Like Chaff in the Wind (The Graham Saga)

by Belfrage, Anna

  His knees were shaking by the time Jones was done, and he’d held on so tightly to the ring he was certain his knuckles would burst. But somehow he straightened up and unclenched his clawed fingers from the ring, he even managed to turn and walk back to where he’d thrown his shirt, but if someone hadn’t given it to him, he would have fallen. He tried to smile a thank you and walked off, every step an act of faith.

  She must be some kind of angel, he thought hazily, when Kate appeared out of nowhere to slip a hand under his elbow. To his surprise she was crying, and he tried to comfort her.

  “I’ll be alright, I’m not dead.” But he was glad for her support, because his legs were beginning to tremble, and he doubted he’d have been able to walk for all that much longer on his own.

  “No,” she agreed, wiping her free hand under her nose. “Not this time, you’re not.”

  “Not this time,” he echoed. There could be no more times; he had to conserve what strength remained to him.

  Kate helped him to the laundry shed and washed his back, making him hiss as she poured hot water over the open gashes. His whole back throbbed, shards of pain that crawled up and down from his waist to his shoulders. The waistband of his breeches was dark with blood, but at least Kate found him a shawl that she tenderly wrapped around him, assuring him he would soon be glad of the warmth. And then she slipped away, returning a few moments later with something hot and steaming, a rich soup of some sort, that she spoon fed him, there in the dark of the shed.

  “So you work up here now,” Matthew said, nodding in the direction of the big house.

  “Yes.” She avoided his eyes as she gave him a brief summary of events. Jones had come up to her in early December and ordered her to follow him, and when she’d asked why, he had slapped her – not hard – and told her it wasn’t her place to ask. Since then Kate spent her nights in his bed and her days in the kitchen.

  Sounding belligerent, she told him that the benefits far outweighed the disadvantages. She was warm and reasonably clean, she ate well and Jones was unimaginative but not cruel in bed.

  “In fact, I think he genuinely likes me.” For an instant she met Matthew’s eyes, before dropping them to her lap.

  “We all survive as we can,” he smiled, reaching out to pat her face. She pressed his hand to her cheek, but he retook it.

  “Nay, Kate, it was wrong. I’m a married man and soon my wife will come for me.”

  Kate stretched to smooth at his hair, fingers lingering on his skin.

  “And what if she doesn’t?”

  Matthew squared his shoulders. “Then I die.” And it was the truth, God help him.

  He stood, thanked her yet again for her help, and limped off towards his sleeping quarters. Halfway there he turned, and she was still standing where he’d left her. She raised her arm in a wave, he gave her a slight bow.

  Davy and Duncan had dragged Elijah to lie in the shed, and had even managed to wash the blood off him. Matthew’s eyes stung with tears as he took in the extent of the damage. Sykes had done a very precise job, sinking the lead to tear even stripes out of the long back, and in some places they could see all the way to the bone.

  “Dearest Lord,” Duncan blubbered. “Oh, God, be merciful on him, take him softly, in his sleep.” But God wasn’t listening, and Elijah woke and wept with pain, begging for someone to please kill him.

  Matthew lay supine on his belly, sunk into fevered dreams for two days. On the third day he was kicked out of bed and told to get to work. He staggered to his feet, and Jones had him working in the curing barn all day. When the supper bell rang Jones just shook his head and pointed at the remaining bales.

  “Those, Graham.” His eyes taunted Matthew, the large hand running up and down the length of his riding crop. It was completely dark by the time Matthew made it back to his straw pallet and succumbed again to dreams; Alex, and her blue eyes glowed with promise, Kate and her hair was so soft, so soft. When he woke none of them were there, no one placed a hand on his brow, and for the first time Matthew began to doubt that she would come. Still he struggled on, driven by the certainty that somehow he had to survive, a deep red glow burning in the pit of his stomach.

  He mended this time as well, but it came at a price, and for weeks he shuffled, any sudden movement breaking up the healing gashes on his back. He no longer washed, all he did was work and eat, tossed by restless, horrifying dreams through his nights – dreams in which Alex looked at him and laughed at the pitiful remnant of a man he had become.

