Mathew's Tale by Quintin Jardine

inevitable.
    ‘Is she aware?’ he asked.
    ‘Not for the last hour, nor will she be again, I’m afraid. It’s for the best, sir.’
    ‘What?’ he retorted. ‘No chance to say goodbye is for the best?’
    ‘She’s out of pain. Her blood and her body are full of poisons. She will sleep away now. All you can do is sit with her.’
    ‘How long?’
    ‘Until she lets go.’
    Lindsay closed the door, leaving them alone.
    There were so many thoughts in his head, so many things he wanted to say to her, so many fervent thanks he wanted to give her for all she had been to him and would always be, but all he could do was try to will them into her unconscious mind, so that she might die in the knowledge that he had come to love her as truly and deeply as he had ever loved anyone, and that she had given him a personal fulfilment he had thought he would never know.
    All that he could say as he held her hand was, ‘Oh, my Margaret, you made me so happy. God’s cruel, that He takes you away.’
    He sat with her for two hours as the sun rose, and brightened the chamber, wiping the moistness from her sleeping face occasionally with clean cloths that the doctor had left. He listened to her breathing, until it became faster, then more laboured, until finally it stopped, and she was gone.
    He stood, and folded her hands across her chest. Then he murmured, ‘Goodbye, my love,’ kissed her on the forehead and then on the lips, and left the room that he knew would always be burned into his brain, another nightmare to curse his sleep.
    When he went downstairs, his mother was waiting. She said nothing, but hugged him, then pressed her face to his shoulder. He knew she was weeping, but would want no one else to see, and so he let her shed her tears, and looked at the doctor.
    ‘You will please ask the undertaker to call on me this afternoon,’ he said. ‘The funeral will be in Carluke, of course, and Mr Barclay will conduct it.’
    As he finished, Hannah stood straight once more. ‘I am so sorry, ma boy,’ she said. She paused, but only for a second or two, and he saw her urgency. ‘We maun go now,’ she told him, ‘and take the bairn wi’ us. His need’s the greatest now, but Ah’ve found someone who’ll look after him like her ain.’
    They wrapped the baby in two shawls. One had been Mathew’s own and the second Hannah had crocheted for him during Margaret’s pregnancy. Then his grandmother carried him outside to the carriage. The horse had been groomed and was feeding from a nosebag.
    ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.
    ‘Carluke,’ she replied, knowing that she need say no more.

Chapter Fourteen
     
    W HEN MATHEW CARRIED HIS son into the McGill cottage, it was the first time he had seen his childhood sweetheart in more than eight years. She was standing with her back to the fire, and she too held an infant in her arms.
    ‘You poor man,’ she said, moved by the sadness in him. ‘You deserved much better. I’m sorry I never met Mistress Fleming, Mathew. David said she was such a good woman.’
    ‘The worst things happen to the best people,’ he replied, in a dull monotone that she could not have imagined hearing from the man she had known for so long.
    She smiled at him, sadly. ‘You should know.’
    ‘I did not mean myself,’ he sighed. ‘Margaret was far too good for the likes of me, that puts his business before everything. Why did it have to happen to her, Lizzie?’
    ‘It lies in wait for all of us who give birth, Mathew. It’s a risky business, regardless of status. Queens have died from childbed fever, so I’ve been told.’
    ‘But you are sound?’
    ‘Yes, I’m among the lucky ones. It’s two weeks since our wee Jean was born and I am back as I was.’
    ‘And she is thriving?’
    ‘Oh yes,’ Lizzie said, glancing down at the bundle in her arms, ‘she’s the most biddable child of the three.’
    ‘I was sorry to hear of your loss,’ he said. ‘Your poor wee Wilma, to be taken like