Whither Thou Goest (The Graham Saga Book 7) Page 4

  *

  Alex had by now finished salving Benji’s burn, and after further making the boy’s day by giving him her last biscuits, she came over to talk to Leon.

  “So now what?” Alex asked.

  “I want to go back,” Leon said, his voice breaking with longing. “Back to my wife and my life, to hours spent in the recording studio with the Philharmonic Orchestra.”

  “That may be difficult,” Alex said. “Time only tears itself apart by chance.”

  “Yeah, I know, you already told me, remember? How we’re stuck here.” He sighed and looked about his surroundings with a displeased frown. “At any rate, I have no plans on staying in this area. The Indians don’t like us, and I’m not made for sleeping out in the open.” He coughed as if to underline his statement. “Shit,” he groaned, “don’t you miss it? The highways, the cars, the way you flipped a light switch and, wham, there was light? Or just imagine opening the door to your bathroom…” He allowed his lids to drop down over his dark eyes, a small smile forming on his mouth. “…you turn the tap, and there’s hot water pouring over you, and then you just wrap yourself in a thick towel and wander over to the scale to see if you can eat those chicken wings you’ve got sizzling in the oven.” He laughed shortly. “Weight isn’t exactly an issue here, is it?”

  “No,” Alex said, “there’s a dismal lack of comfort foods.”

  “But you don’t miss it,” he stated.

  “No, I don’t.” Her eyes went to her husband.

  “Lucky you,” Leon said bitterly, following her gaze.

  “Very.” She gnawed her lip. “Maybe you should go further west, deeper into the wilds.”

  “You think?” Leon shook his head. “I want a house, a bed. I want…” His voice tailed off.

  “Staying here is risking capture,” Alex said. “Sooner or later, someone might find you and take you.”

  “They can try.” Leon sounded belligerent. He sighed, dropping his eyes to his hands. “I’ll die before I go back to him. Anyway,” he added, straightening up, “first they have to find us, and it isn’t as if these parts are full of settlers, is it?”

  “Not really.” Six families within a three-hour ride didn’t exactly qualify as being densely populated. She placed a hand on his arm, making him start. “Take care, okay? And stay well away from Providence and Mr Farrell.”

  She gave them what food she had left, wrapped Benji in her shawl, and stood to the side as the men prepared to leave.

  “Do you think they’ll make it?” Alex asked, waving for one last time to Leon before the big man was swallowed by the night.

  “Make it?”

  “Will they be alright, I mean.”

  Matthew looked at her as if she had completely taken leave of her senses. “They’re fugitives, Alex. They live half-naked in the woods, with no hunting skills to talk of, no home, no nothing.”

  “He said they did. He said how they had built themselves a shelter.”

  “They can’t risk staying too long in one place. Those five men are valuable.” Matthew looked in the general direction they had left and sighed. “So alone, so utterly alone for all that they are five.”

  *

  In the morning, they found the mule gone, with SORRY written in coal across the mare’s saddle. Matthew cursed for a very long time, words like ingrates, bastards, scum and swine dropping from his mouth, before giving a resigned sigh and helping Alex up on the horse.

  “At least they left the mare,” Alex said.

  Matthew snorted, not at all mollified. Mules were versatile animals, he muttered, far more useful in the sheer drudgery of farm work than his precious horses and easier to handle than the pair of oxen that only he could truly manage.

  “They’ll eat it, I reckon.” He sat up and set the horse to walk.

  “He wasn’t glad to see us,” Alex suddenly said.

  “Samuel, you mean?”

  “No, Leon,” Alex replied sarcastically. She rested her open hand on his thigh, and he covered it with his own.

  “We don’t belong in that world. It confused him, to see us there.”

  “Nor does he. He belongs with me, with us,” Alex said.

  Matthew didn’t reply. He just gave her hand a comforting squeeze.

  *

  Mark had obviously been keeping lookout, appearing rather abruptly from a screen of trees when they closed in on Graham’s Garden.

  “Alright then?” he asked, eyes drifting over the double-mounted mare.

  “Aye,” Matthew replied.

