Serpents in the Garden (The Graham Saga)

by Anna Belfrage

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, sitting down on the bed.

  He clasped her hand hard in his. “Think, Alex, beforehand, aye? You’re no mindless lassie to act so rashly.”

  She inhaled, a long ragged breath, and nodded.

  “Come here,” he said, patting at his chest. “Come here, my heart.” Her lower lip wobbled, the corners pulled down as they always did when she was about to cry. He shushed her, pillowing her head against him. Some time later, she slept, a warm breathing weight on his chest. Matthew stared at the ceiling. He’d never be able to sleep, not when his brain was an explosion of jumbled images from the passed night.

  “Da?” Sarah shook him hard, and Matthew reluctantly opened an eye to find his youngest daughter’s face scant inches from his.

  “What?” He yawned, sitting up.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “So am I,” Ruth said, popping up beside her sister. Matthew had to smile. Where Sarah’s hair stood like a messy haystack round her face, Ruth had already braided hers and placed a cap on top.

  An hour or so later, the lasses had been safely deposited with Mrs Walker. Matthew had business to conduct with one of the timber merchants, and he’d decided that he wanted Alex with him, to keep an eye on her. Yesterday had been overly exciting, what with the Burleys and yon Leon, and Matthew intended to ensure today contained no such spicy ingredients.

  “A word, Brother Matthew?”

  Matthew sighed when he recognised the voice, but stopped all the same, sending an admonishing look at his wife.

  “Mr Farrell,” he said, inclining his head in a polite greeting. Beside him, Alex curtsied.

  Mr Farrell nodded curtly. “And how is your wife today?”

  “As you can see, she is well.”

  “Hmm.” Mr Farrell twirled his cane, his normally rather fleshy mouth set into a displeased gash. “I find it too coincidental,” he blurted.

  “What?”

  “Don’t give me that, Brother Matthew. You know full well what I’m referring to. First, your wife is found talking to my slave. Come night, said slave escapes. Mighty strange that: a man chained to a pole contrives not only to strike the chains off, but also succeeds in creating a hole through a stout plank wall – with no tools but his hands.”

  “Aye.” Matthew nodded. “That is right strange, that is.”

  “He had an accomplice,” Mr Farrell said. “How else explain it.”

  “An accomplice? Another slave, you think?”

  “No, Brother Matthew, I think not. I think your wife.”

  “My wife?” Matthew pulled his brows together into a ferocious scowl. “What makes you say such?”

  Mr Farrell took a step or two back. “I hold you in the highest regard, Brother Matthew, and never would I utter such an accusation lightly. But, as I said, I don’t believe in coincidences. On the same night my rebellious slave escapes, your wife is apparently sleepwalking through our settlement, and in the process she not only tore her clothes, but somehow mangled her hands.”

  “I do that a lot when I sleepwalk,” Alex put in, “tear my clothes, I mean. I fall over.”

  Matthew glared her silent. “I can assure you, my wife it was not, and I’d gladly take on anyone who says differently.”

  “We’ll see.” Mr Farrell adjusted his hat. “I dare say he’ll tell us the truth – ultimately. There is only so much pain a man can bear.”

  “The word of a slave counts for nothing,” Matthew said, but his heart was thronging his throat, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Alex had gone very still.

  “Interesting all the same.” Mr Farrell looked Matthew straight in the eye. “I expect you to be present at his punishment so you can hear first-hand what he has to say.”

  “His punishment?” Alex said. “How can you even think of punishing him? He looked close to death this morning!”

  “That slave has to be taught a lesson,” Mr Farrell said, “and, once I’m done with him, he’ll be as docile as a lapdog.”

  “He’s not a dog, he’s a man,” Alex flared.

  “He’s a slave, Mrs Graham, a disobedient, difficult slave.” Mr Farrell gave her a crooked little smile. “And why should you care? Unless, of course, it was you that helped him.”

  Alex went a bright pink. “I most certainly didn’t!” She sounded insulted rather than guilty. “That doesn’t mean I can’t feel sorry for him.”

  “Most inappropriate,” Mr Farrell said severely before turning away.

