25th November 1102

There it stood before her. It was only a slab of rock, carved out neatly by the stone mason’s hand.  There was a dove, the feathers of its wings etched out with endless patience, a tiny olive branch nestled between the sharp angles of its beak. It was upside down as though captured in the middle of diving, soaring down on whispering wings to deliver the most important symbol of all.

Beneath her feet lay a body.

A body. She could still feel the icy rasp of the woman’s tongue licking at the blood flowing freely from her wounds. The vice-like fingers as they snapped her bones as easily as twigs.

Rest in peace it read. Beloved of Christ it read. Sister Mella, faithful to the Lord till the end lay beneath her feet.

They told her it had not been Sister Mella that had shredded her face. They told her it was some creature inhabiting the emptied husk of the fragile nun. This was what they told her, but in her nightmares it was the mute nun with her sad, wide eyes who clawed at her face and beat her till she bled.

She had been brought up a good girl, the bible, the cane, the rows of orphans on their knees praying for forgiveness for their sins. But never had there been mention of monsters that stole in, in the night, ripping your soul bodily from its corpse so they had a mask of flesh to wear and walk around in.

They had not told her much, Father Harndall with his sorrowful, bowed head and trembling hands, the Duke with eyes that grew more and more haunted every day and could no longer even meet hers. She did not understand all the things they said but what she had understood had crept inside her head like rancid water trickling between the cracks, pooling in the hollows.

She was afraid. Afraid of what she didn’t understand. Afraid of what she did. The world was not the place she had believed it to be.

The tears came before she realised it, sinking to her knees in the moist, loose soil of Mella’s grave.

The rain came too but she barely noticed it. The pervading smell of the freshly dug grave was all around, clinging to her skin, filling her nostrils she was soaked in it like the chill rain that dribbled under her sodden cloak. The small patches of snow began to melt till everything was mud and dirt and death and she was drenched in it.

She felt him before saw him, perhaps the tiny vibration as his clumsy feet hit the ground, perhaps it was merely the comforting presence that seemed to warm her despite her water-logged clothing and the rain that was streaming down her face with the tears.

He did not say anything, merely crouched down beside her. She imagined the filth of the dank soil clinging to his knees as he crumpled into a sitting position beside her. She supposed he had come for the same reason she had. There had been no ceremony, only a few quiet prayers recited reverently by the Father and the shovels slicing into the dirt and the simple wooden box lowered into the gaping hole. It had been Harndall’s request for the carving and the stonemason, a quietly pious man had obliged. She supposed they had all felt some kind of guilt for the fate of the fragile sister in the end.

She had not been there, unable to bring herself to go anywhere near the body, even if it was just that, an empty body. She supposed Arran had felt the same.

He sat silently beside her for long moments. Igrayne followed his gaze to the carvings of the tombstone. The dove, its beady eye glaring out at her. She closed her eyes but it was still there, its dreadful flapping wings creaking in the rain and in its bloodstained beak a limply dangling finger.

Arran leaned towards her, one lank leg brushing against her knee. She could feel his warmth all the way through her sodden cloak where it scorched the chilled skin. She felt lightheaded and nauseous.

She looked down at his leg, with its intruding heat and saw the trembling hand hovering between them. In a moment it would be touching hers. It was exactly what she wanted, exactly what she needed but it could not be.

She tried to leap to her feet, her legs tangling awkwardly in her waterlogged gown. Arran sprung to her assitance, his coltish legs folding beneath him. He grabbed her upper arm, his fingers hotly imprinting the soft flesh there as he helped her to her feet.

Growing dizzy, his whole hand clasped around her arm she imagined her cloak drying beneath the heat of his touch. She began to shiver uncontrollably as his hand slid inexorably down her forearm to the opening of her sleeve where her fingers where curled inwards like the legs of a long dead spider.

Then he was prying them open gently, his strong fingers working their way between hers like a careful locksmith picking open a lock that had long since rusted shut.

Her heart was fluttering nervously in her chest. She tried to extract her hand from his tender grasp but he would not release it. Instead he gently took up her other hand so she was doubly his prisoner. She knew it was wrong but she had not felt so comforted and safe for such a long time.

In her mind those hands were softly rubbing the skin of her back as she lay wrapped in his embrace, her face pressed against the dark, curling hair of his chest. His lips were soft on her forehead as she finally slept, safe at last from the fear that plagued her when darkness fell.

He stared at her and she knew these uncontrolled emotions must be rampaging across her face to be caught one by one in the net of scars.

“Igrayne,” he stuttered awkwardly.

Then he suddenly leaned in and kissed her. His face was wet with the rain, his soggy hair brushing against her face. His hand was trembling uncontrollably as he gently cupped her chin, his other hand resting light on her hip.

It was the sweetest, dearest moment of Igrayne’s life and her heart throbbed painfully as she pushed him away. She steeled herself for what she was about to do, shut her heart away like she had done so many times when the thoughts of the mother who had died giving birth to her, the father she had never known crowded her head too much.

“What are you doing Arran?” she cried, backing away from him.

He stared at her, startled as though she had just kicked him in the face with her small pointed boot.

“I… I don’t know. I’m sorry,” he began to stutter nervously, his face growing bright red and scrunching up in dismay, “I thought… I’m sorry, I just thought.”

He swallowed, “I thought, well, that you might care for me.”

She burst out laughing, laughter that to her ears sounded cruel and harsh. She knew it was the right thing but she felt as though she were extracting her heart, slowly and agonisingly up through her throat. It was a giant, choking lump that she had to laugh around. She smiled callously, though she held it meaty and softly beating between her teeth.

“You silly goose. As if I thought of you in that way. What a fine joke that is. Wait until I tell Maire.”

She turned and walked away unable to bear the hurt and betrayal in his eyes. The ground squelched wetly beneath her feet as they thumped down in time with her pounding heart. She did not have to wonder if she had been believable. She had teased and tormented Arran Barran enough times to know that he had accepted every word from her mouth as the truth. She felt sick, bile rising in her throat as she stomped on.

It was only when she was further down the road, the church well behind her that she let the tears come sobbing up. It had been the right thing to do and she had done it the only way she knew how, with surgical precision she had excised him from her life. There was a women with a sad, soft face who desperately needed a husband, a tiny, fragile baby who needed a father and a man who deserved far, far better than her.

Barran, Uncategorized