Serpents in the Garden (The Graham Saga)

by Anna Belfrage

  She indicated that he should roll over, and dipped into her home-made heat rub, consisting mainly of mints, goose grease and camphor. She massaged him until his whole back was bright red, added yet another layer of her grease, and covered him with a quilt to ensure he held the heat.

  “So what is it?” she asked.

  He pretended to snore.

  “What if I don’t like it? At least if you give me a hint, I can pretend to like it.”

  “Like what?” Ian asked, opening his eyes. He smiled at her irritated noise. “You’re imagining things.”

  “Of course, which is why Mark suddenly just had to ride over to the Chisholms’ for beer.”

  “Thirsty work, harvest,” Ian said, and just like that, his mood plunged.

  Alex saw it in his eyes and sighed. How often did she have to tell him to be patient?

  He glared at her, eyes an intense green, and pointedly turned the other way.

  “It’s up to you. Either you choose to see the glass as half-full or half-empty.” She patted him on the back and left the room.

  *

  Minister Allerton made his way over to where Ian was sitting on the little bench in the graveyard and sat down beside him, holding out a stone bottle.

  “Beer?”

  “Hmph,” Ian said, but took the bottle anyway. “She sent you, didn’t she?” he asked, wiping his mouth with his hand.

  “Who?” Minister Allerton opened his eyes disingenuously.

  “Mama.” Who else?

  “She isn’t your real mother, is she?” the minister sidestepped.

  “In everything that counts, she is.”

  “Something of a mother bear, most protective of her young.”

  Ian smiled despite himself at the likeness, and nodded an agreement.

  Minister Allerton raised the bottle to his mouth and drank.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, indicating Magnus’ headstone.

  “That? Oh, that’s Offa. Mama’s father.”

  “Ah.” The minister sat beside him for some time before turning to face him. “She’s right, your mother: you can view what happened to you as a terrible misfortune or as a miraculous deliverance.” He stood up and nodded his head in the direction of the gravestone. “There could have been one more – one with your name on it. But there isn’t, is there?”

  “Am I being very difficult?” Ian asked Betty later that night. She looked up from where she was knitting him a pair of stockings, and the light from the candle beside her fell like a soft golden glow over her face.

  “No more than can be expected,” she said after some consideration.

  “I don’t want to be difficult. At all,” he snapped, and then smiled ruefully at himself.

  She folded together the stockings, went over to check on the sleeping bairns, and came to join him in bed.

  “Back rub?”

  Ian shook his head and patted the bed beside him.

  She knew how he liked things by now, and pulled off her shift to stand naked before him. When she turned to extinguish the candle, he could see how her belly was beginning to round. She crawled in to lie beside him and took his hand, placing it on her stomach.

  “I felt him today,” she said in an awed voice. “And it was like holding a trapped moth in my cupped hands. A flutter of life in my womb…” She turned towards him and kissed him on the mouth, one of her very slow and teasing kisses. At times, Ian wondered how someone as inexperienced as Betty could kiss like that – hot breath escaping through open lips, her tongue flicking so expertly against his.

  “He’ll know his father,” Betty said as she broke away. “And he’ll have many, many brothers and sisters. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “A very good thing,” he repeated in a voice that barely carried. He kissed her again, tasted the raspberries they’d had for supper on her breath, and drew in the scent of roses and lavender that clung to her skin. He smiled. She had bathed and oiled herself for him.

  “How many?” he asked later, lying flat on his back.

  “How many what?” Her voice drifted down from above him.

  “Brothers and sisters,” he clarified with an effort. His cock pulsated inside of her, brimming with life and strength.

  “As many as you want, but perhaps not more than ten.”

  “No more than ten,” he agreed breathlessly.

  *

  Alex saw Ian emerge from his cabin next morning, and she knew that something had shifted for him. She took Matthew’s hand and turned him to watch Ian stretching on his door stoop. In only his shirt, his dark hair messy, Ian raised his arms high over his head and extended himself to well over seven feet, gracious as a giant cat. Unaware of his audience, he took a careful, shuffling step off the stone stoop and lifted his shirt to piss, his face raised to the rising sun. He was smiling, a huge face-breaking smile. Someone said something to him and he laughed, shaking himself thoroughly. Betty appeared at the door, naked as the day she was born, and Alex had to grin at Matthew’s little hiss.

