Revenge and Retribution (The Graham Saga)

by Anna Belfrage

  “Yeah, right.” She wadded the space between his fifth and third toe with lint and applied a linen bandage round it, mainly to minimise chafing. She handed him his stocking, and rose from her knees to wash her hands at the basin.

  “Julian has formally requested Ruth’s hand in marriage,” Matthew told her.

  “Surprise, surprise,” Alex mumbled, using her damp hands to smooth back a couple of escaped curls.

  “As soon as possible,” Matthew went on.

  “As soon as…” Alex turned to face him. “We’ve said: they wait until she turns eighteen.”

  “Which is in four months.”

  “So they wait.” Alex scraped some mud off her light brown summer skirts and stepped into them, efficiently tying them together at the back. She had to sew herself some new clothes, and Matthew as well. At present, he had but the breeches he was in and a pair of woollen winter breeches, and he was down to four shirts, excluding his best.

  “He wants her to accompany them back to Providence, as his wife, so that they together can take Temperance up to Boston there to wed Daniel.”

  “In Boston? But…” They’d missed his ordination due to the whole Burley situation, and now they were apparently to miss his wedding. “We can go up there, can’t we? And Ruth can go with us.” She counted money in her head: yes, there was enough to buy them passages back and forth.

  “And Sarah?” Matthew asked.

  “Sarah? Well, she can come too.”

  “No, that she can’t,” Matthew said, “and nor do I think she would want to expose herself to being looked over and gossiped about.”

  Alex sat down on her stool, deflated. “I suppose you’ll have to go alone then. But Ruth remains unmarried – for now.”

  “Alex,” Matthew groaned.

  “No.” She threw him an angry look and hurried down the stairs.

  It didn’t help to escape Matthew to avoid the subject of Ruth’s wedding, because no sooner was Alex on hands and knees in her garden, but her eldest daughter joined her.

  “Mama,” Ruth begged, “you know I love him. Why should we be made to wait any longer?”

  Alex didn’t reply, concentrating on the cucumbers, squashing caterpillars and bugs as she went along.

  “He wants me with him,” Ruth said. “He says he lives my absence like a constant pain.”

  “Well, he would have a way with words. We’ve said December, and as far as I know, nothing has happened to change my mind on that.”

  “Aye, it has.” Ruth nodded to where Sarah was crouched with Betty behind the raspberry bushes.

  “Sarah?” Alex shaded her face. “What does she have to do with anything?”

  Ruth squirmed. “It’s…” She wet her lips. “It’s not seemly, that a minister’s future wife be living with an unwed and pregnant lass.”

  Alex took her time squishing the bug presently in her hand to death.

  “And is this Julian’s opinion or yours?”

  “Ju…both.” Ruth raised her chin.

  “Ah. And of course you’ll take it upon yourself to explain to your sister that you must wed on account of her shaming you by allowing herself to be raped – future wife of a minister that you are.”

  Ruth went a deep pink. “I don’t mean it like that.”

  “And yet that is what you just said, isn’t it?”

  “Mama…”

  “Get your work done,” Alex said icily, “and then you can scurry off to read your Bible and meditate on the word compassion.” She heard Ruth’s hasty inhalation and knew she had hurt her to the quick, but at the moment she didn’t care. And as for Julian…

  *

  A whole delegation of Graham men came to find Alex later that evening, walking slowly up the slope to where she was sitting beside Jacob’s grave. She heard them talking amongst themselves, all three voices low and dark, and she felt a piercing grief for the voice that was missing, forever silenced.

  She brushed with her hand over the new stone, traced the dates of his birth and death and mouthed his name: Jacob Alexander Graham, born on a cold December night in Scotland, a night that glimmered with stars, dead in a nondescript little clearing in the bright sun of a May day. She placed the wreath she had made of roses on his grave, and stood up, shaking her skirts free of dirt.

  “It’s a beautiful stone,” she said to Matthew.

  He flushed at her accolade, studying his handiwork critically. “I had the minister read something over him.”

