A/N: Right, so here is 'that' scene from The Silent Land. The pivotal moment and decision that set off the rather tragic chain of events that occurred afterwards. The title comes from the Lord Byron poem, 'I Speak Not.' Thank you to the delightful foooolintherain for prompting me (oh so gently and tenderly) into doing this. It was missing mainly because it was described in the main part of the story in the first person in one of Mary's mental letters to Teddy, hence why any graphic description seemed…inappropriate. It was clearly waiting in my mind because it was far too easy to write. I really REALLY hope you enjoy it and would LOVE to hear what you think. I also want to say a huuuuge thank you for the Highclere awards I received for The Silent Land, I can't tell you how much it meant to me. Finally, a mahoosive cold kiss to my beautiful, patient beta, mrstater.
I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name;
There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the fame;
But the tear that now burns on my cheek may impart
The deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of heart.
August, 1917
Mary sighed softly and looked up from the letter spread on the desk in front of her. Richard's clipped script was scrawled across the watermarked page, inviting himself for the weekend. She hovered with the pen over her own paper but let it drop so it clattered against the table and caused her mother and Edith to look up from their embroidery. The house seemed to have slipped into a stupor, every room torpid with heat as the lack of circulating air built and intensified until Isobel had marched round flinging open every window and declaring loudly that such stifling conditions were unsanitary. As if the ventilation is our fault, Cora had hissed out of earshot. This afternoon in particular it seemed that every officer were either asleep or slumped in a bath chair beneath a tree outside, stiff in the shade as nurses fluttered around them with jugs of lemonade and cool flannels. Sybil, of course, was irrepressible, even in tropical heat, and only the wisps of hair escaping her cap and the beads of perspiration on her forehead betrayed her fatigue. Mary supposed that if one felt truly useful it was less easy to slip into a lethargic state brought on by heat.
"Anything interesting?" Cora asked, turning her head to look at Mary's back.
Mary paused, fixing her expression to one of bored indifference before turning around. "Richard will come for the weekend. I'll telephone him this evening. It's far too hot to write."
"It's too hot to do anything," Edith said, placing the frame in her lap and removing a handkerchief from her waistband to dab her brow. "I rather wish we were little enough to bathe in the river!"
Mary smiled briefly. "Yes, that was fun. It took you forever to jump in; you would stand on the edge of the jetty and count to a hundred. It wasn't that cold." Her lips twitched at the memory, Edith in her bathing suit, bony knees pressed together, hands raised to her mouth in fists as she looked down at the opaque surface of the water.
"You always jumped straight in," Edith said. "Without a care."
"It doesn't always pay to think too much." Mary yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand as her sister watched her, the elegant curve of her arm, the delicate hands that had given her a push from behind on more than one occasion.
"No." Edith replied quietly, collecting the loose threads in her lap. "I wonder what Matthew is doing this afternoon?"
Mary's heart convulsed at the sound of those two syllables. They had seen him for dinner two evenings ago; she wasn't sure what he had been doing since. What did a man do during a brief reprieve from the absurdity of war? He had decided not to go to London, his leave was too short he said, and he wouldn't hear of Lavinia travelling up in the heat. He looked drawn, thin, and there was something hollow about the expression in his eyes. Mary thought he would have gone to London to see his fiancée but the truth was he did not have the energy. Perhaps he had spent the last couple of days sleeping, resting his head on a laundered and ironed pillowcase, the sound of guns ringing in his ears. As they ate dinner she had looked down at his fingers holding the cutlery and the knuckles were raw, almost purple, a ridged texture all over the backs of his hands, as if a net had been pressed there too tight. She could not ask; she did not want to know. She could not think of him shivering in a trench, climbing a ladder, surging over the top with a gun in his hands, those poor scarred hands.
He was still Matthew, upright and affable, a gentle smile playing on his lips, but it was a shadow, an impression of the formerly easy manner he had had in her presence. His eyes flitted amongst the convalescing men; the broken soldiers and Mary wondered if he was looking for a fallen comrade, a lost voice in the thunder of screams. He would leave and she would wonder if he had ever really been back with them.