  “Shit,” Alex muttered to his retreating back. She cleared her throat. “Maybe we should leave, now.”

  “How would that help?” Matthew said. “No, we have to brazen it out, no matter what yon poor bastard says.”

  Matthew was so sickened by the brutality he was forced to witness later that afternoon that it was only through staring intently at his shoe buckles that he succeeded in retaining his composure. Mr Farrell was true to his word, stripping his absconding slave of every shred of human dignity before he was done, at which point the tall man was reduced to a whimpering, crawling creature that abjectly begged his master for forgiveness. But no matter how the man was tortured, no matter how deeply the leaded tips of the flogging whip sank into his flesh, he refused to name his accomplice, screaming that he didn’t know, Jesus, he didn’t know, but he thought it might be a man.

  Afterwards, Mr Farrell approached Matthew and apologised for his accusations. Matthew bowed and assured him it was already forgotten, and as they were strolling back towards Mrs Malone, he asked if Mr Farrell had considered selling the slave, troublemaker that he was. In reply, the trader laughed, saying that, now that the man was well and truly broken, he had no intention of selling him – ever.

  *

  Alex wasn’t in the mood for church next day. Matthew’s terse description of what had befallen Leon had left a sour taste in her mouth, and the thought of running into Farrell at church made her want to throw up. Worst of all, there was absolutely nothing she could do to help the poor man – nothing at all.

  All through the sermon, she sat lost in a silent monologue with God, entreating him to pull out a spectacular lightning bolt or two and propel Leon back to whatever time it was he came from; alternatively, fry Mr Farrell to a crisp. Every now and then, she dropped out of her internal musings to ensure her girls were behaving as they should, which was quite unnecessary given the fact that Matthew’s presence was enough to guarantee they sat like angels throughout the long service.

  “I don’t want to be a nun,” Sarah said afterwards. “And I’m that sorry for Daniel. Is this what he’s going to do? Talk people to death?”

  “Shh!” Alex suppressed a laugh. “That wasn’t the best sermon, and I’m sure Daniel will find a way to liven things up a bit. He could start by keeping it substantially shorter and sweeter.”

  Sarah looked doubtful, saying that in her opinion Daniel had a tendency to ramble.

  Ruth poked her with a sharp elbow. “No, he doesn’t. It is just that you never listen, so he has to repeat it, several times.”

  “Will you be sorry to be going back tomorrow?” Alex asked her daughters as they strolled back towards the inn. She was walking arm in arm with Matthew, while their daughters skipped around them.

  “No,” said Sarah.

  “Aye,” said Ruth.

  “Yes? Why?” Alex asked.

  In response, Ruth indicated a group of girls her own age that were walking a few yards before them. “It is nice with all the people.”

  Sarah made a dismissive sound. “I miss home, and I miss our brothers and the woods and our river.”

  “So do I, but I wouldn’t mind going to school.” Ruth sounded very yearning.

  “Lasses your age don’t go to school,” Matthew said, making Alex roll her eyes. So bloody unfair, that their brightest child, their Ruth, was by gender excluded from any kind of higher education.

  “Not even in Boston?” Ruth asked.

  “No, not even there. The skills a lass needs
she has to learn at home.”

  “Huh,” Alex began, but broke off, staring down the street. It couldn’t be, could it? She blinked, looked again. It was, oh my God, it was! With a whoop, she tore herself free from Matthew, and off she went, running at full pelt. From behind her, she heard Matthew’s loud exclamation, and to her great irritation it only took him a couple of seconds to sweep by her, a sound of pure joy hanging in the air behind him.

  “I can’t believe it!” Alex hugged Simon, Joan and little Lucy – not so little anymore – and then did it all again. “Oh, my God, what are you doing here?”

  “I would expect that to be obvious,” Simon Melville said, “we want a slice of currant cake and some of that new-fangled tea that you’re so fond of.” He was visibly shaken, wiping at his eyes between hugging his brother-in-law and Alex. “It’s good to see you, Matthew,” he said hoarsely, and Matthew looked back at him with eyes as wet, and nodded that, aye, it was.

