A Rip in the Veil (36 page)

Alex nodded, amused despite her worry. If it came to a crunch, it would probably be her defending him rather than the reverse.

It was dark outside; as dark as it gets in May, full of strange shadows and greys, creaking sounds and scattering shapes that she knew to be rats. Simon seemed to have some sort of idea as to what direction to take, and led her through a throng of closes and small, smelly streets. She recognised the church and hurried to keep up as they turned into yet another close.

“Matthew!” Simon called out. “Matthew, are you there?” They walked further in, and Alex saw something on the ground. A hand twitched and for a moment she was convinced that was the last movement he would ever make, but then he groaned.

*

Matthew heard her voice and felt her hands on his body, small, strong hands that tried to lift him upright. His head lolled back, and he had the strangest vision of his wife hanging upside down from the sky. He groaned again and turned his head to throw up, grateful that someone was holding him. Simon and…Alex; aye, that was her name, she was his Alex. But Margaret had saved him, and her black hair had tickled his face, as smooth and glistening as he remembered it.

He tried to protest when they lifted him, because it hurt so much, but he was already being half carried, half dragged. He gasped when he slipped out of a sweaty hold to hit the ground.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” someone muttered, and he was in the air again, hearing the heavy breathing of whoever it was that was moving him. He was lowered to lie down, his limbs were lifted this way and that, and something warm and wet moved over his body, making him yelp at times. The weak light of the candles was agony to his eyes, and every touch made his skin scream. He attempted to speak, but his lip was split, and his tongue was a useless sponge in his mouth. Alex, she was Alex, and he was Matthew Graham, and…it all went a blissful, soothing blank.

He woke to find Alex sitting by his side. She was asleep, her head resting against the wall. He twisted to see the window, noting with surprise that it was twilight. He moved his legs, his arms and hands, sending sparks of pain through his mangled muscles. His left arm was one throbbing fire, and he inhaled loudly when he shifted it. Alex awoke with a start.

“Hi, how are you feeling?”

He swallowed a couple of times to lubricate his throat. “Poorly,” he creaked, “everything hurts.”

“What happened?” she asked a while later. “Who did this to you?”

“Luke, it was Luke.”

“He’s here?”

Matthew felt it unnecessary to reply.

“Simon says I shouldn’t have told you,” she said.

Matthew closed his eyes. Nay, she shouldn’t. It would have been better never to consider that there was a possibility of Ian being his son. Possibility? He’d had his answer in Margaret’s white face, in the way her eyes had darted to the lad.

“I didn’t want you to run into him and suddenly see what everyone else has seen for years,” she went on, sounding hesitant.

“I wouldn’t, I would never have looked at him for long enough to see it.”

“But it’s better to know, right?”

No it wasn’t; some truths were only thorns driven into your flesh, an unnecessary suffering. Once he’d had a son, and now he no longer did. Ian; my wee Ian… He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.

*

In the morning they woke to thunderous knocking on the door, and a baffled and protesting Simon was shoved to the side by a group of determined soldiers that hastened up the stairs.

They ignored Alex’s heated pleas that they not move an injured man, they just heaved Matthew out of his bed and dragged him down the stairs, informing Simon that they were taking their prisoner to stand court.

“He’ll hang before sundown,” the lieutenant said with a satisfied smile. “But our Commander has accorded him the right to be heard. Mayhap you should be there – he doesn’t seem to have much to say for himself. Ma’am.” He bowed in the direction of Alex before following his bound and dazed prisoner out into the street.

Chapter 29

Simon saved Matthew’s life that day. In his best coat, with his hair smoothed into place, he lined up argument after argument in the defence of his friend, who was kept on his feet only due to the two soldiers that propped him up. Matthew wasn’t there; he was lying on his back in his secret place, a grassy dell back home, and above him the sky spread a pale, washed blue. He swayed on his feet and wondered why his arm hurt, and when they took him away to lock him in for the night all he felt was relief at being allowed to lie down.

*

“You know he’s no royalist!” Simon glared at Captain Leslie. “You know it was a trumped up charge last time.”

Captain Leslie looked away, uncomfortable under Simon’s penetrating eyes.