  “She’s his wife, and I’m not wearing much more, am I?” She smiled fondly in the direction of Betty and Ian, and slipped her arms round Matthew’s waist.

  “I love you,” she said to his chest hairs.

  He kissed her hair. “I adore you.”

  “And if you don’t tell me this minute what it is you’re planning behind my back, I might just…” She cupped her hand around his balls.

  “You might what?”

  “Do this,” she grinned, very pleased by his surprised gasp.

  Chapter 42

  He woke her with a kiss, told her to put something on, and led her out to the kitchen. Alex just gaped. At Jacob, at Matthew, and back at Jacob.

  “How—” Before she could say anything more, her son had crossed the floor and swept her into his arms. God, he was big, bigger even than his father, and blond and good-looking and whole and safe and… Alex couldn’t stop crying, her hands flying over him.

  “A beard?” she asked, fingers examining the thickened bridge of his nose.

  “I couldn’t shave up in the woods.” Jacob scratched at his patchily covered cheeks.

  “Up in the woods?” Alex whirled towards her husband. “Why you—” She flew at him, but she was laughing, and allowed him to draw her close and kiss her.

  “Happy birthday, lass,” he said. “I couldn’t think of something you would want more.”

  “How long has he been home?” Alex asked, kissing him back.

  “A week.” Jacob sighed theatrically. “Living like a savage in the woods.”

  “Nay, you haven’t,” Matthew retorted. “You’ve been sleeping in style in the hayloft.”

  “And you’ve all known,” Alex said.

  “Aye, well, he isn’t invisible, is he?” Matthew’s voice was loaded with pride. No, he definitely wasn’t. The half-grown boy had returned a man.

  “Have you seen Betty?” Alex asked bluntly, making both son and husband grin.

  Jacob nodded, twisting somewhat as he muttered that it had been a bit awkward at first, to see a girl he had for some years considered as his future wife so besotted with his brother and already with child. “She’s happy,” he said, “and she deserves to be.”

  “And you?” Alex raised a hand to the unfamiliar bearded cheek. Hazel eyes softened and looked down at her, and in the back of them Alex saw pain and humiliation, heartbreak and a tentativeness she had never seen there before.

  “I’m home,” Jacob sidestepped.

  Alex was confined to her parlour for the rest of the morning, with Mary Leslie as her watchdog. From the kitchen floated enticing smells of baking hams and pies and bread, and out in the yard she could hear loud voices calling instructions, laughter and the occasional muffled curse as her family went about setting up their surprise. Not much of a surprise, she smiled to herself, listening distractedly while Mary told her the latest news from Boston.

  “…and Harriet believes the girl is as taken as he is,” M
ary finished.

  “Ah,” Alex said.

  “Alex!” Mary laughed. “You haven’t been listening, have you?”

  “No,” Alex admitted.

  “I was talking about Daniel, him and that girl of his.”

  “Girl of his? Oh, you must mean Temperance!”

  Mary nodded. “A very nice girl according to Harriet, and quite the catch on account of her mother. Hope Allerton is the only daughter to a draper, and the business is worth a substantial amount of money.”

  “It is?” To Alex, all of this just meant one thing: her son might marry and settle so far away from her she would but see him rarely, and as to any grandchildren…

  Mary sighed in agreement. Only once had she seen Harriet in the last five years, and as for the two girls left behind in England, the once so regular letters had dried up to become a dutiful annual epistle.

  “I suppose Boston is better than England,” Alex said, “but it’s so uncertain to have them gone, isn’t it? Anything can happen to them, and we’ll never know until it’s too late.”

  “Yes,” Mary replied shortly.

