpole before she regained her balance.
God, it was hot! The previously clear sky was now a threatening purplish grey, the heavy clouds lit from within by distant lightning. The crossroads; something was happening to it, shimmering bands of bright greens and blues overlaying the scenery behind. She frowned, overcome by a disturbing sense of recognition.
The strands of blue and green danced round her feet, a crack opened in the road, pouring bright, white light. Alarm bells clanged in her head, huge red alerts screeched at her to run, flee, but her eyes were stuck in that funnel of light, and she took a staggering step towards it.
She peered into the bottomless drop, and there were cars, and motorbikes and a bright red phone box, and in her ears noise pounded; honking horns, screeching brakes and snatches of music from various radio channels. Home. She blinked at the familiar faces that swam before her; John, Magnus in his garden, Isaac. One more step and she’d be there, with them, and a hot wave of longing rushed through her. Home – the word bubbled through her blood.
A whispering filled her head, a soft enticing murmur telling her it was time, time to leave all this behind and return to where she belonged. Yes, of course; go home, go home. Below her the road began to churn, and there was a tugging sensation round her feet, her calves, an insistent force pushing her towards that yawning chasm.
Her foot struck a rock, and the flare of pain tore through the whispered promises of home, a life in modern comfort. Home? No! That wasn’t home, not anymore!
She shrieked; Matthew, she screamed, but there were no sounds, her tongue an uncooperative piece of swollen leather in a mouth so dry it felt like she’d been eating sand. Her heart thundered, and she tried to retreat, but she was stuck in this quagmire of colours, the whole road was spinning around her, drawing her towards the pulsing light at the centre of the crossroads.
“No!” With a superhuman effort she tore herself free, landing on her front. She clawed her hands into the dirt of the road, desperately anchoring herself to the here and now. She was dragged backwards, her fingertips and nails torn to shreds over the grit and gravel of the roadbed, and her legs…Jesus! They were being twisted off her.
“Matthew,” she croaked. He must have heard her, because here he came, flying towards her with his breeches still undone. His hands closed around her arms and he pulled. It hurt so much Alex couldn’t cry out – she couldn’t even breathe. Oh God; she was going to die, stretched until she snapped like an elastic band between this time and that.
*
Matthew threw himself backwards, Alex an unco
nscious deadweight in his arms. It was like trying to reel in a trout the size of a horse, with Alex the unfortunate hook caught in between. He inhaled; scorching pitch seemed to clog his lungs, and he gagged on the stench of brimstone that permeated the air. He slipped, landed on his backside, and now they were both hurtling towards that hole of dazzling light. A heel struck stone, the other found purchase against a clump of grass, and Matthew roared with effort.
Inch by pathetic inch, he dragged them away from the precipice. His shoulders were on fire, he could no longer feel his arms, his hands. He gritted his teeth, he prayed, calling for God to help him. No reply, and Matthew did battle all on his own, refusing to relinquish his wife to the hungry maw that was snapping at her feet.
Air whistled in and out of his nose, sweat dripped off his brows, his thighs were beginning to cramp, and still he held on. A weak scrabble, and her feet were no longer dangling in the void. A heave, and there was a yard between her toes and the drop.
“You’ll not have her,” he said through his clenched teeth. “Never will I let her go.”
As if in reply, a sudden wind sprang up. Rain filled the air and the previously so hot day cooled. The chasm slammed shut with a distinctive, grinding sound. After a few half-hearted rumbles, the cloud cover drifted away, leaving in its wake cool, fresh air.
He didn’t dare to let go of her, not yet, not here, so close to where recently it had all been swirling colours and bright light. He pulled them both into the shade of the oak, and once there he unclamped his hands from her arms. Alex lolled like a broken ragdoll, and there was an everlasting moment when he thought she was dead, but then she moaned.
*
“Alex?”
She turned her face towards the sound of his voice. She was one huge bruise and when she struggled to sit, her mouth filled with the taste of blood.
“Alex, are you alright?”
She wound her arms hard around his neck, glad to feel his arms around her, to hear his heartbeat under her ear. He stroked her head and she slumped against him.
A Rip in the Veil (The Graham Saga) Page 35