Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [69]
They walked side by side, occasionally jostled by passersby, men in frock coats with top hats, now and then a woman, highly fashionable, carrying a parasol and smiling and nodding to acquaintances. The street itself was teeming with traffic. Coaches, carriages, hansoms, broughams and open landaus passed by every few minutes, moving at a brisk trot, horses’ hooves rapping smartly, harnesses jingling.
“I love the city on a fine day,” Matthew said almost apologetically. “There is such life here, such a sense of purpose and excitement.” He glanced sideways at Pitt. “I need Brackley for its peace, and the feel of permanence it has. I find I always remember it so clearly, as if I had only just closed my eyes from seeing it, smelling the sharp coldness of winter air, the snow on the fields, or the crackle of frost under my feet. I can breathe in and re-create the perfume of the summer wind from the hay, the dazzle of sunlight and the sting of heat on my skin, the taste of apple cider.”
A handsome woman in pink and gray passed by and smiled at him, not as an acquaintance, but out of interest, but he barely noticed her.
“And the glancing light and sudden rain of spring,” he went on. “In the city it’s just wet or dry. There’s no bursting of growth to see, no green haze over the fields, no strong, dark furrows of earth, no awareness at once of the turning seasons, and the timelessness of it all because it has happened since the creation, and presumably always will.”
A coach rumbled by, close to the curb, and Matthew on the outside stepped in hastily to avoid being hit by the jutting lamps.
“Fool!” he muttered under his breath.
They were a dozen yards from the crossing.
“My favorite time was always autumn,” Pitt said, smiling with recollection. “The shortening days, golden at the end where the long light falls across the stubble fields, the piled stooks against the sky, clear evenings where the clouds fall away towards the west, scarlet berries in the hedgerows, wild rose hips, the smell of wood smoke and leaf mold, the blazing colors of the trees.” They came to the curb and stopped. “I loved the bursting life of spring, the flowers, but there was always something about autumn when everything is touched with gold, there is a fullness, a completion….”
Matthew looked at him with a sudden, intense affection. They could have been twenty years younger, standing together at Brackley, gazing across the fields or the woods, instead of at Parliament Street, waiting for the traffic to allow them to cross.
A hansom went by at a brisk clip and there was a space. They set out smartly, side by side. Then out of nowhere, swinging around the corner, a coach and four came careering over the curb edge, horses wild-eyed, frightened and squealing. Pitt leaped aside, pushing Matthew as hard as he could. Even so Matthew was caught by the near side front wheel and sent sprawling across the road to fetch up with his head barely a foot from the gutter and the curb edge.
Pitt scrambled to his feet, whirling around to catch sight of the coach, but all that was visible was the back of it as it disappeared around the corner of St. Margaret Street heading towards the Old Palace Yard.
Matthew lay motionless.
Pitt went over to him. His own leg hurt and he was going to be bruised all down his left side, but he was hardly aware of it.
“Matthew!” He could hear the panic rising in his voice and there was a sick terror in his stomach. “Matthew!” There was no blood. Matthew’s neck was straight, no twisting, no awkward angle, but his eyes were closed and his face white.
A woman was standing on the pavement sobbing, her hands up to her mouth as if to stifle the sound.
Another woman, elderly, came forward and knelt down beside Matthew.
“May I help?” she said calmly. “My husband is a doctor, and I have assisted him many times.” She did not look at Pitt, but at Matthew. She ignored the permission she had not yet received, and touched Matthew’s cheek lightly, taking