| |
IDA PUT HER gloves back on and picked up the journal. She found her place, looked at it, turned the page, and opened her mouth in an O of astonishment. "She broke the pattern. Here," she indicated the place where her ribbon bookmark was, "she’s writing in April of 1773. But at the bottom of the page, she adds another entry in June of that year." The edges of Ida’s mouth turned even farther down than usual. "This is another one you aren’t going to like."
I was confused. "Which one won’t we like?"
"June."
"Well," Sadie said, "don’t keep us on tenterhooks."
What are tender hooks?
"That means we’re wondering what happened," Carol said. "A tenter was a long rack for drying fabric, and the tenterhooks held the long pieces of cloth."
That does not make sense.
Marmalade’s meow sounded as confused as I felt. All these years and I’d never even questioned the term. Some librarian I was.
Sunday 18 April 1773
I will write little today, except to say that this is the thirty-second anniversary of my marriage. My two grandchildren keep me in a state of near exhaustion, so much so that I am glad I no longer write on a daily basis. Their mother is sickly indeed, so I must fill in with many of the household and child-caring chores that she is unable to manage. Otherwise I would feel as if I had failed in my duty. I fall asleep almost as soon as dark descends. Fortunately, so do the children.
I do wish to record that last Autumn, we obtained some precious window glass, and my John installed the leaded panels in the front window, which up to now has been impossible to peer through. During the cold winter, the window fogged over if I breathed on it, and I began a practice of tracing my initials—my true initials—on the glass when no other person was around. Mary Frances Garner Brandt. Of course, I had to be sure to wipe the window clean as soon as I had done it, lest someone see, but each time I wrote that B, I felt almost as if my Hubbard’s breath mingled with mine.
Carol let out a little laugh of delight. "That’s the first time I’ve ever read a diary entry about writing initials in window fog." When she saw our expressions, she explained, "That first morning I was at Melissa’s, I wrote my initials on the window, and then I remember thinking that it was such a commonplace gesture, but nobody ever writes about it."
"I do it all the time," I said. "Write my initials on the window, I mean."
"But have you ever mentioned that in a diary or journal?"
"Well, now that I think about it, I guess not."
"See? Who else has ever written their initials in window fog?"
Everybody’s hand went up. Everybody except Charlie’s.
"Tonight," I said, "I’m going to put window fog on my gratitude list."
"Your what?"
I explained to Carol about the list I’d been keeping for years. "Keeps me concentrating on what’s good in my life."
"Instead of what stinks?" Charlie’s voice cut across the group like a saber swishing round a soldier’s head.
"On what’s good," I said with what I considered to be admirable patience.
"June fourth," said Ida.
Friday 4 June 1773
My dear friend Miss Julia was buried today, and I am distraught.
I gasped, along with everyone else. Miss Julia? Dead? It was hard to believe. "She seemed so ... so healthy," I said.
Charlie made a derogatory sound. "Everybody dies."
Before I could round on her and give her a piece of my mind, Sadie said, "Yes. We all do, eventually. But I’m sorry for the pain Mary Frances must have felt to lose so good a friend."
I looked at my three Petunias, sitting there side by side. "Miss Julia kind of reminds me of the three of you."
They looked inordinately pleased.
I debated whether to suggest that her grave be placed next to her son, John—my Hubbard—but most of the townsfolk seem to have forgotten where his grave lies under that confounded wall. Silas Martin did not forget, though.
He not only directed that her grave be situated just across the narrow hard-beaten path that has formed around the wall, but he helped to dig the grave himself. 'To do honor to a magnificent woman,' he said.
Miss Julia was so like a mother to me, as she had been like a mother to my dear Hubbard. My John considered her to be the grandmother he had never known, since my own mother died years ago—still without forgiving me. ‘Grannie Gilman’ as he called Miss Julia was sick for a thankfully brief time, during which Louetta, Jane Elizabeth, and I hardly left her side. I had not even to be absent to watch after my two grandchildren, for the other women of the town have been most accommodating in caring for them. The three of us served as a bulwark against the determined incursions of Doctor Blanchard, and there is rumour even now that he has accused us of hastening her death.
Is the man blind? Can he not see how often his patients sicken further and die? The ones who survive his ministrations have constitutions that are hale and hearty to begin with. He will never touch my grandchildren! But I wish not to waste this precious paper railing against such a quacksalver. I rue the day he ever set foot in this town.
