Serpents in the Garden (13 page)

When Ian returned late, she was waiting for him, newly bathed and in her best embroidered shift; nothing else.

“Malcolm?” he asked when she wound her arms round his neck.

“Asleep, and tomorrow is Sunday.”

“So it is,” he nodded, and the shift was already on the floor. He carried her over to their bed and made love to her until the candles guttered one by one.

In the dark, Jenny lay awake beside his sleeping shape and held on very hard to his hand. She loved this man, the way his hazel eyes shifted with his moods, the way his hands were warm and soft on her skin – of course she loved him. So, why was it Patrick she saw while they were making love? Why was it Patrick she wanted to hold her, take her?

She rolled over to face Ian and traced his sleeping profile. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “Oh God, Ian, I am that sorry.” And she knew that she wouldn’t put a stop to it – at least not yet.

Chapter 14

“She is too!” Naomi nudged Betty. “See?”

The two girls giggled, watching Agnes balancing across the frozen yard towards the stables with a pie in her hands.

“She’s what? Ah,” Alex said when she saw Patrick pop his head out of the stable door before opening it wide to allow Agnes and pie entry. “I don’t think he is.” She went back to her cinnamon rolls.

“No,” Betty said with surprising sharpness. “But he knows she’s in love with him.”

That wouldn’t exactly take a genius, Alex thought with an exasperated smile.

“I don’t like him,” Betty added unnecessarily, given her tone. “Agnes can do much better than that conceited man.”

Mrs Parson looked up from where she was steeping willow tea for Matthew, who was in bed with a fever, and nodded in agreement. “He thinks much of himself, young Patrick does. But then I suppose he would, no? He’s a comely lad.”

“Who is?” Ruth came into the kitchen with Hannah in her arms.

“You’re supposed to be in bed, young lady,” Alex said.

“I was in bed, and then who crawled all the way up the stairs on her own?” Ruth kissed her niece tenderly on the top of her dark head and set her down. She coughed, a heavy dark sound, and sat down close to Mrs Parson to rest her head against her. “My chest hurts, and Sarah just coughs and coughs.”

“I’ll be up with a cordial presently, but now be off with you, back to bed, lassie.” Mrs Parson smiled fondly at Ruth, who nodded and padded off. “At least the lads are up and about again.”

“More than up and about – try tearing the whole place down!” Alex was tired: two weeks of colds and fevers, interrupted sleep, and sheets that had to be changed in the middle of the night were taking their toll. She moved over to Betty and gave her a quick hug. “I don’t know how I’d have managed without your help,” she said, receiving a shy smile in return.

“I couldn’t help.” Naomi sounded defensive.

“Nay, of course not,” Mrs Parson said. “You had one sick man, no? Enough to run any woman off her feet.”

“Alex?” came a demanding, very hoarse call from above, and all four fell over in helpless laughter.

Alex came back down to find that the buns were done and that Mrs Parson had made them both a cup of herbal tea. For once, the kitchen was empty, the large table containing nothing but a bowl of late apples and two fat tallow candles. On one of the long benches, one of the household cats was sleeping, and Mrs Parson was sitting in Matthew’s armchair, feet propped up on a stool.

Alex liked her kitchen. It was airy and clean, agreeably warm, and very neat. There was a workbench under one of the windows on which stood a clay pot that housed Alex’s precious aloe vera plant, as well as a large, battered pewter basin. A narrow door led to the pantry, and beside it were a set of shelves that contained what little crockery they had. The walls had been recently whitewashed; pots and saucepans hung on nails within easy reach of the hearth and the small baking oven, and firewood was stacked in one corner.

Alex sank down to sit. “I don’t know how you do it.” She bit into a freshly baked cinnamon roll.

“Do what?” Mrs Parson moved the chair so that the afternoon sun hit her squarely in the face, and sat back with a contented sound. The new kitchen was a light place, with two windows replacing the former single one, even if Matthew had grumbled loudly at the cost.

“You’ve never been sick. Not one single day in all the years I’ve known you.”

“That would be a bad habit to break now, no?” Mrs Parson cradled the earthenware mug in her hands and blew.

“Yeah, so please don’t.”

“Oh, I don’t plan to. I’m aiming to live to a hundred or so. After all, how would you cope without me?”

“Not at all.” Alex clasped the old woman’s liver-spotted hand. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Tsss! It’s my knitted goods you’re after, Alex Graham – that and my meat pie recipe.” But she sounded quite touched, an uncharacteristic wet glimmer to her bright black eyes.

