Death be Not Proud (22 page)

“It isn't so very long ago really, is it?”

He closed his eyes at the memory. “No, there are some things I cannot forget.”

Faintly through the walls of the old house, time struck inevitable hours from the long-case clock in the hall. He opened his eyes. “You must be tired.”

“I am, but sleep can wait. Let me finish telling you first.” I paused, considering whether to tell him about the defaced monument, then decided it didn't need to be said. Having your name removed from a book might be one thing, but to have your image smashed beyond recognition amounted to a violation – a declaration that you no longer belonged – so I skipped that bit. “I went to Old Manor Farm – the church of St Martin's is now part of it; it's where the Seatons lived.”

Matthew nodded slowly as he recognized the name.

“It wasn't known as that then, but I remember it well enough; we had relatives there.”

“You still do.”

He gave a gruff laugh.

“So, by the time I had been there, heard the stories and seen the window, I just about pieced together a cohesive picture. All I wanted in order for it to be conclusive, was a primary piece of documented evidence – a first-hand account.”

Matthew looked at me swiftly. “And you found it? This journal you mentioned to your grandmother?”

“Yup, I not only found it; I've been in possession of it for the last six weeks or so. Not only that, but it was the precise document that I went to Maine to find in the first place, and that my grandfather had been preoccupied with all his life. Bizarre, isn't it!”

“Certainly serendipitous. So you are saying that this journal – this piece of evidence – was at the college? But that you have it now?”

I squirmed guiltily.

“Ah, well, yes… but there is a reason for that. I… er, borrowed it. I will take it back; I was going to.”

I didn't know where to look; doing something wrong might be one thing and something I would deal with between myself and my conscience, but to have the person I loved know that, to all intents and purposes, I was a thief, was quite another.

“I take it from your reaction that the college doesn't know you have it?”

“I hope not.”

“Good. And you have it with you?”

“Ye-es, it's over there,” I indicated my desk and he rose from my bed. “But Matthew, wait.” I crawled across my bed and went to my desk and found the journal in its leather bag. He put out his hand expectantly, but I held it against me, reluctant to let it go. Consternation crossed his face.

“Emma, may I see it?”

I looked at his face, which was frowning now, but more beloved to me than ever, and then at the journal, which had led me to him. Slowly, hesitantly, I held it out to him with both hands as if offering some great treasure – a sacred part of me. He took it without looking, his expression quizzical, before glancing down and removing the book from its bag. Turning it over, he swiftly unwrapped the leather lace that bound it.

“It's the diary kept by Nathaniel Richardson. Please, Matthew… don't be upset.”

He looked at me briefly, already four centuries away. He took it over to Grandpa's chair and opened the first page.

 

For the time being I became redundant; I had served my purpose and brought the past and present together. But not only his past, but mine, and that of my grandfather before me. As I watched Matthew read, fully focused and intent on the task, I reflected on for whom I felt most scared: him – as he read the account of his betrayal and near death, of his rejection by his community, of his father's heartbreak – or me. I had found the journal and it no longer held any mystery for me, no allure. Now my
raison d'être
lay in the man sitting before me and, in transferring all my hopes to him, I wondered not only where he might lead, but whether I would want to go there.

My first thought on waking was:
He's gone.
The campaign chair sat empty and the thin light of early morning drifted through the window, across the floor, and lay on the barren bed beside me. My hand was partway in the arm of my dressing-gown when the door to my room opened.

“Good morning,” he said, walking silently towards me. I blinked to clear my sleep-ridden eyes, expecting him to have vanished when they opened.

“You're… here!” I managed to stutter.

He looked mildly surprised, and stopped short. “Yes, of course; where else would I be?”

Reaching out, I touched his hand and then curled my arms around his waist, reassured to find him real.

“Matthew, where is the journal; did you read it?” His expression clouded briefly. “I should never have let you see it.”

In response, he touched my hair with an ephemeral lightness, and undid my arms.