  *

  Elijah tottered back, a silent wreck that moved like a ghost through the days, barely eating, never talking. What little flesh remained to him melted away, and Jones ordered him to rest, he had no use for a weakling. Elijah cackled wildly when he said that, a demented light in his eyes.

  He took to following Jones around, an obsequious smile on his face that had nothing to do with the ice in his eyes, and it was with wry amusement that Matthew noted just how disconcerted Jones was by Elijah’s constant presence. The large man would detour whenever he caught sight of Elijah, and more often than not it was Sykes who did the task assignments while Jones stayed well away from the yard.

  One morning Matthew was shaken awake by Davy and hurried after him to the whipping post. There was a shocked silence from the men who were standing in a loose circle around it. Matthew shouldered his way through them. Elijah had hanged himself from the ring, and at his feet lay the dogs, sliced open from throat to groin.

  Chapter 17

  “It was my fault,” Alex repeated for the nth time since they had returned from the funeral. “If only I hadn’t meddled…”

  But she’d been obliged to, still angry with herself for not having interceded when she saw the other man being whipped. She grimaced; it hadn’t helped, had it? The poor slave had died anyway, dragged to his death by the length of chain.

  “It happened,” Mrs Gordon said. “It wasn’t your hand that wielded the blade, no?”

  “No, but it might just as well have been. Poor Don Benito, to die so far away from home and family.”

  “He would have died far away anyway, and surely to die in a bed with your hand held by a friend is a somewhat easier going than to be flayed alive by heathen Indians.” Mrs Gordon had some very wild preconceived notions about Indians, Alex sighed, before reverting to her moping. Things weren’t helped by the fact that he’d left her well over fifteen pounds. Even Mrs Gordon had looked impressed when Alex poured out gold sovereigns and silver shillings.

  “He was well buried,” Mrs Gordon said, “and he even got to lie in that horrible hair shirt.” She patted the bench beside her and with a little grunt Alex sat down, glad of the shade.

  “I couldn’t even find him a Catholic priest.”

  “It was opulent enough as it was, no?” Mrs Gordon shrugged. “Close to papist in trappings and rituals, I’d reckon.”

  “It was definitely not Presbyterian,” Alex nodded.

  “Absolutely not,” Mrs Gordon said. “Anyway, I don’t think it much matters, the important thing is that God has welcomed him home. Well; assuming God makes an exception now and then for a papist.”

  “Assuming God exists,” Alex muttered in an undertone. At present she wasn’t too sure.

  “What?” Mrs Gordon leaned towards her.

  “Nothing.”

  Mrs Gordon gave her a long look before bustling off to find them something to drink.

  They were leaving tomorrow, and despite her grief over Don Benito, Alex’s heart lifted at the thought. In a month she’d be with Matthew. She crossed her fingers just in case.

  “Here,” Mrs Gordon extended a wooden cup and sat down beside her. “I’ll miss this house,” she said, studying their surroundings. It was a pleasant little place, the solid house enhanced by the extended porch that ensured shade throughout the day and the neat little garden.

  Alex gave her a sly look. “I’m sure you’d be most welcome to stay.” She laughed at the expression on Mrs
Gordon’s face. “As the new Mrs Coulter, of course.”

  “Hmph.” A nice enough man, Mr Coulter, Mrs Gordon told Alex, but to marry him would be to live forever in the shadow of his defunct wife. “He can’t let her go, or mayhap he simply doesn’t want to.”

  “What about you? Have you let your husband go?”

  Mrs Gordon turned to face her. “My Robbie is always here,” she smiled, patting herself somewhere in the region of her heart. “But I no longer have him in my bed.”

  “Never?”

  Mrs Gordon laughed and shook her head. “Well, aye, there are times when he visits, no? But it’s when I invite him in. When it gets too lonely.”

