“I’ll stand,” Matthew said. He was uncomfortable being here and had not liked the avid interest in the face of the guard who’d let him in. Something was afoot, and after a quick perusal of the little room, Matthew decided to go very canny. There was something awry in the wainscoting, a slight misalignment that had him suspecting this interview was being monitored.
“Suit yourself.” Oliver sat down.
“What happened to your arm?” Matthew asked, indicating the limb Oliver was cradling.
Oliver raised red-rimmed eyes in his direction. “It broke – arms do that when they’re bent the wrong way.”
Aye, they did, and it was right painful, he’d assume.
“Why did you want to see me?” Matthew leaned back against the wall. Oliver didn’t reply, studying Matthew intently. The coat, the white lace at collar and cuff, the well-polished shoes and even the hat, black and discreetly decorated with a dark blue band, were scrutinised.
“One could think you were going to a wedding, not a hanging,” Oliver said, attempting a laugh.
“A festive occasion in any case,” Matthew retorted with an edge.
Oliver yanked at his shirt and muttered something about everything being too big. Matthew looked him over; his former friend had shrunk, and the well-tailored coat hung like sacking on his bony shoulders.
“It must be easy,” Oliver said. “To live in such assurance that you lead a righteous life.”
“Assurance? Nay, Oliver, not that. But I try.”
Oliver laughed hoarsely. “Try? To you the world was always very much black and white. Some things were right, others wrong, and there was never any doubt as to what was what. To most of us life is a jumble of grey, an endless succession of compromises between ideals we once strived for and the sordidness of reality.”
“It’s grey for me too, but there are some things I’d never do. Betray a former friend, for example, or kill a defenceless farmer and his wife.” He spat to the side.
“So you have never killed wrongfully?” Oliver laughed in disbelief. “And the lieutenant you strung up in the crossroads oak?”
Matthew looked at him, shaking his head from side to side – a far too obvious trap.
“Aye, I’ve killed, and mayhap sometimes wrongfully, but it was done in battle, at war.” Which neatly covered the lieutenant and the two soldiers on the fell as well.
“And the night you blew up the munitions shed?” Oliver demanded. “What then? You could have killed hundreds of men!”
“Not me; I was ill at the time,” Matthew said, “with smallpox.”
“From which you recuperated in a miraculously short time, with not one mark on you,” Oliver said with heavy sarcasm.
“I prayed and God listened,” Matthew said.
“Yes, I suppose you think he always listens to you – to you and your good friend Sandy Peden.” Oliver sat forward, glaring at him.
“Not always, no. If he did, Tom Brown wouldn’t be dead.”
“Oh, no? And how would you have dealt with him, informer that he was?”
“Informer? Tom?” Matthew was quite satisfied with how surprised he sounded.
Oliver gave him a long look, slumped and stared down at his right hand, turning it this way and that.
“I had to,” he said. “I stood to lose everything unless I… Oh God, and now my son, my Francis…” He threw a beseeching look at Matthew. “You understand, don’t you?”
“And my children? My wife? My life?”
“Your life?” A spark of the old Oliver flashed over his face. “Don’t give me that. You’re guilty as sin when it comes to helping the damned preachers and we both know it. Admit it, man, you’ve been helping them all along.”
“I have?” Matthew raised his brows.
The animation left Olive as quickly as it had surged. “Will you be there tomorrow?”
Matthew sighed deeply.
“Please?” Oliver said. “There’s no one else up here that knew me as I once was, is there?” He gave Matthew a quick look, mouth twisting into a little smile. “I dare say you’ve regretted it often lately, the night you pulled me out of the fire all those years ago.”
“Aye, there have been such moments,” Matthew said, “but at the time…”
“You couldn’t have acted differently. I know. And had it been you that had been thrown into the blaze, I’d have saved you.”
“Aye,” Matthew nodded, and for an instant they shared a genuine smile.
“So many years ago,” Oliver sighed. “So will you? Be there tomorrow?”
“I’ll be there.”
Oliver just nodded. He pressed a hand to his belly, grimaced. “Go,” he said, “and if you find it in you, I suspect my soul could do with a prayer or two.”
Matthew produced a large flask and stood it on the floor. “Brandy, I recall you never took to whisky.”
