Whither Thou Goest (The Graham Saga Book 7)

by Anna Belfrage

  Whither Thou Goest

  Introduction

  On a muggy August day in 2002, Alexandra Lind was unexpectedly thrown backwards in time, landing in the year of Our Lord 1658. Catapulted into an unfamiliar and frightening new existence, Alex could do nothing but adapt. After all, while time travelling itself is a most rare occurrence, time travelling with a return ticket is even rarer.

  This is the seventh book about Alex, her husband Matthew and their continued adventures in the second half of the seventeenth century.

  Other titles in The Graham Saga:

  A Rip in the Veil

  Like Chaff in the Wind

  The Prodigal Son

  A Newfound Land

  Serpents in the Garden

  Revenge and Retribution

  To Catch a Falling Star

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my sister, Sofia.

  I am very fortunate to have her in my life, and hope that one day she and I will once again play at being dolphins in the warm waters of the Caribbean.

  Te quiero, hermanita – montones!

  Chapter 1

  Uncharacteristically for Maryland, this winter had seen more snow than Alex Graham had ever experienced before. Huge, heavy snowfalls melted into a muddy sludge over a couple of days, and then there was a new blanket of snow, yet more mud.

  Today was one of the muddy days. Alex had to tread carefully as she made her way across the yard to the laundry shed with a small bundle of linens under her arm. There could be no major wash until the weather improved, but a couple of shirts, some shifts and her single flannel petticoat she could hang to dry inside the shed, and, while she was at it, she was planning on submerging herself in a tub of hot water as well.

  It was the first week of February 1686. The shrubs were beginning to show buds; here and there startling greens adorned the wintry ground. Alex lifted her face to the sky and drew in a deep breath. She could feel it shifting. Winter was waning, and soon it would be brisk winds, leaves on the trees, and weeks of toiling in the fields or the vegetable garden.

  “About time,” she muttered, slipped in the mud, took a hasty step forward, and had her clog sink with a squelch into a particularly soft spot. She stood like a one-legged stork, bending down to yank it loose.

  “Bloody hell!” she said when she overbalanced and fell forward.

  “Aren’t you a wee bit too old to play in the mud?” Matthew grinned at her from some feet away.

  Alex scooped up some mud and sent it to land like a starburst on his worn everyday coat. “Oops.” She smiled, feeling a childlike urge to engage in a full-scale mud fight.

  “Clean that off,” Matthew mock-threatened, taking a few steps towards her.

  “Make me.” She managed to get her clog free, and sprinted like a hare on ice skates towards the laundry shed. Matthew came after, which made her run faster and laugh harder, so that by the time she’d broken the world record on the fifty-yard mud dash, she was gasping for air, her hair had come undone, and her cheeks were very warm.

  “Got you.” Matthew pinned her against the wall.

  “…” Alex replied, struggling to get some air back down into her lungs. And the stays weren’t exactly helping.

  Matthew released his hold. “Hoyden,” he said, rubbing at a streak of mud on her face. “All of fifty-three, and still incapable of keeping yourself neat and clean.”

  “You, mister, you’re pushing fifty-six, and look at you! Mud all over the place!” She wiped her hands on his breeches.

  Ian walked past leading Aaron, Matthew’s big bay stallion, and shook his head at them. “You’re old,” he said, his lip twitching. “Very old, aye? Grandparents should act with more dignity.”

  “Huh, as a matter of fact, I was sedately crossing the yard to do some washing when your father here attacked me.”

  “Nay, he didn’t. You fell flat on your face all on your own, Mama. Go and wash,” Ian added before going on his way, clucking to Aaron to come along.

  “Go wash, he said. What does he think we are? In our dotage and in need of a father figure?” Alex stuck her tongue out in the general direction of her stepson and pushed the door to the shed open, smiling when she entered this her almost favourite place.

  Over the years, what had been a hastily constructed lean-to, meant mainly to house the huge kettle, the rinsing trough and all other paraphernalia associated with the tedious and heavy work of ensuring the laundry got done, had developed into a solidly built little house with soaped floors, broad wall benches and, standing in pride of place, the wooden tub – big enough to seat two. The small space was at present agreeably warm thanks to the fire Alex had lit earlier, the air suffused with the scents of lavender and crisp mints.