“He was condemned to hang for treasonous activities.” This was distasteful to him; hauling an injured man from his sickbed on the whispered accusations that he, Captain Leslie, was allowing an enemy to the Commonwealth to range free. It made him sick to his stomach to see the dazed and feverish man who’d stood blinking owlishly for most of the proceedings.

“Aye, he was, and all because of his brother and his lies. It‘s Luke Graham you be wanting as an enemy to the Commonwealth, not Matthew.”

Thomas Leslie shrugged to indicate that matters were out of his hands. Simon set his mouth and followed him across the room. Leslie retreated behind his desk. He fiddled with the decorative braid on his buff coat and avoided meeting Simon’s eyes. Simon brought his hand down hard on the desk.

“He fought for the Commonwealth!” he yelled. “For four years he fought with the Horse.”

Leslie gave him a chilly look and rearranged his disturbed piles of dispatches.

”People have been known to change sides. It happens all the time.” Like himself; in his early youth an admirer of Prince Rupert – well, he still was – but now a convinced Commonwealth man.

“His sentence was commuted to gaol,” Simon said.

“Yes, but then he escaped.”

Simon threw his arms up in the air. “And why is that? May it have something to do with his brother bribing the guards to mistreat him? But no, of course not, how can we dare utter the blasphemous thought that even Commonwealth men are open to bribes – all the way, from court officers to wardens.”

Captain Leslie frowned and moved over to the door. “We’ll continue this matter tomorrow.”

“And will you pledge your honour that he’ll wake alive and well tomorrow?” Simon’s bitter comment brought Leslie up short.

“Why would you fear for his life, here?”

Simon laughed hollowly. “This has nothing to do with Matthew being a royalist, all that know him can vouch that he’s not. This is about Luke and his twitching need to have Hillview to himself.”

Leslie drew himself up tall and met Simon’s eyes straight on. “I give you my word. He lives the night.”

“I’m sure that will be a comfort to his distraught wife,” Simon said and left the room.

*

Next morning, Captain Leslie found his office crammed. Simon Melville must have done his rounds until late in the night, and turned up with several witnesses for Matthew’s staunch Commonwealth stand. Minister Crombie was as vociferous as Simon in his insistence that Matthew had been set up, calling heatedly for new trial, and in the end Captain Leslie gave in.

This was not a time to be seen as too rigid, with London in upheaval after the Army had relieved the new Protector, that incompetent son of a great father, of his charge only a fortnight back. The messenger had ridden in two days ago, shaking his head at the anxious unrest in the country. No one wanted a return to war, but as things stood now, it might well be that the late Protector, rest his soul, would see his inheritance torn to pieces in yet another bloodied feud.

Matthew was pale but coherent when they brought him in. They had put him in chains, and even from across the room the red welts round the mangled wrists were visible.

“You gave me your word no ill would come to him,” Simon said.

“He’s a convicted traitor,” Leslie replied, smoothing down his long, grey hair.

“Nay, he’s not,” Minister Crombie put in. “Haven’t you just agreed to a new trial?”

Leslie regarded these two obstinate Scots with dislike. A small snake of pettiness reared its head inside of him, and he threw Matthew a disinterested glance.

“He stays in chains.”

*

“I want to see him,” Alex said, “I have to see him.”

Simon shook his head. “I don’t know if that’s wise.”

“But his arm! I have to make sure he’s healing properly!” So that he could walk whole and healthy to the hangman’s noose. The acrid taste of bile washed through her mouth.

“I don’t think he wants you to see him like this,” Simon said.

She wheeled away and tightened her arms around herself. “But what if he’s condemned to hang? And it will all be my fault.” For the last few nights she hadn’t slept, rotating like a spitted chicken in bed, as she imagined one end worse than the other for him – her man. He’d hang; she’d die. Boom, just like that.

“Nay, it isn’t your fault,” Joan said. “It’s Luke’s fault – he’s the one who denounced him.”

Alex sank down to sit on the floor, her fingers tracing the sunbeams that filtered through the half closed shutters.

“It’s my fault,” she said, pushing the words through her drying mouth. “If I hadn’t told him about Ian, he wouldn’t have gone to find Margaret, and then Luke wouldn’t have known he was here.”

