A Rip in the Veil (43 page)

“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.

*

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.