  “Oh, really?” Alex adjusted her shawl to lie closer around her shoulders. “I don’t think Jacob had need of any words from him.” She emphasised the pronoun and went over to sit on the bench, crossing her legs.

  “But I did,” Matthew said, and Alex felt her cheeks heat.

  She looked her men over one by one. “I take it this means I’m outvoted. The Graham men have come down on the side of the eager minister.”

  Ian winced at her tone, and came over to sit beside her, lowering himself slowly.

  “Your back?” she asked, receiving an irritated look in return.

  “None too bad,” he replied.

  “Ruth was very upset,” Mark said.

  “She bloody well should be,” Alex snapped, recounting what Ruth had said.

  “Aye,” Ian agreed, “it came out a wee uncharitable, what she said.”

  “Putting it mildly,” Alex muttered, folding her arms over her chest.

  “But that doesn’t take away the fact that she loves him,” Matthew said, “and you’ve always said that we should let our bairns wed as they wished for love.”

  “Huh, right now I’m all for an arranged marriage – why not with Adam Leslie?” But she didn’t mean that, and she knew that he knew that.

  “And not only does she love him, but he loves her too,” Mark put in.

  “Great.” Alex sighed and looked away. “We’ve already agreed to the marriage, but we also said they had to wait until she was eighteen. So what has changed?”

  “Nothing,” Matthew said.

  “Good. So they wait.” Alex got to her feet.

  “I‘ve said yes,” Matthew told her from behind her. “I have agreed that they may wed now.”

  “Oh,” Alex said. “And that was after talking things over with your sons, but not with your wife?”

  “I already knew your opinion, and I don’t agree. Ruth is well capable of wedding as she is now.”

  “Of course she is!” Alex wheeled to face him. “But we decided she had to wait!”

  “She doesn’t want to,” Matthew answered, “and it should be her opinion that weighs the most.”

  *

  “I don’t think she’ll be talking much to you tonight,” Mark remarked as he watched Alex striding away.

  “Nay, probably not.” Matthew was slightly ashamed for having agreed things with Julian without speaking to Alex before, but this matter with Sarah had somehow made it very urgent for him to see his eldest daughter safely wed. “She’ll come round,” he said, wondering where she’d choose to spend the night. Not with him, not in their bed, of that he was sure.

  Chapter 42

  “I don’t understand,” Julian said. “Why are you so displeased? We are but moving the wedding forward somewhat.”

  “Let’s just say I have a problem with hypocrites and leave it at that, okay?” Alex shoved by him.

  “Hypocrites? And what, pray, do you mean by that?” Two bright red spots appeared on Julian’s cheeks.

  “You’re a minister. You’re supposed to be a good Christian, a man who leads by example. And have you? No. Somehow you insinuate Sarah is to blame for what has happened to her, you urge us to marry her off so as to avoid the public embarrassment of a pregnant daughter, and to top it all off, you have the temerity to suggest to Ruth that it might be inappropriate for her to live under the same roof as this fallen woman, her sister. I must say I thought more of you, Julian, but it turns out you’re more like Minister Macpherson than I suspected – narrow-minded and tight-hea
rted – and I’m not particularly pleased in marrying Ruth off to you. But then, that isn’t my decision anyway, is it? Oh no, that’s a decision between men.”

  Julian’s neck had gone as red as his cheeks during this angry speech, and he drew in breath to launch himself into a reply.

  “Don’t bother. Thank heavens there’s at least one compassionate man of God amongst us.” Alex waved her hand in the direction of Carlos who was sitting with Sarah and David, all three involved in a complicated chess game.

  Julian glanced their way and looked back at her. “I am no hypocrite, and I have never suggested your Sarah brought what happened down upon herself. But I still insist you’re inviting more danger into her life by not ensuring she is married, as soon as possible.”

  “Who would it help? Sarah? Are you saying you believe a raped girl should be coerced into marriage for the sake of her reputation? What do you think would happen to her when he took her to bed? What would she relive, night after night?”

  Julian looked away, mumbling that he hadn’t fully thought about that aspect.