“You must pack; we'll need to get to the airfield by ten; do you think you can do that?” I glanced at the clock and nodded. “Do you need help?” I shook my head. “All right, then,” he said expectantly, and I climbed off my bed and went
to shower, noting the impatience – no,
excitement
– in his voice, and how his eyes danced.

 

Mum fussed me into my quilted coat, making a stoic effort to be pleased for me. “Darling, take care of yourself; we'll be thinking of you at Christmas. Phone if you can and let us know how you're getting on, won't you? Oh, and phone when you get there so we know that you've arrived safely.”

I kissed her soft cheek. “I will Mum, I'll be fine, and they don't hand out pilot's licences ad hoc, so don't worry. I'm more concerned that you look after yourself and… and spend lots of time with Nanna, won't you – for me? To make up for me not being here? And Beth – make sure she sees her too.”

Mum looked mystified. “Of course we will, darling, but you'll see her when you come home. You will be home for Easter, won't you?”

That note of anxiety again, the one which had become more evident as she felt me slipping away from her.

“I don't know at this stage; I'm taking it one day at a time.” I glanced at Matthew, but he had his back to us, looking out of the sash window by the front door. She gave a quick nod – her face still drawn tight – but she managed a smile, and we rubbed noses in our time-honoured fashion and she laughed. I took one last look around before I left for I didn't know how long.

 

Half an hour later Dad and I stood on the airfield waiting for Matthew to call me from the sleek aircraft that stood dormant on the airstrip. A generator had been wheeled away and a light mist that had risen in the night surrounded it, replacing the snow. Matthew vaulted into the plane from the ground without bothering to use the steps, his lithe body springing
without hesitation. No one else was around to see him, and my father was still engrossed in working out how to use his new mobile phone, pushing random buttons long-sightedly.

“Use your glasses, Dad; it will make it a lot easier.”

He stabbed at the cursor. “Give me a moment and I'll get used to the blessed thing. You could just call me on the landline, Emma; I really don't need a mobile, you know.”

“I want you to be able to contact me at any time, just in case.”

Defeated, he removed his gold-rimmed specs from the inside pocket of his thick tweed overcoat, perching them on the end of his nose.

“In case of what, Emma?”

“Make sure Mum spends time with Nanna; it's important.”

He regarded me over his glasses, his heavy, straight eyebrows that always made him look as if he were scowling, slightly raised in a question.

“Do you know something I don't, Em?”

I looked at him directly. “I think that she needs to, Dad; Matthew…”

His eyebrows twitched higher. “Ah, is this a professional opinion?”

“Matthew says she hasn't much time left. She's quite comfortable and happy, but he thinks she has only a matter of a few months, and Mum…”

He patted my arm. “Yes, all right – I understand what you're saying. I take it you haven't told your mother, have you? No, of course not, she would have said.”

“Nanna seems to know somehow and she doesn't want me to stay until… you know. I'm not trying to avoid being here.”

I shuffled, pushing the toe of my shoe into the thawing
turf, letting the moisture darken the leather to chestnut before drawing it out.

“I didn't think you were. Will you come back for the funeral, do you think?” For once no layer of presumption of duty lay behind his question.

“I don't know; I haven't thought about it.”

“Let's wait and see what happens first. And, Emma…”

“Yes, Dad?”

He placed his hands on my arms, gripping me lightly above my elbows as if he wanted to ensure I understood what he wanted to say.

“I hope all goes well with you – with you both. I'm just at the end of the phone if you need me and, for what's it's worth…” he paused, framing his thoughts carefully before continuing, “… you were right about me letting you go, about not trying to protect you –
smother
you, I think you said. I hope Matthew looks after you. He's not like Guy, is he? I can see that; but I'm still your father, so if you need me…”

His voice became gruff and he cleared his throat heavily, his embrace more than his customary brief affair, holding tangible affection, a warmth I wasn't used to, and I was able to return his hug with more genuine fondness than I had shown for a long time.

 

Perched by a window as the door of the aircraft shut conclusively, I watched the ghosting mist draw between us as Dad looked shrunken and forlorn standing by himself at the edge of the airfield. He raised a hand, briefly, before being lost to view altogether. Matthew crouched beside me and looked earnestly in my face.

