Matthew grunted in his sleep, but her hand on his head and yet another kiss made his lips twitch into a smile before he rolled over on his side, mumbling something about being very, very tired.
Alex returned to sit on the stool and studied herself meditatively. Almost fifty-two, she mused, not quite a year older than Joan. Not an entirely bad age, actually. She scratched at a small scab on her thigh, blotted the resulting blood with her fingertip, and proceeded with a detailed inspection of her body.
Very nice feet, she smiled, but then she had always had very nice feet – that and good tits. They were still good, at least according to Matthew who, with a twinkle in his eyes, would tell her that he was a far better judge of them than she was. She cupped them, squinting down at them. Yes, quite okay, as was most of her, except for that permanent pouch on her belly and the very ugly scar on her right biceps, courtesy of a wolf.
She nipped at the excess belly skin and frowned. In her age, she could have had a belly tuck done and gotten rid of this. On the other hand, a twenty-first century Alex wouldn’t have lived through ten pregnancies to begin with. And, in her age, there would have been help to be had for whatever it was that was eating Joan alive. It was getting much, much worse, with Joan increasingly wasted each time they saw her. The marijuana no longer helped all that much so, increasingly, Joan spent her days in an opium-fuelled daze in a desperate attempt to find some relief.
Alex uncorked her stone jar and poured a generous puddle of lavender-scented oil into her hands. At least she’d gotten rid of the quack, she thought as she rubbed the oil into her hands and face. Idiot, to suggest a woman as frail as Joan be bled three times a day. No, what Joan needed was surgery and chemotherapy. What she’d get were invigorating tonics and even more opium. Lucky her.
Chapter 2
Lucy Jones inhabited a world of almost silence and had done so since the day of her birth. A silence in which her thoughts stood stark and sharp-edged against a backdrop of constant visual and tactile stimuli. The odd, muted sound would now and then penetrate to her brain, but mostly Lucy heard through her fingers and eyes; she assessed body language and read lips. She moved through rooms full of people that supposed she understood nothing, and all the while she added nugget after nugget of information to the hoard she kept in her brain. Swift and dexterous, she ghosted her way into offices and studies, sifted through opened letters, journals and ledgers. She read deeds and documents; she perused the odd love note and long, boring tracts on God and Church, King and Country.
She knew everything about the people closest to her: her father and his sordid adulterous matter back in Scotland; her mother and her silent battle against constant pain; her mother-in-law’s dalliance with the hot-headed glazier recently arrived from England; her husband’s infatuation with Barbra, the new house slave. Lucy smiled at Barbra, inspecting her for signs of pregnancy. No, not as yet, but given Henry Jones’ repeated absences from the marital bed, it was just a question of time. Well, Barbra would make a good wet nurse, and the half-breed baby could be handed off to another of the slaves to nurse. Barbra shifted nervously under her assessing look, and Lucy broadened her smile. Barbra swallowed and escaped when Lucy waved her away with the breakfast tray.
Lucy stretched luxuriously and got out of bed, one long, narrow hand on her swelling belly. She twirled in front of the three-foot mirror that Henry had bought her as a wedding present, importing it at an exorbitant price from the famous Manufacture Royale des Glaces in Paris. He’d had it framed here, complaining that the heavy gilded frame had cost him almost as much as the looking glass, but Lucy knew that to be a lie – the glass pane had cost four times as much.
She smiled at what she saw: thick hair the colour of copper threaded with gold, strong cheekbones, and a straight nose, neither too long nor too short. Dimples appeared when she smiled, her lower lip was nice and plump, and all of her was covered with velvety skin of that startling white that only redheads ever have. No freckles, except for a smattering over the bridge of her nose, and ironically her ears were overlarge, protruding somewhat from her head.
Lucy adjusted her embroidered linen shift over her breasts, and looked about for the silk nightgown she’d had made some months ago. She stroked the soft dove-blue surface. She liked this new life of hers, and if that included tolerating Henry’s little infidelities while she was pregnant, so be it – however difficult she found it. He’d been honest enough to admit that he found her repellent in her bloated state, going on to underline that it was only her he truly loved. Lucy was no fool, in fact rather the reverse, and of late she had intercepted glances between Henry and sweet lithe Barbra that spoke of more than a male itch. No, Lucy decided then and there, Barbra would have to go, however competent a wet nurse she would make.
