Serpents in the Garden (37 page)

“You mustn’t mind what Mama says,” Daniel said to the minister after dinner. “She can be somewhat frivolous at times.”

“Frivolous?” Minister Allerton gave him a stern look. “What a disparaging comment to make.”

“She doesn’t really know much about matters of faith, and you must keep in mind that she’s Swedish.”

“She’s a woman with doubts – all of us have them at times. Her arguments against predestination have been raised many times before, by men both wise and learned. One doesn’t wave away doubts as being misinformed. One strives to convince instead.” The minister’s mouth set, and Daniel groaned quietly. This could become a very long month.

*

Some days later, Daniel was sitting in the long slope just above the kitchen garden, swamped by the sensation that he was no longer part of this life: he was a visitor, as much an outsider as the exhausted minister. The grey wood of the buildings, the fields that shone golden in the setting sun, and the glittering band of the river – it was all part of a world that he had stepped out of.

All day, Daniel had been longing for home and it had been a disagreeable insight to realise that he was home – these were his people, this was his place. Except that it wasn’t, not anymore. Now, it was Boston he thought of as home; it was with Temperance Allerton, not Ruth, that he shared his hopes for the future, his everyday concerns.

He heard Ian’s shuffling progress behind him and closed his eyes. To see his big brother so damaged cut him to the quick, and even more it galled him that everyone else seemed to consider things were still the same, that Ian was unchanged, despite the fact that he had to walk with a cane. Ian stopped beside him, but where before he would have dropped to sit, that was no longer possible, so instead Daniel stood, making Ian smile wryly.

“Does it still feel like home?” Ian asked, surprising Daniel.

“No.”

Ian just nodded, as if this was to be expected. “But, when you’re there, don’t you miss it?”

Daniel considered this for some moments. “Yes, I do.”

“And Ruth?”

Daniel nodded. Very much he missed her, but she didn’t seem to miss him much, did she?

Ian smiled down at him, still a couple of inches taller. “Much more than she lets on.”

“Does it hurt much?” Daniel asked as they made their way back down.

“Aye.” Ian turned to face him, and in his unshielded gaze Daniel saw just how much it hurt, and what effort went into concealing it. “But I could have been dead,” Ian said with a little shrug that conveyed how weak a comfort he found this.

Daniel dug his bare toe into the grass. “That would have killed her.”

“Who? Betty?” Ian smiled.

Daniel gave his head an irritated shake. “Mama, of course.”

“Mama?” Ian sounded very surprised.

“She loves you best. We all know that.” Daniel smiled at the dumbfounded expression on his brother’s face. “We don’t mind, aye? And she can’t help it, can she?”

Ian cleared his throat, looking like quite the daftie with his mouth hanging open.

Daniel grinned and went to find Ruth.

Chapter 41

“Something’s going on.” Alex turned suspicious eyes on Mark, Daniel and Ian in turn, only to be met by three blank faces. She let her eyes travel over to Minister Allerton, who put on his best bemused face. “None of you will ever win an Oscar,” she said, biting back a laugh at their confused expressions. Well, if they weren’t telling, nor was she. She had already tried Mrs Parson, only to be met by a satisfied little cackle, and Naomi had blinked and widened her eyes, assuring Alex she had no idea.

“All of you,” she said wagging her finger at the four present. “You’re all in on it.”

She cornered Agnes in the dairy shed, and after spending close to half an hour discussing the cheese, she casually let drop that her birthday was in five days.

“Aye, we all know that.” Agnes concentrated on pouring the cream into the churn.

“You do?”

Agnes fitted the wooden lid and took hold of the churn-staff.

“Aye,” she said, before becoming as close-lipped as the others.

Alex rolled her eyes and went to look for Betty whom she found in the kitchen garden.

“I hate surprises,” Alex confided to Betty. “I really, really hate them. So I hope Matthew isn’t planning something. Not that there’s any reason he should. After all, forty-nine is a very unimportant birthday, isn’t it?”

Betty’s bright eyes twinkled. “I have no idea, Mama Alex. Mayhap you should ask Da?”

“Huh,” Alex snorted, “minx.” She stalked off, leaving Betty to harvest the corncobs all by herself.

Even the children were in on it – not the youngest, obviously – and Adam quickly changed the subject by taking her by the hand to inspect his latest patient.

Alex almost threw up. “It’s cruel to leave him alive,” she said, picking up the deformed kitten. “Its back is broken.”

Hugin leaned in a bit too close, a gleam of interest in his black eyes that had nothing to do with the diagnosis. Alex flapped her hand at him, and the raven hopped out of reach, clattering its beak at her.