“Do you want to stay?”

I shook my head vehemently. “No – no, it's not that; it's
just that it's the first time that I can ever remember being sorry to see him go.” I gulped and gave a watery smile. “I didn't think it would ever happen.”

A straggly end of mist-damp hair clung to my face, and he tucked it gently behind my ear.

“Miracles
do
happen,” he said softly.

I looked at the quirky upturned corners of his mouth and the love reflected in the intensity of his eyes as he smiled at me. I remembered what we had both been through and what we had overcome, and I smiled back.

“Yes,” I said, reaching out and touching the face that had turned my world upside down. “I believe they do.”

“It looks very complicated.”

The banks of controls were intimidating – the various lights, dials and switches meant absolutely nothing to me.

Matthew leaned over and checked that the straps holding me into the seat were secure.

“Like anything, you get used to them; you're my flight crew today, by the way.”

I looked at him askance. “You do want us to get back to Maine in one piece, don't you? Or is this a suicide mission?” Grinning, he lowered himself into his own seat, but didn't rise to my challenge. “Anyway, if you need a second pair of hands, how did you fly here by yourself?”

He flicked a couple of switches and the whine of the engine coming to life filled the cockpit. I felt a familiar flutter of anticipation as I readied myself for the take-off, just as I did the last time I had flown to America – before I met him, before I knew what I did now and my whole world changed.

“Strictly, a jet like this should be crewed by at least two, but I can fly it by myself if I have to in the event of an emergency; it's one of the reasons I bought it. However,” he went on before I could say anything, “the FAA would have me grounded and on charges if they caught me, so today – for
the sake of appearances – you are my co-pilot.”

Somehow I didn't think anyone would mistake me for a pilot; I knew as much about aircraft as my father did about history.

Matthew ran what I supposed must be pre-flight checks. He called the control tower for clearance to taxi to the runway, and the plane began to move slowly past the other aircraft slumbering around the apron of the airfield. He seemed completely at ease with the controls.

“How long have you been flying? You didn't tell Dad yesterday, I noticed, and don't say ‘Quite a while', because that won't wash.”

His eyebrows lifted in a show of surprise. “I wouldn't dream of it, although it has been a long time in aviation terms. Hang on, I need clearance for take-off.”

He spoke into the headset and a distant voice answered him. The engines changed note, rising in pitch as the plane picked up speed.

“I started flying before the war – the First World War, that would be. I liked the speed and the freedom of it. I found it exhilarating – liberating – after all those years spent anchored to the ground. It was also a practical service I could offer at the outset – until they needed more doctors, that is.”

The ground gave way beneath us, the buildings and aircraft becoming spectral shapes under the shrouding mist. He gave a low chuckle. “You can let go now.”

I had been unconsciously gripping the sides of the leather seat, my fingers almost as white as the cream upholstery, as the plane soared into the sky. Mist blanketed the windshield in swathes of droplets. I could only just make out denser shapes on the ground that must have been the trees edging the fields we passed on the way to the airfield.

“How can you see?” I squeaked.

“That's what these instruments are for,” he indicated in front of him. “We'll be above this in a minute; it's only low cloud.”

Almost as he spoke, the mist thinned, brightened and then broke as we climbed into untroubled skies above the now obscured Lincolnshire landscape. The plane rose smoothly in a shallow turn, taking flight from the glare of the pursuing sun.

“I see what you mean,” I murmured.

“About?”

“About the sense of freedom up here; it's beautiful.” I resumed the previous topic. “So, if you flew at the outbreak of the war, who were you flying for if the States didn't join until 1917?”

“For the French initially; they didn't ask too many questions about who I was, or where I came from. Then when the US entered the war, I joined them, but by then I was of more use in the field hospitals. The gas didn't affect me, so I could get to the wounded more quickly than other medics.”

“Surely people noticed?”