  “And your girls?” Alex asked hesitantly. Mrs Gordon rarely spoke of her dead family, and it was only by adding up the odd bit here and there that Alex had pieced together the sad story of how Mrs Gordon had lost her entire family in less than a year. Smallpox, an accidental drowning, and then the girl who’d been ill for years had died last, coughing her lungs out.

  “My lasses go with me always, and not a day passes when I don’t think of them.” Her eyes flashed in the direction of Alex. “It isn’t right, a mother shouldn’t have to bury all her bairns.”

  Alex gave Mrs Gordon a hug.

  *

  No sooner had they left the protective barrier of Barbados, than Alex felt the first waves of nausea begin to climb her back. By noon she was lying in her berth, her stomach hurting after hours spent voiding her guts, and for three days she remained in her cabin, swearing she would never, ever, set foot on a boat again. Except that she would have to; how else to go home?

  It was a relief to make it out on deck – until she bumped into a man she for a fleeting instant thought was Luke. With a squeak she recoiled, falling against Mrs Gordon, who luckily was stout enough to handle it. The stranger gave her a wary look, muttered an apology, and hurried off towards the galley.

  “Who’s that?” Now that Alex had recovered from her initial surprise, she saw that the resemblance wasn’t that strong. Luke had hair the colour of a fox pelt, a deep burnished red, while this individual had lighter hair. Also, the eyes were not quite as green, and in stature this lanky person had very little in common with either Luke or Matthew.

  “The new cook, on account of Mr Davies choosing to remain on Barbados with one of Captain Miles’ little brood.” Mrs Gordon clucked with amusement as she explained that it hadn’t been only Nell who had made herself available on the earlier crossing. “But this Anne she held herself to the one man, and when they knew she was with child, they chose to remain on land. I suggested Mr Davies should talk to Mr Coulter, and Anne would make him a good maid.”

  “You thought it was yon Luke, no?” Mrs Gordon said later, interrupting Alex in her intense study of the cook who was leaning over the railings, smoking a pipe.

  Alex nodded, her hands clenching. “I hate him for what he’s done to us. I spend far too much time thinking about how to make him pay.”

  “Och, aye?” Mrs Gordon sounded very relaxed. “Is it not enough to saw off his balls with a wee knife and feed them to him?”

  “No, ground glass would be better, or tincture of monk’s hood, or spitting him on a red hot sword. Anything to make him die in agony.”

  Mrs Gordon paled. “Well; you have been thinking, no?”

  “You hang for murder,” she added after a couple of seconds of silence.

  “I know, and you don’t need to worry. I’ll never do something like that.” Alex turned her wedding ring repeatedly round her finger, lost in thought.

  “You worry that the master might.”

  “If it were me, three things would have kept me alive; Matthew, Mark and the warped wish to avenge myself on Luke.” Alex exhaled loudly. “What will that kind of hate have done to Matthew?” She didn’t say anything more, she just lost herself in the twisting motion of her ring.

  *

  Once she had gotten over her instinctive dislike of the man, Alex found the cook to be an entertaining, if somewhat mournful, companion. His name was Ignatius, he told her, sighing loudly.

  “My father and his brothers were all aitch names, so me and my siblings all begin with an I. Isobel, Isaiah, Isaac, Immaculata…”

  “What?”

  “She’s a nun,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes.

  “Luckily, given that name…” Alex said, receiving an amused smile in return. “Did your mother really call you Ignatius?”

  “No. My family calls me Iggy, and my sister is Im.”

  “Well thank heavens for small mercies,” Alex said. “Look at it from the bright side, it will be easier for your children; James, Jenny, Jane, Janet.”

  “All taken,” he said, rolling his eyes before disappearing down into his galley.

  Mrs Gordon wasn’t too happy about the fact that the new cook was Catholic, on account of it soon being lent and everyone knew the Catholics went a bit overboard during those forty days leading up to Easter.

  “Fish once or twice a week, aye,” she confided to Alex, “but every day no.” In the event, Iggy seemed possessed of a roomy conscience when it came to religion and food, and won Mrs Gordon’s heart permanently when he baked her a marrow pie – on a Friday.

