A Rip in the Veil (32 page)

“No woman raises her hand to me, and definitely not my brother’s foreign slut,” Luke slurred. Once again he drove his fist into Alex’s stomach. Time stopped. Pain exploded, up her spine, down her legs.

“Agh!” Oh my God, the baby! She struggled to breathe, tried to back away. She wrenched at her arm. He laughed. He pulled his arm back, fisted his hand. He met her eyes. Another blow and her legs buckled, small stabbing points of black swimming in front of her eyes. Again. Air rattled its way up and down her windpipe. Again, and again. Wet; something wet down the inside of her thighs.

Joan was crying, pleading with him to stop. Yes; please stop. Alex collapsed to her knees. The kick sent her sprawling. Someone picked her up. She couldn’t stand, she fell to her knees. He kicked her again. She crawled, keening. She could taste blood in her mouth. A hand in her hair and she was dragged to stand. So quiet. All she could hear was her own breathing, her own pulse. Yet another blow. Son of a bitch! A spark of anger flashed through her brain, spluttered and died. So much pain. Her baby.

She was half dragged, half led out of the kitchen and up the stairs. She heard Joan scream her name, was aware that she should try and do something, but the hand in her hair tightened its hold and then she didn’t remember, no, please, she didn’t remember…

*

Matthew made his way cautiously down the slope. He was cold after his night out on the moor, had hoped for a warm welcome and hot food. Instead, his home seemed deserted, sunk into a silence that made his skin prickle. He stood for a long time hidden under the trees, surveying his yard, his buildings. No smoke belched from the chimneys, no bustle in the yard. A trap? He hesitated, uncertain as to what to do.

He moved stealthily along the fringes, trying to understand what had happened. Horses – several horses – but they were gone now. In the barn and stables the beasts stood unharmed. He met Gavin, who’d been to milk the cows, and asked him if he’d seen anyone at the big house yet, but Gavin shook his head, saying that as it was Sunday he’d thought they had given themselves a bit of a rest after all that business yesterday, what with Mr Simon being carried away by the soldiers and the master himself running like a fox.

Matthew nodded but felt his shoulders tense. Mayhap the lad was right, but half the morning was gone, the November sun almost at its zenith, and Joan would be worried blind for Simon.

He armed himself with a pitchfork and approached the house. In the kitchen he found Joan, sitting unresponsive against the wall. There was a gash on her right forearm, and she looked at him with no initial sign of recognition, grey eyes focusing and un-focusing. She held out her tied hands to him in a supplicating gesture.

“What did they do to you?” Matthew asked, loosening the makeshift gag.

“Nothing too bad,” Joan said, eyes sliding away from his.

“Alex?”

“Upstairs, he took her upstairs, and I haven’t heard a sound from her since…oh God, since she stopped screaming.”

“Who?” he asked, forcing the words through a mouth filled with gravel, but he already knew, had his answer in Joan’s shocked face.

“Luke.” She frowned. “Someone left the door unbolted. It must have been Mrs Brodie. Rosie was off to visit her Mam, and it seems Mrs Brodie is gone.”

At present, Matthew couldn’t care less. All of him was focused on the heavy silence from upstairs.

“You think she’s…” Joan whispered, grabbing hold of his arm.

“I don’t know,” he said, making for the stairs.

Alex was on the floor. Alive, thank the Lord, alive and lucid enough to start weeping when she saw him. He helped her to stand, and her skirts were stiff with dried blood.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m so sorry, so sorry…” He hushed her, blinking his eyes free of tears. Time for that later, now he had to be strong and reassuring for this woman who had problems standing, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. What had he done to her, that bastard brother of his?

She held her soiled clothes to her, cried that she didn’t want him to see, didn’t want to see herself, but he insisted, calling down to Joan for hot water and towels – many towels.

One garment at the time, and she wept and sobbed, gasping now and then as he undid lacings and buttons. Dearest Lord! Her front, her back, her upper thighs – a patchwork of bruises, of welts. Carefully he washed her, and she recoiled from his touch.

“I…” she stammered.

“Hush,” he said, waiting until she resumed breathing.