“No – in the conditions we were working in the men were either too far gone or too grateful for being helped to make anything of it. If anyone did say anything, they just put it down to my good luck, or shell shock, or a miracle, and left it at that.”

In my mind's eye, Matthew's ever-young form bent over the broken bodies of the wounded and dying amid the mashed fields of the Western Front. Even through the mustard-yellow gas, his rich flaxen hair must have stood out like some vestige of hope. Then I recalled the whispered asides, the hushing looks, whenever war was mentioned at home.

“My grandfather was badly injured in the Second World
War; he didn't speak about it much, but it must have been terrible. If you can feel people's pain, how did you cope?”

“There was so much pain that I couldn't screen it all out and yes, it did hurt, but it didn't kill me or leave me with lifelong injuries, as it did them. The suffering of those men was indescribable.”

“As in all the wars you have witnessed?” I said softly, guessing – although he had not said and I did not ask – that he had seen many in his 400 years of life. A shadow passed across his face.

“Indeed,” he said. “That is one aspect of war that never changes.”

I studied him in the moments it took for him to check the instrument panel and make adjustments, and wondered what he had seen, what he had felt, because no evidence lay in the untroubled contours of his face; only in the telltale tension of his eyes and mouth did it show.

“When you say the gas didn't affect you, can anything harm you?”

“Physically? Nothing has yet – well, it can – but I heal almost instantaneously. You saw that when the bear attacked, or at least you didn't, which proves the point. I wouldn't like to test the theory as far as decapitation goes, however, although I've come close a couple of times.” Without thinking, he had rubbed the back of his neck and now, conscious of the act, seemed to find the idea faintly amusing. “No indeed,” he said philosophically; “I can't see a way back from
that
.”

My sense of humour failed me at this point, his life no laughing matter.

“And emotionally, Matthew?”

Slowly, he lowered his hand, resting it on the flight controls.

“Ah, well, that's another matter – there doesn't seem to be a cure for the heart.”

There wasn't much that could be said after that, and we fell silent as I tried to imagine what he must have witnessed over his lifetime, and as he tried to forget.

The plane gradually reached altitude above the sunlit cloud. He broke the silence a few minutes later.

“We're just leaving the mainland, Emma, if you want to say goodbye.”

I shuddered. “Don't say that, it makes it sound so final.”

Far below us through broken cloud, the coast formed a corrugated line between the blue-grey of the sea and the brown-patched land. Matthew took possession of my hand and held it beneath his with his strong fingers laced between mine.

“Why do you need your own plane? Or is it that you like the speed of it?”

“If I had a preference, I would fly a glider; it's not as fast but there is a greater sense of being closer to the elements – and to God.” I looked at him swiftly, but he kept his eyes on the instrument panel in front of him. “I wanted something that could cope with transoceanic crossings, could manage on a short airstrip, was fast – and could take my family if need be.”

“Why might that be necessary?” I asked quietly. He didn't reply, and at first I thought he hadn't heard me, except that his hand had tensed uncomfortably over mine.

“I have spent all my life – my existence – trying to avoid discovery, Emma. When I lived on my own, only my liberty was at stake, although what I might have been put through by whatever regime was in power at the time, I will leave to your imagination.” I lacked neither imagination nor knowledge, and the combination of the two sent me into a cold sweat.
“But now I have a family to consider, and whatever happens to me will affect them. I can never,
ever
risk their welfare or their happiness – not for me, not for anyone.”

Despite the frisson his words evoked, my interest prickled at the mention of his elusive family, about whom I knew virtually nothing. In the short time we had known each other, and before I discovered his true identity, he mentioned them rarely, and all I knew was the importance they held for him.

“Your family? Ellie, Harry and Joel aren't your niece and nephews, are they?”

The engines hummed in a soothing monotone, and the time it took for Matthew to reply confirmed my suspicions.

Finally, “No, they're not.”

I nodded. “I thought they must be your children, but you couldn't tell me before because I would have known you are older than you appear. But that's what you are doing by telling me, isn't it? Risking them? Surely every additional person who knows about you puts you and – by association – your family at risk?”

