Revenge and Retribution (The Graham Saga)

by Anna Belfrage

  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 sixth 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

  Wither Thou Goest

  To Catch a Falling Star

  Revenge & Retribution

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to Johan – again. Just like Alex says to Matthew, life without you would be impossible, like having half of me yanked out.

  Chapter 1

  Some aspects of human life should be accompanied by grey skies, whining winds and a steady drumming rain – executions, for example. To contaminate a day as spectacular as this bright June day with the sordidness of a hanging seemed irreverent. It was hot and humid, a combination that made linen shifts stick to backs, stays itch against irritated skin, and hair curl haphazardly. Alex Graham wished she’d worn a cap under her hat and scowled in the direction of Kate Jones, impeccable as always. Not that the woman was wearing a cap – or much of a hat – but her heavy, smooth hair remained in its neat bun, no matter the weather.

  Alex shifted from foot to foot, regretting she had worn her woollen stockings instead of her single silk pair. If she wiggled her toes, she could actually feel puddles begin to form between them, and she could only imagine how they would smell afterwards. Smell: another drawback to spending a day as warm as this in far too close proximity to all these unwashed bodies. She at least was clean – squeaky clean compared to most of them – and when she sniffed the sleeve of her best summer bodice she could only make out a lingering scent of lavender, overlaid by the salty smell of her own skin. She raised herself on her toes to scan the crowds. What was taking them so long?

  Matthew Graham frowned. Two dark brows pulled together over light eyes, the mouth set, and the back stiffened – enough for Alex to follow his gaze across the assembled people to where Stephen Burley was being manhandled towards the scaffold, fighting every step of the way.

  “So he dies, right?” Alex slipped a hand into the crook of her husband’s elbow. Unfortunately, there were two more Burley brothers, and even if it was three years since she’d laid eye on any of them, she doubted they’d forgotten their grudge against Matthew – or their intention to make him pay with his life for killing the youngest Burley ages ago. She swallowed, shifted on her feet, and tightened her hold on Matthew.

  “Aye, but not as he should,” Matthew said.

  No, Alex sighed, because if it had been Matthew who’d apprehended Stephen, he’d have turned him over to the Iroquois – in her husband’s opinion, just retribution for all the homestead burnings, all the pillage, Stephen and his brothers had done dressed up as Indians.

  “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” Alex murmured. “One of the wiser statements in the Bible, if you ask me.” She snapped open her new folding fan and attempted to create a draught around her face to cool her overheated skin.

  “Revenge for what they did to my son should be mine.” It came out in clipped, angry tones.

  Alex didn’t reply. In this, she and Matthew were in total agreement. Ian had been shot by the Burleys while fending off an attack on Matthew, and as an unfortunate consequence had fallen off his horse, landing on a rock. His lower vertebrae had been damaged, and Ian would never again move easily through his days. Easily enough, Alex smiled, watching Ian thread his way towards them with Betty by his side. Betty, on the other hand, puffed like a whale, one hand on her protruding belly.

  “You should’ve stayed at home.” Alex eyed her daughter-in-law, thinking she looked like a balloon about to burst.

  “I didn’t want to.” Betty’s hand tightened on Ian’s sleeve. Where Ian went, there went Betty, wife and head nurse rolled into one, and as protective as an aggressive cobra when it came to her husband’s dignity.

  “As long as you don’t give birth on the horse,” Alex said.

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll have warning enough to get off it first.” Betty grinned, making Alex laugh.

  “I’m not really sure why I’m here.” Alex moved closer to Matthew. She hated hangings. From the first one she had witnessed, hidden in a thicket on a hillside, to the subsequent ones she had been forced to watch, they all made her feel sick – and distinctly aware of how fragile her neck was. She rubbed a hand along the side of her throat and swallowed. Could one swallow when the noose tightened? And, afterwards, while you hung dangling like a side of beef, did you still swallow? Want to swallow?

  “You don’t have to watch, lass,” Matthew said, drawing her close.

  “I hope it’s quick,” she sighed against his shoulder.

  It wasn’t quick. It was a long, protracted affair, and however much Alex agreed that Stephen had this coming to him, she was still horrified by the slow strangulation, the choking, desperate sounds that emanated from the dying man as he struggled to drag air into his lungs. Much better in her time, at least capital punishment no longer existed in the twenty-first century. Umm, she amended, it didn’t back home in Scotland, but weren’t they still executing people in the US?

  Alex allowed her thoughts to meander freely, her eyes closed to the scene on the gallows where Stephen Burley was still twitching. This was 1684, a century more or less before the United States of America broke free from the mother country. And here, in the Colony of Maryland, Alex Graham, born 1976, stood hiding her face against her husband’s coat. Totally impossible, entirely ludicrous, but there you are – sometimes strange things happened, even if dropping three hundred years backwards through time had to qualify as being beyond strange, right?

  The people around her cheered and catcalled when the next condemned prisoner was led up to the scaffold. Alex peeked. One more?

  “Get me out of here,” she said. “I don’t want to see this.”

  Matthew took a firm grip of her hand and made his way out of the throng. He paused in the scarce shade afforded by the meeting house and studied her with a little crease between his brows. “Alright then?”