  *

  In comparison with the Atlantic crossing, the following month was an agreeable cruise, with steady winds blowing them northwards at a sedate pace. No storms, no days of absolute stillness, and with every passing day Alex felt the anxiety in her grow.

  Her dreams were tossing nightmares that had her landing on the cabin floor, disoriented and full of fear. Mrs Gordon soothed and hugged, she sat with Alex’s head pillowed in her lap and sang her to sleep, rocking from side to side. But most of all she smiled and repeated time and time again that of course Matthew Graham was still alive. How could he be otherwise when his wife was coming for him?

  Chapter 18

  “Jamestown.” Captain Miles pointed in the direction of the small collection of houses, and Alex smothered an incredulous laugh. This the main port of entry to Virginia? Captain Miles gave her a brief history; years of starvation, savages that one day swept out of the woods and killed or carried off more than a third of the little colony, stubborn men that clung to the dream of carving themselves a new home here, far from their English roots.

  “They came here, gentlemen with house servants, and found that there was no one but them to till the ground or cut down the forest. It came as a shock, aye? Some refused, but threatened with not eating if they didn’t work, they resigned themselves and put those soft lilywhite hands of theirs to good use.” Captain Miles studied his own callused hands and smiled at Alex. “In return they claimed large tracts of land, and now their children live the life of gentlemen, while the work is done by lesser men – like your husband.”

  “He isn’t a lesser man!” Alex bristled.

  Captain Miles assured her that he was certain that Mr Graham must be a most impressive man, but surely in his present circumstances… Alex sniffed and went back to studying the shore.

  Men were gravitating towards the landing stage, there were cheers that carried across the water. Captain Miles mumbled an apology to Alex and hastened off to see to the unloading of his cargo. Of the original sixty odd women, fifteen had been sold as bond servants, three had died on the crossing, some had slipped away on Barbados, and on deck now stood only thirty-eight, complemented by five red-haired girls from the Scottish settlement on Barbados that in Alex’s opinion all looked as if they had jaundice – or worms, maybe even both.

  The women hung over the railings, waved and bantered with the gathered men, for all the world as if they were here for a daytrip no more. There was a stampede to be first off the ship, but Alex chose to hang back, descending into the last of the longboats.

  Alex had not expected such curiosity, and adjusted her straw hat to hide her face. The men who congregated round the landed women studied her hungrily, but with Mrs Gordon as a scowling watchdog on one side, and Smith on
her other, Alex made it through the press of men to stand some distance away.

  Captain Miles was already on shore, and with a carrying voice took over the proceedings, clearing a space for the women to stand, one by one. Age, religion and status was repeated time and time again.

  “Mary, twenty-two, Church of England, unwed.” Or “Agnes, thirty-one, Presbyterian, widow.” Some men made as if to fondle the goods, but were beaten back by Captain Miles’ crew. The ten remaining bond servants were disposed of, and one after another the girls were led off, with flashes of uncertainty and fear crossing their faces.

  Captain Miles had explained that female bondservants were a commodity in this heat infested place, and that therefore they would fare better than their male counterparts. Whoopee; not much of a dream scenario, and at Alex’s continued questioning the captain had admitted that several of the girls would in all probability end up pregnant, victims of sexual abuse or, in some cases, of genuine affection.

  Alex saw one pretty girl – Jenny, twenty, papist, unwed – fall in step behind a man old enough to be her father, and shuddered at how the man ogled the girl. Jenny would be warming her new master’s bed that very same evening, of that Alex was sure.

  “How terrible,” Alex said to Mrs Gordon. “Imagine being bonded to someone like that.” With her head she indicated a large man who was standing to the side, flicking casually at his boots with a riding crop.

  “A bond servant has a term of service, aye? And Captain Miles says how the lasses are generally treated well enough to survive. Once they do, they can choose their own lives. But these…” Mrs Gordon waved her hand in the direction of the women who were now being led forward. “…these will have sold their lives for the passage. Once you’re wed, there is no getting away from the man.”