Quietly Waiting (Bodies of Want #1)

1. To Bury a Gentle Boy

TO BURY A GENTLE BOY

FRANCESCA

Four months ago

I never would have imagined that my Sunday night would end with me burying my fiancé in the woods behind my cottage.

Alas, here I am, listening to the muffled chatter of crows arguing over which part of him they’ll eat first if the soil refuses him.

The wheelbarrow seeks out every pebble, for it jostles this way and that, prompting Gabriel’s covered head to knock against the steel tray with each push.

His body doesn’t move, at least, not with a mind of its own.

Not anymore.

I watch the linen cloth, stained red with the memory of him, and wonder how a dead body can be so loud. Gabriel sings to me; with every step I take deeper down the fir-lined corridor, I hear his voice. Hear the memories seep into the cracks of my composure until I’m drowning in the thought of him.

In daylight, the walk doesn’t feel nearly as long.

But the night presses in, tendrils of darkness snaking around my bare shoulders.

From between the canopies cut pure silver threads of moonlight, illuminating the horrid state of my nightdress.

Once white, its silk is now crimson. The blood has stiffened the fabric, and every step causes it to crackle.

I can smell him on me. Metallic, sweet and nauseating.

Remnants of the household’s supper awaken somewhere deep in my belly. A portion breaks away, crawls up my throat until I have to clamp a hand over my mouth to prevent bile from spewing out. Blood clings to my fingers, and it only worsens what my guilt tries to unearth.

Everything is spinning. Moving . Though logic fights against the encroaching panic, my mind whispers that my lungs are in the wrong spot. My heart shouldn’t be beating from its current position. I’m dying. I know I am. My body knows what I’ve done; these trees know.

Why else would it be working against me? Why else would the pathway be neverending?

It seems God bestows a small mercy upon me in the form of my cousin’s voice.

“Easy, Chess,” murmurs Edmund, both hands wrapped around the wheelbarrow’s handles as he trudges forward.

He hasn’t glanced behind him thus far, believing that I’d follow obediently.

And yet still he senses the turmoil bubbling beneath my skin.

His hands are muddy, dirt stuck beneath his fingernails, and the reminder of what he’s done for me only has me choking on my next breath.

He croons quietly, gentle words of reassurance in that polished accent, just like he did when we were children.

Except now he’s guiding me through the dark, towards the hole he dug for the man I killed.

The Cyclopean eye of Edmund’s headlight devours the shadows ahead, rolling across moss and overgrown roots.

I stay behind him for that reason, thinking of Polyphemus groping blindly for intruders in his cave.

That light can’t land on me. It would see too much.

Force me to see what I’ve wrought. It would see me, and it would know .

I don’t understand.

I can’t understand.

Gabriel has never frightened me. Not even once.

Memories drag me farther back than I’d like, all the way to age sixteen when our families first arranged our engagement.

A scrawny redhead whose voice cracked whenever he excitedly spoke of golf, Gabriel was always gentle.

He would visit after school, apologising for the mud on his cuffs before asking permission to hold my hand, blushing a storm through his freckles.

I think of those days now, how I would ask him about the stains. The other boys would spill through the doors, muddy and bruised, yelling about their latest rugby win. Gabriel would pull me aside and whisper how he chased a golf ball into a ditch and slipped.

Goodness, I can smell him in that moment and yearn to pluck it from the past. To replace this foul smell with mint bubblegum and the aftershave he slapped on before he even had the first sprout of hair on his chin.

Half of me still believes that if we were to walk any longer, the leaves would come alive in the presence of this man.

He has that sort of gentleness that can bloom flowers and water roots.

Had. Had. Had.

He had that gentleness.

Before I killed him.

I thought I might love him one day. Convinced myself of it, certainly. His nimble little fingers trembled when he officially proposed exactly two minutes after midnight on my twentieth birthday.

Poor thing stumbled through the words as he held out the emerald ring he claimed matched my eyes.

I shut them against the image whilst Edmund hauls the wheelbarrow to a stop.

I should help him. But I cannot. My cousin moves in silence.

The fabric drags against metal, and a lump hits the ground as Edmund grunts.

Polyphemus’s light blinds me when I open my eyes, and I feel naked.