  “No, you wouldn’t, would you? After all, you’re a man.” With that, Alex was off.

  She saw Matthew come towards her, and took a sharp turn to the right. She had no desire to talk to him, so she swished her way through the long grass behind the barn, ducked between the slats of the fence round the meadow where they kept the cows, and increased her stride when she heard him behind her. A swim, she decided, making for the river. She needed a long, solitary swim, and then she’d be able to think more rationally about all this.

  Ruth had apologised to Alex last night, repeating that of course she didn’t mean it the way it had come out, and she truly loved her sister, and Mama knew that, didn’t she? Which Alex did, hugging Ruth briefly. So why was she so angry? She sighed and stalked down the last yards to the water. Normally, when they had house guests, Alex was circumspect about where she undressed, but now she didn’t care. If Julian had a heart attack because she flashed him, all the better, and as to what Matthew might think – well, he could stuff it.

  *

  She was a good swimmer, Matthew thought as he sat on the bank to watch her. Like an otter, she moved through the water, every now and then turning to float downstream and begin all over again. She’d seen him, even if she pretended that she hadn’t, and he looked at her openly when she swam in towards the shallows where she kneeled while she scrubbed herself all over with silt from the river’s bottom.

  “Are you still angry with me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m just generally angry, I suppose.”

  “Ah.” He nodded, and decided that as she was speaking to him, he might just as well join her in the water. “Nice,” he said, swimming back and forth out of reach from the current.

  “I’m disappointed in Julian, I think, because what Ruth said, she’d heard from him, and I expected more of him. He is concerned about how it reflects on him if his future wife has a sister who gives birth out of wedlock.”

  “Hmm,” Matthew said, paddling over to join her in the shallows. He privately thought she was right but unlike her, Matthew could understand Julian’s concerns. He did some brisk scrubbing of his own, climbed out to sit on a sun-warmed rock, and helped her up to sit with him.

  “And then of course, I’m really, really pissed with you that you’d agree to moving the wedding forward when I so clearly said I didn’t want to.”

  “But how can it matter?” And such matters were his decisions anyway, but he wisely decided that was not a comment to make.

  “I don’t know. It’s just that I think it will be very difficult for Sarah. There goes her sister, happily ever after, and what does the future hold for her? Motherhood she doesn’t want, stigmatised forever, and how is she ever to dare let a man touch her again?” She rested back against him, his legs her armrests, and closed her eyes.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Matthew said, stroking her wet hair off her forehead, “I just…I wanted to see Ruth safely wed. The sooner the better, after what happened to Sarah.”

  “One daughter in safe harbour?”

  “Aye. Is that so wrong?”

  “Of course not.” She opened her eyes to look at him. “A small wedding, okay?”

  “Okay.” He smiled.

  “Maybe Carlos can officiate.”

  Matthew laughed. “I don’t think Julian would much appreciate being married under Catholic rites.”

  “As a matter of fact, there’s no major difference. Both the Protestant and the Catholic Church make a big deal out of the obey part for the woman.”

  “As it should be,” he teased. “Women are, after all, simple-minded creatures.”

  “Huh,” she snorted.

  *

  The day before Ruth’s wedding, Sarah threw a fit, upended two of Mrs Parson’s pies, and stalked off into the woods. From where he sat in the shade, Carlos watched her go, and after some moments of irresolution, he stood and followed her, clutching his beads in his hand.

  He had avoided being alone with her for some days, afraid of the way she made him feel with her swelling body and blue eyes. He prayed through the nights, he punished himself physically, he woke in panic to a member that stood hard and throbbing, and he knew – as did God – that he had been dreaming of her, of Sarah.

  I’m a priest, he reminded himself. I have given myself over to serve God and the Holy Church, and once the promise is given, there is no way back. The moment he closed his eyes, she danced before him, and he found himself daydreaming of a life that included her, which made him sink even deeper into prayer as he begged that God give him guidance and strength to fight the temptation of a pregnant sixteen-year-old girl.

