The Chisholm brothers didn’t relax. If anything, they stiffened further at Matthew’s greeting, the younger of them sliding a concerned look at the man on the mule.
“Matthew.” Robert Chisholm nodded in greeting. Since old Andrew died two years ago, Robert was the new Chisholm pater familias, ruling over a huge, rambling family with a substantial settlement to the east of the Grahams – a small village by now, with their own mill, a cooper, a farrier, a cluster of small houses, and the three original farms.
Matthew traded with them, milled his grain at their mill, hunted with the men, had served in the militia with them, and would never dream of offering for one of their girls in marriage to one of his sons, seeing as the Chisholms were Catholics.
Major stigma in the present political climate, Alex thought, suspecting this might be why the brothers remained on their horses instead of dismounting to see if they could help.
Robert frowned when Matthew told him about the Burleys, eyeing Alex with some admiration when Matthew recounted how she’d broken Walter Burley’s ribs.
“Not that difficult,” Alex said, “I just sort of sat on him.”
The stranger on the mule laughed, the sound cut short.
“How unfortunate you didn’t sit that much harder,” Martin, the other Chisholm brother, said. He spat to the side and Alex recalled the Chisholms had personal reasons for hating the Burleys – their sister’s homestead had been attacked by them.
“I didn’t see you in Providence,” Matthew said.
Robert shifted in his saddle. “No, our welcome would have been somewhat dubious at present.”
“Aye, and you do best to stay away for the foreseeable future.”
“This colony was founded by a Catholic, for Catholics.” Martin Chisholm’s voice was raw with rage. “And now look what happens. On account of our own stupidity in creating a haven for all Trinitarian confessions, we find ourselves outnumbered and threatened in a place where we shouldn’t be.”
“No one will harm you up here,” Matthew said.
Robert patted at his musket. “No, that they won’t, and we’re a large enough group to be able to defend our own. But what say you of the recent burnings further south? Of Catholics driven off their land on account of their religion?”
“I say it’s wrong.” Matthew sighed. “And I’ve argued the point as well as I can.”
“Will it help?” Robert asked.
Matthew shrugged. “That depends – on the king-to-be, mostly, and it would seem you’ll live to see a Catholic king on England’s throne again.”
“Deo gratias,” the unknown man mumbled.
Alex had by now found the beer, and the three men dismounted somewhat unwillingly to join them. Because of the wide-brimmed hat he wore, it was impossible to make out the stranger’s face. After a few clipped courtesies, he accepted some beer in the mug he produced from his bundle and retreated to sit some distance away, leaning back against the smooth bark of a sugar maple.
Alex’s eyes kept on gliding over in his direction, her brain scrambling to grab at the vague memories he woke by the way he moved and sat. She had a pretty good idea what this man was, further reinforced by his dark apparel, his soft, uncalloused hands, and the rosary beads she’d glimpsed hanging round his neck. Well, she wasn’t about to tell, and it was probably wise to exert caution while travelling with a Catholic priest.
“…so we’ll remain here until tomorrow, and by then we hope I’m well enough to continue our journey home,” Matthew finished explaining to Robert.
“Alone?” Robert shook his head. “Is that wise?”
“Ian will send Mark or Jacob to meet us,” Matthew said, “and they’ll be back home tomorrow by noon.”
“Ah.” Martin nodded. “And the Burleys?”
“Somewhat worse for wear, I imagine, at least for some days yet.” Matthew shifted where he sat, and closed his eyes. “I swear, if I ever lay hands on them—”
“…you turn them over to the law,” Alex finished.
“Or not.” Martin Chisholm mimed a slashed throat.
When the Chisholms stood to leave, their silent companion took off his hat for a moment, smoothing down thick, dark hair. Alex strangled a gasp when she saw his face. No, it couldn’t be. It was totally impossible, and this resemblance was nothing but a quirky coincidence. Still, she couldn’t help herself. When the young man swung himself atop his mule, Alex stood up.
“Vaya con Dios, Padre,” she said. Go with God, Father.
