Martin Chisholm made a dismissive sound. “He’s bastard born. Protestant yes, but not born in wedlock. Who would follow him against a rightful king?”
“Men do stupid things all the time,” Alex said, “and when it comes to England and religion – it’s not even forty years ago since the first Charles had his head chopped off.”
Matthew took a firm grip of her elbow and steered her in the direction of the house. “Refreshments for our guests, Alex.”
She stuck her tongue out, making him smile and stoop to brush his lips over her brow.
*
Thomas Leslie came by some hours later with Nathan. By then, Matthew, his sons and the Chisholms had consumed a sizeable quantity of beer, all of them sprawled in the shade of the oak. Thomas smiled when he heard Matthew laugh, and gave Alex an affectionate hug.
“Back again?” Alex said, returning his hug. Thomas had been round repeatedly the last few weeks, to begin with to sit on a stool for hours by Matthew’s bedside, talking to him about anything and everything, lately to broach the subject of Jacob with Alex, listening patiently as she went on and on about the injustice of it all.
“He seems much better today,” Thomas said, gesturing in the direction of where Matthew was sitting on one of the benches with Lettie on his knee and Adam leaning against him.
“He is. Did you know,” she went on, changing the subject, “that King Charles is dead?”
“Yes, I heard it down in Providence in May. Not that it will affect things here much; too far away for the king to make much of a difference.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Would you have cared?” Thomas looked at her from calm grey eyes.
“No, I suppose we wouldn’t have given a shit.”
“Alex!” Thomas said, sounding somewhere between amused and disapproving.
She propelled him over to join the men. “Boys only, I fear, so I’ll retire to do some mending or some other adequately feminine pastime.”
In the end, Alex decided that the adequate pastime was to work in her kitchen garden where her daughters were. It was hot, even this late in the afternoon, and even more so up among her neat squares of kitchen produce. So much food: beets, carrots, turnips, cabbages, beans, beans, beans, squash, maize, more beans. Cucumbers for pickling, dill that looked wilted and meagre in the sun, parsley, garlic, and sitting in the middle of the potato rows was Sarah, her legs drawn up to her chin and a wild look in her eyes. Ruth was kneeling before her, and Alex knew that Sarah had somehow received final confirmation that she was with child. When she got closer, she could smell the reek of vomit and pulled Sarah into a hug.
Sarah moaned, hiding her face against Alex’s chest. “I’ll never get away from them now. For the rest of my life, they’ve marked me.”
“We’ll cope,” Alex said shakily. “Somehow, we’ll fix this, okay?”
“How?” Sarah tore herself free. “Can this be undone?” She whacked at her belly.
“Sarah, come here.” Ruth held out her arms to her sister, but all Sarah did was shake her head and get to her feet.
“You know what they’ll say,” she sobbed. “And it’s true, it’s true! I’m a whore – they made me a whore – and this…” She hit herself again. “…this is a bastard.” She wheeled and ran. Like a wild thing, she ran for the safety of the woods.
*
She was sitting by the river, throwing stone after stone into the water, when she heard the distinctive sound of a wooden peg tapping its way down the path. Sarah hunched together, wanting nothing so much as to disappear.
Carlos lowered himself to sit beside her. He made no move to touch her, he didn’t speak, he just sat beside her, and in his hands were his beads, fingers caressing their way over one at the time.
She slid him a look, met two lustrous dark eyes.
“Shall we walk?”
“Aye,” she said, and when he held out his hand, she took it.
“Have you told anyone what they did to you?”
Sarah shook her head. “No, I can’t.”
“But every night you relive it, is that not so?”
Sarah nodded. The first invasive thrust, the hard hands on her forcing her to do just what they wanted. She tried to tell herself she didn’t remember, but she did, every violation stark and detailed in her head. She began to shake with fear. What if they had gotten away from the Indians? They’d come here, and Walter would whisper in her ear, and she’d do anything he wanted as long as they didn’t hurt her.