“So was Ian’s,” Adam said.

“No, honey, it wasn’t. If it had been, he wouldn’t be walking. He hurt his back badly, but he didn’t break it. But this…” She held up the mewling kitten. “…this back is cleanly broke. See? Its hind legs just hang.”

“So, what do I do?” Adam used his finger to caress the little head.

“We end its suffering.”

“Is that what you would have done to Ian?” Adam asked in a small voice.

“God, no!” But he would have wanted us to, she thought.

*

“…and then of course I had to kill it,” Alex said with a grimace, when she recounted the incident to Matthew.

“How?” Matthew asked.

“I wrung its neck.” Alex shuddered. One sharp crack and the little animal was dead. She helped Matthew unharness the oxen, and gave him a concerned look. “How are you?”

In the whirlwind of the last few weeks, they had barely spoken. First, Alex had been entirely focused on Ian, then the harvest had begun in earnest, and Matthew worked and worked, with Mark and John Mason his constant shadows. Minister Allerton and Daniel had done their fair share, as had David, but the brunt of it fell on Matthew, and he had worked from well before dawn to late into the evenings, stopping only to eat and sleep.

“Tired.” He felt old, he muttered, his body protested at being used this way, his knees and back ached, and his shoulders had stiffened into a permanent band of pain.

“You should have told me,” she said.

Matthew shrugged. She had enough to do with her own harvesting, keeping them all fed, and on top of that minding and chiding Ian.

“Men! Come here, you.” She extended her hand to him.

“Better?” she asked an hour or so later, smiling down at him.

“Mmm.” He was almost asleep in the hot water, his body relaxed. She washed him, singing softly under her breath. He smiled as she sang about summer breezes and how deep her love was.

“I like that,” he said, humming along with the chorus.

“You do?” She splashed water in his direction. “I used to dance very, very slow dances to this.”

“Did you now?” His eyes cracked open. “You’ve never danced a slow dance with me.”

“You’ve never asked me to, have you?”

“…but when I ask you to…” he said, his eyes fully open.

“…well, then I will,” she promised and pushed his head under water to rinse his hair.

Once he was clean, she dried him, patting her way down his body. She slowed her hand over his crotch, running a tentative finger down his penis. It twitched in response. Alex stroked it again, thinking that she couldn’t quite remember when they’d last made proper love. Since Ian’s accident, there hadn’t been time for more than the odd, urgent coupling, often just as they were drifting off to sleep. But now…

“Lie down,” she said, pointing at the bench. He was naked, she was dressed, and when he made as if to undress her, she shook her head. Not yet, not until he was quivering with need.

She kissed her way up his legs, all the way from his toes to his groin. Her hand on his member, a fleeting kiss to its tip, and he groaned. Alex smiled and concentrated her efforts on his eyes, his beautiful mouth, his neck. A series of swift kisses down his sternum, her cheek resting against his belly while her hand fondled and teased, and he exhaled, sinking his hand into her hair.

“For pity’s sake, woman,” he said, sounding very hoarse.

Alex slid upwards to kiss his mouth. For a long, long time, they kissed. He rolled her over, smoothing the hair off her face. She gripped his ears, pulling his mouth down to hers. He shoved her skirts out of the way and plunged into her.

“I needed that,” he said afterwards.

“So did I.” Alex gave him a brief kiss. “Massage? I think you need that too, right?”

It was as she was working out the tensions in his back that he began to cry. Not a noisy, sobbing weeping, but a low, heart-rending sound, and Alex stopped what she was doing and leaned her cheek against his back.

Matthew hid his face against the bunched linen below him and wept, and she cried with him, for the young man who would never again run unhampered through the woods, or walk for hours behind the plough, safe in the strength of his own body.

“It won’t be that bad.” Alex wiped at her eyes. “He can already walk without his cane for short stretches.”

“But he could never walk on the moors like you and I did,” Matthew said, “and I was older then than he is now.”

Alex didn’t reply. She stroked him over his head until he fell asleep, sitting cross-legged beside him as he slept.

*

“Now,” Alex said, prodding Ian’s side a bit too hard. “Tell me what is going on.”

“Mama!” he protested, laughing. “Will you resort to torturing a weakened man?”

“You bet, and it’s much easier to torture someone who’s already lying down.” She peered at the healed scar, her hands soft when she inspected his flank. “That doesn’t hurt at all, does it?”

Ian shook his head.