  “Yes.” She looked down the narrow main street and back at where Ian and Betty were extricating themselves from the crowd. Ian was limping as he approached them, face drawn with one of those sudden bursts of pain that assailed him. Alex knew better than to voice her concern – at best it would be met with an irritated comment that she should not meddle in matters that weren’t her concern. Besides, it was his life, and Betty was capable of giving him whatever help he needed.

  “Where’s Ruth?” she said instead, standing on her toes to look around. From her vantage point, right at the edge of the small square that housed the meeting house, she could see most of Providence. Four larger streets extended like the spokes of a wheel from the central docks and wharves, situated three hundred yards or so downhill from where she was standing. The streets were lined with narrow houses, most of them of wood, here and there in brick or stone. Only Main Street was cobbled – the others were no more than dirt roads – and its gutters were decorated with the contents of chamber pots, garbage in general, and the odd, tenacious dandelion. To her right, she could make out the recently painted exterior of the Anglican church, home to a growing congregation of non-Puritans – as
yet a minority, but capably led and represented by their cheerful reverend, William Norton.

  Most of Providence was out and about today; most of them were presently cheering what was happening by the gallows, so the town was unusually deserted.

  Alex shielded her eyes, looked in the direction of Minister Allerton’s house, close to the western palisade, and repeated her question.

  “I left her with the minister and his lasses – he didn’t want to come anyway,” Ian said.

  “Oh.” Alex set her mouth. She liked Minister Allerton, finding him a devout and compassionate man with a broadminded approach to much of human life. She liked his daughters, in particular Temperance, who at sixteen was a plump, rosy girl with her father’s grey eyes and, Alex supposed, her mother’s blond hair. She had never met Mrs Allerton, and now she never would – at least not in this life. No, all in all, Alex was very fond of Julian Allerton. What she didn’t like was how the minister regarded her soon seventeen-year-old daughter Ruth, and she definitely disliked how Ruth gazed at him. Twenty years or so her senior, he was, and in Alex’s opinion that was far too much. She wondered if Matthew had noticed, and if his reaction was similar to hers.

  She waited until Ian and Betty moved off to talk with a group of younger acquaintances and shared her concerns with him. To her huge irritation, all he did was smile. “She’s a pretty lass.”

  She most certainly was, with dark red, sleek hair and eyes so like her father’s, light hazel that in sunshine shifted from celadon green to gold.

  “Very,” Alex said, “and not yet seventeen. She’s barely a year older than his daughter, for God’s sake!” Nor were things made simpler by the fact that their Daniel and Temperance were betrothed.

  Matthew sighed. “He looks, Alex. He wouldn’t be a man if he didn’t look at a pretty wee thing like our Ruth.”

  “Hmm.” Alex gave him a sidelong glance. “Do you?”

  “Oh aye,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching. “It’s nice at times to rest your eyes on something young and bonny.”

  “Absolutely, I do it all the time. Now that young man for example…” She bobbed her head at a man – no, a boy – standing some yards away, and looked him up and down. “Very nice arse.”

  Matthew clearly didn’t find that amusing, glaring down at her.

  She snorted and sank her nails into his hand. “If you look, Matthew Graham, then so will I.”

  “I don’t, not really.”

  “Good,” she nodded, “then I won’t either.” She threw a lingering look at the boy. “Probably very boring in bed. You know, stick it in and, wham, it’s over. Not at all like you.” She dropped her voice and winked.

  “Alex! Hush!” Matthew’s cheeks went a dull red, but he tightened his hold on her hand.

  “Anyway,” Alex went on, nodding a greeting to one of the older Providence matrons, “it’s not only Julian looking at her, it’s Ruth looking at him as well. And not, I might add, because of his handsomeness, seeing as he’s rather plain.”

  “Inner qualities, Alex, inner qualities. You must learn to look beyond the outer shell.”

  “He’s pushing forty. He’s more than twice her age!”

  “He won’t do anything untoward.”

  “And should he come asking, you’ll just say no, right?” At his silence, she stopped. “Right?”

  “And if it is she that comes? If it’s our Ruth that comes and tells you she’s dying with love for that grey-eyed, balding minister of hers?” He looked at her until she dropped her eyes.

  “Oh shit, hoisted on my own petard…” She scuffed at the ground and frowned. “Then I’ll tell her she has to wait until she’s eighteen,” Alex said with a sigh.

  Their discussion was stopped by the sudden appearance of Minister Allerton himself, complete with youngest daughter Mercy and a trailing Ruth, walking arm in arm with Temperance.

  “And Patience?” Alex asked, offering Mercy a boiled sweet.

  “Over there,” Minister Allerton replied with a vague wave of his hand in the direction of the bakery. He was doing a good job of bringing up his daughters on his own, and Alex liked the fact that he had insisted they stay with him after their mother’s premature death and not be sent back to live with their large family back in Boston. “Any day now.” He nodded in the direction of the port.