  Too late, Alex remembered that Mary had recently lost one daughter to childbirth down in Virginia, only to find out in a stilted letter from her bereaved son-in-law. Alex covered Mary’s hand with her own.

  All of them gawked: Ian, Mark, Jacob, Daniel – even David stared at his mama in her dark red bodice. Not that she noticed, because all she cared for was the look in Matthew’s eyes. She twirled, adjusted her laces, and smiled at him, a slow smile that she accompanied with a fluttering of eyelashes that made him laugh rather than pant. Still, when he took her hand, his fingertips caressed the inside of her wrist, and his eyes had gone a very golden shade of green, making something stir inside of her. She leaned towards him, a brush, no more, of her daringly exposed chest against his shirt.

  “We have guests,” Mark reminded them.

  “Many guests,” Ian nodded, and all the present Graham children burst out laughing at the way their mother rolled her eyes.

  *

  “Ouff!” Alex sat down with a thud on a stool, and flapped her hands in an attempt to cool her overheated cheeks. The barn was full of people, dancing, eating, drinking copious quantities of beer. Luckily, the Chisholms had brought some extra beer and cider with them, but what had seemed a mountain of food was now reduced to a couple of pies and a half-eaten loaf.

  Alex grinned at the sight of Mrs Parson dancing with Peter Leslie, and turned to face her son. “She’s seventy-one. You wouldn’t believe it, would you?”

  Jacob shook his head. “It will be him that keels over first.”

  As if he had heard him, Peter held up his hands in an apologetic gesture and dragged himself over to where the drink was.

  “Was she pretty?” Alex asked.

  Jacob’s mouth curved into a reluctant smile. “I thought so, but then I thought a lot about her that later proved to be false.” He met her eyes. “Later, I’ll tell you all of it later.”

  “Of course you will,” she said, and he nodded in defeat.

  “Should he be dancing?” he asked instead, pointing at Ian, who was on the dance floor.

  “No, but if he’s willing to take the pain that comes tomorrow, well, that’s his business.” She stood up and extended her hand to him. “One more, Jacob, seeing as your father has escaped outside.”

  “Mama,” he groaned, but got to his feet anyway.

  *

  “Nowhere close, not anymore,” Matthew said to Peter and Thomas Leslie. He had looked, God how he had looked, those first few weeks after the attack. Mark and he had scoured the woods, and had they found them, the Burley brothers would no longer be walking the world. Where before the Burleys had mostly woken fear in him, now it was hatred and rage that flowed through his veins when he thought of them. He cleared his throat. One day…

  “They make dangerous enemies,” Thomas warned, regarding Matthew through a thin veil of pipe smoke.

  “So do I, and I won’t forgive them for damaging my son.”

  “Mmm,” Peter nodded, “terrible…”

  Matthew felt it unnecessary to comment.

  “Will you help me find them?” Matthew asked, directing himself to Thomas, who nodded.

  “And what will you do if you find them?” Peter asked.

  “If?” Matthew shook his head. “There’s no if. It’s a when.” He closed his hand round the piece of bread in his hand and watched it disintegrate. “And when I do…” His voice trailed off into heavy silence.

  Any further conversation was interrupted by Alex, appearing rosy and warm in the barn door.

  “You promised you were going to dance with me, Mr Graham,” she said, and came to take his hand.

  “I did? As I recall, what I said was that, if I danced, it would only be with you.”

  “Same thing,” she said and tugged at him. “You also made some very cocky remarks about dancing me off my feet. So far a lot of words and no action, if you see what I mean.”

  “No action?” His mouth was very close to her ear.

  “No action,” she repeated, and pulled him back with her into the barn.

  Matthew danced her off her feet. When she pleaded for mercy, he shook his head, leading her out into every dance. They twirled, they stamped, they weaved through complicated patterns with the other dancers, but all the while his eyes were glued to hers. She was lifted in the air, she was held close enough that he could feel the rise of her breasts against his chest, and only when she threatened to sit down where she stood, did he take pity on her and lead her off the dance floor.

  “You said how you would dance a slow dance for me,” Matthew murmured some time later, handing her a cup of cider.