“Y tu, hija,” came the automatic reply. Robert Chisholm blanched as did the stranger, but curiosity won out. “¿Habla Español, Señora?” he asked.
“Si,” she replied, her tongue thick in her mouth with sounds she hadn’t made for very many years. She decided to gamble once again. “Conocí a su padre, Don Benito Muñoz,” she said, and now the priest really stared at her. Alex wanted to laugh at his expression, but then to hear a totally unknown woman say she knew his father must have been somewhat disconcerting – in particular if she was right.
“My father?” he said in Spanish. “He died very many years ago—”
“In Barbados.”
“Sí,” the priest whispered, staring at her as if he’d seen a ghost.
“If you ever want to talk about it, my home is open to you,” Alex said switching back to English.
“Gracias.” The priest smiled. With a curt nod, he clapped the hat down on his head and rode off behind the Chisholms.
Matthew stared after them and then turned to look at her.
She explained.
“Don Benito’s son?” he said once she’d finished.
“A spitting image.” And just like Don Benito, this young priest was an uncomfortable copy of that future Ángel Muñoz, Isaac’s father. “Jesus,” she said, hiding her face against her knees.
“What?” Matthew sounded concerned.
“That’s what I suppose Isaac looks like, just like that. The same hair, the same eyes, the same mouth…” She straightened up to look at him. “That’s what Isaac’s father looked like, that fucking bastard Ángel Muñoz.”
“Ah, lass.” Matthew opened his arms to her, and Alex crawled in as close as she could.
“Silly, isn’t it?” she said in as light a tone as she could muster. “To become so upset over something that happened almost thirty years ago.”
Matthew stroked her hair. “That vile man abducted you, held you imprisoned for months. I imagine you don’t forget that – ever.”
“No.” She twisted her fingers into his shirt, playing with the laces. “I only ever told you. No one else knows.”
“As it should be,” he breathed into her hair. “No secrets between you and me, aye?”
“Do you think he’ll come? The priest?”
Matthew snorted. “Aye, of course he will. You waved a right big carrot at him. As you tell it, he never knew his father.”
“Seeing as his father was a priest and as such sworn to celibacy, I imagine there was no opportunity to build a strong father-son relationship.” She dug her bare toes into the soft moss and frowned. “He was so afflicted by guilt. A good man, a genuinely good man, who had the misfortune of falling in love where he shouldn’t, and for that he flagellated himself until the day he died.” She wrinkled her nose at the memory of that horrid hair shirt – the garment he had insisted he be buried in. She laughed. “Mrs Parson is going to have a fit. I’m not sure I ever told her Don Benito had a son.”
“Aye, it is a mite surprising.”
Alex looked at him. “You don’t approve, do you?”
“It isn’t my business to approve or not, but it would seem to me yon priest was unfaithful to the vows he’d made.”
“He was a man. Fallible as all of us are,” Alex said severely.
“Oh aye? So if I find myself confronted with a pretty young lass and bed her, you’ll forgive on account of me being but a fallible man?”
She sat up. “I’ll cut your balls off, and, besides, you al
ready have, haven’t you?”
“That was ages ago – and different,” Matthew said, sounding defensive.
Yes, of course it was different. He’d have died if bloody Kate Jones hadn’t cared for him and healed him and fucked him. Not that it helped much to keep that in mind.
“I suppose it was different for Don Benito too,” Alex said, elegantly closing the discussion.
Chapter 6
Just by chance, Lucy Jones found out what the little picture could do. Her heart hammered as she held her little daughter in her arms. Frances was crying, she could feel that, and Lucy checked her arms, her legs, her head – all of her for any visible signs of damage, sagging with relief that she was still here, still whole. She barely dared look at the canvas, and her head rang with voices, music, screams, laughter. She flipped the picture over, and the silence was immediate, allowing her to think.
