Death be Not Proud (14 page)

Ten days later, he recorded:

That was interesting. It told me four things: that Matthew had a fever, that he lay in some kind of coma and that, thirteen days after he had been severely injured, his wound had healed. The final piece of information puzzled me, though; it sounded as if bloodletting had been resorted to as the standard medical practice of the time, but the reference to “small blood”? I deduced that meant only a
little
blood had been drained, which seemed a good thing too, given the weakened state of
his body. But I questioned my interpretation when almost three weeks later, Nathaniel wrote:

This put a different slant on things. “Small blood” might have indeed meant that little was taken, but from this later entry, it sounded as if it wasn't for the want of trying. Matthew had not bled when cut and his father would not let anyone attempt to bleed him again. Why?

But a day later, a single entry:

So, five or so weeks after being stabbed through the heart, Matthew Lynes woke up and spoke to his father. Miracles happen and Richardson obviously thought this was Divine intervention, yet I detected an element in the words he used to record Matthew's recovery that made me wonder if he thought otherwise. I sat back against the hard vertical ribs of the iron bedstead and assessed the information gleaned so far.

OK, so I had almost come to terms with the fact that the Matthew Lynes I met in the States was the same Matthew Lynes recorded as cheating death almost 400 years earlier. I found it a bit of a struggle to get my head around it, but
there you go, so be it. Whatever had happened to allow this freak of nature to occur, I couldn't begin to pretend this was normal – although I shied away from using the term “freak” in relation to the man I loved. It would appear that what happened must have been the result of the life-threatening injury he received at the hands of his uncle. The question being,
what
? I mean, what had happened – physically – to have altered his state? At this point it would have been to my advantage to have been a scientist rather than a historian. Then again, that was exactly what Matthew was, and that – patently – was no coincidence.

I yelped as cramp shot through my right leg and I leapt up, tipping my plate over on the bed, strewing cake and crumbs with it. I took it as a sign that my body required some exercise to pump oxygen into my blood, so I took to striding around the confines of my bedroom. The heart circulates blood around the body. Cut the body and it will bleed. It has to bleed, or the heart has stopped and it is no longer living. Matthew didn't bleed, but nor was he dead. What did that make him then – alive?

I did a few star jumps, trying not to shake the floor too much – although, as my watch read a quarter to three in the morning, I hoped my parents wouldn't be awake to hear the floorboards squeak under the pressure of my pounding feet. I stopped as my ribs protested, and took to flexing each leg in turn instead. A sudden creak from behind had me spinning around in horror. I stifled a scream as the door opened, already beginning to cower as Staahl's grey form stood in the doorway of my mind's eye. But nothing appeared except the cat, sublimely oblivious to the rank terror he had momentarily caused. He jumped onto my bed, making directly for the upturned plate.

“No you don't, Tibs, you piglet,” I said affectionately,
distracting him by stroking his long back while I rescued the plate. I nibbled the tart Dundee cake. I never understood why Dad favoured it; it must be something to do with growing old – an acquired taste, as Nanna would say. I pictured my father sitting alone in the potting shed in his own dark world, drifting, and ached for him – for the unrecognized sacrifice he had made for his daughter, and for her rejection of him. Tiberius rolled onto his back in a portly streak of contentment, catching the warm air from the fan-heater. I pulled myself back from reality and faced the past again for fear the present would engulf me.

I turned the next few pages. A gap in the entries covered a number of months, then there were a few concerning a minor dispute over a field boundary in late October, and finally there was one in November, which intrigued me:

I read the entry again, slowly this time, but there could be no mistaking what Richardson had written. I remembered seeing Matthew pick up the ember in his bare hand when he thought I slept. What reason did he give the watching men when he emerged, unscathed, from the burning barn? Mrs Seaton said the stories told of how Matthew increasingly put himself in danger. But it had also been said that he challenged God, and that his survival was more to do with
being the servant of the devil than the child of the Almighty. I read on, nervously.

The following spring, Nathaniel recounted a series of events:

So here I found a reference to Matthew's strength. Richardson used the term “Master” rather than “young Master”. I wondered whether that reflected a change in the way he regarded Matthew, or whether Matthew had indeed taken on a more prominent role in the running of the estate, or whether perhaps – more simply – Nathaniel made a mistake. Next:

I shuddered, the pattern of persecution so familiar that I could have written it myself. I wondered what happened
to the poor woman, what happened to Matthew himself? I didn't need to read much further to find out. After a gap of a few weeks, an entry brought me to the brink of tears:

The final mention of Matthew came one full year after William had betrayed the family so irrevocably:

Gut instinct – it worked every time.