"Perhaps Matthew has gone for a swim," Mary replied, swallowing the lump in her throat, her words sounded stilted to her own ears and her mother and Edith both looked at her curiously.
"Well, it may be hot but please don't go jumping in the river yourself, my darling," Cora said. "These men are supposed to be convalescing," she added with a wry smile.
Mary rolled her eyes. "Alas I'm not ten years old anymore, Mama, and such behavior is well outside the bounds of propriety – even during a war."
She waved her fingers restlessly in her lap, smoothing her skirt and looking around the room with growing agitation. The back of her neck prickled with heat and she could feel every fibre of her blouse against her damp skin.
"I'm going for a walk," she announced, standing up quickly so that her head swam slightly.
"Oh, I'd join you, but I'm afraid I can't bear to move," Cora sighed. "Ring for Carson, darling," she said to Edith. "We'll have some iced tea."
Mary walked through the saloon, it was deserted and she quickened her pace until she was in the cool gloom of the lobby before she moved to push open the front door. The sky was so bright it cast the driveway in a white haze ahead of her; she shielded her eyes with her hand as she stepped out and walked across the gravel, the stones scratching beneath her feet. The sun bounced from the walls of the Abbey so they almost seemed to glow gold and heat radiated off the stone as she skirted around the side of the house until her steps found the grass, crisp and brown at the tips. Downton, the grounds, the country, everything was parched, all life seemingly sucked into the relentless heat of an unforgiving sun, a red ball of blood in a sky under which so many were dying.
The top of her head felt as if it were burning and Mary could already feel color rising in her cheeks. She nodded at the men and nurses gathered beneath the great cedar tree under which she and Matthew had sat – and argued – on more than one occasion. Her breath came a little quicker at the memory and she hurried past with a tight lipped smile as she recalled the way the bright blue of his eyes seemed to bleed into white as he looked at her with such pain, such shock, that anyone, that she, could be so cruel. Of course she had loved him, of course she had, but she had let the doubt steal its fingers around her heart, the uncertainty that she could ever be truly happy and the towering notion that he would not want her anyway if he knew what she was, what she had done. These grounds held the memory of that too and as she started down the slope Mary thought of the sure tread of Diamond's hooves, of Kemal Pamuk, close at hand, a smile curled around his full lips and of the shuddering jerk he had made as he'd died. A fist squeezed her heart and she moved to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear, the thought of the river and its still, cool depth was very enticing.
"Mary!"
At the edge of the outcrop of trees, Mary turned and Matthew was walking towards her, quickening his pace and raising his hand in greeting. He was wearing shirtsleeves, his uniform trousers and boots, and she suddenly thought of him plunging into the river, the fabric of his shirt going sheer against his chest. A tremble pinched her mouth and she covered it with a bright, tight-lipped smile.
"I wanted to catch you," he smiled, his hand moving to push his hair away from his forehead.
"Oh?" Mary replied, pressing her fingers into her palms and letting her arms move away from her sides slightly, in an attempt to ease her desire to tense every muscle in her body and stand stiffly in front of him.
"It's so very hot," he blustered slightly, suddenly aware of the sensation that he might have interrupted her in a private moment of contemplation.
The smile hovered around her mouth, her eyes a little too wide, slightly too bright, her gaze slightly out of focus. Look at me, Mary. Yet he found he could not look at her, he felt that if he met her gaze he might shatter it, that it was a delicate as crystal, a vessel that would break into shards, all it contained spilling out over the ground, soaking into the dry earth, her very heart sliding through his fingers. When he looked at her the years fell and faded away and he was a doctor's son once more, a solicitor, in awe of all this splendor and perfectly captivated by the beautiful, haughty cousin who had swept through his consciousness, stung him with her sharp remarks and infuriated and enflamed him in equal measure.