*

“I love this time of the year,” Alex said to Ian a couple of days later, efficiently gutting one trout after the other. She drew in a long, invigorating breath of crisp November air. It was a beautiful, still day, the kind that brought roses to your cheeks the moment you stuck your face outside, with the fallen leaves crunching with frost under your booted feet.

She rubbed her frozen fingers together and stamped her feet. “Not perhaps if you stand still too long,” she hinted, making him laugh.

“Is it a wee walk you want, Mama?” Together, they strung the fish up and carried them over to the smoking shed.

“A long walk, but Matthew doesn’t want me walking about too much on my own, and he’s stuck in bed for another day or two.”

They walked in silence for a while, Alex setting a brisk pace that Ian easily followed.

“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know how we’d have coped without your help these last few weeks.”

Ian grunted in reply, saying that he liked being here, surrounded by his whole extended family, and Malcolm pined for his uncles if he didn’t see them daily.

“All the same, Jenny can’t be too thrilled, can she, to be spending so much time alone.” It worried her, how Jenny isolated herself, rarely accompanying Ian and Malcolm. Ian hunched under her inquisitive look, but chose not to reply.

“Do you think of him often?” Ian asked instead, making a hasty grab at her skirts to stop her from overbalancing on a fallen log.

“Who? Jacob?” All the time, more or less, spending an idiotic amount of time scanning the lane for the implausible arrival of an anachronistic postman, complete with a letter from her son assuring her he was alive and well.

“Nay, Isaac.”

“Oh.” She glanced at her twenty-five-year-old stepson. She was still in two minds about him knowing the truth about her, and disliked his repeated attempts to discuss all aspects of her future life – and especially her son living in the twenty-first century. “Of course I do, but not exactly on a daily basis,” she said, feeling rather ashamed. She increased her pace up a short incline and waited for him at the top, breathless with exertion. “Does that make me an awful mother?”

“Not to me, but perhaps to him.”

“There wasn’t much I could do about it, was there?”

Ian gave her a long look. “Would you like to go back?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“That’s a rather stupid question, isn’t it? I have my family here, not there.”

“And if you could take us with you?”

Alex fell silent, mulling this over. “No, I somehow think you’d all be quite unhappy there.” Rednecks, the lot of them, and where here Matthew and his sons were looked upon with respect, there they’d be considered uneducated. “It’s very different: people live in cities, and the jobs they do keep them mostly indoors. And for your father, it would be difficult to adapt to an age so devoid of God.”

“Devoid of God? How can any time be devoid of God?”

“Oh, believe you me it can.” She gave a short laugh. “If the Second Coming happens in my time, no one would really care, and poor Jesus would have his work cut out for him to even achieve being heard.”

“So you’re glad that you happened upon this time?”

“Glad? Well, now I am. But if it hadn’t happened then I would probably have been pretty okay with the life I was leading there, in the future. Of course, that would have meant I would never have met Matthew Graham, and that would have been a terrible loss.” She snaked her arms hard round herself. Quite unbearable, actually.

“Besotted,” Ian said, rolling his eyes.

She laughed and swiped at his arm.

It was probably because they had the advantage of higher ground that they saw the Indian before he saw them. Still in the same gruesome coat as last time she’d seen him, but Alex could swear there were more braids decorating the dark broadcloth, one of them an eye-catching red colour that for a moment had Alex choking on her heart: that could have been Ruth’s hair.

Beside her, Ian had gone still, sinking down on his haunches with an admonishing finger to his lips. Alex nodded, lowering herself to a crouch, eyes never leaving the silent shape that was gazing so intently at her deserted yard. Not entirely deserted, because suddenly Narcissus loped into view, his heavy snout raised to the wind. The dog barked and took a couple of steps in their direction. Below them, the Indian raised his bow, notched an arrow, and aimed at the dog.

Alex just couldn’t stand it. “Hey!” she called out, barging down the slope.

The Indian wheeled, still with his bow raised. Belatedly, it struck Alex that this was a very stupid thing to do, to rush a man with a lethal weapon. She faltered. The Indian pulled back the bowstring.

“Mama!” Ian’s arms wrapped themselves around her thighs, tackling her to the ground. The arrow whined through the air, striking a nearby tree at head level. Narcissus was barking his head off, and from all over came canine reinforcements, adding their voices to the cacophony of sounds. Ian whistled, and here came the dogs, making a beeline for the intruder.

