“What are you thinking?” Alex asked.
Matthew drained the beer flask and fitted the last piece of bread into his mouth, making it impossible to answer.
“It’s sometime since you bled,” he said as they made their way back home, the June sun warm on their shoulders despite it being late in the afternoon.
“Yes, about two months ago. It didn’t take us very long, did it?”
Matthew slipped an arm round her waist and drew her close, forcing her to do a series of small skips before her stride was aligned with his.
“A lad.” He smiled down at her, proud of his own virility and his wife’s fertility.
“And I suppose you already have a name for him?” she teased.
“Aye, I do.”
“So, what is it?”
“Ah no, you don’t find out until you’ve birthed him.”
“Unfair,” she muttered, “and, anyway, maybe I have an opinion.”
Matthew hitched his shoulders. The naming was his to do, and they both knew it.
They balanced their way over a couple of fallen trees, and Alex accepted Matthew’s hand to help her up a particularly steep bank.
“Fiona’s been in a vile mood all day,” she said, “what with it being laundry day tomorrow. Not her favourite chore – not my favourite day of the month either.”
“Fiona’s always in a bad temper when it comes to work.”
“Not always, and just the other day I actually heard her singing up beyond the kitchen garden.”
“Was she working?”
“No, she was taking a walk.” She frowned. “A lot of that lately, if you ask me.”
“You need to put your foot down. You’re allowing her to shirk work, and that’s not right.”
“I know,” Alex sighed. “But, frankly, at times I prefer to do things myself than have her sulking for a whole day.”
They walked in companionable silence, hands as always braided together. His thumb drew a circle over her skin; Alex returned the caress. She wiggled a finger insinuatingly where it was trapped between his larger digits, and Matthew tightened his hold, suppressing a smile.
Alex slowed her pace and gave him a blue look. “It’s nice here, don’t you think?” She sank down to sit in the grass. The birch leaves overhead rustled in the evening breeze; shadow and sun streaked the ground; and when Alex tugged at his hand, Matthew kneeled beside her. “I have to make you a new shirt,” she said as she undid his lacings.
“Do you now?” He leaned forward to kiss her, his tongue darting out to follow the contour of her lips. Alex kissed him back, her arms encircling his neck.
“Not right now, I don’t,” she murmured, rubbing her cheek against his chest. “Right now, I have other things to do.”
“Wanton,” he whispered in her hair, tightening his hold on her.
She kissed him between the clavicles. “It’s not as if you mind, is it?”
“Nay, not as such.”
She stretched out on her back, caught his eyes and winked as she pulled her skirts up, inch by delightful inch.
“Go on, uncover yourself for me.” He caressed her bare shin with his fingers.
“All of me?”
“All.” He cleared his throat, eyes never leaving his wife as she struggled up to sit up, impatient fingers working at the lacing on her bodice. It fell discarded to the ground. Through the sheer linen of her shift, he could see her breasts, and he couldn’t resist the temptation to brush his hand across her bosom.
“More?” She rose on her knees to undo her skirt.
“All of it.” He extended a hand to help her.
From somewhere to his right, there came a muted sound, somewhere between a sob and a honk.
“What was that?” Alex crossed her arms over her chest.
“I’m not sure.” He scanned the surrounding woods. A twig snapped, the resulting sound loud like a musket shot in the drowsy stillness of the forest.
“Indians?” Alex whispered.
Matthew peered into the shadows of the nearest shrub. Something light caught his eyes: a man, the shirt hanging untucked as he flitted away.
“Hey!” Matthew picked up his axe and rushed after. There was a loud crash, a brace of birds rose screeching towards the sky, and the white blob picked up amazing speed, darting off like a wild stag down the incline.
“Matthew! Wait for me!” Alex came charging after, still half undressed, her hair falling to her shoulders.
Matthew had by now reached the wee stream that burbled its way across the valley’s floor. In the mud was a clear imprint of a hobnailed boot.