So much had changed. He was engaged to Lavinia, she to Carlisle, their lives had met for one blissful moment and then violently diverged, carrying his heart away, tearing it from her open palm. Was he carried away? Had Lavinia transported him from her, had the war? Suddenly, as the strength of the sun seemed to brand his skin, he was not so sure of anything. It was rather like a dream, this, Mary bathed in the dappled shade of the tree she had half stepped under, a heat that was unnatural pulsing around them, the scent of hot earth and something else, burning perhaps, pervading the air. Slicing through his mind he felt a new heat descend, the hot pouring of blood that ran and drained in rivulets all over his hands, the stripped skin that revealed a hole which had been a young man's face, a very young man, a man whose future lay in gelatinous nodules of flesh barely distinguishable from the mud, except by their color, a color that would be lost, life turning brown and black in a field in France.
We are just blood. We are bones and muscle, a beating heart and a head filled with thoughts that cannot always be controlled. We are animals and what we are prepared to do to each other is unthinkable. It is senseless. In war we lose our minds and Matthew could recall days when he could barely feel the gun in his hands, when he hardly felt anything at all, just cold, a chill that reached his very core and clung there, twisting and palpating his heart until there was only one thing, one person of whom he could think. She stood in front of him now and she was all of the life and all of the heart he had ever possessed.
"I'm afraid we will not remember August, 1917, for the sheer warmth of the summer," Mary said.
"No," he agreed. "Can I walk with you? It may be cooler under the trees."
There was no discernible path through the trees but Matthew fell into step beside her nevertheless as they picked their way over small hillocks and patches of dead moss. It was indeed cooler but his proximity seemed to be raising a flush in Mary's cheeks, which she sought to cool with back of her hand. He was looking straight ahead and when she stole a glance at him she saw his face was also red, a patch of scarlet on his cheekbone below his eye.
"I'm so glad we are friends again, it's all so much easier to face now I know that," his eyes flickered and reached hers before she had chance to look away and she met them briefly before lowering her eyes, concentrating on the toes of her shoes as they pressed into the uneven surface of the grass.
"Is it very awful at the front?"
"I cannot tell you how awful, how… damn cruel." He stopped and looked off into the trees, the way they bent and gathered in front of them, seemingly impassable until you moved closer.
In that moment she could not bear it, the shadows that hung beneath his eyes, the way the miserable futility of battle seemed to seep from every pore.
"Oh, Matthew," she whispered, reaching to touch his wrist, the tender thin skin where the veins crossed, where in a little hollow she could feel his pulse, feel it fluttering like a moth against the glass.
He looked up at her and he saw her brow crease, the smile fallen away from her mouth, her lips slightly parted. He saw her as if she were glimmering around the edges, as if she were not real, visited upon him in a dream. A beautiful dream from which he would wake, his face pressed to the ridges of earth, the back of his collar stuck to his neck by sweat, by mud, by blood. And if he never woke? If he never woke let her be the last thing he saw, all of the promise, all the pain fallen away, every scar healed, every cut she had made filled, filled with her. The slight pressure of her fingertips on his wrist seemed to quicken his heart and he could hear it in his ears, not racing, or rushing or pounding as it did when he placed the whistle in his mouth in the trench, the lives of a hundred men under his command. It was not like that, his pulse shivered, it trembled at the thought of her and it beat so fast it was as if it were not beating at all, a flick of a taut wire that vibrates so quickly it appears not to move.
"Mary." Her name fell from his lips, it cascaded from his tongue and it was almost a moan, a shudder from his head to his feet.
He twisted his wrist in her grasp and took her hand in his, their damp palms sticking, her eyes widening as the space between them closed. He pulled her against him and kissed her, his lips met hers and he remembered every sweet taste of her mouth as they'd met over a plate of sandwiches in the dining room. The moment he'd thought life was changed and that it opened, wide and glittering before him, bathed in light. That feeling remained and what came afterwards was swathed in darkness as if they had continued from that moment to this. To this. Kissing her, kissing Mary beneath a canopy of trees, all duty and all honor forgotten.
