“No – but I can learn.”
“Right now the guns we have must be carried by those who can use them.”
“Use them? Seriously, Alex, Jacob’s nine years old, and—”
“Jacob can shoot,” Alex cut him off.
Magnus considered protesting further, but decided there was no point. Should he win Alex over, he’d still have to convince Matthew – fat chance. He pursed his mouth and picked up a long, stout stick instead, swinging it a couple of times to get a feel for it.
“Coming?” Alex called. He extended his stride to catch up with Alex and her daughters.
“Agnes says the dead Indian lass will go to hell on account of her being a heathen,” Ruth said.
“Agnes has the sense of a fly in a bottle trap,” Alex snorted, making Magnus laugh.
“So she won’t?” Ruth asked.
“I don’t think so,” Alex said. “She was a very brave girl, and God loves her just as much as He loves all of us – it isn’t her fault that she’s an Indian, is it?”
“You think?” Ruth said. “Then why did he let her die?”
“I don’t know,” Alex sighed. “Sometimes it’s difficult to keep up with God.”
“Quite an overbearing bastard at times if you ask me,” Magnus muttered in an undertone, making Alex elbow him.
One moment things were like they always were, the next the world was tumbling round him like in a kaleidoscope or the side effects of a bad LSD trip. Magnus came to an abrupt stop, trying to visualise the pain, isolate it and bring it under control. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, sinking down to sit on the ground.
“Pappa? Magnus?” Alex squatted beside him. “Are you alright?”
“No,” he replied through a tight mouth. “No, I don’t think I am.” He breathed; long, regular breaths that he forced in and out of his nose, concentrating on counting seconds rather than on the burning point inside his head. Finally it receded. His head was no longer banded by pain, and when he opened his eyes he could see Alex’s face, only centimetres from his.
“Gone,” he said shakily.
“Is this the first time?”
“Of course it isn’t. I told you, didn’t I? I’ve had this before, and then the headaches came back last spring. That’s why I decided to come here.”
“You know that wasn’t what I meant,” Alex said. “Is this the first time since you got here?”
“No,” he grunted, picking at his stockings. “But it’s only been a couple of times.”
“And that’s good, right?” Alex sounded hopeful.
“Yes, I suppose it is.” In his head, the pain surged and peaked, but this time Magnus had it under control. He even managed to smile. His hand closed round the pouch that held his small supply of pills and that in itself sufficed to calm him.
Chapter 21
After several weeks of vigilance, life returned to normal. Fields were planted, land was cleared, and what with the workload and the time constraints, the spectre of Burley returning bent on revenge -as he had sworn to do – receded. Besides, the man might be an unsavoury beast of a man, but he didn’t strike Matthew as a fool, and an outright attack on the Grahams would be a foolish thing to do, effectively labelling Burley a renegade and an outlaw.
“I thought he already was,” Alex said when he told her this. She stifled a yawn. It was well before dawn and she was sitting up in bed nursing their son.
“An outlaw? Whatever for?”
“He kidnaps Indian women and sells them. He even kills them!”
“And you think people will condemn him for doing that?” Indians were heathens that most colonists would gladly either enslave or kill.
“They should.”
“Aye, but they won’t. And with the escalating tensions in Virginia, I dare say quite a few would applaud Burley for doing what he’s doing – the more women he steals away, the fewer new Indians.”
Alex made a disgusted sound.
That same morning, she came to find him in the barn. “I’m taking a walk. Want to come?”
“I can’t, lass, not now. I have to…” He grunted with the effort of sliding the post into place. “… get this done, aye?”
“Too bad,” she said, giving him a blue look. It made him smile, and he moved close enough to kiss her cheek.
“Save that look for later,” he murmured. She stood on her toes, took hold of his ears and kissed him on the mouth.
“Later.” With a little wave she moved off, promising to bring back something green and edible for dinner.
*
“More nettles,” Daniel groaned, pouting at the dark green soup.