  “The mule?” Mark smiled a swift greeting at Alex, and a sudden shaft of sunlight lightened his eyes into a greenish brown, making him look remarkably like his father. A throwback on Matthew when she first met him, Alex reflected, leaning over to pat her son’s cheek.

  “Alex!” Matthew warned, making a grab for her, but it was too late, and in an undignified welter of skirts, flailing legs and arms, she slid off the horse to land on the mossy ground. A gust of laughter, hastily swallowed, and Alex glared up at her son and husband, both of them with identical and straight faces, and slowly got to her feet, shrugging off Mark’s helping hand.

  “I’ll walk the rest of the way,” she informed Matthew. “I felt like some exercise.”

  “Of course,” he replied with a grin and with a slight wave urged the horse on.

  “They stole it,” Alex said to Mark.

  “Stole what?” Mark asked, confused.

  “The mule. Some runaway slaves stole it.”

  Mark’s features hardened. “Runaway slaves?”

  “Yes, and God help them, half-naked and alone in all that,” Alex said, waving a hand at the surrounding forest.

  “I don’t like it,” Mark said. “Desperate men so close to our home.”

  They came out of the woods, and before them the ground sloped upwards, all the way from the river to where the main house stood safe against the hillside, framed by stables and barns, meadows and fields. To the right stood the three separate cabins that housed Ian and Mark and their respective families, with the smallest of them being home to their servants, Agnes and John. As if on cue, Agnes stepped out of her doorway holding her daughter, Judith, by the hand. Alex waved at her, and Agnes shone up at the sight of her mistress and waved back.

  “They might steal our beasts or scare our bairns,” Mark said, eyes flying over to where his three eldest children were playing by the rope swing.

  “Well, they have a bloody big mule to eat first. And I don’t think they’re dangerous – frightened and hungry, but definitely not dangerous.” She laughed when Hannah, Mark’s eldest, succeeded in tipping her brother Tom off the swing only to have little Lettie steal the coveted seat.

  “’Tis the frightened dog that is the most dangerous, Mama. Corner it and you don’t know what it will do to fight itself free.”

  “With the fundamental flaw being that we’re talking about men, not dogs,” Alex said, frowning at him.

  “Still.” He shrugged, giving her a kiss before striding off to where John was calling for his help.

  It was a nice day, and once Alex had verified Sarah was okay – if in an even fouler mood than when they left – she decided to take a quick walk up to the graveyard.

  Ian joined her halfway across the yard, wondering how things had gone with the Indians.

  “…so Qaachow will be on the lookout as well,” Alex finished.

  “Well, that’s good,” Ian said.

  “The more the merrier.” She studied him out of the corner of her eye. Something was troubling him, and at first she’d thought it was his back, but he walked easily up the steep slope, and Betty had been taking good and thorough care of his lumbar region, at least to judge from the strong peppermint scent that hung around him.

  Alex smiled at the thought of Ian’s wife: small and slight, stubborn like a mule, and with quite nondescript looks if it hadn’t been for her hair and her eyes. Betty hated her wild, vigorous hair, a constant fuzzy cloud around her hea
d no matter how hard she braided it. A deep, reddish brown, it matched her eyes, wide and thickly fringed with dark lashes. Like maple syrup her eyes were, shining with luminous pride whenever they rested on her husband or her children.

  Alex began by giving Magnus’ headstone a swift little pat. Her father shouldn’t have died and been buried here, centuries before his birth, but that’s what you got when you suddenly decided to do some time diving. It made all of her itch: one parent a time travelling witch of some sort, littering the world with small, painted time portals, and the other had been sufficiently desperate to brave the void of time on purpose to come looking for her, skydiving through a magic picture the size of a normal pocketbook. Bloody, fucking unbelievable, as she was prone to say to herself. She gave a bark of nervous laughter, closed a mental door on all this, and moved over to the other grave.

  Alex said hello to Jacob, running her fingers over his headstone while she talked to him. Most mornings, she came to tell him of her life, a few moments when she allowed herself to hope that he was still around, somehow, her son. But he wasn’t. In the ground beneath her feet, his remains were slowly decaying, and what had been a tall and strong young man was now at best a skeleton.

