On the third day of this, Mrs Parson entered Alex’s bedchamber with a bang. “How much longer?” she barked, startling Alex to sit up straight. “Are you planning on staying in here forever while life goes on outside?”
Alex didn’t reply, swinging her feet back and forth.
“Alex Graham!” Mrs Parson shook her hard. “It isn’t only you, aye? You have a husband that’s hurting, you have two wee lads who don’t know what to do!”
Matthew…a dull ache soared through her heart as she thought his name. He must be so angry with her.
“I don’t care,” Alex said, forcing the words up her throat. “I just want to be left alone.” She giggled out loud. “Like Ferdinand the Bull.”
Mrs Parson eyed her with exasperation. “I have no idea what you’re on about, but you stink, Alex Graham.”
“I do?” Alex hitched her shoulders. She couldn’t care less.
“And have you not spared a thought to where your husband might be?” Mrs Parson asked.
Alex blinked owlishly. Matthew? Well, he was here, wasn’t he? She blinked again. No, he wasn’t. In fact, she hadn’t seen him since the moment she’d slapped him. Something shifted in her belly – Matthew? “Where?”
“We don’t know,” Mrs Parson said, and Alex could hear how close the old woman was to tears.
“You don’t know?” Alex felt something stirring inside of her.
For the first time in days, she looked at her own reflection and she didn’t like what she saw, not one bit. She sniffed and made a face. Mrs Parson was right; she did stink. Things began to drop into place in her head. Samuel was gone, with Qaachow, but he would come back some day, of course he would – Qaachow had promised, hadn’t he? But David…Adam…and, oh God, Matthew! He must be twisting with guilt. She had to go to him, now!
“But you must have looked!” His sons would look out for their father, wouldn’t they?
“We have,” Mrs Parson said, “but we can’t find him.”
That made Alex’s guts begin to revolve. What did they mean: they couldn’t find him? Hadn’t they seen him go?
Mrs Parson sighed. “It was a mite chaotic.”
Alex scrunched up her face, making a huge effort to pull out the memory of the moments just after her Samuel had been taken from her. Someone had been screaming, and detachedly she realised that must have been her. David…he’d been crying, and Mark had stood with his arms around him. And Adam? Hugin, the bird, had flown over to sit on her head, disturbed by her screaming, and Adam’s eyes had been very close to hers, but she couldn’t remember… Yes, she could. Oh God, she had shoved him away, screaming that her Samuel was gone, and could he just fuck off and leave her alone? A wave of bile washed through her mouth.
“Adam,” she groaned. She rose, holding on to the bedpost.
“Aye, Adam.” Mrs Parson stopped Alex on her way to the door. “Not like that. You’ll frighten your bairns even more. I’ll have Sarah come up with water.”
Half an hour later, Alex had returned to the world of the living, her brain frantic with worry for Matthew. No one had seen him! Not at the Leslies, not at the Chisholms, and Ian assured her they had checked the decaying cabins up at Forest Spring as well.
“But why?” she asked Mrs Parson.
“Why?” Mrs Parson eyed her disapprovingly. “Maybe because you told him it was his fault? You screamed at him like a fisherwoman, telling him not to touch you.”
“Well, it is,” Alex said.
Mrs Parson just looked at her.
“It was him that promised,” Alex tried again, feeling flayed by those black eyes.
“And you could have said no,” Mrs Parson said. “If you had already then this wouldn’t have happened.”
“I didn’t think he’d ever come to claim him,” Alex whispered, “and when I finally realised he would, it was too late.”
“And don’t you think Matthew reasoned the same way?” Mrs Parson shook her head at her. “For him to give up his son to the heathens…unthinkable, no?”
Alex sat down. “Samuel, my little Samuel.”
Mrs Parson sat down beside her on the kitchen bench. “He isn’t dead, Alex.”
“No,” Alex said, blinking furiously to stop herself from crying – not that it helped. “But we just gave him up, tossing him away like a defect toy.”