Lucy drew the bolt on her bedroom door and sat down at the little table she used as her private desk. The drawer was kept locked, and right at the bottom, her hands closed on the wrapped package and drew it out. This was her treasure, her best kept secret – a little thing that should have been destroyed years ago, had she obeyed her father.
Burn it, her father had said, his eyes wild, burn it, lass! And Lucy had hurried to the kitchen with the wrapped item crushed to her chest to do as he said, but had frozen with her hand extended towards the grate. From the thing she’d held came noise, and Lucy’s heart had leapt like a startled hart when, for the first time in her life, she truly heard. Not the muted, distant sounds she would occasionally pick up, not the discordant, jarring noises that now and then broke through her veil of silence: no, this was a veritable banquet of sound – screams, songs, the eerie call of gulls, laughter, voices drowning in each other, the lapping sound of waves against the shore – all of it bombarded her reeling brain.
With a shaking hand, she’d uncovered what she held and found herself looking down at a painting, an exquisite little painting of…she didn’t truly know. The sea perhaps, or the sky as it looked to the west moments after the sun had dropped out of sight, leaving a band of shimmering greens and blues in its wake. A painting that spoke to her, and Lucy had clutched it to her heart and lied when her father asked if she had burnt it. Yes, she had nodded, and all the while the little magic painting lay hidden under her bodice.
Three years on, the painting lived in her desk. She caressed its sides and placed it on the table. Lucy closed her eyes and listened, drinking in all those sounds she only heard here, sitting at her desk in solitude. People weeping, crying for their lost ones…the high sound of a girl laughing…the darker notes of a man’s voice. To Lucy, they were all intoxicating, a bouquet of sensations that left her mildly drunk for the remainder of the morning, an addiction she no longer could do without.
Her father had never explained why she was to burn the picture, saying only that it was evil and dangerous. Dangerous? Lucy scraped a nail over the thick oil paint, tracing the scrawled M in the right-hand corner. Yes, it probably was, but not to her, even if at times her head would throb and her vision cloud if she looked at it for too long. She pursed her mouth, considering why her father, Simon Melville, would have thought it evil. What could this little square of bright colours possibly do? With a sigh, she rewrapped the painting in its square of muslin cloth and returned it to its hiding place.
*
At times, Lucy admitted that the single largest benefit of her marriage to Henry Jones was his mother. She liked Kate, admired her even, and, in particular, she enjoyed spending time with a person who so clearly regarded her as an intellectual equal rather than a halfwit.
Kate was sitting at her desk when Lucy entered the parlour and brightened at the sight of her. She patted at the chair beside her. Lucy smiled back, dancing over the dark hardwood floors despite her huge, protruding belly. Twins, just like Henry had been a twin, even if his brother had died some years ago. Lads, she hoped, heirs to the plantation and all the riches Kate was accumulating. Not that she didn’t love her little Frances, but male children were what was expected of her – by
her husband and her mother-in-law.
“Good night?” Kate enquired with a smile. She set her quill down and moved the open ledgers aside.
Lucy nodded and pulled the ledgers towards her. Together with her mother-in-law, Lucy kept all the accounts, and it was their neat hands that flowed up and down the columns, detailing expenses and incomes.
New slaves, she noted with a slight frown. Again? She tapped at the item with her finger, raising a questioning brow.
“For the tobacco farm,” Kate explained. “You know how quickly they wear out.”
Lucy made an acquiescing movement and went on with her inspection of the latest entries. Dyed broadcloth? Dark red? Lucy lifted her eyes to where Barbra was minding little Frances. Definitely a new skirt, and definitely dark red…Lucy scowled. Mayhap she should send Barbra off to the tobacco farm, but something in her gut told her Henry wouldn’t like that. Sell her off while Henry was away elsewhere? Lucy sneaked a look at Kate and concluded this was not an option. Her mother-in-law might not approve of Henry bedding a slave – in fact, she probably pretended it wasn’t happening – but as long as Henry wanted the wench to stay, stay she would. Lucy sighed. No, she would have to think of something else. With an effort, she returned her attention to the ledger.