  And still…like a lodestone she was, and when he saw her walk off weeping into the woods, what could he do but follow, telling himself that this was a lost soul in need of pastoral care.

  “I want it gone,” Sarah said when Carlos found her sitting on a fallen log several hundred yards into the forest. “I try to pray, to remind myself it isn’t the baby’s fault, but I wish it would die and slip out of me, leave me myself again.” She rubbed her bloated face against the rough serge of her skirts. “Mama says it was the same for her, with Isaac. But she had a man to help her, a man she loved and trusted, while I…” She moaned into the cloth.

  “Isaac?” Carlos had not really heard of this child, nor had he known Alex had been married twice.

  “He’s dead.” Sarah frowned and gnawed at her lip. “She says she hated him. Even when he was born, she hated him at first, and it was her man who cared for it because she couldn’t bear to look at him. But I don’t have a man, do I?”

  “Maybe you should ask your father to find you one,” Carlos said.

  Sarah looked so stricken he took hold of her hands.

  “Most men are good,” he said gently. “Most men care for their wives.”

  “Even when they come damaged to the marriage bed?” She looked at him, despair shading her eyes. “How am I to stand a man’s hands on me?”

  Carlos cried inside for her, and moved close enough that she could lean against him, placing his arm around her. “I’m a man, and you seem to be able to stand my touch.”

  Sarah rubbed her cheek against the black of his cassock. “You’re my friend, and your hands I trust and like.”

  ¡Ay Dios! Carlos bent his face sufficiently that he could brush his nose over her gleaming hair.

  *

  On the anniversary of their very first meeting, on a heat infested August day twenty-seven years ago, Matthew surprised Alex by serving her breakfast in bed, waving away her protests that there was too much to do with the impending wedding.

  “You can take your ease for some time,” he said, shedding his breeches to slip back into bed beside her. He was content today. The harvest was in, and it had been a good year, enough to compensate for the lost crops of last year’s burning. The fine litter of piglets that the sow had farrowed in the spring was gro
wing into a herd of fat young pigs, and all that ham and meat would bring in a substantial amount at the autumn markets.

  His back was fully healed, even if it was criss-crossed by ugly pink scars, his toe no longer throbbed quite as wildly as before, and the brand on his buttock bothered him but rarely. Physically, that is; mentally, it most certainly did, because every time Alex salved it, he remembered that other humiliation, seeing in his mind’s eye how submissively he had stood on all fours when Walter took the place of his brother. No fight, no attempt to crawl away, just a silent praying that it would soon be over, that someone would place a gun to his head and shoot him.

  He frowned in irritation at having his head taken over by these memories, and turned to his wife with something hidden in his fisted hand. “Here, happy anniversary, lass.”

  He watched her as she turned the little wooden sculpture round and round. In butternut, the wood a pale light yellow, he had carved an image of their son. Not as he had been at the moment of his death, because try as he might he couldn’t capture the face of the young man, grief drowning out the details, but rather as he had been as a lad, a lad of sun-bleached hair and slanted hazel eyes, a strong and sturdy lad that regarded the world around him with open curiosity. A lad that dreamed of going places, of seeing Rome and Paris, mayhap even Jerusalem, and who now was rotting to soil in his far too early grave.

  “Jacob,” Alex said, her voice unsteady. “Just like he was.” She managed a smile, her eyes wet and glinting in the morning light. “Thank you.” She rested her head against his.

  *

  Later that same day, when the afternoon sun patterned the yard with shadows and dancing sunbeams, the whole Graham family stood outside, augmented by the Leslies who were, in Alex’s opinion, more or less family anyway. Alex stood with her heart in her mouth, watched her Ruth exchange vows with Julian and smiled tearfully at the way the groom kissed his new wife reverentially on her brow.

  A rustle behind her, and out of the corner of her eye, Alex saw Sarah break away, a swift silent shape that had her hand pressed to her mouth. She took a hesitant step, looked back at her husband, busy congratulating their daughter, took yet another step, and was arrested by a light touch on her sleeve.