She pulled away for a moment but Matthew could not let her go and he released her hand, his palms moving to press against the small of her back, pulling her tightly against him and forcing her against the tree. He was mad, it was madness and it was so full and consuming that for a moment Matthew felt as if he was watching from the outside, as if he was stood between the trees watching himself tilt his head to deepen their kiss. Her hands moving up across his shoulders to grip his shirt between her fists, moving across his neck, damp with sweat and into the darker blond of the hair at the back of his head, her fingers entwining there.
The shock was acute but it disintegrated with a frightening rapidity, is dissolved into a burning desire that seemed responsive to nothing but him, to the need to bring him closer, as close as possible, to never let him go. This was Matthew returned to her, given back in the most unimaginable way and there was nothing and nobody else. His fingers burned through the thin material of her blouse and he tugged at where it was tucked into the high waistband of her skirt, pulling it loose, and then tearing, ripping the buttons to reveal her camisole. Briefly, she was glad that all the women of the house had decided to forgo corsets during the heat-wave but such conscious thought was quickly banished as Matthew began to kiss her neck whilst she moved to pull his shirt open, her hands so hot against his chest it seemed as if he were melting under her touch.
He spun her around so her hands were against the rough bark of the tree, her eyes closed as she felt his fingers loosen the buttons at the back of her skirt, sliding his hands inside over her thighs so that it fell. He did not turn her back to face him and for a moment she was glad, her breath came in short gasps as he pressed up behind her and helped guide the blouse from her shoulders so she was wearing nothing but a couple of flimsy pieces of silk. She did not care, she moved against the hard edges of her mind, caressing the borders of her consciousness and nothing of the outside world could penetrate, could break through into this as his hands slipped around her waist and she moved to turn back to him, this time seeking out his kiss, delving and tasting and digging her fingernails into the now bare skin beneath his ribs.
He winced in her grasp, his aching, battered body suddenly acutely sensitive to every sensation so that it was overwhelming, a cascade of motions, pulling, smoothing and piercing inside him. Her hands moved to his waistband and she tugged down his trousers. Matthew gasped into her mouth as she took his bottom lip between her teeth for a tantalizing moment. He opened his eyes and she was looking back at him, deep into his soul, through everything to this pinprick of light, this moment that was only theirs, a moment they would grasp and absorb into their flesh until they came together. Matthew bent his head and Mary bit her lip as he kissed the skin above her sternum, pulling the strap of her camisole down so that his lips could pass over her breast. A wave rushed through her and her head swam, the brilliance of the shafts of sunlight making their way through the trees blinding.
"Oh, Matthew," she gasped, her hands gripping his back, pulling him closer.
Her body seemed to convulse towards him and her hips pressed against his as his fingertips slipped over the edges of her underwear, his hands trembling over her smooth skin as he eased them down past her thighs so they slid over her knees and were lost in the grass. It was all lost. The bark of the tree grazed her spine so that it stung, she was vaguely aware that the sharp sensation in her back was not pleasure but when he grasped her around the tops of her legs and lifted her up she was aware of nothing else but the feel of him against her, the overwhelming heat and desire that drew him to her, into her. There was nothing but the sweet smell of Matthew as she buried her face in the curve between his neck and his shoulder and gave a sharp intake of breath as everything they ever were and ever would be sought to fill every portion of her soul.
Her back scraped against the surface of the tree with every thrust but she could not feel it, she remained clasped against him, her arms tightly wrapped around his neck, she moved her face and she was looking at him and his eyes were focused on her. He saw everything, every tear she had ever shed, every cry of pain, every laugh; it all seemed to mount and build and the light headed euphoria soared like it would never reach a pinnacle, as if it would climb to an insurmountable peak from which they would never be able to fall. She felt weightless as he held her up and the muscles of his biceps tensed and bulged, it was not a strain, it was the most natural thing, the only thing for them to do and sweat ran in a stream down between his shoulder blades as he thought he would break apart beneath her hands.