  Along the back wall, drying herbs hung in bunches. On a small shelf stood stone jars of oils and salves, pots of soap, and an assortment of lanterns. The only things that were missing, in Alex’s opinion, was a tap from which to turn on running water and huge terrycloth towels. Neither of those had been invented yet, as she was prone to reminding herself, just as cars and washing machines and phones were still centuries away from materialising.

  “Are you just going to slouch against the wall and look decorative or are you going to help?” she asked Matthew, who had followed her inside.

  “Oh, I don’t mind looking decorative,” he said, but came over to help her with the heavy cauldron. She set the few garments to soak with lye in a bucket, forcefully scrubbed the mud stains off his woollen breeches and coat, and then he helped her do the same with her skirts, stretching the fabric for her.

  “I’ll never get this off,” she grumbled, inspecting the broad kneecaps of mud. “And look at my bodice!” The sleeves were encrusted with mud to halfway up the elbow, and once she had taken that garment off, the chemise beneath was just as dirty. Alex peeled it all off, hung her stays to sway on a hook, dunked the shift and petticoat in with all the other stuff, and found a bristle brush with which to attack the bodice. Matthew sat down on one of the benches and regarded her as she moved around, covered in her shawl and nothing else.

  “It’s impolite to gawk,” Alex said sternly.

  “Aye, but you’re my wife and I can gawk at you as much as I want.”

  “Glad you like it.” Alex arched her back and winked, making him laugh.

  They talked about this and that while she did her washing, Matthew coming over to help her fill buckets with water when she needed it.

  “It does him good, these long winters,” Alex said.

  “Who?”

  “Ian. No limping, no shuffling.” She smiled, thinking that Ian at present moved with the fluidity and ease one could expect of a man just over thirty. Not that it would last, she sighed, because with the advent of spring and summer, his damaged back, in combination with all the work, would at times leave him white-faced with pain, reduced to hobbling round the yard.

  “Ah.” Matthew sounded tense – but then he always did when they discussed Ian’s injured back, the consequence of a failed ambush by those accursed Burley brothers. Understandably, her man sounded tense whenever the Burleys were mentioned. He bore scars of his own on account of them, as did their youngest daughter, while one of their sons was dead – all because of Philip and Walter Burley.

  Alex concentrated on her scrubbing. They’re gone, she reminded herself, they’re dead by now – or if not dead, almost dead.

  Matthew poured a couple of buckets of cold water over her scrubbed clothes, helped her wring them and hang them to dry.

  “Look at my hands,” she complained, holding them out to him: bright red, itching all over from the lye.

 
; “Mmm,” Matthew said, eyes glued to one of her breasts, quite visible now that the shawl had slipped. She let the shawl drop entirely, standing very still when his fingers grazed her flesh.

  It shouldn’t be this way, not when she was over fifty and had lived with him for almost thirty years, but it was, it still was. A current that surged between them, a heavy warmth spreading through her, breath that became shallow and rapid, knees that somehow lost stability, and all because of him, the man who stood fully dressed before her and ate her with his eyes. She fluffed at her hair, met his hazel eyes, and smiled.

  “Da?” Ian’s voice had an edge to it. “Da, are you there?”

  “Aye,” Matthew said, the attention he had been focusing on her wavering.

  “You’d best come out.”

  Matthew threw a rueful look in the direction of Alex. “Stay here,” he suggested, buttoned up his coat, and stepped outside.

  “Stay here,” Alex muttered, shivering in the chilly wind that he had let in. From outside came male voices, and from the agitated tone, they weren’t exactly here for a natter and a biscuit. She threw the half-filled tub a longing look and, with a grimace, slid into stays, skirt and the dirty bodice, wrapping the shawl tight before going to join her husband.

  Their visitors were still in the yard. Adam, her youngest son, had appeared from the stables to help with the horses, but remained hovering around the men, listening avidly. Alex smiled a greeting at Thomas Leslie, their closest neighbour, before nodding at the Chisholm brothers, also neighbours – a rather strange word to use for people that lived more than an hour’s ride away.