“You think I need it?”
“I would,” Matthew said, bowed and left.
He found Simon waiting just outside, a worried look on his face.
“What?” Matthew asked, eyeing the two guards standing to the side.
“A word, Mr Graham?” The nasal voice came from somewhere behind him, and Matthew turned to face the commanding officer of the Ayr garrison, a Major Stapleton as he recalled it.
“About what?” Matthew asked.
“This and that,” the major said, gesturing in the direction of the closest building. The guards closed in on them, indicating this was not an invitation, this was an order. “I have a witness,” the major threw over his shoulder as he preceded Matthew across the yard.
“A witness?” Matthew had to struggle to sound unconcerned. Had they mayhap arrested Peter, or one of the other two, beaten the truth out of them as to what happened the night half of the garrison yard was reduced to blackened timbers and ashes?
“Yes, a man. He claims he saw you strike down those two soldiers on the moor – in cold blood, he says, and from the back.”
Matthew almost laughed with relief. As he recalled it, no one had been close enough to see him, and as to him killing the two soldiers from behind, well, that was a blatant lie, so whoever had come forward had not been there.
“Me? I was fishing with my son.”
“So you say, so you say.” The major clasped his hands behind his back. “But then you would say that. Wyndham is convinced you’re involved.”
“Aye, but then he insists I murdered Tom Brown – a remarkable feat conducted over several miles, seeing as I was here at the time of the poor man’s death.”
“Hmm,” the major said. He entered a small room, with Matthew and Simon following behind. “These are serious accusations,” the major went on, sitting down behind a narrow desk. Matthew and Simon remained on their feet in front of him.
“Oh aye; but whoever that has come forth is lying.”
“Really?” the major drawled. “And can you prove that?”
“No more than he can prove he saw me.”
“You think?” the major smirked. He clapped his hands, and a man was escorted into the room.
“I’ll handle this,” Simon said in an undertone to Matthew.
“Well?” the major said to the moon faced creature standing before them.
The man took his time. He tilted his head this way and that, walked back and forth, hemmed and hawed. For a long time he stood before them, looking Matthew up and down. Finally the major cleared his throat.
“Is it him?” he said.
The man threw Matthew a triumphant look and nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes, this is the man I saw on the moor. He stabbed them in the back, he did!”
The major grinned, at which point Simon stepped forward.
“I am Matthew Graham.”
It could have been amusing, if Matthew hadn’t been so angered. He wanted to throttle the life out of this lying wee Englishman.
The man did a double take. “Matthew Graham?” He inhaled, licked his lips. “And as I said, it was you I saw on the moor! You!” He stabbed his finger in the direction of Simon. “It is men like you, Graham, that cost all of us in strife and suffering!”
“Oh aye? All the way down in England?” Simon inquired, and the man and the major went blood red. Simon clapped his hat on his head, bowed at the major. “I assume this farce is over.” He stood on his toes, swaying towards the major, for all the world like a top on the point of overbalancing. “It would be foolish to assume that all Scotsmen are Presbyterian hotheads with no connections whatsoever. I dare say my Lord Lauderdale will not be entertained when I recount this little matter to him.”
“This has nothing to do with me,” the major said. “It was him who came to us, him that told us he had witnessed the slaying of our two comrades.” He waved his hands at the guards. “Take him away and have him flogged.”
“Me?” the false witness squeaked.
“You,” the major said, “for lying. Forty lashes, I think.” He stood, mouth like a narrow spout, and watched the man be dragged away before turning to face Matthew. “I remain convinced that you were involved, Graham, and I fully believe you to be an active supporter of all these accursed preachers, foremost among them that Peden. And one day…” He stopped to draw breath. “Well one day I’ll apprehend you. All the time I’ll be watching you; keep that in mind.” He bowed slightly in the direction of Simon. “And no matter how often you sup with Lauderdale, you’ll not save him then.”
Matthew took a huge gulp of air once they were outside.
“Luke,” he said, “that was Luke’s handiwork.”
“Or Wyndham’s,” Simon said. “Although that does seem unlikely given his present constrained circumstances.” He brushed at his coat, frowned and scraped at something with his nail.