Each movement into her, as he crashed against the angles of her hips, as she gave herself over into every part of him seemed to promise an ending, an end to the unspoken longing, the dark silence in their hearts, she could think no more than this. This is where it will end. She cried out, nobody would hear because there was no-one else, nobody but Matthew, gripped around her, his body quivering beneath her grasp as he too gave a deep moan that roared through him as he felt her legs tighten around his back, their passion reaching an impossible depth, every piece of his being straining further, deeper. Mary bit down on his shoulder, her teeth sinking into the flesh, the salty taste of him filling her mouth as she shuddered beneath a wave of pulsing fulfillment, a deep moan in his ear that brought him to the brink and cast him from the edge, downwards, until everything was black and there was nothing but wave upon wave of pleasure coursing through him, from the tips of his fingers into every nerve that fired and filled his head with stars.
She could not breath and for a moment she thought she would faint, her arms weak around his neck, her whole body trembling, her legs shaking and covered in goosebumps as the pleasure moved in ever decreasing circles. Reluctantly she felt him part from her and as he gently lowered her to the ground she saw that he was shaking too, that he could hardly stand. Mary swayed slightly as the world shifted and reordered itself around her and he caught her around the waist, guiding her onto a smooth patch of grass beneath the tree, he hovered over her for a moment before laying down beside her, taking his shirt and pulling it over her as she clasped her arms across her body, trembling.
Matthew lay on his side, he could not take his eyes from her face, the smooth curve of her jaw, the high spot of colour on her cheekbone, the way her hair had fallen loose and hung unpinned around her shoulders. She was looking at the sky, the flashes of blue between the leaves, her chest rising and falling in quick shallow breaths.
"Mary," he whispered and he placed a hand on her hip to guide her onto her side towards him.
She turned so they were face to face and she could not believe what they had done.
"If I don't come back…" he started.
She closed her eyes for a moment, the words so sharp they drew blood. Mary raised a finger and placed it against his lips to silence him. If this is the end, let us pretend we don't know it to be so.
October, 1917
The toilet bowl was so cool against her forehead that it sent a shiver across her back. Sweat stood out against her brow, a damp sheen and Mary dreaded to think how she looked, her hands trembling as she attempted to pull herself to stand. She could not stand. Another wave of nausea crashed against her and tears stung her eyes as she retched, thinking that it was not possible to be so repeatedly sick, her ribs aching and her heart trembling as she groaned miserably.
The corset was not helping, any relief after each episode of vomiting stunted by the constriction caused by the laces pulled tight that morning by Anna. The dressing gong sounded somewhere in the distance and Mary's eyelids fluttered closed at the thought of dinner. Perhaps nobody would miss her, Sybil was rarely at the dinner table these days, maybe her absence could slip by unnoticed. Hardly likely, Mary reminded herself as the dark papered walls of the bathroom seemed to throb against her, if anything, her mother seemed to be paying her acute attention due to her inability to observe Sybil more closely. In recent weeks Cora's constant, anxious refrain had been that Mary looked pale and it did not matter how many times she made an increasing fractious response that she was quite all right, her mother would not be silenced. It was a lie, of course, all was not well and she knew it.
She couldn't think of it but it hovered before her eyes and if she reached out and touched it she would fall apart. It couldn't be. The guilt hung over her, it was heavy and pulled her to the ground, tethering her into place so that she couldn't cast it off, it wouldn't let her be. It stole around her heart and sought to smother her memory of that day, of him, of what they had done, but it could not and she dreamt of the fire of his skin against hers, the ripple of his body beneath her fingers. Lavinia appeared in her mind periodically but she was an apparition, there was no substance to her and Mary's heart plummeted at the gentle innocence of her face, of the way she looked at Matthew. Her heart contracted because her own pain superseded it, her own agony of seeing him get back onto a train, a last look over his shoulder, it was all that mattered. They were all that mattered.
