The Café, Santa Barbara, 1996
Kate paused and looked up at her sister. Maddie was scowling into her martini and didn’t look pleased.
“Katie, this is depressing. You mean that our earliest ancestress didn’t even have a name?” she asked.
“Nope. I’ve never found a shred of information about that. I have, however, made some educated guesses based upon naming patterns of her son’s children and the families living around at that time. In fact, I have christened her ‘Mary Beall.’ The Beall family were associates of the Cobhams, and Mary’s first grandson was named Zephaniah—which is a Beall name and—”
“And where did you get the name ‘Sesell’?”
“Something that Father told me long ago … said that the name was originally Cecil or some such—the phonetic spellings in old documents can drive you mad—and that we were descended from some washed-up old nobles in Stuart England. They changed the name to Cobham. It gets complicated,” Kate replied with a grin. “We’re probably descended from a nice line of bastards.”
“Enough, my brain is reeling with all of this. So—Mary Beall came to the New World from England, got married to this William Cobham, had several kids, and died young. No story there.”
Kate shrugged. “True. But she was our thirteenth-generation grandmother. If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Too bad that she can’t look ahead and see her granddaughters sitting here on the Café veranda tonight sipping martinis. It might have made her feel better,” observed Maddie. “So what happened to Will and the kids?”
“The children were bound over to the Duvall family. They were a relatively rich and influential group. William disappears from the records for years. My guess is that he traveled about the country doing various kinds of jobs, or maybe went back to England for a while. He was a literate and educated man, judging from the only known document he ever wrote. He would have had little trouble finding work in the tobacco industry—which was, by the way, about the only game in town at that time. He probably drank a lot, but then so did most people in colonial America.”
“Hmmmm. So this Frances Duvall took the kids and raised them?”
“For a while. But she got herself into a lot of scandal and probably had to give them back to their father in a few years.”
“What kind of scandal?”
Kate shrugged. “She was married, and having an affair with another man.”
“So?”
“Mad, in those days they could hang you for adultery. She might have been whipped publicly in a church, or simply put in jail if she escaped a noose.”
“And we think that we have rough lives! So what happened to Frances?” asked Maddie. “She’s more interesting that this Mary Beall anyway.”
Kate laughed. “That is another story, and I haven’t had time to research it. Anyway, she wasn’t our ancestress.”
“Too bad. A beautiful adulteress in peril of her life makes a superb beginning for a novel,” sighed her sister. “If we write a boring book, we’ll never make it onto the best-sellers’ lists!”
Kate sighed. “You’re the writer, darlin’. I’m just a stupid crusading lawyer who feels the need to give life to our long-forgotten ancestors.”
“Oh bull. Don’t give me that, Katie. You’ve worked for years to save the planet, and now you want to rescue the dead.” Maddie finished her martini with a flourish.
“Well, please don’t forget that I’m still working on this.” Kate fumbled with her stack of papers. She was increasingly nervous about presenting her work to Maddie, suddenly afraid of criticism. “William and Mary left three children. Little Susan disappears from all records—she probably died young. But their sons, John and Philip Cobham, both married and had children.”
“What were they like?” asked Maddie.
“No descriptions survive. Philip died and left a wife and six kids in considerable poverty. John seemed to do pretty well—left five sons and some substantial landholdings to his oldest son.”
“James would approve,” observed Maddie. “Real estate.”
Kate laughed. “Our ancestor, Samuel, was John’s second son. He didn’t inherit much. But he must have been quite a man—and he pioneered in western Virginia, and he and his sons all fought in the Revolution.”
Maddie pulled out a pen and began scribbling on the thick paper napkin. “I’m trying to diagram this! So, William and Mary Cobham had three kids. Susan died young, Philip married and didn’t amount to much, and John settled down to raise sons. One of those sons was Samuel …”
“Yes. You’re going to love Samuel’s wife. She must have been a remarkable woman—she lived to be ninety-one.”
“Sheesh … without hormones and antibiotics?”
“Yes. And get this—some genealogists think that they can trace Rebecca’s ancestors back to Mary Boleyn. She once a king’s mistress, and her sister, Anne Boleyn, was actually Queen of England.”
“Hmmm. Too many bad novels written about poor Anne and Mary Boleyn,” observed Maddie. “But they do make fine historical fiction. Old King Henry was the ultimate male pig.”
“Well, I’ve never been able to find out if we are actually distant kin to those Boleyn ladies,” said Kate.
“But it would explain the enchanting allure of us Cobham women,” teased Maddie, fluttering her eyelashes at nobody in particular.
“Maddie, you’re ruining my appetite,” snapped Kate. “Here, take these pages that I wrote about Samuel’s wife and tell me what you think.” She signaled to her favorite waiter, Enoch. “Let’s order some dinner.”
“I told you that I don’t have my reading glasses, Katie. Let’s just move to one of the back tables, and you can read to me while we eat!”