Breath of Peace (eBook)

Chapter
Two

Woken by his incoherent cries, groggy with sleep, only half aware of anything, Madeleine groped under the blankets to make some kind of reassuring contact with her gasping, twitching husband. He sounded afraid. Tangled in another bad dream. She judged it not far off dawn by the smell of the air and the direction of the moonlight, but she certainly didn’t feel ready for the morning just yet.

She turned toward him, putting her arm around him, raising herself to kiss his forehead. ‘Hush,’ she murmured patiently, barely awake herself. ‘Hush, my love. Come now, wake up. It’s all right. Wake up. Come on. William. Wake up.’

Sudden and startling, his eyes opened and she looked into their dazed and frightened depths of darkness. ‘William, it’s me – Madeleine.’

One more breath sucked in, shuddering and terrified, then calm gradually returned. She could still feel his heart pounding, though. She lay back in the warm nest moulded to her body alongside him, wondering how he might receive it if she asked what the dream had been. This happened often. He turned aside all probing, saying either that he couldn’t remember or that he didn’t want to.

He rolled over to face her.

‘Will you hold me?’ His voice shook, sounding as pathetic as a lost child. She opened her arms and he crept into the refuge of her embrace.

‘William, you’re trembling,’ she said, cradling him to her. ‘Whatever was it? What are these nightmares about? Is it from that fire you were caught in at St Dunstan’s, or the men who attacked you? What?’

She felt the tension of his hesitation, the breathing in to speak, then letting it go, then breathing in again, and he finally mumbled: ‘It was just a memory. Sometimes they come back.’

‘Of?’ she prompted, and he burrowed in closer.

‘My father.’ The words blurred indistinct against her neck, and she pulled back a little so she could see and hear him, which he resisted, clinging to her.

‘Tell me,’ she prompted, her voice soothing and kind, as if she spoke to a small child. Something in her wondered if that was indeed what she was speaking to.

She waited a long time while he brought the words up from some locked place in his soul, and dragged them reluctant into the dim half-light of the dawn. Even that felt like too much exposure.

‘I was about… about fourteen I think, and I can’t for the life of me remember what insolence of mine had roused him so. It… it never had to be much… just the look on my face… the wrong tone of voice… anything. There was just something about me that drove him crazy at times. He’d be bellowing at me to take that brazen look off my face, but I never knew… I mean I hadn’t realized… well, anyway…I remember only standing in the sunlight with the open door behind me, and his face turning dark red with rage as he rose from his seat at the table. I turned to run, but my mother had come in behind, and she grabbed me for him. I tried to struggle free, and I wish I’d fought harder. He took hold of my hair and wrenched me round to face him. He’d unbuckled his belt while I was struggling to get free of my mother’s grip, and he held it dangling in his other hand as he yanked my head back and roared in my face: “You saucy, impudent knave! By the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll not want to speak at all!”

‘I knew it would be true… It was… By the time he’d done I was nothing but a trodden clot of seeping welts, lying half-conscious in a puddle of my own urine… and all I wanted was to get out of my body somehow, get out of my life, find a way to escape it… Then in the end I did. I got free of them. But it follows me sometimes, comes back to stalk my dreams.’

Madeleine stroked his hair, making room in her soul for the awfulness, wondering if there was nothing human nature would not stoop to. His trembling had almost stopped.

‘That’s why…’ he said then, ‘that’s why I couldn’t have you slap my face when I was so rude to you yesterday. I know how insulting it was, what I said – I know it. I did fully deserve to have my face slapped – but I can’t permit it. It just makes me see red. I’ve had enough of it. I know I’m obnoxious and offensive and all of that, and I realize how nasty I can be… and when I think back on it after, I’m always ashamed of myself. But I… I cannot allow you to raise a hand against me, because I just won’t have that any more. If you…’ He moved his head against her shoulder, nuzzling his face into her warmth. When he spoke again his voice was so muffled she had to strain to make out his words. ‘If you could manage to be patient with me when I speak so rude and hurtful, I’ll see it for myself and apologize when I can get myself to it.’ He turned his face a little and his words came low but clearer. ‘I’m sorry now, Madeleine, sorry that I ever had anything to say so spiteful and unfair that you wanted to slap me. I’m truly sorry. It’s no wonder you flared up at me. Can you… have you forgiven me?’