  “I sincerely hope so,” Alex said. “We want to leave the day after tomorrow.” It had been something of a fluke that Stephen’s execution had coincided with the expected return home of one of their sons. Still; they’d been here six days now, and so far no Daniel. She shaded her eyes and looked out at sea, scanning for anything that might look like the sloop from Massachusetts, but the silvered waters of the Chesapeake lay flat and empty, the June heat creating a shimmering haze that floated enticingly a few feet off the surface.

  “And has Daniel made up his mind?” the minister asked Matthew.

  “Aye.” All of Matthew expanded with pride. “He’s going for ordination.”

  “Ah.” The minister nodded, sending a shrewd look in the direction of Alex, who kept her face neutral. “It pleases you, Alex?”

  “It pleases Daniel, and that’s what’s important, right?” In her very private moments, the ones she kept even from Matthew, she’d admit that she wasn’t all too happy about one of her sons becoming a minister in the Puritan church; so easy to become straight-laced and judgmental, to become inflated with an excessive sense of self-importance – in particular in an age and place like this, when God and his ministers ruled most aspects of people’s lives.

  Alex sighed. They’d been driven to leave Scotland for religious issues, escaping persecution by coming to this small colony that had early on embraced religious tolerance. Over the last few years, this open-mindedness had narrowed down substantially, with increased conflicts between the state’s minority Catholics and predominant Protestants, many of whom were Puritans/ Presbyterians, like her husband. Like herself, come to think of it; at least, in the sense that everyone assumed she was of the same beliefs as her husband.

  It always made her laugh. Agnostic, hard-nosed Alexandra Lind had no time for God until the day she’d had the misfortune – or not, depending how one saw it – of being on an exact ninety-degree crossroads when a thunderstorm broke out overhead, effectively creating a rift in time. Even now, twenty-six years later, she had to hug herself at the far too vivid recollection of her fall through time. All that noise, all that bright light, and with a thud she’d landed here, in an age very much defined by faith. With the passing years, she had adapted and conformed, and now she would never dream of not saying grace before eating, or of not sending up a quick, genuine prayer to God at least once during her day. Short and to the point mostly, not a lot of waffling about, sometimes rather acerbic, but still…

  “…and I hope you’ll agree,” Minister Allerton was saying, looking at Matthew.

  Alex forced herself back into the here and now. Agree to what?

  “Aye, why not?” Matthew said.

  Ruth beamed at him, curtsied, and rushed off with Temperance in tow.

  “Agree to what?” Alex asked in an undertone when they were walking off.

  “Betrothal,” he teased, making her pinch his arm. “Ruth is to stay with the Allertons for some weeks, and then they will all come up to Graham’s Garden for the harvest.”

  “Bloody tradition that has become,” Alex muttered, but with no real heat. The minister more than pulled his weight on the farm for the three or four weeks he was there, and his girls were all willing to help however they could. “I’m not sure I like it that she stays with them, in particular, given our previous discussion.”

  “Julian is an honourable man,” Matthew said.

  “And if he isn’t?”

  Matthew looked down at her. “Then the minister might find himself short of his balls.” He leaned towards her with a grin. “Big balls, by the way.”

  “Matthew!”

  *

  They spent t
he evening with Matthew’s sister, Joan, and her lawyer husband, Simon Melville. Matthew and Simon played chess; Alex and Joan spent several hours talking out in the yard, while Joan sucked hungrily at one of the two joints Alex had rolled for her. As she smoked, Joan relaxed, her normally so tense features smoothing into a bland, woozy expression, allowing that full mouth of hers to curve now and then into a smile. They all knew it was a matter of months before Joan died, but as Joan refused to broach the subject, her family played along, with Matthew and Simon pretending not to notice Joan was as high as a kite when they joined their wives in the yard.

  It was almost midnight by the time they made it to bed, a narrow contraption in the small room just under the roof at the inn that stood a stone’s throw away from the meeting house. It was like entering an oven, the small window giving very little relief, despite Matthew propping it wide open.

  “…so Joan is a bit worried, given that the midwife is convinced it’s twins this time, but Lucy doesn’t look all that peaked in my opinion, and her girl is what? Nearly two?” Lucy Melville, now Jones, reminded Alex of a well-fed, sleek cat. Astonishingly beautiful, permanently silent due to her deafness, Matthew’s niece had turned most male heads in Providence a full 360 degrees before she was safely wed to Henry Jones. Now, at soon nineteen, Lucy was like a gigantic, attractive pear, her ninth-month belly sailing before her. “Personally, I’m far more worried about Joan, she’s down to looking like a walking skeleton, and—”

  A soft snore interrupted her. Matthew was asleep, sprawled diagonally across the rope-frame bed. In sleep, his face smoothed itself out, the mouth curving into its natural generous expression. The grooves on his brow and around his nose, the network of shallow wrinkles at the outer corner of his eyes, they all softened.

  His hair lay dark against the white of the pillow, grey and brown intermingled, and to her he was as beautiful now as he had been the first day she saw him. He looked young and vulnerable in the weak light, his right arm thrown high over his head, the other slung across the pillows. One leg was pulled up, and from beneath the hem of his bunched-up shirt, his penis peeked, half-tumescent. Alex moved over to kiss his cheek, filled with an overwhelming tenderness for this man – her man.