Frances calmed down, resting back as well as she could against her mother’s huge belly. Lucy dangled her silver pendant as a distraction, and Frances’ plump hands made a grab for it. Lucy shivered, a breath of ice travelling down her spine to collect along the back of her thighs. One more moment and her baby would have been gone, swallowed into the dazzling light that had poured from the painting. A small bare foot was all that had been left of Frances, and fortunately Lucy had managed to grab it in time, her hand, her arm, being pulled into the painting together with her daughter. Her limb ached after the recent tussle with a magic piece of canvas that had no intention of relinquishing its hold on Frances, twisting itself like a vice around the girl and, in the process, mauling Lucy’s arm to the point where she actually opened her mouth to scream out loud. She studied herself, fingering the dark discolouration that ran the whole length of her arm. Strange that she should bruise so badly while Frances was unscathed.
She rewrapped the painting and stuffed it back into her drawer, locking it carefully. Burn it – yes, she should burn it before something like this happened again. Where would she have gone, her little Frances, if she’d let go of the foot and let her fall? Lucy had a vague impression of a churning chute, of whipping branches and screeching trees. Green, green, green, and the light so bright it hurt your eyes.
Destroy it, Lucy told herself, but all the while she knew she wouldn’t – the little picture had her in its thrall, and she had no intention of going back to a world devoid of sound.
*
“What have you done?” Kate looked with horror at Lucy’s arm.
Lucy shrugged and mimed falling off her bed.
“Your bed?” Kate shook her head. “No, my dear, that I don’t believe.”
Lucy insisted that was the case and looked about for her husband.
“He’s gone,” Kate said in reply to Lucy’s questioning eyes. “Matters to attend to in town.”
Ah. Lucy frowned. He’d spent the night with Barbra – again. The curvaceous slave girl was becoming something of a liability, a chafing thorn in Lucy’s perfect life. She threw a look out of the window, eyes locking on the golden hoops that decorated Barbra’s ears. Baubles for the master’s slave mistress? No, this little matter had to end. Now.
*
Some hours later, Lucy detoured through her father’s office, planting a light kiss on his balding pate. She leaned over his shoulder and scanned the deed he was drawing up.
“Get away with you.” Simon covered the paperwork with his hand. “None of your concern, is it?”
Lucy shrugged. Minister Walker’s will didn’t much interest her. She smoothed down Simon’s few remaining strands of light red hair in an affectionate gesture before hurrying off to find her mother.
“What happened to your arm?” Joan gasped when the bell-shaped sleeve fell back to reveal the mangled skin. Lucy scowled, regretting not having worn a full sleeve bodice over her imported French chemise. But it was too hot, and she was too huge, and she hadn’t thought much about her arm as she walked up the slight incline to her parents’ house. No, she’d been reliving time and time again that moment of absolute panic when she turned to see her daughter disappearing. She sighed and sat down on the bench in the yard, flicking at her skirts to chase away one of the hens. From her petticoat pocket she produced paper and coal and scribbled a question, handing the note to Joan.
“No.” Joan set her mouth in a stubborn line and swept the note aside.
Lucy frowned at her and shoved the slip of paper at her again.
“I said no, and why would you want to know about it anyway?” She gave Lucy a suspicious look. “You did burn it, didn’t you?”
Most certainly, Lucy nodded, of course she had burnt it. She scribbled on the paper and handed it to her mother.
“Aye, it frightens us.” Joan’s shoulders drooped, causing her neckline to gape open. So thin, Lucy thought, skin and bones no more. “If you look for too long and too deep, you disappear,” Joan went on. “You fall through time, and God knows where you end up.” She shivered. “It must hurt, don’t you think? Leave you all bruised and damaged.”
Lucy couldn’t help it. She cradled her arm to her chest. Joan’s eyes glued themselves to her discoloured skin.
“Dearest Lord! Your bruises! You didn’t burn it, did you?” This time Lucy’s insistent nods that aye, she had didn’t fool her mother. She took hold of Lucy’s shoulders and shook her. “You were told to burn it! It’s an evil thing, aye?”
Lucy twisted loose. Her hands flew through the air, and Joan collapsed to sit, her eyes darting between Lucy’s hands.
“You hear?”