“Not an Indian.” Alex stared at the huge footprint.
“Nay.” Most definitely not an Indian, but why would a white man rush off like that?
“Could it be Jones?” Alex asked, head swivelling as if she expected Jones to appear from behind the nearest stand of trees.
“Jones? Yon fat bastard could never move as fast as this one did.” He studied the imprint. “And this is too big to be Sykes.”
“Sykes? Oh my God, Sykes!” She turned to face him. “It was him, the man I saw.”
“You saw him? Where?”
“I told you. How I recognised one of the men who abducted those two girls. It was him, Sykes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! Men that ugly don’t exactly grow on trees, do they?”
It made him laugh; it shouldn’t, but it did, because she was right. Sykes was a right ugly character and, as he recalled it, equipped with balls the size of peas unless Jones was nearby to back him up. He was tempted to set off at a run after the trespasser – should it be Sykes, it would bring him the greatest enjoyment to bash his head in with the axe. But it wasn’t; he knew that. He frowned, staring in the direction in which the man had disappeared.
“A trapper, mayhap,” he said out loud. Aye, that was probably it, although why a trapper should flee instead of requesting bed and board was beyond him. He waved away this disturbing thought, took Alex’s hand and led them back home.
*
As expected, Fiona looked most put out next morning, muttering that never had she lived in a home where linens were changed as often as they were here. Alex ignored her grumbling, concentrating instead on keeping the lye at a safe distance from her body.
“I saw one of the girls up at the Leslies’ the other week,” she said. “Her whole arm was badly blistered on account of having the lye spill over her.”
Fiona shrugged; such things happened. “Are they English, the new lasses?”
Alex had no idea. None of them had opened their mouth. “One of them is pregnant. She must’ve been with child before she boarded, and her contract’s been extended with a full year. She didn’t seem too happy about that.”
“Nay, she wouldn’t be. Five years is quite enough.”
“Only two left for you.” Alex found this difficult to talk about, even knowing that Fiona had chosen this as the only way she could start a new life for herself. A brave young woman, Alex thought, to cross the world all on her own. Brave or desperate, and despite having lived at close quarters with Fiona for three years, she still didn’t know which.
She studied Fiona as she lifted the steaming linen from the cauldron into the rinsing trough: black hair pulled back in a strict braid, eyes a warm chocolate brown, and a nice figure. Fiona had no idea how old she was, but thought she might be twenty-five or thereabouts, insisting she had recollections of the uneasy times back in the War of the Three Kingdoms, fragmented images of hiding from the Commonwealth army that rode into Scotland in pursuit of Charles Stuart.
“What will you do?”
“Do?” Fiona gave Alex a blank look.
“You know, once your term of indenture is up. Will you stay up here or will you go south to the towns?”
>
“The towns, I think.” Fiona wrung the shirt in her hands, shook it out and hung it on the clothes line. “I’m not a country lass.” She threw a disgusted look at the woods that stood thick and dark around them. “I miss the sound of people. And I miss the sea.” She turned to Alex. “And you, mistress? Are you happy here, up in the wild?”
Alex surveyed her home, a fragile man-made clearing in the encroaching forest. This was a safe haven, a new start far away from a country where her man was constantly persecuted on account of his faith.
“Yes I am, even if it’s a bit far away from everything. A town half a day’s ride away wouldn’t have come amiss.”
“You have the Chisholm place, and on account of them being so many, that’s like a wee village in itself.”
Alex laughed. Fiona was right: their neighbours were numerous, three brothers who’d come out twenty years ago, and now with their sons and daughters a small community numbering fourteen families or so. She liked the Chisholms, but they tended to keep themselves to themselves, an enclave of Catholicism in an area mostly settled by Protestants.
“A man,” Fiona said out of the blue a few moments later.
“A man?”
“A husband,” Fiona clarified. “Most of all I’d like a husband.”
“That won’t be too hard, will it? Not here, where unwed women are as rare as sweet water pearls.”
