Two leaps and he was out on the moss, setting off at a run. He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, jumping over stones and gorse, splashing through puddles. He ran until he stopped crying and then he ran some more, straight out into that heaving, flowering mass of pink.
Matthew brought Ian home, carrying him as if he were a small child. The boy was drenched from falling into terns and small springs, and Alex took one look at him and ordered him to bed, sitting by his side to make sure he swallowed down every last drop of the broth she brought him. Alex caressed his cheek and to her surprise the boy curled up as close as he could, face hidden in her skirts. Jesus… Alex smoothed at his hair, overwhelmed by very protective feelings towards this boy.
“I can find an excuse to keep you here for now. It won’t help in the long run, but if you want me to, I’ll make sure Mr Brown leaves without you tomorrow.”
He nodded once, burrowed even closer.
Alex stroked him over his knobbly back. “You always belong here. Remember that, okay?” He moaned, thin shoulders shaking. Then and there he took that final leap into her heart, jostling for space with her own brood. She smiled wryly; a pushover, Alex Graham, that’s what you are – at least when it comes to needy children. She sat beside him until he was fast asleep, her hand held hard in his.
“Chickenpox,” Alex said. “If you want to check, be my guest. It’s highly contagious and if you haven’t had it as a child… well.” As if on cue Daniel began to shriek, waving his arms in the air. Alex wasn’t lying; Daniel’s genital area was covered in the trademark blisters, travelling up his stomach and across his chest. She was, however, lying when she insisted that Ian might be coming down with it too.
“Frankly, I don’t think my brother-in-law would much appreciate if his eldest son was dragged home ailing, and imagine what he’d say if the baby got infected.” She eyed Daniel and turned innocent eyes on Mr Brown. “Some die, you know.” A major exaggeration. Mr Brown looked flustered; the idea of travelling for eight days with a sick child clearly held little appeal.
“Chickenpox? Is it something akin to smallpox?”
“Very similar,” Alex nodded. He shuddered, and Alex smiled to herself. “I’ll write a letter, and I’m convinced both his parents will agree that we mustn’t risk Ian’s future health.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “At his age it might affect his future… err… fertility.” No, that was mumps, but apparently Robert Brown had only the vaguest concepts about illnesses in general, and he took a hasty step back from her and the crying child.
“It is for the best if I leave as soon as possible,” he muttered, escaping to the other side of the table. Oh yes; the sooner the better, as far as Alex was concerned.
Alex signed the letter, blotted it and folded it together.
“There,” she said, handing it to Mr Brown. And where was Matthew? He should at least say goodbye to Brown. “Have you seen the master?” she asked Sarah, but Sarah’s reply was drowned in a frantic clucking, here and there interspaced by high, excited voices. “Bloody hell; now what?” Alex rushed for the hen house, with an interested Brown in tow.
The hen coop was in chaos, the hens fleeing in all directions from a determined Rachel, who seemed set on grabbing one. There were feathers everywhere; in the air, on the ground and stuck all over Rachel’s hair. Jacob was in there with her, helping as well as he could, and on the outside Mark was hanging on to the latched gate, laughing his head off.
“What in the world do you think you’re doing?”
If she hadn’t been so angry, Alex supposed it would have been amusing to see the way her children gawked at her. The hens continued to squawk and flap, Jacob stuck his hand into Rachel’s, and Mark made as if to sidle away.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Her hand came down like a clamp on his arm.
“It wasn’t me,” Mark protested. “I’m not in there, am I?”
Rachel’s mouth opened in an ‘o’. She threw a reproachful look in the direction of Mark.
“You locked us in. Said we weren’t coming out without a hen.”
Mark twisted. “It was your fault! It was you who said you could wring a hen’s neck.”
“What? You dared her to kill one of my hens?” Alex scowled at Mark who shrank away. “Idiots, the lot of you. This will probably put them off laying for days, but I’ll leave it to you to explain that to your father, shall I?”