“That? Oh, that… You weren’t supposed to see that,” Kate said. “It’s something Henry wishes to surprise you with.”
Lucy smiled. A sizeable amount, spent down in St Mary’s City with one of the better merchants. She patted herself on her belly and got to her feet, indicating with her hand that she intended to go out.
Providence in June was at times uncomfortably warm. Lucy snapped her fan open, adjusted the brim of her hat to ensure her face remained in shadow, and hurried off in the direction of her parents’ house. In sober velvets and immaculate linens, she swept through the town, her hair modestly hidden under an elegant hat. People bowed and curtsied; young Mrs Jones was a valued customer for all that she was considered simple. Poor lass, old women would sigh as they looked her up and down, unaware that she understood every word they uttered: pretty enough but deaf as a door post. Imagine Henry Jones marrying her!
Minister Walker stopped and bowed, his mouth moving with extreme slowness as he enunciated a good day to her. Lucy simpered and curtsied and wondered if Mrs Walker had any idea of where her God-fearing husband spent most of his evenings. Lucy did, slipping in for the odd visit with Mrs Malone, who not only made the town’s best beer to serve at her brothel, but who was also beyond doubt its most competent high-fashion seamstress.
Not that Mrs Malone would ever dream of being indiscreet, but chatter away to her girls she did, while deaf Lucy stood silent on a stool, her eyes leaping from mouth to mouth as she added bit after bit to her extensive information bank – like the fact that Minister Walker was a frequent guest, an old dear who drank far too much beer and flirted enthusiastically with the girls, even if he had never succumbed to his carnal itches – except for that time five years in the past.
“Distraught,” Mrs Malone said. “The poor man was so disgusted with himself, it made my heart break.” Well, that was as it should be. A minister to do such! Lucy had wrinkled her nose, thinking that no man was above sin.
Lucy didn’t like it when they discussed her father, a far too regular visitor to this establishment. Nor was she amused at some of the detailed descriptions of her own husband, roused and half-naked in Madam’s own bed.
“Just like his father in his tastes,” Mrs Malone had said, and they all laughed, throwing Lucy pitying glances. Lucy had twisted her hands together to stop herself from hitting her. The woman was older than Methuselah – what in God’s name could Henry see in her? A lot apparently, but not only in her, as the other girls added anecdotes of their own, starring Henry Jones and his eager member.
*
“And Frances?” Her mother didn’t attempt to hide her disappointment, her narrow shoulders slumping even more than usual. Lucy gave her a concerned look. She loved her mother more than she loved anyone else in the world, and this long, slow dying was unbearable to watch.
Joan patted her hand and gestured for her to sit down on the bench in the backyard, pouring them both some buttermilk. “It’s good for you,” she said at Lucy’s face. “And it’s good for the weans.”
Lucy rolled her eyes, but drank. Afterwards they both laughed at each other’s white moustaches.
Lucy wasn’t delighted by the sudden arrival of her aunt and uncle. Ever since Matthew Graham had caught her reading his private correspondence some years ago, something of a chilly truce existed between them. But her mother brightened markedly in the presence of her brother, smiling as he teased her about her latest addition to her hen coop.
“She’s a good layer,” Joan said. “Every day during spring and summer.”
“She’s bald!” Matthew laughed. “You have to knit her something to wear, indecent as she is.”
“Who has ever heard of a hen in clothes?” Joan protested.
“And who has ever heard of a hen with no feathers?” Matthew said.
“It’s only round her rump.” Alex bent down to inspect the said hen.
“Aye, immodest little baggage.” Matthew nodded at the cock. “Not that he much cares, does he?”
“Maybe that’s why, you know, desperate females and all that.” Alex undid her hat, and dropped it onto the table, fiddling with her hair.
“Alex!” Joan eyed her new hen and sighed. “Now I won’t see her without noting her nudity. The pot,” she said, wagging a finger at the hen. “You go into the pot within the week.”