"Lady Mary?" Anna's voice, a note of concern hovering in the words, came to her through the locked door. "Are you in there?"
"Yes," Mary managed and she was so weak and so desperate for it to end that she could bear to be alone no longer and with difficulty she twisted round and crawled to the door to unlock it, sinking back against the wall from the effort.
Anna pushed the door slowly and slipped in through the small opening so that Mary did not have to move back.
"Milady!" She said, sinking down beside her and handing her a towel from the stand by the sink.
"Anna, I…" Mary started, passing the towel over her face shakily, a sob threatening in her throat as the maid's concerned face hovered in front of hers. "I wonder if you would help me to my room."
"Of course, milady," Anna said, taking her arm and helping her to her feet where she swayed unsteadily for a moment, her fingers pressed to her lips and her eyes tightly closed.
Anna guided her to the bed and she knelt at Mary's feet to remove her shoes.
"I'm sorry, I must look ghastly," she said, unable to meet Anna's gaze as she looked up at her.
It was not the first time she had found her mistress, ashen and gripped by nausea. Ethel had flounced down at the table in the servants hall only yesterday, a magazine spread open in front of her, and announced that she had seen Lady Mary run into a bathroom to vomit, again, she had added pointedly, her eyes travelling to Anna's face and hovering there. Anna looked away but O'Brien's gaze had flickered with interest so that Anna felt the need to excuse herself incase anything in her face gave her away. It was a maid's duty to know all of her mistresses' routines and Anna knew the intricacies of the girls monthly rituals as well as her own. The knowledge passed unspoken and when Lady Mary said nothing the first time, and then the second, Anna suspected. In the past a late routine would be the cause of idle speculation, of bored annoyance, but her mistress' silence spoke the unthinkable.
After the incident with the Turkish gentleman, Anna had been anxious and she had shared Mary's thankful relief when all remained as it was. They had not talked of it but she sensed it, now she felt that Mary's façade was brittle, opaque and she could not read the still, flat expression in her eyes. She had been waiting for her to crumble, to take her hand and pull her into her confidence in a way that Anna suspected she could do with nobody else, but she hadn't, and she had stood stiffly in the mirror and instructed the maid to pull tighter on the laces of the corset.
"I won't be dressing for dinner," Mary said, rather pointlessly, the towel still clutched in her hands.
"I'll tell Her Ladyship," Anna nodded, moving to the chest of drawers to remove a nightgown. She paused with it in her hands, steeling herself for a moment before turning round to where Mary was sitting, her hands covering her eyes as her shoulders quivered.
"Anna," she whispered, her voice hitching as the maid came quickly to her side, placing her arm around her shoulders. "I'm in terrible trouble."
The words breathed through her as her hands fell from her face into her lap, and the sharp pain beneath her ribs dulled slightly for a moment as the weight of what she was saying began to stir and mount around them, lifting and spreading into the room. She felt Anna squeeze her shoulder and she had never been more grateful.
"You're not the first, milady," the maid said. "And Sir Richard…"
Mary's sharp laugh cut her off and her face crumpled as she took Anna's hand and squeezed it tightly against her knee.
"Oh, Anna, I'm afraid it isn't that simple," she closed her eyes once more and they burnt, they seared from all she could see before her, the past in all it's excruciating detail and a future that was not visible.
"I don't understand," Anna frowned.
"Sir Richard and I may be engaged but we aren't lovers."
Anna's preparatory contemplation of this scenario had not extended outside the bounds of that which she took for granted, and she had a moment to recover her expression before Mary turned to face her.
"Then…who?" she asked, and yet she knew the answer.
Each muscle in Mary's face seemed to poise, to tense against the skin, to bring to the surface all that she was keeping locked inside and the name spluttered from her lips in a cry. Matthew. It is Matthew, it was always, Matthew. Matthew gripped around her, Matthew moaning her name in her ear and Matthew who had given her a most precious gift she did not know how to accept.