“Do you?” Matthew asked.
“Hmm?”
“Sup with Lauderdale.”
Simon straightened up and grinned. “Not as such. It may be we’ve been in the same inn once or twice – but no need to tell the major that.”
“Quite the threat.” Matthew studied his brother-in-law gloomily. He had no illusions regarding the recent lack of inspections. Now that Captain Howard had resigned there would be a new energetic officer in charge and anyone fingered as a Covenanter would find his every move perused in detail – as the major had so kindly pointed out. Men had been dragged from their homes and beaten to an inch of their lives just for reading their bibles and he had problems keeping his temper in check; last time it burst from him it had cost him his daughter.
Simon listened to his little diatribe in silence, light eyes never leaving him. He cleared his throat, cleared it again.
“You have to leave; it breaks my heart to say thus, but you must go. It’s but a matter of time before they trap you.”
Matthew shook his head in denial. This was his home and he wouldn’t be run off by a band of cut throat soldiers; soon enough it would all calm down.
“Nay, Matthew, it won’t.”
Matthew scowled, and Simon held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture before suggesting they repair to the inn and get royally drunk.
He woke to a horrible headache and a throat that felt as if someone had tipped buckets of ash into it. Beside him Simon snored heavily, fully dressed, and a bleary inspection confirmed that Matthew himself was still in his coat and shoes. He groaned as he sat up, running his tongue over his coated teeth. It was years since he’d drunk so much and he leaned his face into his hands, trying to stop the spinning. Simon started awake at his movements, coughed once or twice and rolled out of bed, looking disturbingly sprightly.
“Not even your lovesick wife would find you attractive today,” he teased.
“Seeing as my cock is too drunk to even attempt to stand, even less find its way out of my breeches, that doesn’t matter greatly,” Matthew mumbled. He stood up carefully, supporting himself against the bedpost. “Ah, Jesus.” He turned itching eyes in the direction of Simon. “We best make haste; he hangs soon.”
Simon looked disgruntled, but nodded, leading the way down the narrow stairs.
“That wasn’t pretty,” Simon commented once they were safely away from Cumnock. Neither of them had said a word throughout the hanging, nor after. Matthew had thrown up on his way to the stable, not certain if it was an effect of all the drink or if it was the spectacle of a gibbering, pleading Oliver, crying that he was sorry, so sorry, but please, no, that had so turned his stomach. They’d had to drag him over to the noose, and despite his fine clothes and his newly shaved face Oliver had died without a shred of dignity.
“He deserved it,” Simon said.
“Aye, but it doesn’t help much, does it?”
Matthew sank into a deep sullen silence, mulling over not only Oliver’s death but also what Simon had said yesterday. Leave or be destroyed… Despite all of him protesting, deep down he knew Simon was right, but he just couldn’t bear it, sickening inside at the thought of leaving his home. Hillview thudded through his bloodstream, lived in his flesh, and he couldn’t envision himself anywhere else. How would he survive without his woods, his fields surrounding him? Still; mayhap he should write a letter to Thomas Leslie, just in case. He glared at nothing in particular and kicked Ham into a trot.
The black mood lifted the moment he saw Alex. She was standing some way off when he rode in, raising her hand in a little wave before retreating into the shadows of the trees. He barely greeted Joan and his sons, eyes fixed on the spot where she’d disappeared.
“Here,” he said to Mark, taking off his coat and hat. “Carry this inside for me.” He handed Ham’s reins to Ian. “You take care of the horse.” And then his legs were carrying him towards his wife, all of him stirring with longing for her.
Matthew undid his shirt while he walked, stopped to kick off shoes and peel off stockings, leaving them by a tree as he continued barefoot up the slope. He ran a hand through his hair and in his breeches his member had definitely overcome any lingering effects of last night’s heavy drinking, flexing against the constraining cloth. Nine years he’d known her, bedded her almost as long, and still there were moments like this when it was all startlingly new again, when his ears filled with the sound of his pulse and his breathing grew loud and irregular with need.
He had no idea where she was, but he walked on in the general direction of the mill. There was a sudden flash of white and he came to a standstill only yards from where she was standing, eyes huge, mouth slightly open. From here he could see she was trembling, and knew it was for him.