“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Carlos said when she voiced this fear out loud.
“I should have asked him to kill them. Instead, I wanted them to live in pain and humiliation, and now I will never know if they are truly dead or not.”
“They won’t come back,” Carlos said. “They are surely very far from here right now.”
Sarah gave him a wobbly smile. Samuel would know, she reassured herself, and he’d be back before autumn to tell her the Burleys were effectively destroyed.
She dug her toe into the ground. “I’m with child.”
Carlos just nodded, commenting that many women ended up raped and pregnant.
“I hate it!” She spat to the side. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.”
“The child is innocent. It can’t help its father.”
“Its fathers,” she replied, and suddenly it all bubbled out of her – a long, detailed description of her ordeal that left Carlos pale and stunned.
“Oh, child,” he murmured afterwards, and that made her laugh. This young, cosseted priest man call her a child? What did he know of the pains of life?
“We all have different crosses to carry,” he said.
“Aye, you lost half a leg while I’ve lost my honour and my dignity, and now my body is invaded by them as well. I wouldn’t mind switching.”
“God has given you this burden to carry, and carry it you will. You must pray for divine help.”
“Divine help? I want God to rid me of it, not have me carry it!”
“But He won’t.” Carlos put his hand on her stomach; she gasped and shrank back. “Here is life, and He won’t extinguish innocent life.”
“But what about me? What about my innocence? How could He let that happen to me?”
“I don’t know. God has ordained. Unfathomable as it may seem right now, there is a purpose, a good purpose behind it all.”
“Why me?” she moaned. “Why did it have to be me?”
Carlos took both her hands in his and turned her so that they faced each other. Of almost a height they were, this slight priest and her.
“Because you’re strong enough to shoulder it, and God will be with you all the way.” He fumbled his hand through the side slit of his cassock to the pouch he kept within and brought forth a rosary in dark stained wood. “Here.” He placed it in her hands. “You remember the prayers I taught you?”
“Aye, but I‘m not a Catholic.” The beads lay like a warm comfort in the palm of her hand.
“I don’t think God will mind, and for you to pray to the Holy Virgin may not be a bad idea, given your condition.”
“No.” She ran a thumb over the first bead. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” she recited, “the Lord is with thee.”
*
It was a substantially calmer Sarah that came back to the house after her walk with Carlos. Resigned, but calm, the wild despair that had shone through her eyes for the last few weeks replaced by a shimmer of sadness and determination. Across the table, she looked at Carlos and a smile fluttered over her face, reciprocated by a smile so bright it was difficult to miss.
Alex saw the exchange between them and wasn’t entirely sure if she liked it. Even if Carlos was unaware of it, and would in all certainty hotly deny it, he looked at Sarah as a man would, not as a priest. A strong hand closed on her own, and she shared a concerned glance with Matthew. He had seen it too.
Chapter 41
“It’s one of those horrible cir
cular references,” Alex said to Matthew one early morning.
“Hmm?” he asked, more interested in exploiting the possibilities of his cock-stand and her warm, naked body. He was voracious in bed, had been so for the last few weeks, a constant appetite for her, an urgent need to confirm his virility. Not that she seemed to mind, every now and then wondering in a pleased voice just how many women her age got laid on a daily basis. Aye, she was getting laid most regularly, and this morning would be no exception.
“Carlos,” she said, which didn’t enlighten him at all. Alex sighed, her hand stroking his cock so that it hardened even further. “Somewhere in the future, I have a son fathered by a man that’s the spitting image of that small priest – bar the wooden leg. Ángel is – will be – a right bastard, and yet, in the here and now, his ancestor may be the one who helps my daughter cope with her terrible ordeal.”
“Hmm,” he repeated, and kissed her into silence. He didn’t much like thinking about the stranger aspects of her, and what she had just said made him break out in gooseflesh, in particular given the looks he had seen flash across the table the last few evenings.
