| |
“THIS IS SINGULARLY frustrating,” Pat said as soon as we returned to the attic after our break. “No more Hubbard journal, no more Mary Frances journal—”
“At least not for six more years,” Ida pointed out.
“That’s what I mean. How are we ever going to know what happened between 1746 and 1752?”
“Looks like we have to do some more searching,” Glaze said, and our circle dispersed.
“We don’t want to skip over anything good,” Maddy said to the room at large, “but try to concentrate on things that might be old.”
“Everything up here is old,” Easton said before she walked over to one of the dressers, opened the bottom drawer, and groaned. “It’s stuffed full.”
“Good,” Dee said. “Maybe there’s something spectacular in there.”
Easton made one of those indeterminate sounds, but I had a feeling I knew what the word would have been if she’d voiced it.
Of course, it was Easton who found the prize of the day.
I hadn’t paid much attention to her, but when I heard her grunt, I looked up to see the middle drawer opened as far as it would go without crashing to the floor. Easton had just lifted out a flat, fabric-wrapped package, about the size of a thick manila folder. “Easton,” I called, “is it heavy?”
“No. It was just sort of wedged in there. These drawers aren’t very big from front to back.”
I sidled her way, which seemed to start an avalanche as women came from all corners of the attic to see what was going on.
“It’s probably nothing,” Easton said, but I could hear that undercurrent of possibility that each of us had felt in the attic.
“Wait,” Carol said as Easton opened the last fold of fabric to reveal a thick stack of papers between two layers of heavy homespun. “Don’t touch it yet. Biscuit, do you have those gloves of yours handy?”
I handed her the pair I’d been using and she passed them on to Easton.
Easton pushed her hair back out of her way and lifted the top layer to reveal a note written on fairly modern-looking paper—it was pink with a muted background of washed-out roses.
“You’re not going to need the gloves for that.” Ida sounded rather disgusted. Still, she was curious. “What’s it say?”
“Lindsey asked me to hide this for her. R doesn’t want her to have it.” Easton looked up in bewilderment after she read it. “What on earth does that mean?”
“Who wrote it, dear?”
Easton shook her head at Sadie. “It’s not signed.”
Pat let out a growl worthy of a pirate. “No name? This is so frustrating!"
"Why should she sign it?” Rebecca Jo spread her hands. “She’d recognize her own handwriting, and she was probably somebody who lived in this house."
“Unless, for some reason, she gave it away to somebody else who lived here after that Lindsey person gave it to her,” Glaze said. “The way our Martelson hat ended up in this attic.”
“My hat, you mean,” Ida said, flipping the white feather back away from her face. Of course, it dropped right back against her cheek.
Pat leaned over Easton’s arm to read the note again. “I don’t know of anyone named Lindsey. Does anybody else?”
“My mother died when I was pretty little,” Easton said. "Her middle name was Lindsey. That’s what everybody called her, I think." She ran her finger over the name.
"You’re right, dear." Sadie’s voice was soft.
Lindsey, I thought. I knew Easton’s father had been named Rupert. Could he have been the R in that note? But I didn’t want to ask. I’d heard too much from Bob about how abusive Rupert Hastings had been.
When Easton lifted the note, I gasped. Even looking at it upside down, I could see what was written on that top piece of fabric. The words had blurred somewhat as the ink spread into the fibers, but the writing was large and easily read.
My Father’s Sketches
Louise Martin Breeton
“Be right back,” I said. “I’ve got more of these gloves down in my bedroom.” I knew darn well everybody was going to want to handle them.
Returning with five or six more pairs of gloves—I hadn’t bothered to count but just scooped them out of my dresser—I laid them on one of the card tables.
“We need more room,” Carol said. “Will it mess up your system if we clear off these stacks of letters?”
“Just keep them in their separate piles,” Sadie said. “I’d hate to have to re-sort them.”
We found a relatively clear area off to one side. Sadie handed me the piles one or two at a time, and I stacked them where nobody would step on them. Meanwhile Dee and Rebecca Jo were clearing off their card table with Glaze’s help.
Easton did the honors, laying the sketches out one at a time. I grabbed my camera and took pictures as we went. There were so many, we needed the third card table as well. The paper was thick and rich-looking. The ink varied from one sketch to the next. Some had dark lines, others looked faded-out.
Carol pointed to a couple of the sketches. “These look like charcoal. You can see how smudged some of them are. We can’t risk doing more damage.”
“Did they have charcoal pencils back then?”
“No, Glaze,” Carol said. “But they could use sticks charred in a fire.”