  “Bloody berserk,” she said to the stone, tracing the scrolled J in his first name. Shot through the heart when he rushed to his sister’s rescue, his eyes blazing with hatred as he charged the Burleys. “Do you think—?” Alex broke off with a rueful smile.

  “Do I think what?” Ian prompted, settling himself on their favourite perch: the bench that afforded a view all the way to the river.

  Alex came to sit beside him. “Is he in heaven, do you think? Or is he forever gone?”

  “As long as he lives here,” Ian placed a hand over her heart, “and here,” he placed a hand on his own chest, “then how can he be gone?”

  A trickle of warmth flew through her at his words, and for an instant, she thought she could hear Jacob’s laughter in the air, a happy, vibrant sound that made her smile in response.

  “Betty’s with child,” Ian told her as they strolled the long way back through woods beginning to burst with spring.

  Alex came to an abrupt stop. Not good, not good at all.

  “I’ve tried, but she has begged and wept for yet another babe, and I want one too, and—” He looked away, his cheeks mottling into red as he described just how much he’d fought this, how she’d begged and pleaded, telling him that she’d be alright, of course she’d be alright, and she so wanted another child.

  “And now… Oh God, Mama, what have I done? I couldn’t help myself, I swear…” There was an edge of desperation to his voice, his eyes surprisingly dark as he looked entreatingly at her.

  “Shh,” Alex interrupted. “How long gone?”

  “A month?” His mobile mouth quivered somewhere between pride and a gesture of despair.

  “So not until October,” Alex calculated, sounding very much calmer than she felt. “It’ll be fine,” she said, even if she had no idea, “but this time she does exactly as Mrs Parson tells her, okay?”

  “Okay,” Ian said.

  Chapter 5

  Sarah went into labour in the last week of February. For six hours straight, all she did was scream and curse, shrieking that she didn’t want it, that she hated it, that it hurt. Two hours later, and her ordeal was over. The room had been aired and cleaned, Sarah had been washed and fed, and the baby had been inspected and pronounced healthy by Mrs Parson.

  Alex was very ambivalent towards this latest grandchild. It wasn’t the baby’s fault, she reminded herself as she studied the sleeping boy, wishing that it at least could have been a girl. Nor did the shock of black hair help, or the way his ears stood straight out from his head – just like Philip Burley’s.

  “What do you want to name him?” she asked Sarah.

  “Nothing,” came the dull reply. “I don’t want him.” Sarah refused to touch the child, defensively crossing her arms whenever the baby was close. Alex looked for help in the direction of her husband, but Matthew avoided her eyes, just as he had so far avoided holding the baby.

  “So what should we do then?” Alex said. “Roll him into a blanket and place him in a basket like Moses?”

  “Why not?” Sarah shrugged.

  “He’s innocent, look at him – a helpless child.” The little body squirmed, the face darkening into a ferocious scowl, and a damp spot appeared in the swaddling.

  “I know that,” Sarah said, “but it doesn’t help.”

  “He’s your son as well,” Alex insisted.

  Sarah rolled onto her side, turning a stiff back to her. “Nay, he isn’t. I never wanted him, and I don’t want him now. Give him away.”

  “Give him away?” She placed the restless boy in Matthew’s reluctant arms and went over to sit on the bed beside her daughter. “Honey, that’s a very big step to take.”

  Sarah just hitched her shoulders. “Mayhap someone else can love him – I never will.”

  *

  “It isn’t your decision,” Sarah said to Carlos next morning. She was groggy with lack of sleep, and in substantial discomfort on account of her sore and heavy breasts, bandaged tightly.

  “No, of course not, hija. But I’m asking you to consider the implications.”

  “The implications?” Sarah gave a short laugh. “I have considered the implications. I don’t want a constant reminder of what his fathers did to me, I don’t want to see him open eyes the same light grey as theirs, I don’t want to see all my life stolen from me by them. By them! By the accursed Burley brothers.”