“Nay, you didn’t. The boy left knowing you love him.” She stroked Alex’s face. “And he has the wee priest with him, no?”
Alex laughed through her tears. “It will be Samuel having to take care of him.”
“And that’s not a bad thing. It will take the lad’s mind off other things.”
“All my children,” Alex moaned. “Jacob to go to London, Daniel to Boston, and now Samuel with the Indians—”
Mrs Parson slapped her shoulder, hard. “You’re fortunate. You have living children, no? And even if they go abroad, they’re still alive. Wee Samuel will live, Alex.”
“He’ll live,” Alex repeated, “yes, he’ll live.” She kissed Mrs Parson on her wrinkled cheek and then stood up.
“First things first, I have to find Adam and apologise.” And then David, and finally Matthew. Where could he be? Something wild and toothy lived in her stomach, a gurgling monster that told her maybe he was dead. But, no, she took a deep breath, she took another and turned inward, searching for his beat. There, but thready and weak, and Alex’s eyes flew open in panic.
“He’s hurt!” she gasped.
Mrs Parson took her hands. “Your wee sons first. Then your husband.”
“My sons,” she repeated, but all she wanted to do was to pick up her skirts and run to find Matthew.
She found Adam down by the pig pen, held him hard and whispered that would he please forgive her, but she hadn’t been herself, and she really, really loved him, but he knew that, didn’t he?
She placed her hand over his heart. “Here you know that I always love you, even when I go a bit wild and crazy.”
Adam hugged her back and told her that the pig seemed to miss Samuel too, although perhaps not as much as he did, or David did.
“I’m sure she does,” Alex replied and kissed him once again. “Do you know where David is?”
“Up in the graveyard.”
David was far more difficult. His face was pinched with exhaustion, and Alex was washed by a wave of guilt that she should so have dropped into herself, wallowing in her own dark feelings of loss, and leaving her son to cope on his own.
“Why are you sitting here?” she asked, joining him on the bench.
He shrugged and studied his bare feet. In his hands, he held the knife Matthew had given him for his last birthday, every now and then sinking it into the wood of the bench. “Where else? Here I see it all so, when he comes, I’ll be the first to see him.”
“It will be a while before he comes back.”
“If he comes back,” David whispered and began to cry.
That was when Alex saw that on the nearest tree someone had carved a large, unsteady Samuel, and she held her eleven-year-old to her chest and shushed and comforted, her fingers running through his dark hair. Twins they could have been, him and Samuel, so alike were they, and, like twins, they had grown up in constant companionship, but now one half of them was gone, leaving David hurting badly.
Alex kneeled down before him. “Honey, I can’t promise you he’ll come back.” She bit her lip so hard it cracked, her mouth filling with the taste of her own blood. “But I believe he will, and until he does, I’ll pray every night that God returns him safe and sound.” She kissed the sad face before her and coaxed his chin up so that she could see his eyes. This close, they were an amazing mossy green with flecks of deepest brown. “He’ll come back. Now,” she said, getting back onto her feet, “I have to find your father. Do you have any idea where he is?”
No, David didn’t, but he had a very long list of where he wasn’t.
“Hmm,” Alex said, staring off in the direction of the river. And that is when
she knew where he would be. How stupid of her not to realise that immediately! She flew down the slope, half-ran across the yard, swerving to avoid crashing into Minister Allerton when he appeared from behind the privy.
“Alex!”
She ignored him.
“Alex!” Minister Allerton puffed in his effort to catch up with her. She threw him an irritated look. She didn’t want company on her walk. She definitely didn’t want an audience should she find Matthew where she hoped. Actually, she was irritated already before, with her husband. To have everyone worried out of their mind like that! Her elder sons had ridden like couriers back and forth, searching for their da, and with a shuttered face Ian had voiced the opinion that mayhap Da had… Alex felt her insides tear themselves apart with worry. What if he was hurt? Deep inside of her, she could still feel him – a quickened pulse, not at all his normal, steady beat.