  Alex wasn’t quite sure whether to cry or smile when they hugged each other again, these two men that were almost like brothers, for all that one was short and shaped like a bulging barrel while the other – her hunk – was an impressive six foot two with not an ounce of excess fat on him.

  “You look just the same,” Alex said, although that wasn’t strictly true, at least not in Joan’s case. Matthew’s sister had always been very thin and very tall, hovering around six feet, but the last decade or so had permanently rounded Joan’s shoulders, and there was a gauntness to her face that made Alex worry she might keel over at any moment. But Joan’s eyes, grey and luminous, were just the same, fringed with the thick dark lashes she shared with her brother.

  Simon did look very much himself, emanating that general likeness to a fat, strutting pigeon, even if his girth had expanded dramatically, reminding Alex of a mother of twins in the last month of gestation. But his eyes were still an inquisitive, mischievous blue, his hair still fluttered in reddish strands around his head, and he still heaved himself up and down on the balls of his feet while he talked.

  “And she’s stunning,” Alex said, indicating Matthew’s niece. Lucy Melville was indeed so beautiful that men were already taking note of this new arrival, quick looks being thrown her way and then thrown again when they took in the general roundness of her, eyes just like her mother’s, and hair somewhere in between her father’s reddish colour and Sarah’s blond, hair that hung, surprisingly, uncovered and unbound down her back.

  “And deaf,” Joan reminded Alex.

  “Not that much of an impediment, it would seem.” Alex inclined her head in the direction of where the girls were walking in front of them.

  “She lip-reads,” Joan said, “and she always carries paper and a stub of coal with her. And she talks with her hands, but you won’t understand that, I fear.”

  “So why are you here?” Matthew said. “You’ve never indicated any wish to leave Scotland.”

  An unreadable look flashed between Simon and Joan.

  “Nor did you,” Simon retorted. “As I recall, it took a lot of convincing to make you see you had to go, for the sake of yourself and your bairns.”

  “Are you saying you had to leave?” Matthew said.

  Simon came to a stop and turned to face Matthew. “I’m fifty-one. All my life I’ve spent building a practice in Scotland. Do you think I’d be here unless forced to?” He stuck a finger down his collar and grimaced. “And it’s a frightfully hot place – hot and damp, like.”

  “Hot?” Alex said. “This isn’t hot; this is comfortably warm. It’s better up where we live, up in the higher country.”

  “So why?” Matthew repeated.

  Simon squirmed. “I had to.” From the set of his mouth, it was clear that for now that was all he was going to say.

  Repeatedly, Alex clasped Joan’s hand, smoothed her hand over Lucy’s head, ignoring the irritated ducking movement this generated. To Alex, all of this was a dream come true, except that of course it wasn’t, because something must have gone very wrong for them to set out so late in their lives to build a new existence for themselves. Also, there was a reticence between Joan and Simon, and with all her antennae waving madly, Alex caught far too many looks between them, heard too many undertones in the comments they made to each other. Behind her sister-in-law’s back, she caught Matthew’s eyes, and from his infinitesimal nod, she understood that he noticed it too: the silent but constant reproach oozing from every pore in Joan’s body.

  *

  Alex took Joan for a walk, leaving the girls in the care of their fathers. After a guided tour through the town, they strolled off along the water, opposite to where the ship from which the Melvilles had disembarked earlier that morning lay at anchor, small boats plying back and forth.

  “How fortuitous,” Alex said, “that you should arrive today, on our last day here.”

  “Do you have to leave tomorrow?” Joan asked.

  “We’re riding with a party. It’s best not to ride alone.” Especially not now, when the risk of running into the Burleys was significant. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she stroked Joan over her thin arm. “It’s so good to see you, and once you’ve settled in, maybe you can come up and visit us for some weeks.”

  “Settled in? Here? In this small place so far from home?” Joan kicked at a stone and burst into tears.

  “Oh, Joan.” Alex hugged her sister-in-law. “It’ll be alright. It does have its advantages, you know. Like much less rain and fog in winter, and none of that constant grime hanging in the air like it does in Edinburgh.”