  Giving birth had been hell. Having Mama’s hands on her inner thighs had thrown her into a panic, making her recall those other hands, forcing and hurting her. Dead, she reminded herself when her throat began to close, they’re dead, by now they’re dead. They won’t come back, ever.

  “But he isn’t them,” Carlos insisted, smoothing down the front of his new cassock, “and raised in love, he will grow into an entirely different man.”

  “Aye,” Sarah agreed, “which is why I won’t keep him. I can’t love him.” She dropped her eyes to her rosary beads, a gift from Carlos, and caressed them with her fingers. “I tried. I prayed and I prayed that I wouldn’t hate him, but it hasn’t helped.” She kept her eyes on her beads until she heard him sigh and leave the room.

  *

  “She remains obdurate,” Carlos said, accepting a mug of herbal tea and a biscuit from Mrs Parson. He sat down with a little sigh, extending his peg leg before him.

  Matthew just nodded. His Sarah had made up her mind several months ago, and he thought it most unlikely that she would have a change of heart.

  “She has it from both sides,” Mrs Parson said. “Stubborn as mules, the both of them.”

  “I’m not stubborn,” Alex protested, making Matthew bite back on a grin, “not like he is.” She jerked her head in Matthew’s direction and went back to the time-consuming work of feeding the baby with a cloth dipped in milk.

  “Naomi can nurse him, can’t she? She’s nursing a baby of her own, isn’t she?” Carlos said.

  “She doesn’t have enough,” Mrs Parson explained, “so this one gets one meal a day from her, no more.”

  “This one?” Carlos extended his hand to stroke the wee head from which hair sprouted in a spectacular mop.

  “As yet unnamed.” Matthew felt sorry for the wean, to be born into a family that didn’t want it, and even more that no one should have chosen a name for him, now that he was well over a day old.

  “So what will you do?” Carlos asked.

  “I don’t know for sure.” Matthew sighed. “I’ll wait a while and give the lass a chance to change her mind, and if not, well then I must find him a home. Far away from here.” He looked away from Alex’s eyes. She wished him somewhere close, had even suggested the babe could stay with them, but Matthew considered that to be unfair not only to the wean but also to his daughter.

  “At least he must have a name.” Ca
rlos dug into a side slit in his cassock and extracted a small wooden cross attached to a braided piece of twine. “I made this for him, something to protect him against the vagaries of the cold world he now has entered.” There was an element of accusation in his voice, and Matthew narrowed his eyes at him.

  “Are you suggesting we are doing less than we should by him?”

  “Yes,” Carlos replied, “it is difficult enough to be a bastard without being shunted out at once. I’m in a position to know, having had the dubious experience of growing up an unwanted child in my uncle’s home.”

  “If we have to, we’ll find him a good home,” Matthew said defensively.

  Carlos lifted the infant out of Alex’s arms. “Your name is Jerome.” Carlos used his finger to draw a cross on the wean’s head. “May your namesake keep you safe, hijo.” In an undertone, he blessed the child in Latin and handed him back to Alex.

  “Jerome?” Alex said.

  “After the patron saint of orphans,” Carlos informed her. “It seems like a good choice, given the circumstances.”

  “You had no right,” Matthew said.

  “Yes, I did. As a priest, I have an obligation to safeguard this innocent soul.” Carlos finished tying the cross in place around the baby’s neck and straightened up. “I’ll be back in some days to see how they fare.”

  *

  They fared badly, the both of them. Sarah threw tantrums when the wean cried, screeching at her parents that she wanted it gone, and that made the babe scream even more, as if it understood his mother’s rejection of him, and that in turn made Sarah rush off to hide in her bed, the pillow pressed hard over her head.

  She looked at the child and she saw Philip Burley leering at her; she saw it fast asleep on its back and there was Walter, eyes regarding her hungrily.

  “Take him away!” she screamed. “Make him stop his infernal crying, aye?”

  Every time the wean cried, her breasts strained against the linen bands. Every time that thin voice rose in a plaintive wail, her womb contracted in painful cramps and she hated it that even now, when the wean was birthed and safely out of her, it should still have such an effect on her.