“Has anyone ever told you you have a most transparent face?” Julian said once he drew abreast with her. He held up a hand to stop her from saying anything. “I just want to let you know that I’ll help as well as I can. It’s difficult to lose a child.”
“He isn’t dead!”
“No,” the minister said, “but lost all the same.”
*
Julian Allerton was still reeling when Alex disappeared into the woods, his hand caressing his reddening cheek. Serve him right, Mark thought, sending the minister a dark look. He had only caught the tail end of the conversation, having been busy in the tool-shed when he heard Mama’s voice.
“Now that was a very daft thing to say,” Mark commented.
“It’s the truth,” Minister Allerton said. “The next time they see their son he’ll be a heathen savage. These years are crucial.”
“I don’t think you should say that,” Mark suggested with a certain chill. He could still see Mama, a blur of colour moving at speed through the trees.
“No,” the minister said, deflating rapidly, “you’re right. I should let them keep their hope.”
“Aye, they’ll need it.” With a curt nod, Mark hurried on in the wake of his mother.
She was walking – nay, running – with determination towards the north-west, cutting across fields and ditches, ducking under thickets, and swerving through the trees.
Mark increased his pace. She might need him. He sighed, imagining all kinds of gruesome scenes at her point of destination.
*
He woke reluctantly, half opening his eyes before closing them again. What was the point? Out of a sense of obligation, Matthew attempted to move the trunk once again, but gave up, falling back to pant with frustration and fear.
His axe lay just out of reach, and yet again he stretched himself towards it, fingertips grazing the smooth handle, no more. He had screamed himself hoarse, but no one had come, and this last night, he had lain half-delirious, trapped against the damp softness of the moss. He was chilled to the bone, and here, in the thicker stands of forest, the sun never fully reached the ground, dancing a few feet up in the air. He was no longer hungry, but, God, he was thirsty! He tore off another chunk of moss with his free hand and sucked at it.
He filled his lungs with air and called out again. “Aleeeeeeex! Aleeeeeex!” He didn’t want to die here – not like this, pinned beneath a log due to his own stupidity.
He had been so angry: with Qaachow, with Alex for shouting at him like she did, but mostly with himself. Why hadn’t he done like Alex suggested and sent Samuel off? Tried, at least, to save his son from this hasty promise, made so many years ago?
So he had come here, to the clearing that had once housed Qaachow’s village. He and Alex had occasionally come here through the years, and this was where Samuel had been made. Mayhap it was all decided already then; the lad was created here, among the ruins of an Indian village.
He licked his chapped lips and swallowed, light-headed with lack of food and water. He shivered, his trapped limbs trembling, and closed his eyes on all the green that surrounded him. Up to the other day, this had been a place he approached with reverence and respect, but the afternoon that Qaachow stole his son, Matthew had taken his axe and come here to desecrate, eradicate.
He had done a good job. The few remaining mounds he had kicked to pieces, he had felled saplings to drag them together in a heavy pile that he had planned to set on fire, and it was as he stood panting and covered with perspiration that he had leaned too hard against one of the old fallen trees. He was only vaguely aware of what had happened. He had slipped, the ground giving way below him, and scrabbled backwards, seeing in slow motion how the heavy pine log shifted and began to roll. It hadn’t hurt, and even now he could move both feet, but the log had settled itself across his torso and upper thighs, effectively imprisoning him. Revenge, he assumed, for the destruction he had wreaked.
He was tired and wet, and his mind wandered. Would they ever find him? And when they did, would his bleached bones lie here? He laughed hollowly at his own morbidity. Alex…he wanted his wife to hold his hand while he slipped away into the afterlife. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. Maybe he could avoid waking up again to despair and fear, mayhap he could dream. In his dream, she was there, a short-haired lass in strange breeches and a bright red jacket, and she laughed at him, her eyes glittering in the sun. Matthew smiled in his dozing state.
“Djeens,” he mumbled out loud.