  “I like Edinburgh,” Joan snivelled. “I didn’t want to leave.”

  “No, in general, you don’t want to leave your home, do you?” Alex pulled them down to sit on a rock facing the water. “So, why did you?”

  Joan burst into a new bout of tears.

  “It would have been better if he had visited the whores,” she said, once she’d gotten herself back under control. “I could have understood that, aye?” She blushed and looked away. “I can’t…not since several years, on account of always being in pain.” Joan placed her hand on her abdomen – ever since Lucy’s birth, she had been plagued by constant pain in her nether parts. Joan straightened up and looked at Alex. “So I wouldn’t have liked it had he gone with the whores, but he’s a man, and men have needs. Instead, the wee daftie had to fall in love, and not only fall in love, but with the wife of one of the aldermen.”

  “Ah.” Alex nodded, although in reality she had no idea beyond seeing an enraged husband appear at the bedside and threaten Simon’s life.

  Joan gave her an irritated look. “Ah? So you know then? What it’s like to have your husband write love notes to another woman? To hear your neighbours whisper behind your back, tittering to themselves while you know nothing, nothing at all, because you’d swear on the life of your child that your husband wouldn’t do something like that?”

  “No,” Alex said, “I guess, I don’t.”

  Joan exhaled loudly. “He never did anything, he says. He just loved her from afar…” She wasn’t sure she believed him, she went on, but he insisted that was how it was: a passionate verbal relationship no more. When the alderman found out, intercepting one of the love letters, he’d hauled his wife in front of the courts for adultery, demanding that the marriage be dissolved, and who would step in to defend the wife if not the honourable Simon Melville.

  “He didn’t! He was compromised, wasn’t he?”

  “Aye, one could say that,” Joan said, “but, strictly by law, no adultery could be proven, and so the alderman was obliged to settle generously with his wife or keep her.” Joan picked at her skirts. “He kept her.”

  Oh dear, Alex thought. The poor wife would probably pay until the end of her days.

  “I was made a fool in everyone’s eyes,” Joan continued. “They looked at me and nodded that they could understand why Mr Melville strayed. And I have problems forgiving him for that – I have problems forgiving him at all.” She sighed. �
��He made Simon pay, the alderman did. In a matter of weeks, his custom dried up, and on top of that he hounded us – Simon mostly. But, one day, a gang of apprentices set upon Lucy, chasing her all the way back from the butcher’s shop.”

  “No!”

  “And then, one March evening, Simon came home and told me we were leaving on the morrow, that he had passages booked, and had no intention of staying one more day in this accursed, damp-ridden gutter of a city. So that selfsame night we packed and, come daylight, we were in Leith, boarding the ship.”

  “Wow, very abrupt.”

  “I told you, we had to. It was unbearable, it was!”

  Alex eyed her sister-in-law. Dear Joan wasn’t telling her the whole truth – she saw that in how Joan avoided her eyes and, much more tellingly, in how she’d clasped her hands together.

  “I am so angry,” Joan said after a minute or two. “It is a Christian thing, to forgive, and I try. But some days…”

  “So, why did you come with him?”

  “And what else was I to do? He’s my husband. Besides, I love the silly, puff-breasted man.” Joan picked up a clod of earth and crumbled it through her fingers. “I think I do at least,” she qualified, staring off towards the east.

  *

  “…it’s so sad.” Alex finished recounting her conversation with Joan.

  “Aye,” Matthew said, “but I’d warrant Joan is but telling you selected pieces of the whole sorry tale. Simon is far too competent a lawyer not to weather such a storm. No, there’s something else at the root of this sudden decision to leave.”

  “Yeah, I think so too.” Alex went back to her packing, wondering how all this stuff would fit in the pannier baskets.

  “Simon and I spoke to William and he’s willing to attempt a partnership,” Matthew said, “and I’ve found them lodgings with Mrs Redit. I reckon it may do Joan some good, to have a female companion to show her about.”

  Alex threw him a look. Mrs Redit was a widow, and a bloody old one at that, but seeing as she had lived here since Providence was three houses and a hen coop, she knew everyone in town, and was probably a good introduction.