He rinsed the towel, and in the basin the water was a dirty brown. A clean shift, her bed jacket, and he carried her over to the bed, cradling her in his arms as if she were a wee bairn. His wife; his throat clogged with grief and anger.

“Joan will come and sit with you,” he said, brushing at her hair. “I have to find Simon.” And Luke. She nodded and rolled over on her side.

*

Matthew was gone all of the following week. He rode like a madman across the surrounding countryside looking for his brother, but of Luke there was no trace. Margaret swore she hadn’t seen him for weeks when Matthew appeared at her door, but he could see she was lying, her neck mottling red.

Despite Joan’s worried entreaties that he not put himself at risk, he rode into Cumnock, walked his way through all Luke’s haunts but there was no sign, not even a whiff of him.

“Are you sure?” Simon panted, trotting after Matthew towards the Merkat Cross Inn. “Was it really him?”

“Joan says so.”

“But not even Luke would so harm a woman, would he?”

Matthew shrugged. They’d both seen Luke in one of his rages, seen him lose all control. He turned to look at Simon with despair.

“My brother, Simon! Abusing my wife. And she pregnant and hurting and begging him to stop!”

“Maybe he didn’t know – about the wean, I mean.”

“And that’s an excuse?” Matthew spat in the gutter, wiping his hand hard across his face. “I swear if I find him, I’ll kill him.”

Simon paled at his tone. “He’s in Edinburgh.”

“And now you tell me?” Matthew glared at him from under his wide-brimmed hat.

*

Alex retreated into silences and blankness. Mostly she avoided him – all of them – disappearing for hours on end to walk the woods or sit alone in the hayloft. The bruises faded, but her eyes remained sunk in her face, wary and dark they would but rarely meet his before she averted them, hands fiddling with her apron, her skirts.

“It’s my fault,” she said one day. They were sitting in the parlour, and Matthew closed the book he was reading and looked at her. There was a strained set to her mouth, and she’d pulled back her hair into a tight little braid. It didn’t become her, her hair should float and fall around her face, not be tamed this brutally.

“Of course it isn’t.” His gaze strayed to her waist and then away.

“You don’t sound as if you mean it.” She took a long, steadying breath. “I shouldn’t have provoked him, but I guess I didn’t think. It sort of got to me, to see him sawing his way through Joan’s wrist.”

“Oh, Lord…” Matthew hung his head, torn apart by the fact that it was his brother, a man he could – no, should – have killed that had done this to his wife. He was at her side in seconds, tried to take her fisted hands. “Tell me, don’t carry this alone, lass.”

“I can’t.” She wrenched herself free and fled the room, and behind her Matthew sank his face into his hands and groaned. How was he to help her, help them both, if she wouldn’t let him?

He tried. God knows he tried to talk to her, prise a description of that night from her, but every time he did, Alex just shook her head and escaped him, leaving him to imagine one sequence of events after the other, each of them successively more cruel, more degrading.

“She needs time,” Joan said when he came to her. “And she’s right, isn’t she? You do think she is to blame, at least a little.”

“I blame him, accursed bastard that he is.”

“Aye – and her, for not handing over her ring.” She sighed and patted at his arm. “It wouldn’t have mattered if she had. Luke didn’t come to rob you of what little gold you may have. He hurt her to hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

That didn’t help, he told her, if anything it made it all so much worse. “My Alex, and her so damaged and I can’t help her.”

Joan clasped his hand and gave it a little shake. “You love her, you really do.”

Matthew muttered something and looked away. Loved her? Oh aye, he most certainly did. That’s why all of this was like ingesting ground glass, leaving him torn and bleeding on the inside.

He woke to her muffled sobs, his heart breaking at each of these low desolate sounds. His hand moved of its own accord, stroked her back, her arm, while he made shushing noises, anything to stop her hurting. And then she was in his arms, her mouth was wet on his neck, on his mouth, her whole body demanding that he love her, hold her. And he wanted to, dearest Lord he did, his body arching under her touch, his mouth seeking hers. He rose above her, he kissed her, and there, unbidden, came the images of his damned brother making free with Alex as he had done with Margaret, and everything in Matthew shrivelled at these far too explicit pictures.

With a groan he fell back beside her. Not the same, he reminded himself, not at all the same – but it didn’t help.