“Francesca,” Edmund says again, wiping sweat from his brow and smearing mud there. I take a few steps closer before I even know what I’m doing. I need to see him.

One last time.

Peering over the lip, I catch the edge of a red lock from behind the linen.

He loved those curls and swore that our kids would one day resemble him.

Looking back at it now, I wonder if I should’ve taken insult.

If the darker parts of himself were always hidden behind that crooked grin and his family’s ambition.

I can feel Edmund watching me, but I can’t speak.

It hurts too much. He shovels fast as if in a haste to return me to the comforts of the cottage.

I can’t tell him comfort would be sparse there while Gabriel’s blood still mars the bed.

The dirt covers him, slowly but surely. I whisper a prayer to these woods and its ghosts.

Please, stay gone . I can’t bear to have him haunt me.

Not him as well.

“Francesca, look at me,” Edmund commands when he’s finished, dumping the shovel into the empty wheelbarrow. The clang of steel on steel has me flinching. “It’s not your fault. He gave you no choice.”

My head dips in a nod without any awareness of the action.

I can see the front door shifting as I readied myself for bed.

How Gabriel crept in with a smile too sweet and expectation in his voice.

Darling girl , he called me. Saccharine and horrifying at once.

I ignored it because Gabriel was Gabriel.

If he stayed late on the property, drinking with Edmund, I expected him to take the couch.

As always. But once in my room, I felt the change.

Felt the past shrivel into nothingness as something new and cruel bloomed in its place.

“ Breathe .”

But I can’t, because the boy I grew up with changed, and I don’t know why.

And perhaps I never will because is this not what Godwyn does?

Slips in where devotion once lived and fills it with appetite?

Guilt thrums beneath my skin as I try to convince myself this is how it goes.

Legend is older than us both; I was only playing my part.

In the hush that follows his quick burial, I soothe myself with the reminder that I passed the test.

That’s all that matters.

Redford’s ghosts care nothing for my remorse, Gabriel’s reasons or the truth of this night, only that I succeeded in earning my seat.

“He can’t hurt you. Nobody will. I’d never let that happen, do you hear me?” Edmund tries again after receiving no response.

Another nod. Do I believe him? Of course I do.

With Percy visiting their mother and Gran spending her anniversary weekend in Lanorythe, there was no one else to turn to.

Edmund didn’t hesitate when called upon.

Gabriel’s blood was yet to cool when I sent him a message.

Just four simple words. Cousin, I need you.

He arrived from the castle ten minutes later, sleep-mussed but entirely awake.

Whatever he sees on my face right now must tell him all he needs to know, because the worry eases from his features.

Just slightly. The walk back to the cottage is one of quiescence, save for the rattle of the spade jostling against bumps.

I try not to look at it, knowing that it didn’t just bury a man who tried to hurt me but a future not taken.

A life I would’ve lived.

Edmund opens the chipped green door, yanks off his headlamp and guards my back as I enter.

I don’t ask against what, focusing instead on kicking off my boots and sauntering towards the couch.

Where he should’ve stayed. Should’ve been sleeping until morning came, and we’d all tease him about being unable to hold his liquor.

I spot one of his cufflinks caught between the cushions; a simple GF engraved there, and that’s when the dam breaks. ‘Splinters’ would be the more appropriate word, for a hairline fracture takes root in my chest, spreading all the way to my fingertips until I’m in pieces.

A strange, keening noise emerges from my throat, so tragic that the sound alone is enough to have me bending over and sobbing.

I cry for gentle Gabriel, who sat outside my grandmother’s office whilst she discussed terms with his parents.

Like the both of us were cattle to be bartered off.

I cry for the way he held my pinky upon witnessing my gut-wrenching apprehension and how he tried to assure me he would be kind.

How he promised he would die before hurting me.

And I made him keep that promise.

Edmund doesn’t try to soothe what’s still too raw to be covered.

He lets my grief breathe and leads me to the kitchen, where he gets a tap going.

Not even the scent of rooibos that clings to the curtains and dishtowel is enough to pull me back to the present.

Because just hours ago I stood here, offering Gabriel a mug and some of the shortbread Baker’s biscuits I had imported from South Africa.

Now he’s gone, and I can still taste his blood in my mouth.

“He was my friend.”