Something flitted over Fiona’s face, a smugness quickly suppressed that made Alex throw her a long look.
“Mayhap not,” Fiona said, and there it was again, a satisfied little smirk.
*
As a treat after an entire morning hanging over the laundry cauldron, Alex succeeded in wheedling Matthew’s permission to visit their new neighbours – as long as she took Jonah and his musket along. She was curious about the Waltons, the wife and children having come but recently from the east to join the husband who’d been here since spring. Not that she’d met him either, being far too busy at home to do more than send along the odd pie with Matthew on those few occasions when he’d ridden over to help.
“You think it’s safe, mistress?” Fiona sounded nervous.
“As safe as it was yesterday. Anyway,” Alex grinned, “it’s you the Indians will go for, not me.” That made Fiona wipe her palms on the dark cloth of her skirts. Jonah chuckled and made a show of brandishing the musket he was carrying.
Alex swept the forest with her eyes; four years here, and they’d never seen an Indian. A couple of years ago, she and Matthew had come upon a sizeable clearing, with overgrown mounds showing where buildings had stood. Among the weeds, Alex had found shards of pottery and, growing in a corner, a few stands of maize, apparently the result of spontaneous germination in seeds left behind when the inhabitants moved away. The maize she’d taken care of, and now there were several rows of Indian corn growing in her kitchen garden.
Fiona gripped Ruth harder and hurried them on, muttering that this was a fool’s errand in times when Indians were abroad, but Alex turned a deaf ear. She wasn’t unduly worried by the news that Indians had been sighted, and so far all they’d done was steal a horse or two off Andrew Chisholm. No, she was made far more uncomfortable by the humid heat that made clothes stick to damp skin and brought out small beads of sweat along the bridge of Alex’s nose. She tilted her straw hat so that it shaded her face, and examined her new skirts. Matthew had brought back several bolts of fabric from Providence, and this time he had spontaneously added yards of pale green cotton to the standard linen and dark wool, for which she was very grateful – especially on a day as hot as today.
Alex adjusted Sarah’s cap and called Daniel back from his brutal inspection of an ant hill.
“Remember,” she said, “they might not speak English.”
Fiona looked at her with incredulous eyes. “Not speak English?”
“Quite a lot of people don’t.” Alex bit back a little smile.
“Da says only very few speak English,” Ruth piped up, skipping by Fiona’s side. “It is too bad, on account of them not being able to read the Bible.”
“Of course they can,” Alex said. “The Bible was written in several old languages, and it’s been translated into English, just as it’s been translated into Swedish or German or Spanish.”
“But it’s only us that have the true Bible,” Fiona said to Ruth. “Only us of the Scottish Kirk, aye? Ask your da,” she added with a triumphant look in Alex’s direction.
For a moment Alex considered throwing herself into a religious debate with Fiona, but instead she smiled at her children and told them that she wasn’t a Presbyterian, and yet she was quite convinced that she had access to just as valid a Bible as any member of the redoubtable Scottish Reformed Church.
“Is it much further?” Sarah whined. “I’m hot and hungry.”
“I’m not quite sure,” Alex said. The riding trail meandered in a rough westerly direction, but all around the woods stood thick, gigantic chestnuts, sycamores and oaks, and here and there stands of dark pines. The air hummed with insects, and from the surrounding undergrowth came the chirping and rustling of birds. Alex smiled at the bright orange of the orioles, darting from one shrub to the other.
“Here.” Fiona pointed at where a new trail cut into the woods. “This must be it.”
They walked Indian file down the narrow trail that opened up into a small clearing.
“Hello?” Alex called. “Hello?” she repeated taking a further step towards the log cabin. How had they managed to build something that permanent in such a short time? The door swung open and a young woman stepped outside, smiling at her visitors.
“Good day,” she said in accented English. “Welcome to Forest Spring.”
“Forest Spring?” Alex looked about. “Is there a spring somewhere close?”