“It’s good for you,” Alex replied, “and there’s pie for afters.”
“Can’t I just have the afters?” Daniel looked as miserable as possible. “I still feel sick.”
“Cut it out,” Alex huffed. “That was two months ago.
“Where’s Ian?” she asked Matthew, setting his bowl down in front of him.
“I have no idea.” Matthew shared a helpless look with his bairns, picked up his spoon and swallowed, pantomiming a horrible throat burn behind Alex’s back.
“I saw that,” she growled, “and that means you go without dessert, Matthew Graham.” The bairns giggled and bent their heads to the soup, filling the kitchen with the sound of their slurping.
*
“Didn’t you hear the bell?” Alex served Ian his soup.
“No,” he said, going an interesting pink. As long as it wasn’t Agnes, Alex sighed to herself, because however willing and hard-working that girl was, she had at most two brain cells, generally in permanent opposition to each other.
“Hmm.” Alex shared a look with Matthew, who shoved his pie plate away with a contented expression on his face.
“Da wasn’t supposed to get dessert,” Daniel said from the doorway.
“No, you’re right, but he apologised so nicely I caved in.” She went back to inspecting Ian. “Rolling around on the ground?” She picked a dried leaf from his hair. Daniel snickered, but at Ian’s forbidding glare retreated speedily.
“It’s a nice day,” Ian said. “So I stretched out for a nap. That’s why I didn’t hear the dinner bell.”
“Of course, and that’s why you smell so nicely of lavender, right? Maybe you stretched out in my kitchen garden.”
Ian gave her a haughty look, muttered something about being man enough to handle his private concerns, and went back to his soup, refusing dessert in his hurry to leave the kitchen.
“Who?” Alex asked Matthew.
“Jenny Leslie,” he replied, grinning at her.
“You think?”
Matthew raised one brow and called for Daniel. “Go on then, tell your mama what you told me before.”
Daniel turned to his mother. “I saw Ian, with Jenny.”
“Oh?” Alex waited.
“They were talking and holding hands.”
“Ah. Just holding hands?”
Daniel wrinkled his brow together. “Aye, I think so.”
“Maybe you should have a talk with him,” Alex suggested once Daniel had left the kitchen.
Matthew made an indecipherable sound. “Is there more pie?”
“You know there is. Ian just walked out on his slice.”
“More pie?” Daniel and Jacob appeared like greased rats from behind the kitchen door.
“Oh, go ahead – splurge.” Alex set down the half-empty pan in front of them. “Don’t bother with plates,” she added a moment later. None of them heard.
“Mama?” Jacob lingered behind in the kitchen, shifting from one foot to the other.
“Yes?” Alex patted David on his back to burp him and laid him to the other breast.
“What’s the matter with Offa?”
“How d
o you mean?” Alex tried to sound relaxed. Jacob came over to her chair and leaned against her, one finger tracing his baby brother’s downy head.
“He...” Jacob smiled at David, who gave him a wide, toothless smile in return. “I reckon he’s hurting.” He gave her a green look. “I saw him in the woods, up beyond the graveyard, and he was crying and calling for Isaac.”
“Isaac?”
“Aye,” Jacob nodded, “and that’s strange because Isaac’s dead, isn’t he?”
Not quite...if they were to be correct, Isaac wasn’t even in the making yet.
“Your Offa was very close to Isaac, and I think he misses him – a lot.” Alex ran her fingers through Jacob’s thick, fair hair.
“Will he die?” Jacob asked.
“Everyone dies.”
He frowned at her. “Will he die soon?”
“Yes, I think he will.”
Jacob shifted even closer to her. “Before, I didn’t know I missed him, but when he dies now I’ll miss him a lot.”
“So will I, but I’ve missed him all the time before as well.”