“I haven’t worn them in over twenty years,” a voice said somewhere over his head. “I don’t think they’d fit.”
“You don’t have them,” he said without opening his eyes. “You burnt them.”
“Yes, I did.” The voice smiled, and Matthew thought that this was not too bad, to die while talking to his imaginary wife.
A hand closed on his and his eyes opened to see hers, wells of deep blue only inches from his.
“Hi,” she said, kissing his ice-cold nose.
“Hi yourself,” he replied. A huge tremor flew up his body before he slumped into a faint.
Chapter 16
“I thought you’d died,” Alex said later. “A smile, a shiver, and then, boom! Dead to the world.”
“It wouldn’t have been too bad, to die with you beside me. It was worse when I thought I might die all alone.” Matthew’s entire body ached, and now that he was back in the safety of his own bed, he could feel the shivers running up his legs, his skin itching and hot with returning circulation.
No major damage, Mrs Parson had concluded. Nothing but a fever and a chest cold. He drank down the wintergreen tea that Alex held to his mouth, and subsided with a pleased sound against the clean pillows. “Why didn’t you come looking earlier?”
Alex hitched her shoulders and fingered the tassels of the new quilt. “I didn’t miss you. All I could think about was my Samuel.”
Merciful Lord, but that hurt! Matthew closed his eyes at the terrifying thought that, had she not roused herself out of her grief, he would still have been lying out in the woods.
“And I was angry with you,” she said.
“Aye, I gathered that,” Matthew managed to say. He was still trying to assimilate the fact that she hadn’t missed him. He had lain there in the forest and cried for her, called for her, wanting only her, while she had blocked him out of her head. It had never happened before, that they had been separated and she not care, and it made him feel orphaned.
Alex snuck him a look from beneath her lashes and moved over to sit beside him in the bed. He shifted away.
“I wasn’t myself,” she said, “and Samuel, oh God, Matthew! They found his clothes folded down by the river.”
He made a strangled sound, and when she extended her hand he took it, braiding his fingers tightly around hers.
“I…my head…I just couldn’t take in more. And it was all Samuel, Samuel.” Haltingly, she described how these last few days had been for her, how she had walked in a mental fog to shield herself from confronting the fact that their son was gone.
“And you weren’t there,” she said i
n a choked voice. “You weren’t there to hold me, and I thought maybe you were angry with me because I had yelled at you, blaming you for something that was really my fault. If I hadn’t been stupid enough to save Qaachow’s son to begin with, if I’d not nursed the boy, none of this would have happened.” With that, she began to cry, and he gathered her as close as he possibly could, ignoring the twinges this sent up his legs and back.
*
Matthew was fast asleep when Mrs Parson opened the door a few hours later, his head a heavy but comforting weight on Alex’s chest. The old woman beckoned for Alex to come, whispering that supper was on the table. Alex extricated herself from Matthew and followed her, adjusting her hair and cap as she went.
“He could have died,” Alex said in a low voice as she closed the door behind her.
Mrs Parson rolled her eyes at her, saying that people could die all the time, no? In fact, people did die all the time.
“But he didn’t,” she pointed out. “God didn’t want him yet.”
Alex mulled that over. “You think God will want him?” She somehow suspected her own assessment of Matthew was very biased.
“Oh aye.” Mrs Parson grinned. “I’m not quite that sure about you, though.”
“Huh,” Alex snorted. “If we’re talking Presbyterian heaven, I somehow think hell will be more fun.”
“Alex Graham!” Mrs Parson gave her a scandalised look.
“Kidding,” Alex muttered.
*
It wasn’t easy. In fact, at times it was near on unbearable, and more or less on a daily basis Matthew caught Alex doing what he was doing – looking for a third lad where now there were only two. But life picked up around them. The last of the harvest work had to be done, and in the day to day, his name was rarely mentioned, not even by mistake. Where before David and Samuel had been inseparable, it was now David and Adam that did everything together, with Malcolm a permanent third.
Revenge and Retribution (The Graham Saga) Page 13