Ida laid a gloved hand carefully on the edge of the cover sheet. “Louise Martin Breeton. My great-great-and-so-on grandmother. And her father was Silas Martin.”
“The sketch in town hall,” Pat said. “The one Reebok told us about. The barn in 1745. That was signed S M just like these.”
Sure enough, every piece of paper held his initials. Except for one.
“And he dated them all,” Carol said with an air of satisfaction. “I love that man.”
“You can’t have him,” Ida said. “He’s my granddaddy way back.”
“That means these sketches are yours then.”
Ida’s face spread slowly into a huge grin. “Thanks for the thought, Easton, but I’d say they belong to the Martinsville Museum.”
“They’re in chronological order,” Maddy said. “Sort of.”
“Silas probably stored them that way,” Glaze said.
“Or his daughter sorted them out when she got them.” Carol scratched her head. “Does anybody know when he died? That’s the most logical date for Louise to have acquired them.”
“I don’t know,” Sadie said and looked at Rebecca Jo, who shook her head.
“Well obviously,” Maddy said, pointing to the last of the sketches, “it was some time after 1780.”
“This doesn’t seem like nearly enough sketches for that long a period,” Pat said. “See? The first one is 1741.” She perused the lot of them, muttering the years. “There’s 1742, nothing from 1743—wonder why not?—but here’s 1744, ’45 and two from 1746.” She moved to the next table. “Here’s another one from 1746. That must have been an important year. Then there’s one per year up until 1751.” At the final table she said, “One in 1762, ’68, '70, ’71, '76.”
“American Revolution,” Rebecca Jo said.
Pat nodded. “And the last one is 1780.”
“That’s surely not all the sketches he made,” Glaze said. “He must have been drawing regularly to keep his craft so well-honed.” She let out a low whistle. “The man had real talent. Look at how he captures the light.”
“Maybe he gave them away,” Maddy said. “Like the one in Town Hall.”
Pat wiggled her hand back and forth. “Maybe his daughter gave them away.”
Sadie looked at Rebecca Jo. “By 1780 he would have been, what? In his sixties?” Carol did a quick calculation and nodded. “There comes a time in life when a lot of us feel like it’s time to start cutting back on the amount of stuff in our lives. Maybe he got rid of them himself.”
“Nah,” Glaze said. “Surely he wouldn’t do that.”
~ ~ ~
DECEMBER 1780
SILAS MARTIN TOOK yet another of his drawings and fed it to the fire. He had waited until his wife and daughter were out of the house tending to their women’s work. No sense in upsetting their wagons.
It had taken him weeks to reach this point. In this particular drawing, he thought as he watched the flames eat up the sides of it, the face was not alive enough. In that one—which was only ash now, but he remembered it quite well—his quill had been defective, causing one line along the side of the face to be rendered too thick, too coarse. He could always add width to a thin line, but once the ink had spread too wide, there was no remedy. He hated to lose this drawing. The face had been that of the merry and well-liked Mistress Heath from Brandtburg. He knew he had not sketched that one while he was in Brandtburg. Where had he been? Ah! It was on the trail, well more than a year along the journey, that time he felt overcome with longing for the life he had left behind. Mistress Hannah Heath had always had a kind word to say to him, even though she had been a Brandt and he a Martin. Her delight in life was apparent to all, for she seemed to spread sunshine about herself as she walked through the lanes of Brandtburg, whether they were muddy or dry. Then too, her Apple Pan Dowdy had been something to long for of a winter’s night. He could still almost taste it on his tongue, and he wondered if any woman would ever again lend such deliciousness to a sweetened dish of apples.
In choosing what to take with him on the journey and what to leave behind, he had discarded all his drawings from Brandtburg. He had rued the loss of the other drawings many times, yet the break needed to be clean. This new life in a new place needed to be given a chance. Of course, once he had met his Louetta, he had felt no need for memories of Brandtburg, except for those times when he wanted to share his entire life with her. What better way than to show her what he had drawn? Only he had burned all of those sketched memories the week before they left.
He wondered why he had not conveyed these less than adequate drawings into the various campfires as soon as he had created them, for he had known immediately which ones were not acceptable. He knew, though, why he had not. He had seen his wife look with such pride at the two children who had come from her body. Was this—what he felt—akin to that? Burning his sketches felt a bit like tearing out his liver, even though he knew that the ones he discarded were less than his best effort.
The drawing of the barn he had saved, of course, for that was the day their Louise was born, and the other brief sketches on that sheet had been well rendered. Many of his sketches of Louetta were in a stack off by themselves. Those he could not bear to part with.
