Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [19]
There had been no peace in France. Men standing cheek by jowl in the trenches had had no privacy. The guns, even when silent, could be heard in the bones, that ache of thunder that dulled the brain and deafened the ears for hours afterward. The aeroplanes passing overhead, horses struggling through the mire, the lorries moving up, voices swearing and singing and talking day and night. Or screaming and cursing in pain after an attack, and the barking of dogs searching for the living among the dead.
There had been no stillness in himself either, with Hamish rampant in his mind. He was never truly alone.
But here it was palpable—the quiet—
He stood there, looking up at the empty blue sky, his head tilted back, his arms out from his sides, his fists unwittingly clenched. And drank in the stillness.
Even the wind had dropped off. Hamish, for a mercy, was silent. And there was no birdsong; the birds had turned south to winter in another climate. The beating of his heart seemed muffled beneath his coat.
Stillness.
It seemed to spread through him, it seemed to wrap him about, it seemed to fill him full.
For nearly a quarter of an hour he stood there alone and listening.
When he turned away to walk back to the car, there were tears in his eyes.
But he had found the strength he needed.
6
MORAG GILCHRIST GREETED RUTLEDGE AT THE HEAVY front door of The Lodge almost before he’d knocked.
She had looked after this house just south of Edinburgh for nearly three generations of the Trevor family, and nobody seemed to know just how old she was. If anyone asked, he was given short shrift. Morag’s back was straight as a sergeant-major’s, her eyes as bright as a crow’s, and her hands as soft and steady as a girl’s.
“Mr. Ian!”
He thought for an instant she was going to embrace him. There was such warmth in her face that it seemed to reach out to him. He put his arms around her instead, and she let him, then pushed him away with a “Pshaw! You’ll muss my gown, lad! Give o’wer!”
Her black gown, to the floor, was nearly as stiff as she was, Victorian and a badge of honor, like the heavy ring of keys at her waist on a silver chain.
David Trevor came out of the room just off the passage where they stood, and gripped Ian’s hand hard, with something in his face that made them both feel deeply the loss that neither spoke of.
Trevor’s son had died at sea in the third year of the war. Ross had been as close to a brother as anyone Rutledge had known. It was still a raw grief.
He was led into the sitting room, small and low-ceilinged and old-fashioned, with comfort apparent in every cushion and a fresh fire on the hearth. The dogs, after their first joyous welcome, curled themselves at his feet with sighs of contentment. The tick of the clock was steady, peaceful. A glass of good whiskey seemed to appear in his hand before he’d settled in the chair opposite the one he knew his godfather favored. The stiffness and fatigue of the long drive vanished. He was, in a sense, home.
Hamish, after hours of angry turmoil, seemed to find his own peace here too. Or was it the fact that Rutledge himself had crossed a border in his mind as well as an invisible line on the landscape? He thought it might be both.
“How was your journey—?”
It was the beginning of a long and undemanding conversation that lasted until Trevor heard the clock on the mantel chime the half hour.
“We’ll be late to our dinner and Morag will scold me for keeping you here when you want to change. Go on, it’s the old room, under the eaves.”
But large enough not to be claustrophobic. Rutledge knew it well; he’d stayed there on his visits, boy and man, since he could remember.
At the door, Trevor clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s damned good to see you. I hope you’ll stay as long as you can!”
Then his eyes slid away toward the fire. “Mind Morag, will you? She hasn’t been the same since—well, since the news came. She’s showing her years now, and it’s a pity. But she loved him, you know. . . .” His voice trailed off.
Rutledge