An hour later a still laughing Mr Brown had bid them farewell and Alex sank down for a quick breather. Her children were confined to the kitchen bench, three pairs of hazel eyes throwing her cautious looks. Even Rachel was silent, trying out her best smile whenever Alex’ gaze rested on her.
“No, mistress, he’s not in the stables or in the barn, and it’s only Samuel and Robbie out in the field. They say the master rode off early this morning, but they don’t know where.” Sarah sounded apologetic.
“Hmm.” Alex regarded her children. They had to be punished, but she suspected sending them off to spend the rest of the day in their bedroom was going to be received with relief, and from the way they were looking at each other it was obvious both Mark and Rachel were counting on being let off with nothing more than a mild slap to the wrists. You wish, she thought, turning various alternatives over in her head.
Matthew came riding over the water meadows, nodded a greeting to Samuel and Robbie and handed Ham over to Gavin before making for the house. He hoped he wasn’t too late to bid Ian a proper goodbye, but look as he might he couldn’t find Brown’s horse. Ah no; Ian was gone, and he hadn’t been here to hug him one last time. He kicked at the ground and came to a halt by the hen coop. What had happened here? A fox mayhap? But there was no blood, only a flock of ruffled hens, a few of them seemingly dead. He frowned and increased his pace.
“Why are there five dead hens in the coop?” he said, making his whole family start.
“Oh, they’re not dead,” Alex said. “They’re just suffering from shock.”
“Ah.” Matthew let his eyes travel over his children while Alex retold the events, struggling to keep the grin that wanted to break out under control.
“All of them were in on it,” Alex said mournfully. “Well, not Daniel, but that’s probably on account of him not being able to walk yet. And he has chickenpox, poor thing.”
“Nor Ian,” Rachel piped up. “He has the pox too.”
“Ian?” Matthew turned to face Alex. “Is Ian still here?” One part of him was overjoyed, the other apprehensive.
“You heard; the poor kid has the chickenpox. I can’t send him back contagious to his baby brother, can I?”
Matthew looked at her in silence, a slow smile spreading over his face. Tender-hearted, this woman of his, capable of being protective towards a lad she recognised as being a potential threat to her own son’s future.
“The pox, aye?”
“Serious,” she said, looking concerned. “Will probably take months of convalescence. At least that’s what I wrote to Luke. Among other things…”
Matthew sighed; he could imagine those other things.
“Not to worry,” Alex said, “he probably won’t be able to read my handwriting.”
A couple of minutes later the three elder Graham children trooped off in the direction of the henhouse.
“It must be swept and scrubbed entirely clean,” Matthew called after them. “No dinner until you’re done,” he added before closing the door.
“Where were you this morning?” Alex patted some ground oatmeal on Daniel’s irritated skin, smoothed down his smocks and set him down on a blanket.
“No clout?” Matthew smiled at the waving legs and leaned down to pinch at a rosy toe.
“Fresh air helps, I think. So, where were you?” She nodded a thank you at Sarah, and took a bite of the meat pie.
“Up on the moss. Peat, aye?”
Alex gave him a disbelieving look. He shook his head in warning and waited until Sarah left the kitchen. “Today they hang,” he said softly. “A
ll five ministers, including Minister Crombie. So I stood up there and offered up a prayer for their souls, God help them.”
“With Sandy,” Alex said.
Matthew nodded, ate some of his pie but shoved it away from him half-eaten. Alex scooted closer and rested her head against his shoulder. He rubbed his cheek against her head.
“Don’t mind me, Alex. It’s not a good day.”
In response she slipped her arm around his waist and kissed his cheek.
“I’m glad you helped him stay,” Matthew said, standing up with a grunt.
“Mmm? Oh, Ian. I did it for his sake. The poor kid needs someone in his corner.”
“And for my sake as well.” He smiled at how her cheeks reddened. “It’ll be the last time I’ll have with him as a lad. I don’t think Luke will renounce the lad, but he’ll punish him for coming running to me – Ian won’t be coming back to Hillview.” He sighed, bent to kiss Alex and went outside.