Thank Providence that his sketches of his wife had been secreted in a sturdy crate on that evening in—when was it?—early in ’75 it must have been. The evening before the Endicotts left the company. Silas had been paying little attention to the activity around him. He had been far more intent on the drawing that lay across his heavy leather portfolio. He had captured the lightness of heart of three of the Surratt children as they laughed over a silly game of some sort, and he wanted to render the background faithfully—the campfire, the corner of a wagon, and just a suggestion of Geonette Surratt looking on amiably.
He had not even glanced up when a set of boots stopped in front of him.
"Too high and mighty even to say good evening, are you?" Joel Endicott had snarled just before he pretended to trip, and managed to knock over Silas’ ink bottle. The drawing was ruined, of course, as were Silas’ breeches. The worst of it, though, was that some of the ink had run down into the inner pocket of the leather case.
It had taken a great deal of forbearance for Silas not to chase after Joel Endicott and rub his nose in ashes that had blown out of the fire circle. He took the time, though, to save as many of his drawings as he could, ignoring the laughter from the Endicott wagon.
Had that entire family not left the next morning, Silas was not sure what he would have done. Retaliation was not in his nature, but he could not avoid wishing Joel Endicott might burn in hell.
Now, there would be no more drawings. Of that he was certain. His hands could no longer hold a quill or even a charred stick with any degree of comfort. If it had been merely a matter of working through the pain, he could have managed that, but his grip was so lax now, the lines would not always go where he wanted them to.
He lifted the next sketch from the pile and grimaced. Here was when his abilities had truly begun to wane. He could see it in the wavering line where he had intended something strong and sure. To the fire with this one, then.
He could not help but smile when he thought of how the will he had written only this past fortnight would be interpreted. ‘Save but four of my drawings of my wife,’ he had instructed. ‘One for my wife, one for my daughter Louise, one for my son Brand, and one for my wife’s particular friend Mistress Mary Frances Martin. I instruct that the rest of the pictures of my wife be buried with me.” The remainder of the will was just the usual verbiage. The drawings were the most important part of his legacy. His daughter was the one who would have them after he died.
~ ~ ~
FEBRUARY 1781
LOUISE MARTIN BREETON bent over her father’s hand and watched her tears bead up in the valleys between his raised blue veins. “Papa,” she said over and over as she tried to wipe the tears away.
He lifted his other hand and laid it on her white cap. “Daughter.” His voice was less than a whisper, but she raised her head immediately and studied his loved face. “Chest ... foot ... of bed. My ... drawings. They are ...” He paused for a long moment, during which Louise held her breath. “Yours,” he finally said.
It was a very long time before he made another sound. “Son?”
Brand stepped from the foot of the bed and took his sister’s place. “Yes, Father?”
“My will ... with drawings ... read it before ... you ... bury me."
"Of course, Father," Brand said through his tears.
"Wife?”
Louetta, who had sat on his other side for many hours, reached out to touch his face.
His lips curved into a smile—beatific, Louise said later when she described it—and he breathed his last.
~ ~ ~
REVEREND JONAS RUSSELL, grandson of Anders Russell, the original minister, seemed a bit scandalized when Brand and Louise insisted upon inserting their father’s drawings of Louetta Tarkington Martin into the coffin, but Brand waved Silas’ will underneath the minister’s nose and insisted. It was a horrible breach of good manners, but Brand had ever been a man with his own mind made up. Brand’s mother had violated the terms of the will by giving one of the portraits of herself to Mistress Elizabeth Benton Hastings, but Brand saw no reason to mention that particular detail. He suspected—he knew—that she had given others away as well, but he never asked. The pile of her portraits had been considerably higher at Father’s bedside. Now, there were but a dozen or so to be buried with him.
After the prayers at the graveside in the cold February rain, the people of Martinsville gathered at the Hastings house. It was no longer used as a tavern, but Reuben and his wife Astaline Shipleigh Hastings opened the large room on the ground floor so people might congregate and remember the remarkable man who had been the brother of the founder and had been uncle to the current leader of the community.
John Martin was the first to speak, as was fitting. His son Jerrod, only nine years old, but already as solemn as an owl, stood beside his father and gazed on the assembly, no doubt well aware already that he would one day lead them.
Mary Frances Martin stood beside the newly widowed woman, holding her cold hand. Louise held her mother’s other hand, and Brand stood behind the three women, like a bulwark against a storm.
~ ~ ~
“I’D LIKE TO INSPECT them one at a time.” Maddy reached for the oldest one. "Is that okay with everybody? Easton? Do you mind?"