  “Not for, with, and I’m ready whenever you are.” She drained her cup, set it down and walked with swinging skirts in the direction of the woods. He followed, smiling when he saw that she’d taken off her shoes and stockings, walking barefoot through the grass. She held out her arms to him, winding them hard around his neck.

  She sang in his ear, the same song she’d sung him in the bath about summer breezes and touching in the pouring rain, and he tightened his arms around her and kissed her, trying to show her just how deep his love was. Forehead to forehead, they slowly turned, singing the chorus together.

  *

  From where he was standing a few feet into the forest, Qaachow watched Matthew and Alex slow their dance to stillness, saw him take her hand and lead her towards the house. He motioned for his men to remain where they were, and stepped out of the wooded fringe that surrounded the central buildings of the farm. When he was a boy, not that long ago, all of this had been forest, oaks and maples and sycamores standing never-ending round him, and now it was all gone. His land was gone, his people were gone, the spirits of the deep woods had fled further north and further west, and soon nothing would be left to show his people had ever been.

  From the barn spilled the sound of white man’s music; in the door he saw the shapes of white men’s bodies, skin that shone fair in the light of lanterns. In the yard, a group of children ran and played, boys mostly, but here and there he caught the long braids of a girl.

  We should have driven them off, he thought bitterly, our ancestors should have thrown them back into the sea whence they came. Even now, it was perhaps not too late. Kill all the men, take the children and women with them, and make them forget who they were and where they came from.

  Qaachow sighed and turned away from the sounds of dancing and enjoyment, gliding back into the invisibility of the trees. He stood there a while longer, and now his eyes were riveted on the boy – his foster son. Tall like his father, dark of hair, and with a fluidity in his movements that made Qaachow smile with pleasure. White Bear leaped high in the air and landed with the ball in a firm grip, ducked to avoid his elder brother and, with a whooping sound, threw the ball to another child. Soon, Qaachow mouthed soundlessly, I will come for you soon.

  *

&nbs
p; “Alex?” Matthew groped for her hand.

  “Mmm?” She braided her fingers round his.

  “I love you,” he said to the dark, overcome by an urgent need to tell her what she surely knew anyway. “So very much do I love you.”

  She raised herself on an elbow and kissed his cheek. “I know,” she said, nestling back down against his chest.

  He waited and waited, and thought she might have fallen asleep.

  “I love you too,” she breathed against his skin. “I always have, and always will.”

  “Always?” His fingers brushed through her hair.

  “Since before I was born,” she replied, giggling at her own jest.

  “Alex?”

  She didn’t reply, and, from the sound of her breathing, she had fallen asleep.

  Matthew cradled her to him and kissed the top of her head. “I don’t think I’d want to live without you,” he said out loud, his cheeks heating. “I don’t think I could.”

  *

  Alex opened one eye and smiled. Me neither, she thought drowsily, me neither, Matthew Graham.

  * * *

  “A package?” Simon turned it over. “Who’d send me something from London?”

  “Unless you open it, you won’t find out, will you?” Joan offered him her scissors to cut the string. She laughed at his hesitation. “It won’t bite you.”

  “Oh, aye? And how do you know?” he said, but he smiled at her as he said it. He sneaked her a look from under his lashes. Whatever it was Alex had suggested she take, it helped, even if at times the sweetish smell was rather cloying. There was a tinge of pink in Joan’s previously so grey cheeks, and her mouth that for years had been set in a line had relaxed back into its natural fullness.

  Simon Melville wasn’t a fool. He knew his wife was dying – she’d been doing that for the last five or six years – but now it seemed these last few years would not be one long agonising journey, and for that he was hugely grateful.

  He unwrapped the last of the packing around the object. “Dear God,” he whispered, almost throwing the small square from him. He had seen something similar to this once before, and he knew what they could do. Joan leaned over his shoulder to look, a shocked exclamation escaping her. A painting: swirling greens and blues, a heaving mass of colour that entrapped your eyes and enticed you to look deeper, lose yourself in it.