She indicated that he should roll over, and dipped into her home-made heat rub, consisting mainly of mints, goose grease and camphor. She massaged him until his whole back was bright red, added yet another layer of her grease, and covered him with a quilt to ensure he held the heat.

“So what is it?” she asked.

He pretended to snore.

“What if I don’t like it? At least if you give me a hint, I can pretend to like it.”

“Like what?” Ian asked, opening his eyes. He smiled at her irritated noise. “You’re imagining things.”

“Of course, which is why Mark suddenly just had to ride over to the Chisholms’ for beer.”

“Thirsty work, harvest,” Ian said, and just like that, his mood plunged.

Alex saw it in his eyes and sighed. How often did she have to tell him to be patient?

He glared at her, eyes an intense green, and pointedly turned the other way.

“It’s up to you. Either you choose to see the glass as half-full or half-empty.” She patted him on the back and left the room.

*

Minister Allerton made his way over to where Ian was sitting on the little bench in the graveyard and sat down beside him, holding out a stone bottle.

“Beer?”

“Hmph,” Ian said, but took the bottle anyway. “She sent you, didn’t she?” he asked, wiping his mouth with his hand.

“Who?” Minister Allerton opened his eyes disingenuously.

“Mama.” Who else?

“She isn’t your real mother, is she?” the minister sidestepped.

“In everything that counts, she is.”

“Something of a mother bear, most protective of her young.”

Ian smiled despite himself at the likeness, and nodded an agreement.

Minister Allerton raised the bottle to his mouth and drank.

“Who’s that?” he asked, indicating Magnus’ headstone.

“That? Oh, that’s Offa. Mama’s father.”

“Ah.” The minister sat beside him for some time before turning to face him. “She’s right, your mother: you can view what happened to you as a terrible misfortune or as a miraculous deliverance.” He stood up and nodded his head in the direction of the gravestone. “There could have been one more – one with your name on it. But there isn’t, is there?”

“Am I being very difficult?” Ian asked Betty later that night. She looked up from where she was knitting him a pair of stockings, and the light from the candle beside her fell like a soft golden glow over her face.

“No more than can be expected,” she said after some consideration.

“I don’t want to be difficult. At all,” he snapped, and then smiled ruefully at himself.

She folded together the stockings, went over to check on the sleeping bairns, and came to join him in bed.

“Back rub?”

Ian shook his head and patted the bed beside him.

She knew how he liked things by now, and pulled off her shift to stand naked before him. When she turned to extinguish the candle, he could see how her belly was beginning to round. She crawled in to lie beside him and took his hand, placing it on her stomach.

“I felt him today,” she said in an awed voice. “And it was like holding a trapped moth in my cupped hands. A flutter of life in my womb…” She turned towards him and kissed him on the mouth, one of her very slow and teasing kisses. At times, Ian wondered how someone as inexperienced as Betty could kiss like that – hot breath escaping through open lips, her tongue flicking so expertly against his.

“He’ll know his father,” Betty said as she broke away. “And he’ll have many, many brothers and sisters. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“A very good thing,” he repeated in a voice that barely carried. He kissed her again, tasted the raspberries they’d had for supper on her breath, and drew in the scent of roses and lavender that clung to her skin. He smiled. She had bathed and oiled herself for him.

“How many?” he asked later, lying flat on his back.

“How many what?” Her voice drifted down from above him.

“Brothers and sisters,” he clarified with an effort. His cock pulsated inside of her, brimming with life and strength.

“As many as you want, but perhaps not more than ten.”

“No more than ten,” he agreed breathlessly.

*

Alex saw Ian emerge from his cabin next morning, and she knew that something had shifted for him. She took Matthew’s hand and turned him to watch Ian stretching on his door stoop. In only his shirt, his dark hair messy, Ian raised his arms high over his head and extended himself to well over seven feet, gracious as a giant cat. Unaware of his audience, he took a careful, shuffling step off the stone stoop and lifted his shirt to piss, his face raised to the rising sun. He was smiling, a huge face-breaking smile. Someone said something to him and he laughed, shaking himself thoroughly. Betty appeared at the door, naked as the day she was born, and Alex had to grin at Matthew’s little hiss.

“She’s his wife, and I’m not wearing much more, am I?” She smiled fondly in the direction of Betty and Ian, and slipped her arms round Matthew’s waist.

“I love you,” she said to his chest hairs.

He kissed her hair. “I adore you.”

“And if you don’t tell me this minute what it is you’re planning behind my back, I might just…” She cupped her hand around his balls.

“You might what?”

“Do this,” she grinned, very pleased by his surprised gasp.