Joan knelt down beside her. “He already knew. Margaret would have told him when she got back from church.”

Alex bit down on a wobbling lip and shook her head. “I don’t think she would, for both their sakes.” She got back onto her feet and turned pleading eyes on Simon. “I have to see him. Please.”

*

Captain Leslie protested at first, but finally agreed to one visit from Graham’s wife. Alex handed over her basket to the sentry, hated seeing those dirty fingers rifle through her carefully prepared foodstuffs and the clean shirt she’d brought for Matthew. With a nod the sentry allowed her entry, and Alex held on hard to her basket as she crossed the courtyard at the heels of yet another soldier, this one not much more than a boy.

She kept her eyes on the cobbles, closing her ears to the appreciative whistles from a group of soldiers loitering in the yard. Her head jerked up when someone screamed, worried eyes scanning her surroundings for Matthew, but her shoulders slumped when she realised it wasn’t him, it was an unknown someone, and from what she could make out he was not yelling due to torture or flogging, but rather due to the inspection of his injured leg.

“It’ll have to come off,” the boy threw over his shoulder. “But he doesn’t want them to cut him.”

“I can imagine,” Alex said.

Alex stood in the door and waited for him to ask her in. The man sitting hunched on the straw pallet in front of her was a stranger, his face shadowed by lack of sleep and contained fear. He motioned for her to enter, but when she made to come over to him he raised a hurried hand, the chains clinking. She drowned a surprised exclamation in a cough. Simon hadn’t thought to tell her they’d put him in fetters. They were holding him like an animal; a pail in a corner, straw to sleep on and…her eyes went to the iron round his wrists and ankles.

“I don’t want you to come too close. I stink,” he said.

She struggled to wipe her face clean of disappointment, even managed a smile.

“I don’t mind, and I want to see how your arm is.”

“My arm’s healing. You don’t need to worry.”

“I don’t need to worry?” She shook her head. “Of course I worry, you bastard!” She went over to him, her hands hard around his face, a hasty kiss on his mouth. “And I don’t care if you stink, okay?” Which he did, badly. She studied the iron manacles and bent to place her lips against the reddened skin around his fetters. She stood and brushed his hair off his forehead.

“Are you alright? Truly?” Talk about unnecessary questions…

Matthew hid his face against her belly and exhaled when she put her arms around him.

“No, not really.”

Before she left he put a hand on her arm. “Did you buy the painting?”

“The painting? What painting? Oh…” A shiver rippled through her. “I forgot, these last few days, well, I’ve had other things to think about.”

His mouth curved into a faint smile. “Aye; so have I.”

“I can imagine,” she said, and she just had to smooth at his hair, kiss his cheek.

“You said you had to buy it.”

“It sort of calls to me,” she muttered.

“I…well, I don’t like it. It makes my innards flip. I don’t want you looking at it, you hear?”

“I won’t.”

“If you buy it, you burn it – as you said.”

“Yes, I burn it.”

*

They dragged the proceedings on over a further four days, but in the end Captain Leslie concluded that the first trial had been an apparent miscarriage of justice. In the continued absence of the key witness at that trial, Luke Graham, and in view of the multiple testimonials as to Matthew Graham’s unwavering support for the Commonwealth cause, he could not but find that Matthew Graham had been wrongfully accused and should be acquitted of any charges laid against him.

Once the chains had been struck off, he apologised, hoping Mr Graham would not hold this against him, he was only carrying out his duty. Matthew bowed and assured him that no, of course he wouldn’t. But he held his hands behind his back tightly fisted, nails sinking into his palms.

The moment he was outside he turned to Simon.

“Where is he?”

“Who?” Simon said.

Matthew shook his head. “Nay, Simon, not this time. I know you’ve locked him up somewhere – otherwise he’d have come forward – and you’ll take me there. Now.”

Simon met his eyes and with a little sigh acquiesced.

“Stand up.” Matthew cut the ropes and hauled his brother to his feet. After more than a week locked up in the abandoned stables, Luke was a reeking mess, but despite his bedraggled state he drew himself up straight, sneering at Matthew and Simon. Whatever his other faults, brother Luke did not lack for courage.