Read Online A Newfound Land by Anna Belfrage - Free Book Online

disbelieving brows. “Here? Come off it. They should have been able to find something closer to home.” She laughed and shook her head. “Listen to me; I sound like a veritable gossip, don’t I? I suppose they had good enough reasons. Maybe Kristin’s father couldn’t stand Henry’s guts or something.” She dipped her foot into the river and looked back at her husband. “Race?” She drew off her shift and plunged into the water.
    A quick bath and they were back on the shore, Alex donning a clean shift before spreading a blanket on the grass and motioning for Matthew to lie down. He made happy sounds as she worked her way up and down his back, now and then protesting when she dug her fingers into a particularly tense muscle.
    “Are you asleep?” Alex whispered in Matthew’s ear some time later.
    “Almost.” He stretched to his full length. The skin on his back and buttocks was red in patches after her massage, and all of him smelled quite nicely of lavender.
    “Supper soon,” she said, busy with her clothes. She handed him a clean shirt, collected the towels and her small stone flasks, and sat down on a felled log to wait for him. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?“ She took in their surroundings. “But so huge, miles and miles and more miles. Unbroken expanses of forests, deserts, mountains and more forests...”
    “Aye.” Matthew sat down beside her and pulled the comb through his damp hair. “It is enough to make a man feel most humble, and very small.” He froze with the comb halfway through his hair and hissed a warning.
    Alex followed his eyes to the other shore. One by one, a group of Indians were coming out of the forest. Matthew stood up, raised his hand in a silent greeting and bowed. The men facing them returned the greeting, filled their water skins and melted back into the surrounding woods as silently as they had come.
    *
    “Indians?” Ian sounded jealous. “What did they look like?”
    “Like men do in general,” Alex replied, earning herself six – nay, eight if one included Fiona and Jonah – disbelieving looks. “They did, right?” she said, turning to Matthew.
    Matthew concentrated on his food, drank and wiped his mouth before sitting back to answer. “They did. Less clothes, most of them only in leather breeches, but aye, much like men in general.”
    Two of them had carried muskets and that worried him, as did the fact that he now had a band of a dozen or so Susquehannock braves close to his home, on his land. Should they choose to attack, there was nothing he could do to defend his family – they would easily overrun whatever defences he, Ian and Jonah could offer. He swallowed noisily, disguising it as a cough attack. Occasionally, there were stories of Indians attacking homesteads such as theirs, but they were rare, he reminded himself, and anyway the Susquehannock were allies, a tribe that traded with white men.
    Just in case, Matthew insisted on leading the livestock into the stable for the night and took an extra round to ensure all his doors were safely fastened. He gave Ian one of his muskets, placed a loaded pistol within reach on Alex’s side of the bed, and leaned a musket against the wall on his own.
    Alex didn’t say anything, but he could see in her eyes that she was disconcerted by his behaviour, and she spent far longer than usual in their bairns’ rooms before joining him in their bed.
    “Do you really think they might attack us?” she said in a small voice.
    “Nay, not really.” He kicked off the quilts. It was hot in their little room, and with the shutters closed it was worse than usual. “It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”
    *
    The Indians came into their yard next morning: twelve silent men that stood waiting until Matthew went out to greet them. It took some effort to stand at ease in the half-circle of braves that surrounded him. His hands itched for the weight of a musket or a sword, but he’d decided that to go out armed was too much of a