He banished these thoughts, concentrating on the woman below him instead, on the curves of her body, the smoothness of her skin, and the alluring scent of almonds and lavender that clung to her. His tongue drifted down, and she made a series of small noises somewhere between saying yes, please and no, I can’t stand it.
He chuckled and raised his head to look at her. “One day, I aim to tie you to the bedstead and have my way with you for hours.”
She laughed. “Talk, talk, talk. We never have time for stuff like that.”
“No?” In a matter of seconds, he found one of her shawls and tied her into place. She was laughing so hard she was almost convulsing, but she didn’t laugh quite as much when he went back to what he’d been doing before. Or when he took her, in slow, steady movements, and just when she was about to come, pulled out and hunted about for his shirt.
“Where are you going?” She tugged at her hands.
He looked down at her and grinned. “For my breakfast. I’ll come back shortly and finish with you then.”
“Matthew!”
In reply, he kissed each ankle before tying them to the bedposts, leaving her spreadeagled and naked on their bed.
“Very nice. Stay,” he said, laughing at his own jest as he closed the door behind him.
*
“Let me go,” she gasped an hour or so later.
“I’m not sure,” he teased, kissing her sweat-slick chest, “I’m not done yet, am I?” His cock stood like a quivering ramrod, demanding that he give it release, but Matthew was enjoying this new game of his, pushing them both almost to the limit and then holding back, hearing her grunt and groan with disappointment.
He released her legs before flipping her over on her front. She pulled her knees up, her cleft a damp, secret place that begged for him to take it. So he did, and there he was on top, she on her knees, and in his head swam an image of himself as he had been that day, with Burley riding him as he was now loving his wife. It filled him with rage, it made his cock roar in desperation, and Matthew took her roughly, violently. She pushed back against him, asking for more, and he closed his eyes and gave it to her, collapsing in a panting heap on top of her afterwards.
She strained against her bindings. “I have to pee.”
Matthew raised a hand to undo the knots, and flipped over on his side to watch her cross the room to where they kept the chamber pot.
“I’ll start looking for a husband for her,” he said.
Alex froze mid-crouch. “A what?”
“She has to be wed. She can’t birth a child as an unwed mother.”
“Sarah isn’t marrying anyone at present,” Alex said with absolute finality. “She has enough to cope with as it is without having to face the duties expected of a wife.” She stood and looked at him. “Like in bed.” She came over to sit beside him. “If anyone must be in love with her husband, it must be her. How else is she to overcome the fear and revulsion their treatment of her must have left in its wake?”
“She can’t go about bloated, and my daughter at that!”
“Yes, she can.” A dangerous glint appeared in Alex’s eyes. “I won’t have her sacrificed on the altar of hypocritical morals and conventions. She’s the victim here, remember?” She stared him down, and, finally, he lowered his eyes.
“I won’t force her,” he sighed, “of course not.”
*
When Julian Allerton arrived a month or so later, he didn’t agree. In his opinion, Sarah needed to be wed as soon as possible, preferably to an older, kindly man who would show her the forbearance and patience she deserved.
“No,” Alex said.
To the minister’s irritation, the priest agreed with her. “Not yet, she’s far too distraught.” Carlos smiled over to where Sarah was sitting with her sister and Temperance in the bower, a tangled mass of various shrubs.
Julian eyed Carlos from under creased brows. Proselytising among his flock – he didn’t like it, not at all.
“She will begin to show shortly,” Julian said. “Surely you don’t want to expose her to the shame of rounding with child whilst unwed?”
“She was raped.” Alex’s brows pulled together in warning.
“Hmm.” Julian stretched himself for the pitcher and served himself some more of the elderflower cordial. The evening air was heavy with the scent of roses from the rosebush that clambered its way along the main door to the Graham home. A soft breeze came floating up from the river, and from somewhere behind the house drifted the enticing smells of barbecued meat – a feast in celebration of Mark’s newborn child.