Ian stood with his back pressed to the wood panelling of the dark hallway. Renounce him? Could Father do that? But Mam wouldn’t let him, no of course she wouldn’t, because Mam loved Ian – even now with Charles in the house.
“Mam,” he breathed, sliding down to sit on the floor. He missed her so much it hurt, he wanted her to laugh in his ear and tell him what a fine lad he was and how proud she was of him. Ian leaned his chin against his knees and exhaled. If only Father had come himself instead of sending Mr Brown. He closed his eyes and there in his head was his father, and he was laughing, telling Ian not to be such a daftie, for surely he knew he was loved. But Ian didn’t; not right now, sitting in the dark and draughty hallway with a borrowed shirt flapping round his legs and no one in the whole world he could truly call his own. Not even Mam; not anymore, not after Charles.
Chapter 18
Alex reread the note before folding it together and putting it aside. Just deciphering the handwriting had been an issue, and the contents themselves didn’t exactly help. A very oblique warning, but a warning none the less… Alex dug into her apron pocket for a coin or two for the messenger, a scruffy boy about Mark’s age who was wolfing down the bowl of stew Sarah had served him.
“Who?” Alex held up a tarnished half-crown.
The boy’s eyes widened. “A man.” He extended his hand for the coin.
Alex shook her head. “Better than that.”
“A soldier.”
“Young? Old? Fat? Go on, what did he look like?” She flipped the coin, and the boy’s eyes followed it up into the air and down.
“I don’t know, he was just a soldier.”
“An officer?”
He hitched his shoulders. A man with a sash on a horse had given him the letter to deliver and that was what he’d done.
“He had a scar, here.” He placed his hand to cover most of the right side of his face. “Like snakeskin – and no hair.”
Once the boy was gone Alex sat down and read the short message again. Beware; an ambush can be ambushed, the attackers be attacked. Why address it to her? She tapped at the paper. An ambush can be ambushed… and tomorrow some of the men fined for their participation in the disrupted meeting on the moor would be transported from Cumnock to Edinburgh, there to be bonded overseas with their families.
Alex sighed; her brave, high principled man was off to play some kind of latter day William Wallace by freeing those men, and apparently this was exactly what the soldiers were hoping he would do. And we all know how Wallace ended his days, Alex thought; hung, drawn and quartered.
Matthew read the note, read it again. They knew; somehow they’d had word of the planned ambush, and now… Sweetest Lord, it would be a bloodbath, farmers ranged against fighting men. And he’d said so, repeatedly he’d warned them, saying this was too dangerous, too risky.
“I hope you’re not planning on taking part,” Alex said.
“How can you think I’d do something that daft? Do you seriously think I’d put you all at risk for a gesture bound to fail?” He crumpled the paper and threw it at her feet.
“Is it? Bound to fail, I mean.”
“Aye, I think so, and I will take no part. Who sent this to you?”
“I have no idea.” Alex bent to retrieve the paper. “Literate at any rate, and with a scar.”
“Scar? Have you seen him?”
“No, but the boy who delivered it said he was an officer, badly scarred over half of his face. Like snakeskin, he said, I suppose he means puckered, and apparently he’s bald.”
“Wyndham.” Matthew stood stock still. “Oliver Wyndham. Now how have you managed that, you a most devout Puritan last I saw you?”
“So this is a friend of yours?”
Matthew gave her a grim look. “Not as such. But he owes me his life, like.”
“He does?” Alex settled herself on an upturned bucket, looking so much like a lass waiting for a story that Matthew smiled.
“It’s no tale of honour and gallantry. It’s rather the sad story of two young lads, a worldly-wise whore and what can befall you if you’re not careful where you leave your heart.”
“Aha, a morality.” Alex looked at him expectantly.
Matthew snorted, torn between amusement and irritation.
“To us she was a glamorous creature, all bared skin and ruffles with eyes the size of saucers and a wonderful mouth.” His cheeks heated at the expression on Alex’ face. “Nay,” he muttered, “not like you do. I… well, you were the first to…” His hand strayed to his crotch.