Lucy had only half followed this exchange, utilising the opportunity to study Matthew and Alex in detail. Her uncle was a handsome man, albeit that he was well over fifty: all his teeth, thick hair, and a face that was relatively unlined. At some inches over six feet, he was inordinately tall, as were all his sons, in particular Jacob. Lucy smiled. Of all her cousins, it was Jacob that she truly liked, impressed by how he’d gone to London on his own at only sixteen.
Matthew raised an eyebrow at her intense staring, and Lucy ducked her head. Why was it that he made her feel so transparent, as if all the thoughts that darted back and forth inside her brain stood plain to read upon her face for him? That Alex didn’t much like her was obvious, nor did Alex make much of an effort to hide her opinion, even if she always accorded Lucy the respect of treating her like an adult. Lucy didn’t much like Alex either, and in particular she didn’t like it that the woman looked so radiant, her skin an unlined pink, her dark blue eyes clear and glittering. Her hair was, as always, brushed to a shine, strands of grey highlighting a mass of brown and bronze and chestnut. Mayhap there was some truth in all that posturing around the importance of eating raw greens, Lucy mused, grimacing at remembered meals at Graham’s Garden that consisted of far too much spinach and beets, and far too little gravy and pie.
Lucy produced the little piece of sharpened coal she always carried with her and doodled while she waited for her uncle and aunt to leave. She drew swirls and whirlwinds, a small patch of something that heaved and sucked. She smiled down at her effort: the little picture, albeit muted now that it was all in grey.
Joan placed a hand on her sleeve, making her jerk upright. Her uncle’s face had gone a sickly white, and as to Alex, she was staring at the little drawing with revulsion.
“What is it you’re drawing, daughter?” Joan asked, her grey eyes wide.
Lucy tried to cover the scrap of paper with her hand, but Matthew was quicker, snatching it away to study it closely.
“Oh God!” He crumpled it together.
“Joan?” Alex said. “Has she seen one of those?”
Joan nodded. “We were sent one, three years ago.”
“Sent one?” Alex wet her lips with her tongue. “By whom?”
“We don’t know. It just came, aye? But we burnt it, didn’t we?” She met Lucy’s eyes. “We burnt it.”
Lucy nodded, several times. Of course sh
e’d burnt it.
“Thank the Lord for that!” Matthew slumped in his chair.
“Amen to that,” Alex said, looking as if she were about to faint.
Lucy eyed them both with interest. They were frightened, badly frightened, and once again she found herself wondering what the little painting could possibly do. To ask outright was not going to work, she could see that in all of their faces, and seeing as neither her uncle nor aunt showed any indication of leaving, Lucy chose to cut her visit short. She rose, curtsied politely and left, promising her mother she’d be back on the morrow.
*
“Luke,” Matthew muttered when Joan left them to escort her daughter to the door. “It has to be Luke that sent them the picture.”
Alex nodded. There was no doubt in her mind: this bore the elegant signature of Luke Graham, Matthew’s estranged brother – and she knew for a fact that he’d had one of these horrible paintings in his possession a few years back. Even worse, she knew who’d painted it, hating this reminder of her strange time travelling witch of a mother. She kept a cautious eye on Joan, moving around in the kitchen to find them something to drink.
“How could he do that?” Alex said in an undertone to Matthew. “He knew the painting was dangerous. I told him!” Not that she’d wanted to, but upon realising Luke had one of Mercedes’ pictures in his possession, she’d felt compelled to warn him – more for the sake of her son, Jacob, who at the time was in London and spending a lot of time with Luke. She smoothed at her skirts, a sudden itch flying up her legs. She could still remember the fear that had gripped her upon reading Jacob’s detailed description of the painting, down to admitting just how ill it made him feel. Alex drew a deep breath. If you looked too long, the painting trapped you. It sucked you in and transported you elsewhere, and… Damn Mercedes! Why, oh why had she chosen to litter the world with these dangerous portals through time? She knew why: Mercedes was trying to paint her way home to fifteenth century Seville, but ironically her little portals did not seem to work on her.
Revenge and Retribution (The Graham Saga) Page 2