Julian gave Matthew a considering look, wondering if the moment was opportune to press his own case – he wanted Ruth to be given him as his wife as soon as possible, take her away from her shamed sister. A quick look over his shoulder, and there she was, dark red hair braided, white skin, and that soft, plump mouth. Instead, he cleared his throat and wondered if Matthew had heard the latest about the Ingram girl.
“Aye, they found her in a whorehouse down in Jamestown.”
Julian shook his head in pity. No longer entirely sane, the poor girl had insisted she had no wish to leave, none at all. Covered in bruises, accustomed to spending her whole life in the room where she received the men the whoremaster sent her way, she had stared round in shock at being outside again.
“So now she stays at home, following her mam like a wee bairn around the farm, not saying a word.” Matthew sighed. “Her, they will never find a husband for. What man would want to go where countless men have been before?”
Julian nodded, his eyes resting pointedly on Sarah, sitting some feet apart from Ruth and Temperance, a vacant look upon her face.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Alex rose to her feet. “It’s different, okay?” She turned to her husband. “It is, isn’t it?”
“I hope so,” Matthew said, rearing back when Alex crashed the pitcher into shards in front of him. “Alex! What else do you expect me to say?”
“Eff off!” she snapped, running in the direction of the house. Eff off? Julian had never heard the expression before but, from the look on Matthew’s face, it was not a kindly one.
*
Alex retreated to the kitchen, trying to work off all that anger that seemed to boil through her bloodstream. When Matthew popped his head in to see how she was faring, she felt her face crumple together, and in two swift steps, he’d crossed the floor to hold her to his chest.
“It’s just…” She rubbed her cheek against his shirt.
“I know,” he said, and she could hear it in his voice, just how devastated he was. They stood like that for a long time, so long in fact that Mrs Parson rapped Matthew on the shoulder and told him to make himself scarce – unless he planned on cooking, of course.
*
After supper, Julian shared his other news with them: news of unrest, of revolts
in both Scotland and the South of England against the new king.
“The Duke of Monmouth intends to make himself king,” he said, “and I dare say he’s well supported in his ambitions by his Dutch cousin.”
“Dutch cousin?” Alex sat down beside Ian. “Is that William the Third?” Ian coughed in warning while Thomas Leslie smiled indulgently at her.
“Yes, William of Orange.” Thomas sucked deeply at his pipe. “His mother was King James’ sister, and now he is wed to the king’s eldest daughter.”
“How incestuous.” Alex wrinkled her nose.
“Cousins,” Julian said. “Hope and I were cousins.”
“Oh,” Alex replied, peeking over to study his daughters for any signs of inbreeding. “I suppose it’s different depending on where you come from. In Sweden, you must have a royal dispensation to wed your cousin.”
“You must?” Julian sounded very interested. “And the king has time to look into such matters?”
“I suppose he has someone who does it for him.”
“Who is king of Sweden?” Julian asked, his eyes intent.
Alex frantically gleaned her brain. Gustavus Adolphus was dead, that much she knew, and after him came Christina, but she was probably gone as well. So then, who? Oh yes, the big fat bloke who rode across the ice to invade Denmark from the south.
“Charles the Tenth.”
Julian raised a brow. “I think not. He died in 1660.”
“He did? Oh, how terrible! And me not even knowing!” Alex was pretty impressed by her own performance, but very worried by the fact that Julian must have spent time informing himself about Sweden. Why had he done that? To her relief, Matthew cut the conversation short by suggesting they all taste Robert Chisholm’s latest efforts at making dark ale.
*
“Will you manage?” Alex asked Matthew next morning, frowning down at his foot. It was still very tender, breaking up to bleed at any major strain, and after two weeks of harvest it looked decidedly the worse for wear.
“I have to,” he snapped. He relented and leaned forward to touch her cheek with the back of his finger. “I’ll come and find you if it hurts too much.”
Revenge and Retribution (The Graham Saga) Page 34