“And the last,” Alex informed him, making him laugh.
“Oliver and I were what? Eighteen? Both far from home and always the youngest, surrounded by serious men who fought for principles and such.”
“And you were only there to have a good time,” Alex said, waggling her brows.
“Nay, that we weren’t. But at times it’s difficult to live only for duty, and especially when you are but a lad.” He handed her a harness, a cloth and some grease, indicating she might as well do something useful while she sat listening. “For months we were cooped up, ordered to stay in camp, one day after the other full of the utter boredom of siege work. And the siege of Colchester was long – all summer it lasted – and it was hot. Relentless the sun shone from dull blue skies and in the city people starved and died while we sat outside and waited.” All around the army camp fields had lain abandoned and untended, the air hung heavy with the stench from endless privy ditches, and over it all that constant, scorching heat.
“And she was an army whore?” Alex asked. “I didn’t think Puritan morals allowed such.”
“They don’t,” he said. “But men will be men, and months – years – away from families and wives make even the most moral of men prone to fall for the carnal itch.” He smiled, shaking his head. “An angel we thought her the first time we saw her, both of us too innocent to see her for what she was. She followed the army, she and her fellow workers, and we were ripe for the plucking, all of us. Restless and itching, bored of ourselves and our comrades at arms, and these lasses sang and made eyes at us and threw long manes of hair about. They were good at what they did, they were…”
His voice trailed off and he smiled at the memories of himself, young and inexperienced and convinced he was in love with French Marie – no more French than he was, but he didn’t know that at the time. And Oliver equally in love with her, and both of them certain they were the sole recipients of her true affections. Alex laughed when he told her this.
“But the lady didn’t mix business with pleasure, did she?” she said.
No, she hadn’t, and she’d made that very clear to both of them one night.
“We drew lots, Oliver and me, and he won and I swore to no longer importune the fair Marie, to leave the field free for him.” Agreeably drunk they had made their way to the whores’ end of the huge encampment, Matthew to witness as Oliver begged for her hand in marriage.
“First she laughed at him, telling him she had no patience with callow lads, but w
hen he continued to wheedle and beg she had him thrown out, and he was so incensed by this behaviour that he grabbed a candlestick and set fire to the canvas sides of the tent.” Shrieking women in different states of undress, a grim and angered madam, and poor Oliver was sent flying into the conflagration, head first. “The buff coat saved him, but when I got him out, one side of his head was one raw blister, his hair, eyebrow and eyelashes all gone.” Matthew had thrown his friend over his shoulders and legged it, pelted with all kinds of hard and unsavoury objects by the angry, frightened whores.
Matthew fell silent. Oliver had been in agony for days, and the surgeon had despaired for his life and his eyesight in that order. But he lived, and where once he had been a handsome, spirited young lad he became a bitter, twisted man.
“We never spoke much afterwards. He requested transfer elsewhere and whenever we met he would avert his face and hurry off with nothing but a hasty nod.” No doubt making a comparison between his own diminished state and that of his erstwhile companion, Matthew sighed.
“Apparently he still remembers you,” Alex said standing up. “What will you do? I suppose you must try and warn them.”
Matthew looked away. “Aye, I must try.”
Alex watched as he saddled up Ham. “Why is he warning you, do you think? Because he owes you or because he still holds to his original convictions?”
Matthew tightened the girth and backed Ham out of his stall. “I don’t know, I would hope it’s because of convictions.” Once outside, he swung up in the saddle and indicated the scrap of paper in Alex’ hand. “Burn it.”
The soldiers rode in late next afternoon. Dishevelled and dusty, they charged down the lane towards the yard with swords drawn. Jacob shrieked and hid himself against Alex’ skirts, calling loudly for his da.
“Your husband, ma’am,” the lieutenant barked, holding in his sweating mount. The horse frothed at the bit, and its flanks heaved, the large hoofs sliding over the cobbles. The officer swept the people in front of him with angry, bloodshot eyes, and Alex shooed her children indoors.
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