The young woman tilted her head in the direction of a mossy hollow in the ground.
“There,” she said. “I’m Kristin,” she added, curtseying.
“Alex Graham. I’m your closest neighbour, and these are my three youngest children, Daniel, Ruth and Sarah. And this is Fiona.”
From behind their mother, three white blond heads appeared, all of them with pale blue eyes; three boys, the youngest still in smocks, holding on to his mother’s apron.
“Per, Erik and Johan,” Kristin introduced, nudging her boys forward.
“Swedish names!” Alex said.
Kristin regarded her with some caution. “Ja. We come from New Sweden.” In a matter of minutes, she explained how her parents had immigrated in the early 1640s, homesteading high up on the Delaware River in the recently established county of Upland. “Sweden lost the colony in 1655, and in 1664 the English came.” Kristin blushed prettily. “And my husband, Henry Walton.”
“Why did you decide to move here?” Alex smiled at the youngest of Kristin’s boys.
Kristin looked away. “It was for the best.”
From the half-built stables came Henry Walton, a narrow-shouldered man with hair as fair as that of his sons, and once again Alex wondered how he’d managed to get something as solid as the cabin into place in less than four months.
The answer appeared from behind the privy, adjusting his breeches. Fiona inhaled, her mouth falling open. Alex swallowed back on a gasp. This had to be Kristin’s brother, sharing with her rye-coloured hair, blue eyes and lightly freckled skin. Not only was he big, he was possibly the most beautiful man Alex had ever seen, and to her embarrassment her eyes glued themselves to him as he came towards them. He surveyed them with a blank face, and looked questioningly at his sister.
“This is Lars.” Kristin placed a light hand on the man beside her. She said something in what Alex supposed was antiquated Swedish, making Lars turn all of his six feet and four of gorgeous manhood towards them. Fiona moaned, and Alex could but agree with the sentiment; the broad chest, the slim hips, the
long, long legs...mouth-watering, all of him. Except for his eyes: flat and indifferent, they showed no animation when he nodded in her direction.
“Lars,” Alex said, receiving a weak smile in return. The large man’s gaze was riveted on Fiona, who gawked at him, her hands clasped tight. From the corner of her eye, Alex saw Kristin and Henry share a look, a swift locking together of eyes that was quickly smoothed over into a smile.
*
“It was sort of amusing,” Alex said to Matthew later that evening, walking hand in hand with him down to the river. “She’s comfortable in the woods, and so is that strange brother of hers, but poor Henry looks totally out of place.”
“Aye, he’s dependent on his wife and yon giant of a brother-in-law.”
“I wonder why they left New Sweden. It seems sort of desperate to start all over again.”
“Mayhap there wasn’t enough land.”
Alex raised disbelieving brows. “Here? Come off it. They should have been able to find something closer to home.” She laughed and shook her head. “Listen to me; I sound like a veritable gossip, don’t I? I suppose they had good enough reasons. Maybe Kristin’s father couldn’t stand Henry’s guts or something.” She dipped her foot into the river and looked back at her husband. “Race?” She drew off her shift and plunged into the water.
A quick bath and they were back on the shore, Alex donning a clean shift before spreading a blanket on the grass and motioning for Matthew to lie down. He made happy sounds as she worked her way up and down his back, now and then protesting when she dug her fingers into a particularly tense muscle.
“Are you asleep?” Alex whispered in Matthew’s ear some time later.
“Almost.” He stretched to his full length. The skin on his back and buttocks was red in patches after her massage, and all of him smelled quite nicely of lavender.
“Supper soon,” she said, busy with her clothes. She handed him a clean shirt, collected the towels and her small stone flasks, and sat down on a felled log to wait for him. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?“ She took in their surroundings. “But so huge, miles and miles and more miles. Unbroken expanses of forests, deserts, mountains and more forests...”
A Newfound Land (The Graham Saga) Page 5