  “Scalped, I’m telling you! Not more than some hundred yards from my home!” Martin Chisholm was visibly upset, his normally placid exterior contorted into a hatchet face, small blue eyes staring like flints at his audience. “The poor bastards must have shrieked their heads off, and we didn’t even hear them.”

  “Oh,” Matthew said, sharing a worried look with Alex.

  “Not Mohawk,” Thomas Leslie hastened to assure them, and Alex’s shoulders dropped an inch or two. Not her son, not his adopted Indian family. Grief rushed through her at the thought of her Samuel. He should be here, with her, not out in the forest with Qaachow and his tribe.

  “Bloody nuisance is what they are,” Martin went on, with Robert, his brother, nodding in agreement. “It would be best to enslave them all, put them to work on a plantation where they could be controlled.”

  “Maybe they don’t want to.” Alex picked some straw out of Adam’s hair, cuddling him for an instant against her chest. All legs and arms, her not quite ten-year-old scrubbed his head affectionately against her shawl.

  “Want to? What do we care what they want? Heathen is what they are, and to kill…oh, my God! My poor nephew!”

  “Your nephew? They scalped a child?” In Alex’s ear, Adam’s tame raven, Hugin, cawed, seemingly as upset as she was.

  “No, but he found them.” Martin shifted from foot to foot, looking longingly in the direction of the Graham house, and with an internal sigh, Alex asked them all to come inside. On their way across the yard, Thomas leaned towards Matthew and whispered something, and her gut did a slow flip at the expression of shock that flew across Matthew’s face.

  “What?” She grabbed Thomas’ arm.

  “What? Oh, that. A matter between men. Nothing to concern you, my dear.”

  Alex pursed her mouth, unconvinced by Thomas’ strained smile. “Never mind, I’ll ask Matthew, and he’ll tell me the truth if he knows what’s best for him,” she said, before wobbling off on her mud-caked clogs to ensure the guests were adequately fed.

  “Yon men eat like horses,” Mrs Parson said when Alex entered the kitchen. Alex gave the old woman an affectionate look. Mrs Parson was her best friend, an excellent midwife, but first and foremost the closest thing Alex had to a mother, a constant source of comfort and strength when Alex needed it.

  “Lucky we have plenty of soup, then,” Naomi said from where she was stirring the pot. Bean soup, from what Alex could make out. Not her favourite, but her daughter-in-law was partial to it, and it did have the benefit of being quite filling.

  “I hate bean soup,” Mark muttered from behind her.

  Alex turned to flash her eldest son a grin. “Best tell your wife that, not me. She’s the one who keeps on making it.”

  “I heard that.” Naomi brandished the wooden spoon in their direction. “And I’ll have you know my father loves it.”

  “Great, Thomas can have my share as well,” Alex said, laughing at Naomi’s pretend scowl.

  The Chisholms were solid men that took up a lot of room, but after some minutes the household and their guests were settled round the large table, albeit with less elbow room than usual. As always, Matthew sat at the head of the table while Alex had her chair at the other end, within easy reach of the hearth and the workbenches. Whitewashed walls and constant scrubbing of the floor and surfaces, ensured that the kitchen was clean and relatively light, the February sun streaming in through the two windows, both of them with horribly expensive glass panes.

  “I had no idea that something so simple could be this good.” Robert Chisholm stretched to spear yet another salt-baked beet on his knife, lathered the beet generously with butter, and bit into it.

  “And it’s good for you, full of vitamins and other stuff,” Alex said, busy slicing bread.

  “Vitamins?” Martin looked at her.

  “That’s what my father used to say,” she temporised, which wasn’t a lie, even if he’d said it in the late 1900s. “Maybe it’s a Swedish expression.”

  Mrs Parson coughed loudly and placed the large pot of soup on the table before sitting down in the armchair reserved for her out of deference for her advanced age. She fiddled with her starched linen cap and turned her black eyes on the Spanish priest who had ridden in with the Chisholms. “Are you planning on staying to officiate at the funerals as well?” she asked, and Robert choked on his ale.