Nobody had any objections, and it seemed like a reasonable plan. Better than all of us pawing over the drawings and running the risk of damaging them. Looked like we weren’t going to need all those gloves I’d brought upstairs.
She held up the first one and walked around the inside of the circle so everybody could see it more closely. “This one says 1741 Leaving.”
“You think that town in the back is Brandtburg?”
Carol nodded at Glaze. “Sure would make sense.”
"You can see a mountain off in the distance."
Carol nodded again. "Gore Mountain. I guess some things don’t change."
“Look at those two men off on the side of the trail,” Ida said. “They’re holding their hats. Remember in the diary, where she says she tried to run to Hubbard, but her brother stopped her?”
“That’s Hubbard?” Glaze sounded a bit breathless.
“And probably that’s the minister too,” Pat said. “Didn’t Mary Frances say there were the two of them there?”
“Too bad there’s not a note on the back,” Maddy said. “I’d like to know who’s driving the wagon.”
“That’s history for you,” Carol said. “You take what you can get. I think it’s a great sketch, but I wish he’d drawn the faces bigger."
"Why?" Glaze asked. "He had to keep them in proportion to the rest of the picture."
"I know, but all I can get is an idea of Hubbard. That high forehead and such, but I’d like to know what he really looked like.”
She wasn’t the only one.
~ ~ ~
MONDAY 20 APRIL 1741
THEY HAD BEEN so long on the road today, and not one of the people on this trek had any experience pulling wagons into a protective circle or setting up anything more than a rudimentary camp. Silas supposed that eventually, say within three or four months, they would have perfected the routine, but by that time they might already have arrived at their destination, wherever that turned out to be.
As tired as he was once the company had been arranged for the night, he still took a few precious moments to draw what he remembered of their leaving that morning. Not the whole company, of course. Paper was too precious for that, but he sketched one wagon in some detail. The Russell’s wagon, with Reverend Russell driving and Mistress Russell slumped beside him in her grief. Behind them, he suggested the line of other wagons and a hint of the town they had left behind. Off to one side, he showed Hubbard Brandt and Reverend Atherton with their hats off in tribute as the wagon bearing Myra Sue’s coffin passed by them. That had been a brave thing those two men had done, and Silas was not one to ignore any act of courage.
He deliberately did not portray Charlotte Ellis, sitting as she had been on the coffin of Myra Sue. Myra Sue, who would have been his sister-in-law had she survived. Had Ira Brandt not murdered her. Her death had kept him, he supposed, from being related by marriage to the odious Charlotte Ellis. Before that thought could poison his mind, he added a few lines to his drawing.
In the distance, he suggested the height of Gore Mountain, even though he knew that it had not been visible by that point in their path. He would not leave his beloved mountain behind.
~ ~ ~
“HAND ME A PAIR OF THOSE gloves, please.” Sadie donned them and reached for the sketch. Maddy picked up the next one. I’d already noticed how unique that second one was, of course, when Easton laid it on the table, but I was curious about what everybody else would say.
Dee squinted at the drawing. “Whatever do you suppose gave him the idea to draw the people like this?”
“Silas Martin,” Carol said, “could have made a living as a political cartoonist. I wish we knew who these people were.”
“There aren’t any names,” Maddy said. “It just says Susquehanna 3 Jan 1742 S M.”
“I sure don’t like the piccolo,” Maddy said. “She looks like a strident old biddy.”
“I wouldn’t trust that snare drum,” Dee said. “I don’t like the slant of his forehead. He looks like he thinks he’s the boss, tootin’ his own horn—or rather, banging on his own drum.”
She was right. The figure’s arms were canted as if thrumming on the man’s—the drum’s—middle. “He might be Homer Martin, then.”
“Sure would sync with what we know about him from the diary.” Ida spoke with a distinct sour tone.
“Did you ever see a lovelier cello?” Glaze looked kind of dreamy-eyed. “I’d be willing to bet Silas was in love with her for him to have drawn her like this.”
Melissa leaned forward to study it more closely. "Maybe she’s Louetta Tarkington Martin, my ancestor?"
“It must have been a wedding,” Easton said. “Look how the fiddle guy and the woman who looks like a bow are kind of leaning against each other. And that fellow there, the one standing in front of those two, the clarinet guy with the open book, must be the minister.”
“That would have been Anders Russell,” Carol said. “Amazing.”
"But it’s not a clarinet," Maddy said. "It’s probably a chalumeau."
When we all—every single one of us—looked at her in surprise, she lifted her shoulders. "The clarinet wasn’t invented until the late 1700s."