*
On the other side of the door, Magnus leaned against the wall and didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. Maybe this had been the real purpose behind his skydive through time – to meet his grandchildren and leave an imprint of himself on them. If so, it seemed he’d achieved his purpose; his name would be spoken out loud in this household long after he was gone, and even perhaps in his grandchildren’s homes. He’d be remembered long before he was born, he smiled wryly – not something that happened to all that many.
He heard Alex kiss her son on his cheek and send him out to play. Magnus remained where he was for some time before going over to the unshuttered window to watch his grandchildren. All five of them were in the yard playing with a makeshift ball, with Jacob testing himself against Mark. Daniel tried to tag after his brothers and leave his tailing sisters behind without any major success because Ruth was fast and lithe and horribly determined in her chase after the ball. Magnus laughed when Sarah picked up the ball, running like a rabbit for the protective shelter of her father. Coming here had been worth it, he told himself, turning away from the window. And he wasn’t about to die anytime soon; he had far too many things left to do.
“Like what?” Alex said when he shared this with her. She poured him a cup of tea and offered him a dry biscuit in lieu of the massacred pie.
“I want to see the sea again. I’d love to attend a religious service—”
“You’re kidding,” Alex interrupted, “hours and hours of tedious sermon, mainly along the lines of how corrupted we all are by original sin – in particular us women, weak vessels that we are.”
“Still, I’d like to go, perhaps even have the opportunity to sit and talk with one of these very convinced ministers.”
Alex shook her head. “Not going to happen. You open your mouth and I’ll find you burning at the stake or something.”
“They don’t do that anymore,” Magnus scoffed. “That’s more fifteenth and sixteenth century.”
“Really? And why do you think we had to leave Scotland?” She gave him an irritated look. “What else?”
Magnus sipped at his tea. “I want to see him walk,” he said, nodding at David, who was sleeping in his basket.
*
Matthew found Ian on one of the furthest fields, tilling the recently cleared ground. As he walked towards his son, Matthew noted the lad was nervous, shoulders squaring themselves under his shirt.
“Son.” Matthew nodded.
“Da.” Ian nodded back, wiping his palms on the coarse cloth of his breeches.
“I hear you’ve been seeing a lot of Jenny Leslie,” Matthew said, dispensing with any form of preamble.
“I have?” Ian tried out his most innocent look, but Matthew wasn’t having any, a slight motion of his head making Ian slump.
“We talk,” Ian muttered.
“More than talk. I’ve heard of handholding and kisses.” He laughed at Ian’s aghast expression. “You have brothers and sisters. They see much more than you think.”
“Hmph!” Ian’s long mouth set into a straight line.
“So what has changed?” Matthew sat down with his back against a maple and squinted up at his son.
“Changed?”
“Aye. Not yet a year ago, you insisted you didn’t want to wed her, and now you seem to want nothing more than bed her.”
Ian went a bright red. “Nay, I don’t.”
“No?” Matthew laughed. “Now why do I find that hard to believe?”
“I won’t bed her without wedding her.”
“That gladdens my heart, if naught else because Peter Leslie sets a high price on his daughter’s honour.”
“It wasn’t me!” Ian protested.
“Wasn’t you that did what?” Matthew studied him intently.
Ian sat down beside him and let the full story spill from him. “It was at Christmas that I found her crying in the dairy shed,” he began, and Matthew remembered that Alex had told him she had seen them there, very late at night. “She was angry and sad, but mostly angry on account of Jochum leading her on when he had nothing to offer her.”
“What do you mean?” Matthew found a hairy boiled sweet in his coat pocket, inspected it, and threw it away.
“He’s not only Catholic, he’s married and was well on the way to committing bigamy until the letter from his wife arrived telling him she was taking the first boat out this year. He didn’t think she ever would.”
“Does Peter Leslie know this?”
Ian shrugged. “I can’t very well tell him, and Jenny hasn’t either, keeping Jochum on tenterhooks.”
“How did she find out?”
“The letter,” Ian explained with an eye roll.
“She reads German?” Matthew pretended to be impressed.
“Nay,” Ian said. “He was so shocked he told her – well, he had to, on account of having promised her marriage and weans.”