‘Forgiven you “witch” or “bitch”?’ The recollection still stung. He had apologized more than once, and Madeleine felt she ought to be able to leave it alone now, but she found the injury hurt still as she uncovered it. She knew it didn’t help to rub his nose in the recollection of what he’d said, and she felt guilty not to capitulate more generously in the wake of the nightmares that harrowed his sleep; but the hit still felt sore.

He lay silent for a few moments. She wondered if this would be the start of another row.

‘I know,’ he mumbled. ‘I know. It’s just how I am. You aren’t the only person who found me too offensive to bear. I don’t know what to do except say I’m sorry. I can’t see any way to set it right. Please, Madeleine.’

‘Did you not mean it, then – what you said?’

Again he was silent. ‘There is nothing good in this,’ he eventually whispered. ‘I’m begging you to let it go.’

‘Oh. So you did mean it.’

‘Madeleine… please… well, all right then, yes I meant it. But I’m still sorry I said it. It didn’t help.’

She took a deep breath. ‘Well then, here’s the thing. It still feels bad that you could say that or think it, but when I look back on what passed between us, I have to admit it – you had some cause. And I think I can put up with the occasional laceration to my soul if you can live with my ugly temper and my unsubmissive spirit. I don’t expect to be a wife a man could be proud of anytime soon. What I’m saying is, I’m sorry too.’

He lifted his face to look at her, raised himself up on his elbow, brought his hand to her cheek, let his fingertips stray to trace her hairline, her eyebrows, her lips. Serious and tender, his gaze took in every feature, adoring her.

‘I am proud of you. I… um, I’m not sure it’s morally improving to your character to admit this, but I just worship the ground you walk on.’

Softly, he kissed her cheek. ‘Madeleine… look… I haven’t washed, or rinsed my teeth, and I’m all frowsty from a night’s sleep. But if you don’t mind it, I believe there’s a God-given way to bring back some of the tenderness we let ourselves lose so casually. Will you have me, my lady? Do you want me?’

In the slow grey rising of dawn, the mystery of her dark eyes met his questioning gaze. She saw something teasing, something trusting, but also a shaky thread of uncertainty. He would never be quite sure, she thought; never know without a doubt that life would receive him or that love would be unconditional. Even now, the uncertainty was increasing and his confidence that she would welcome him diminishing. She looked up at him, and as his eyes searched hers he saw a sly shaft of utter mischief come slanting there. A tiny smile brought the familiar dimple to the side of her mouth. Unsure what was happening, or what she might be thinking, he was taken by surprise and was easy to topple when with a sudden, vigorous movement she twisted up and round and pushed him onto his back on the bed, straddling him and glaring down in pretended stern severity in the semi-darkness. Startled and laughing, he looked up at the forbidding dominatrix who had overpowered him. Leaning forward, her river of greying hair surrounding his face, she grabbed his wrists and pinned them back to the pillow.

‘Tha’rt a bad lad, William de Bulmer!’ She frowned ferociously down at him, the old broad country speech adding coarse sand to the scolding. ‘Tha’s been a bad lad all thy life! Tha came through thirty years in a monastery unscathed, and nothing I can do or say has taught thee better manners either! Tha’rt a reprobate! A villain! A rascal! Just wait and see what I’m about to do to thee for thy sins!’ Her eyes flashed and sparked as she contemplated him trapped on the bed beneath her.

‘Oh, heaven, pity!’ he whimpered in mock terror. ‘Oh Jesu, help!’

For a moment...