“Nay.” He shifted away, disentangling himself from her. She froze, eyes huge in the pale oval of her face, and flipped over on her side, her back stiff like a board. Matthew wanted to stretch out his hand and pull her close, mayhap kiss her hair, comfort her, but more than that…no, he just couldn’t, not when his brain was invaded by disjointed pictures of Luke with his Alex.

“When I come to you with my need you won’t deny me,” she whispered into the dark and he could hear how much it cost her to keep her voice steady. Matthew moaned, twisting his face to hide himself against the soft, worn linen of his pillow.

“You said it worked both ways, and now…well, now I come to you with mine.” She rolled over again, her face only inches from his. He reared back and put a hand on her shoulder. To draw her close? To keep her away? He didn’t know.

“I can’t, lass. Not like that. But I can hold you.” He gave her a weak smile and held up his quilt to invite her in.

“That’s not enough.” She slipped out of bed and left the room.

*

“Will you stop doing this?” he said next morning, rubbing his hand hard across his face in a futile attempt to wipe away his exhaustion.

“Do what?” she asked mildly, in total contradiction to the expression in her eyes.

“You know what I mean! You get out of bed and then you don’t come back, and I spend the night looking for you, to make sure you’re safe.”

She banged his plate down in front of him. They were alone in the kitchen, Joan having decided that she needed to inspect the smoking shed.

“Well I’m here when you
need
me, aren’t I?” She glared at him. “There’s food on your plate when you
need
it, clean clothes when you
need
them, warm water when you
need
to wash. All your
needs
I make sure are adequately cared for, right? And here I was, thinking it was supposed to work both ways.” She slammed the door on her way out. With a resigned sigh he got to his feet to follow her.

He found her where he knew she would be, in the stables. As he walked down the length of the building towards Samson’s stall he heard her voice, a hushed monologue in a language he didn’t understand. She started when he appeared in her line of vision and ducked under Samson’s massive neck to hide her face from him.

“It’s been over a month, and unless we talk about it, this will fester, poisoning every aspect of our relationship. It already is.” He gave her a crooked smile. Whatever it was she wasn’t telling him, it couldn’t be worse than what he was imagining.

She met his eyes over the horse’s back. “I don’t want that,” she said, eyes so dark the pupils were deep wells only faintly ringed with blue.

“Neither do I.” He extended her cloak to her. “Walk?”

They didn’t talk, they just strode side by side, holding hands. By the time Matthew led them in the direction of the little graveyard, her fingers were tightly braided round his. He stopped at the gate and swung it open, brushed some wet leaves off the bench, and invited her to sit.

A weak December sun filtered through the bare branches of the rowan, long extended fingers of shadow thrown across the faded grass. Their breath came in soft puffs, and Matthew slid to sit closer, pressing his thigh against hers. He could feel her relax, a slow softening of muscles that for weeks had been rigid with fear and grief. He didn’t push, he just sat beside her, every now and then sweeping his thumb in a caressing movement over the back of her hand.

“I can’t stand it,” he finally said in view of her continued silence. “I can’t…I see these pictures in my head of you with him, and I can’t wipe them away, and I want to… Alex, I’m so sorry!”

“Of me with him?” Her confusion was apparent, and he turned to look at her. Her eyes widened. “Oh my God; you think he raped me?”

“Didn’t he?”

Alex made a slow negating movement with her head, and Matthew’s shoulders dropped several inches.

“He…well, he just lost it, you know? He punched me and hit me, he swore at me, hit me some more, and I begged for him to stop, but he just went on and on about you and Margaret, and how would you like it now, when he did to your wife what you’d done to her, and —” She threw him a look and came to an abrupt stop. “It isn’t your fault.”

“Aye it is, I should have been there to protect you.”

“Well, he made sure you weren’t, didn’t he? And had you come back, what could you have done alone against six men?” She shivered when the sun disappeared behind fast moving clouds. “I don’t think he was fully aware of what he was doing – besides, he was drunk.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“No; it definitely isn’t.” Her hand drifted down to knead at her abdomen. “Our baby.”

Matthew took both her hands in his and knelt before her. “We’ll have other babies, lass.”