“And why did you say it wasn’t you?”
“Because it wasn’t. Jenny Leslie is no longer a maid, but it wasn’t me.”
“Ah.” Matthew envisioned the total havoc this would cause in the Leslie house. Jenny tied to the bedpost and whipped at a minimum, Jochum out on his ear, probably severely damaged for life. “But she isn’t pregnant, I trust.”
“Nay, of course not – she isn’t a fool.”
That made Matthew sit in silence for a while. A young, unwed lass that knew enough to partake of forbidden fruit and not become pregnant was no innocent, not by any stretch of mind.
“And was he her first?”
“Da!”
Matthew shrugged. “You tell me she’s bedded a man but has ensured she hasn’t conceived. It smells of more experience than I want my future daughter-in-law to have.”
“She went to Mrs Parson for help.”
This Matthew didn’t like at all, for Mrs Parson to be dispensing such advice to the lasses in the area. Somehow he suspected Mrs Parson would give not one whit for his disapproval, and nor would Alex, no doubt haranguing him as to the importance of ensuring no child was born unwanted. With an effort, he pulled himself back to his conversation with his son.
“It wouldn’t matter if she were with child,” Ian said. “I’d wed her anyway and take the child as mine.”
“Oh, you would? That isn’t an easy thing to do, and you’d know that better than most.”
Ian dropped his eyes to his hands, tearing at a long blade of grass. “I would love it for its own sake, not like Luke, taking me for Mam’s sake.”
Matthew put an arm around him and gave him a quick squeeze. “And so you love it for its own sake, and then comes a child truly your own. Will you love it still?”
None of them mentioned Luke, or the way his a
ffections for Ian had become permanently eclipsed the moment red-haired Charlie – the spitting image of his sire – was born.
Ian chewed at his lip, deep in thought. Finally he looked at his father with a brilliant smile. “Mama loves me – for my own sake.”
“Aye, that she does, so very much does she love you. And she wouldn’t like it that you marry for pity. She says you should marry for love.”
“It isn’t like that,” Ian said, looking away into the distance. “I...” In a low, rushed voice he told Matthew how Jenny only had to look at him and he would feel his skin begin to tingle, how her dark voice told him things no one had ever told him before, and how all of her made his insides twist themselves into a ball of fire.
“That’s your cock speaking,” Matthew interrupted, “not your heart.”
“Oh, and it isn’t your cock speaking when you go looking for Mama? It isn’t your cock that makes you take her up to the hayloft and—”
“Shush, lad,” Matthew said, aware of a wave of blood flooding his face. “But you’re right: you must listen to your cock as well. As well, mind.”
“I want to marry her.” Ian’s jaw set in a stubborn line. “I ask you to help me.”
Matthew looked at him and gave an infinitesimal nod. “I’ll do my best.” He got back onto his feet and was aware of an urge to find Alex – now. With a quick wave he left Ian to resume his work and strode off across the uneven ground.
Matthew heard her singing in the kitchen garden and moved towards the sound. She was on her knees, her hands buried in the rich soil. She had put her hair up into an untidy bun,, locks escaping to wave around her face in the spring breeze, and as he watched, she used the back of her hand to smooth a tendril back behind her ear, leaving a dark smear of dirt across her cheek.
She looked so young, he thought tenderly, not so much in her appearance as in her movements that were still the same restless bursts of energy he remembered from when he first met her. And here she was, nearly fifteen years on, mother seven times over, and at times she still reminded him of that wild, strange lass he’d made love to for the first time on the open moor.
His cock stirred in his breeches, a reaction to the combined effect of the memory of that first time and how she looked today. Something changed in the way she held herself; her back straightened, her head was suddenly at a coy angle, and he knew she’d seen him where he stood among the trees. She sat back, pushed her chest forward, and he smiled that she should still preen for him, want him to like what he saw.
A Newfound Land (The Graham Saga) Page 19