The answer was so blindingly obvious as to be untrue. That it might be true, inconceivable. The evidence lay before me in the pages of the journal I had searched for, and my grandfather had sought before me. Two unrelated matters: one of the head, one of the heart, drawn together in time and space by an anomaly – by a freak of nature – the very existence of whom ran contrary to all known laws of science. At what point would I wake from this protracted dream?
When would I wake up to reality? When would I reject the reality presented to me? When would I
run
?

I put the journal down and hung my head, slow tears seeping through my closed eyes as I felt the burden of loss in the relentless beating of my heart. I bent my legs, cradling them in my arms. I did not know what Richardson meant by “fell from life” – whether he spoke metaphorically or physically – but I definitely knew how I would react if someone I loved as much as I did Matthew had been lost to me.

I stared blankly towards the side of the room where the plain ceiling met the palely sprigged wallpaper at the edge of the eaves. My desk sat under the eaves, and under my desk, a printer.

 

The first photograph that fed through the printer showed the monument to the Lynes family; the second, the memorial window. Thrumming my fingers on the desk, I surveyed them critically, then selected the second one. Barely hesitating, I dragged my chair over to the corner cupboard, feeling around the top shelf with a blind hand and stitches pulling, until I found the shoebox in which I kept my odds and ends. Among the Mickey Mouse key ring my best friend had given me when we were seven, and the school report I kept hidden from my father and told him was lost, I found a partly used pack of greetings cards in their flimsy plastic film. The front of each card bore an identical picture of St Mary's Church, its towering spire piercing an intensely blue sky. I checked the back of the card: “St Mary's Church, Stamford, Lincolnshire.” Plenty enough information. The photograph of the Lynes window just fitted inside and I carefully glued it in place, but I didn't know what to write; I didn't know how I could put into words what I knew. Whatever I wanted to say sounded vapid.

“I need some help here,” I said to the ether. From where he lay on the bed like an elongated sausage, Tiberius purred, a deep affirming noise that made his whole body vibrate. I arranged Matthew's scarf as a narrow shawl around my shoulders. My hand slipped to the familiar shape of the cross on its gold chain and I pulled it free of my jumper, mumbling it between my lips, the metal warm and comforting.

“Thank you,” I whispered, as the wind found a way into my room and with it, the words I would use.

From the list of quotes I had extracted from the journal, I copied part of one onto the blank side of the card, hoping my cold, stiff fingers wouldn't render it illegible:

Primary evidence. Were anyone else to read the card, it would be meaningless; only Matthew would understand the reference. I waited for the ink to dry before closing it, kissing it once and placing it in its envelope. On the front I wrote:

Hesitating, I realized that I didn't know how to address him properly. In Britain, as a surgeon, he would have been plain “Mr”; then I thought that, given what I had written inside, in all likelihood he wouldn't care.

I finished addressing the envelope and fished in my bag for some stamps, sticking on a half-dozen to make sure it would get there and not get stuck in some forsaken corner of a post office for lack of postage. I flipped the card against the back of
my hand before deciding that I couldn't risk waiting to post it in case – in the cold light of day – I changed my mind.

 

At 5.40 in the morning, the streets of Stamford were just beginning to hum with the first commuters. The freshening wind blew away the fumes of the few vehicles, lifting the clean, green scent of the Meadows from the riverbank. I took a deep breath as I stood in front of the narrow mouth of the red metal post box, touching my lips to his name on the envelope before quickly posting it and hearing its hollow echo as it hit the base of the empty box.

 

The house was as quiet on my return as when I left it, bar the rhythmic resonance of the clock marking time by the stairs. I reached the broad landing of the first floor when I noticed my father. He stood in the doorway to their bedroom, his thick, dark-red dressing-gown a zone of colour against the white-painted door.

“I'm sorry, did I wake you?” I whispered.

He shook his head. “I was already awake and I…” he stopped, his hesitancy uncharacteristic, “… and I didn't want you coming home to a dark house.”

I expected him to ask me where I'd been, but he just turned and went back into his room. He shut the door quietly before I had time to thank him for turning on the light.

 

My mother woke me with a cup of tea at eight. I had managed to kick off my shoes as I crawled into bed, and I slept in my coat with my blue rug pulled around me. I felt revolting and probably looked worse.

“I'm not going to ask you why you're sleeping in your clothes, as I'm sure you have a perfectly logical explanation;
however, I don't want you to miss your appointment at the hospital, which I know you haven't forgotten.”

I managed a bleary, blank look and she tutted.

“It's ‘C' day, Emma, remember?”

“Umm…”

“Your cast, darling, it's being removed. And your stitches. Your appointment's at ten.”

I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I moved my hand protectively over my stitched arm; whatever the reason for them, it had been Matthew who put them there, a tangible link to him sewn into me – a part of him I felt suddenly reluctant to let go. My mother squeezed my hand.