The Breath of Peace (6 page)

Without stopping to think, incandescent with rage, she lifted her hand to slap his face, but he was quicker, and she found her wrist seized and held with a grip like steel.

‘Don't do that,' he said, his voice icy.

‘Well, you deserve it!' she bawled at him. ‘You
deserve
it!'

‘I don't care.' This was a simple sentence, and its import should have been easy enough to grasp. But it took Madeleine a few seconds' pause to pick those three words clear of all the expletives and profanities that came with them. She was not high-born, and in the course of her work as a healer she had mixed with some vulgar folk; but she had never in her life heard such a gross stream of obscenity as William, his voice low and cold and focused, levelled at her then.

He released her wrist and, in his wet socks, walked quietly past her to let himself out of the house. She burst into tears. Weeping, she knelt and lifted blindly the dough in its cloth from the bowl, carried it to the table to deal with later, then picked up the shattered pieces of pottery, and stood with them, heartsick, her tears falling on them. After a moment's indecision, she carried them up to their chamber and laid them on the bed. She took a kerchief from the store of linen in her chest, and swaddled the forlorn and useless heap of broken shards in its soft folds. She buried the bundle beneath her clothes, right at the bottom of the chest. The idea of parting from that gift felt unbearable. It was meant to be forever. She closed the lid of the chest and sank down on the floor beside it, sobbing inconsolably.

She had no idea how long she stayed there, grieving. Her imagination could frame no way forward. But eventually she wiped her eyes and blew her nose on her apron. The dough would be ready. Life had to go on. She went downstairs again, unwrapped the bread sponge from its cloth and picked out two fragments of pottery that had got past the linen to the dough, then kneaded it again for a minute or two, shaped the loaf, and left it to prove while she tended to the oven, lighting another bundle of sticks and hoarded brushwood to bring it up to full heat. She waited patiently until the time and temperature were right, raked the ashes aside and pushed in the dough, sealing up the gaps with flour and water paste as she set the stone in the aperture.

She scrubbed down the table and washed her hands, set the fallen stool on its feet again, under the table this time. Finally, reluctantly, she faced the fact that she'd better go and make peace with her husband. Underneath her sense of injustice and indignation and outrage, she knew he hadn't meant to break the bowl. She knew how much he loved the place of its making and the man whose gift it was.

Madeleine pushed her feet into her clogs and went in search of her man. She wondered if he was still angry with her, and if intrusion would still be unwelcome.

Though the days continued cold, especially in the wind, the air held a promise of spring. It was wet underfoot everywhere, and the twigs of trees and herbs still stood stark and bare in the sunshine, but in the living boughs the bark shone red now, not dull black or sere dun, and Madeleine could feel the rising of life, the turning of the year towards the light. There was hope in the air, and it hummed its healing song in her soul. She went down the path and looked for William in the woodshed, where she saw the flung log with its buried axe-head and the broken haft, and shook her head in wondering disapproval. She looked in the stable, which she found empty – then she saw he had taken the palfrey and tethered her outside.

Eventually she found him, in the barn where they stored the straw and some of the implements they used around their holding. He had been setting new teeth in the rake, replacing the damaged and missing ones. She saw that he had taken off his hood and thrown it across the barn. It lay on the floor near the doorway. She knew why that was. Sometimes, especially when he felt upset or under stress, he could not tolerate anything tight around his throat – around the place where once a rope had tightened when, in utter despair, two years ago he'd tried to hang himself. She bent and picked up the hood.

He had heard her clogs on the stones set into the track and straightened up from the bench against the wall where he had been working, the rake in his hand, turning to face her as she stood in the doorway and looked in.

He did not speak. In the pale, bright February sunshine she saw his face still set grim and bleak. She wondered what to say to him. Evidently he intended to say nothing at all to her. She supposed he must still be angry with her, then.

‘Love… ' she said at last, ‘love is not a matter of endearments murmured in the bedroom and forgotten in the day's work around the yard. Love is for the everyday, and its courtesies are for the ordinary round, not just for the conquest of seduction.'

She sounded bolder than she felt. The clear challenge of her voice showed him no sign of the odd quailing weakness in her belly. She did not like to admit it, but she had felt afraid of him when he grabbed her arm and swore at her. His face had been possessed of so fierce an intensity, with not a glimmer of kindness anywhere – just cruel, cold fury in his eyes. She was not sure what his reaction to this might be. The prospect of another wave of anger like the last one frightened her. But she stood, chin up, feet planted, and looked him in the eye. He remained quite immobile for a moment, the rake held in his hand. Then he placed it with precision against a frame-joint where it could not slide and fall. The deliberate stillness about him scared her even more. It felt somehow threatening. Such self-control filled her with foreboding. She wondered if he might even hit her. He turned to face her, and the sun from the open doorway behind her shone into his eyes. He squinted to see her, then raised his hand to shield his gaze from the sun. She saw that his mouth was being repeatedly dragged sideways now, by a tic that had started up in his face. The effect was ominous. Even so, she stood her ground. She clutched the hood she had picked up, her grip tightening in fear.

‘I know,' he said simply, in reply to what she had said. He took a step towards her. ‘Madeleine, I can't see you properly; the sun's in my eyes. I can't see what you're thinking. Are you still angry with me? If I… may I… will it be acceptable to you if I hold you in my arms?'

This struck Madeleine as a very strange question for a man to ask his wife. She was learning that a childhood with no playmates and no affection, followed by three decades in a monastery, had left her husband without any easy instinct for family relationship. Her heart still pounded erratically at the outburst of anger she had imagined. Suddenly she felt quite drained and spent.

‘For goodness' sake!' She hadn't meant it to come out sounding so peevish.

She closed the gap between them, and put her arms close around him. She expected him to speak to her, say sorry, explain himself, but he lowered his head onto her shoulder, pressed his face against her neck, held her to him tightly, saying nothing. They stood like that for a long time.

Eventually she stepped back a little from his embrace, and lifted her hands to cup his face, her eyes searching his. Vulnerable, open, he let her look at him, her face still blotched and her eyes red and swollen from weeping over the calamity of the bread bowl.

‘I feel so ashamed,' he whispered. ‘I feel so guilty. I… can you… will you… forgive me? For the bowl and the hens, and for swearing at you… and I think I might have hurt you too – hurt your arm. Please… it's unbearable… I just need you to forgive me; I can't bear it otherwise, can't bear what I've done.'

Madeleine wondered if the day would ever dawn when she finally felt she'd understood her husband. She thought probably not. So she kissed him instead, and that seemed to go well.

‘It's all right,' she consoled him. ‘It was an accident.'

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.'