  Carlos Muñoz blinked, an elegant hand coming up to smooth at his collar. “What funerals?”

  “Well, you’ve wed most of the younger Chisholms almost two years back, you’ve baptised all the new weans, and so you can’t have much cause to linger much longer, can you? Unless you’re counting on them needing you for last rites and such nonsense before they pass on.”

  “Mrs Parson!” Alex glared at Ian and Mark who seemed to be on the verge of exploding with laughter.

  “It is no nonsense, and I’ll not have you disparage the Holy Church,” Carlos replied stiffly. “As to why I am still here, at present I find myself trapped due to inclement weather.” He slid a look up the table to where Sarah usually sat, but now, in her last month of a most unwelcome pregnancy, their youngest daughter shunned the table when there were visitors. Alex stifled a sigh. The young priest had developed quite the crush on Sarah.

  “You shouldn’t tease him like that,” Alex remonstrated with Mrs Parson once the men had gone outside to conduct their business, leaving them alone in the kitchen. “We both know why he’s still here.” She inclined her head in the general direction of Sarah’s room. “If it hadn’t been for him…” Alex left the rest unsaid. They both knew it was Carlos who had helped Sarah cope with her situation, chosen by Sarah as her sole confidant. Most unorthodox, given that Carlos was a Catholic priest.

  Mrs Parson looked somewhat shamefaced. “He’s a good lad, for all that he’s a papist. But it’s time he leaves, aye? For his sake, Alex. Yon lassie of yours won’t want much to do with him once this is over.”

  “You think?” Alex was surprised by this assessment. In her opinion, Sarah was too fond of the priest, and at one point, Alex could have sworn Sarah was in love with him. She threw a distracted look out of the window, eyes lingering on Carlos, who was already mounted on his mule.

  “She’ll want to forget, all of this last year she’ll want to bury, and wee Carlos is very much a part of it, no?”

  “She can’t forget. There w
ill be a child.” Alex watched the Chisholms and Carlos out of sight up the lane before turning to face Mrs Parson.

  “She doesn’t want it. She has said so for the last few months.”

  “She might change her mind once she sees it.” Alex was in two minds about this: one part of her hoped Sarah would change her mind, the other couldn’t quite see how a child with Burley blood would fit into the Graham household.

  “I think not,” Mrs Parson said. “You must start thinking about finding it a home elsewhere.”

  Alex was so busy mulling over her discussion with Mrs Parson, it took her some time to notice her entrance into the little parlour had effectively muted whatever conversation Thomas and Matthew had been having.

  She set her tray down, handed them a mug of tea, took her own, and went to sit by the fire. First, she studied Thomas. Under her inspection, he fidgeted but by busying himself with his pipe, managed to avoid her eyes. Then she turned her attention to Matthew, and he calmly looked back, but she knew him too well, saw how his little finger twitched, how still he held his head, and the hair along her back began to rise.

  “Something’s wrong.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, directed at them both.

  “We don’t know,” Matthew said.

  Thomas gave him a sidelong glance, and sucked on the carved stem of his pipe, holding his tongue.

  “What is it you don’t know?” Alex asked, but there was a hollow feeling in her chest at the look that flared in her husband’s eyes.

  The men exchanged a look. Matthew sighed, beckoning that she should come over. She knew it was bad when he sat her on his lap, despite being in company, one strong arm encircling her waist.

  “Philip Burley,” he said.

  “Oh, Jesus.” The mug she was holding in her hands slid through numbed fingers to hit the floor.

  Chapter 2

  Alex paced their bedroom like a caged tiger, her hands twisting together.

  “How?” she said, wheeling to face Matthew where he sat on the bed.

  “I have no idea.” He had thought them finally rid of the Burleys, that those days last May when they’d abducted their daughter, murdered his son, and almost killed him was the last time they’d ever hear of them. God, that he hadn’t ensured they were dead! But he had been more dead than alive when the Indians saved him, and so the two surviving Burley brothers had been turned over to Qaachow and his Indian tribe for punishment.