Lucy nodded. She couldn’t fully explain, her hands fluttering like bird wings as she tried to convey just what a miracle it was for her to actually hear things. Disjointed things, voices that spoke in strange languages, children that cried and laughed, horses neighing and dogs barking, but still – sounds!
Joan slumped even lower in her chair. She stared down at her thin, knobbly hands for a while before raising her face. Lucy took a step back at the look on her mother’s face, gaunt features pinched tight into a mask of absolute fear.
“You have to destroy it. What if Frances stumbles upon it?”
Lucy dropped her eyes, but not soon enough.
“Ah, sweetest Lord! Our little lass, she could have been gone from us, and we would never have known.” Joan closed her eyes, clasped her hands together, and recited a heartfelt prayer that God keep her granddaughter safe from magic and evil.
“Straight home to burn it,” Joan said in parting, sinking her grey eyes into Lucy’s. “Today,” she insisted, her grip hard on Lucy’s arms. She looked about for her shawl, her hat. “I’ll come with you.”
For a moment, Lucy feared she would, but the burst of energy left Joan as soon as it had surfaced and, with a little sigh, she admitted she didn’t have the strength to attempt the long walk to the Jones’ house. Lucy kissed her mother, promised yet again to burn the painting, and was off, trailed by the black man assigned to accompanying her.
*
“I’ll go and talk to her,” Simon said after having listened to Joan’s abbreviated version of events. “I’ll make sure she burns it.”
“Today?”
“Aye, today.” He leaned forward to pour himself some more beer. “She’s far too canny to risk her daughter again.”
“Aye,” she whispered, “but there are others.”
“Joan!” Simon choked on his beer, spraying both her and the table.
Joan hung her head, lifting one emaciated shoulder high. “She isn’t always a good person. And the painting, it has her spelled. I could see it in her eyes as we spoke, that she would very much like to see someone disappear entirely – to see if I was speaking true.”
“God in heaven,” Simon muttered, ignoring her displeased grimace. He lifted the mug to his mouth with a shaking arm and drank deeply. “She wouldn’t do something like that,” he said with conviction.
“No?” Joan was not quite as certain. Lucy was a detached young woman, observing her surroundings, and most p
eople in them, with much curiosity but little affection.
*
At first, Lucy thought her father was here to tell her that at last her poor mother had died, but he was far too composed for that, even if he twisted the hat he held in his hands round and round in a way that showed that something was troubling him.
“The picture?” Simon patted Frances on her dark brown head.
Burnt, Lucy signed, she had burnt it. Immediately she had come home, she added with the help of her coal stub.
“Hmm.” Simon studied her narrowly, but Lucy was an expert at masking her thoughts, pasting a mild smile over her features.
“I hope you’re telling the truth. It’s a wee bit of evil, aye?”
Lucy nodded, even though she didn’t agree. To her, the painting breathed desperation, not evil, as if someone had been trying fiercely to find their way back to something. Another time perhaps, a lost lover, a child, a home… The fine hairs along Lucy’s nape bristled with disquiet.
*
It would never have happened if Henry had chosen to spend this night with her. Or if he at least had been polite enough to sit with her for a while and then accompany her to bed, perhaps even holding her hand as she fell asleep.
Instead, Henry rushed into the room, kissed her on both cheeks, patted his restless children through the linen and silk that covered her skin, and complained about being tired and needing to sleep – alone. Or not, she noted when she took a short, cooling walk around the garden with Kate. Both of them could see the soft candlelight that spilled from his windows, and while only Kate could hear them, Lucy saw the shadow of a woman and knew her husband was betraying her with the slave girl – again.
Before she went to sleep that night, Lucy withdrew the painting from its hiding place and placed it on her desk. The carpet of sounds danced around her, filling the dark, humid night air with birdsong and clanking chains, with the slapping of oars against water, and the howling of wolves. Human voices rose and surged around her. They called, they wept, they sang and whispered. Lucy lay in the dark and listened, her eyes fixed on the low fat moon she could see through the open shutters. No, not evil, but definitely dangerous. Very, very dangerous.
Revenge and Retribution (The Graham Saga) Page 5