The Indian set off for the river. Ian roared and charged after, dirk held high. With him went the Graham pack, now running in sinister silence. Alex rose to her feet. A couple of hundred yards to her right, the Indian had reached the shore, but Narcissus was snapping at his heels. When the dog sank his teeth into the man’s thigh, the Indian screamed. Ian yelled, rushing for the Indian. Some of the younger dogs were leaping about like demented rabbits, but, step by step, the Indian dragged himself towards the water, with Narcissus like a huge yellow leech on his leg. With a splash, the man went under, and Narcissus released his hold.

For a moment, Alex thought the Indian might be dead before the dark head resurfaced halfway across the river. Without a backward look, the man swam to the other shore, limped his way to the bordering woods, and disappeared.

“Are you alright, then?” Ian was breathing heavily by the time he got back to Alex.

“Yes, I scraped my knee, that’s all.” She patted Narcissus on the back. “He’ll sleep in the yard for now.”

“Aye, they all will.” Ian slid his dirk back into its sheath and took her hand.

The Indian had come with a purpose they discovered some time later, finding yet another little package where he had been standing.

“Burn it.” Alex nudged it with her toe.

“Shouldn’t we open it?” Ian said.

“Whatever for? We know what’s in it. Yet another calling card from the damned Burley brothers. Sick bastards.”

She told Matthew of the whole incident while she served him hot broth for supper. For all that he was hot with fever, he tried to get up, insisting he was well enough to leave his bed and take over the defences of their home.

“Forget it,” she told him, pressing him down on the pillows.

“I must,” he said, trying to stare her down.

“Ian and Mark will handle it, and then there’s Narcissus. Somehow, I don’t think our Indian friend is all that eager to meet him again.”

Matthew’s lips stretched into a faint smile. “He bit him?”

“Like a clamp. Must hurt like hell.”

“Aye, if we’re lucky, the wound will fester. Nasty things, dog bites.”

*

For several days, Betty had stayed close to the house, unnerved by the notion of finding herself face to face with an Indian man who collected braids. But when she saw Ian enter the resurrected stables, she decided it would be safe enough for her to brave the yard as well. Moments later, she slid into the dusky light of the stables and seeing as Ian was nowhere in sight, busied herself with Moses.

She had finished with the mane before Ian came back, pushing a creaking wheelbarrow.

He set down his load and nodded a greeting to her. “You like horses?” he said.

Betty went on with her currying, standing on tiptoe to properly reach across Moses’ wide back.

“They smell nice, and they’re warm and they don’t talk.”

Sarah and Ruth recently out of sick bed made for enervating companions, Naomi was sick, and as to Agnes… After several weeks of Angus anecdotes, it was Patrick this, Patrick that, and had Betty noticed how beautiful his eyes were, and did Betty think he preferred grey or green, and should she perhaps leave her hair unbound now and then? She sighed. It lay like an uncomfortable rock in her belly, the scene she had witnessed in the woods, and she was still not sure it was the right thing to do, not to tell. Would Ian not want to know?

Betty crouched and combed her way through the white feathers that adorned Moses’ fetlocks, and tried to make him lift his hoof. Moses stood like a rock, sinking his head into his manger. Betty tried again and sat back with an irritated sound.

“You can’t do it by force,” Ian said mildly from above. He entered the stall and ran a firm hand down the leg, squeezed, and waited until Moses lifted his hoof.

“See?” Ian smiled at her. His eyes were far too close, and so like Jacob’s – except that he had a ring of small yellow spots all around his pupils, and Betty couldn’t recall if Jacob had those. She drowned in these hazel pools, widening her own eyes in response.

Ian stood up abruptly, slapped Moses on the rump, and backed out. “Tell me if you need help.”

“I did it!” Betty crowed. She gave Moses a carrot and exited his stall, looking for Ian. He was down by the pigs, and Betty danced towards him.

“Oh, aye?” Ian wiped his forehead with his sleeve and grinned at her. “There are four more horses – and the mules.”

She stuck her tongue out and came over to hang over the railing to look at the huge sow. “She could do with a wash; she looks very dirty.”

“I wouldn’t try,” Ian said. “She’s not in the best of moods at the moment.”

“Who would be?” Betty extended a piece of bread to the pig. “Look at that belly!”

“Aye.” Ian sighed. “Breeding females are difficult.” A shadow flitted over his face as he sank his pitchfork into a heap of soiled straw and lifted it into his barrow. Betty waited for him to say something more, but after some minutes she trailed back to the horses.

*

Ian worked himself into a sweat, all the while thinking about Jenny. Something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. At times, she was like fire in their bed, and he allowed himself to be devoured by this wild, unknown woman who was insatiable and demanding. Other times, she was a stiff board, insisting that they blow out the candle first.