His hand relaxed again and he squeezed mine lightly so that our intertwined fingers were one.

“I don't think so, and if I didn't tell you, would that have stopped you searching and discovering for yourself? If I had denied it, would you have believed me?”

“Probably not, no.”

“The only way I could have prevented you from knowing, Emma, is to have avoided you from the start – not to have talked to you, not to have wanted you – and I'm too selfish to have done that. I had almost persuaded myself that I didn't need you, and that there was no connection between us. I told myself that you preferred Sam…” I tried to jerk my hand away, appalled, but he held on to it, “… yes,
Sam
– and
that would have been a safer option for us all. But I would have had to let you die the night of the attack, and I couldn't let that happen. By that time it was too late anyway.”

This sudden confession had my head spinning.

“I don't understand; what are you saying?”

“The night of the All Saints' dinner, I had a call from… somewhere, and I had to leave.”

“I remember.”

“If I stayed – if I had been there – I could have protected you from Staahl…”

“How? And anyway, you weren't to know.”

“Yes, but that's just it, I
did
know, Emma, or at least I thought it possible. You remember the attack on the girl on campus, and the murder of the woman in town?” I nodded. “I suspected they were carried out by the same person but I had no proof. I was aware Staahl had been watching you for some time. We kept an eye on you – two when we could.”

“We? You keep saying ‘we'; who do you mean?”

“Members of my family: Joel, if he was on leave; sometimes Ellie; and Harry and Dan when they could.”

That explained why Harry turned up at the diner, unexpected but oh, so welcome, the night Staahl followed me there. Then I had believed Harry to be Matthew's nephew. Now I tried to make sense of the relationships.

“Daniel's not your brother, is he? And Henry's not
your
father?”

“No – but that doesn't matter, Emma; what matters is that I knew and I was responsible for letting Staahl get to you when I should have prevented it. If I hadn't come back that night you would have died, and I and my family would be safe. But I couldn't leave you – I couldn't just let you die – and I had to make the choice. And once I made it…” He suddenly
hit the control column in front of him and the plane banked sharply to the left. “I'm a fool if I thought I hadn't made it the first moment I met you!”

I clutched at the edge of my seat again, but already the plane had been smoothly brought back under his control. He switched to autopilot, pressed his palms to his forehead, and exhaled. After a moment in which I waited to hear him breathe, he took his hands from his head, and spoke again.

“Sorry. I'm sorry about everything. I hadn't meant to say anything until we were back in the States; it's all such a mess.”

His fingers flexed open like a flick-knife then shut tight, and he stared out of the side of the cockpit into the empty sky. I was still struggling to get my head around what he had said.

“You knew about Staahl but you didn't tell me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I thought that I could protect you until such time as I gathered enough evidence to get him arrested and charged. If I had told you, you would have been alarmed without being able to do anything about it, and you would have started asking questions about my involvement.”

“Matthew, I already knew that Staahl was following me; I was already frightened.”

“Yes, I'm sorry.”

“And as for you, I tried not to be interested but I felt drawn to you. You are right, of course – the only way you could have stopped me from being
interested
in you would be to have let me die, then you wouldn't have had a problem.”

“And I wouldn't have you.”

“And you and your family wouldn't be in danger of discovery.”

“And I wouldn't have you,” he repeated.

I pressed the point. “Am I really worth it? All this nonsense when you could have had a more peaceful life?”

He fixed indigo eyes on mine. “I could ask the same thing.”

I blinked as sharp sunlight reflected off a metal facia, breaking the bond.

“I think,” I said slowly, “that if I couldn't be with you, you might as well have left me to die.”

He smiled grimly. “You know I couldn't have done that, don't you? I couldn't have left you then – I can't leave you now. No matter what happens, I'm tied to you.”

In any other circumstance or during another conversation, to hear him speak of such commitment would have had me whooping in paroxysms of delight. Now, however, I detected an undercurrent to those words that sent a tremor of apprehension through me.

“How much do your family know? Do they understand the danger they could be in?”