“What’s a quacksalver?”
I was glad Pat asked, because I had no idea.
I do not know either.
“It’s where the term quack came from,” Carol said. “I think it had something to do with people who sold ineffective lotions and potions and salves.”
Lotions and potions and salves, I repeated to myself. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
Lions?
“Like a snake oil salesman,” Dee suggested.
“Right.”
Snakes?
~ ~ ~
JUNE 1773
MISS JULIA HAD slept in a room by herself for so many years, she seemed to have fitted it to herself. The cheery rag rug beside the trim bed still looked fresh, even these many years after Miss Julia had braided it together.
Jane Elizabeth hated the necessity of emptying the room, but now that Miss Julia was dead, leaving many friends but no children behind, there was naught else to do but give away her few possessions.
The array of small carved animals—exquisitely carved—that her son had given her was the first chore Jane Elizabeth took upon herself. She had seldom entered this room, for Miss Julia had always been at work with the other women of the household or off on healing journeys to other families. Now, she took a few moments to study the lifelike creatures. The first she took up was a bear. Something about it made her want to laugh. The round belly of the animal, the tufts of fur, the prominent nose. The nose. The nose? So very like the nose of Jane Elizabeth’s late husband. She pulled her spectacles from her pocket, centered them before her eyes, and studied the bear. It was. It most certainly was a likeness of Robert Hastings, deceased these past five years.
Beside it was a stoop-shouldered bird—a vulture?—that reminded her of Master Ormsby, the Brandtburg schoolmaster. All the bird lacked was Ormsby’s ever-present book. John Gilman could not have known Ormsby, though. Perhaps most schoolmasters looked like this feathered creature.
The monkey could be none other than the irrepressible Able Garner, who had left to found the settlement of Garner’s Creek these many years gone, but who visited Martin’s Village as often as he could.
This deer was Mary Anne Breeton Russell. And the stag aside her was her husband Thomas. Good, dependable Thomas, whose speech may have been slow, but who was nothing if not stalwart. The hummingbird reminded her instantly of Mary Frances, although why John Gilman had chosen to depict her thus, Jane Elizabeth could not fathom. Before, when they were in Brandtburg, Mary Frances had been that carefree, but Jane Elizabeth had seen no hummingbird joy in Mary Frances in years. She thought back. Not since they had left the north. How could John Gilman have known what Mary Frances Martin had been like before?
Finally, setting the numerous animals aside, after having decided to bestow each on the person it depicted—she would keep her own beaver and her husband’s bear—she opened the small chest. Under a quilt and a few small clothes, she found books. Seven books.
Books that bore the inscription of Master Ormsby, the schoolmaster in Brandtburg.
Now, here was a mystery indeed.
But what was Jane Elizabeth to do with them? That they had been stolen, she had no doubt, for Master Ormsby would never have parted willingly with such treasures. For them to have found their way to Julia Gilman’s keeping, though?
She worried the problem for several days as she cleaned out the rest of the room. Then she took her sharpest knife and carefully slit the first page of each book as close to the binding as she could. She burned those pages when no one else was in the house, and delivered the books to her grandson Alonzo. They would get good use in the schoolroom, and Alonzo was ecstatic to receive them.
~ ~ ~
APRIL 1776
JANE ELIZABETH HASTINGS thanked Marvin Breeton, handed the boy a penny, and closed the door. She turned over the envelope he had delivered and peered at the blurry-looking address on the front of it. She really should keep better track of her spectacles. If she lost them, she would have to purchase another pair from Frederick Breeton. They were indeed a great help, although they tended to slip off her nose at inconvenient times, which was why she seldom wore them unless she needed to read something.
By the time she located them, it was time to prepare the evening meal for herself and for her daughter-in-law Edna, and she had already stuffed the envelope back into the capacious pocket of her apron. Edna had been somewhat scandalized when Jane Elizabeth stitched a large square of material onto the front of her apron. It made great sense to Jane Elizabeth, who prided herself on her practical approach to life. Men might have pockets sewn into the seams of their breeches, but women were required to tie on their own pockets and hide them beneath their overskirts, where it was practically impossible to reach them quickly. It was also easy to forget just what one had stuffed in there. Edna might scoff, but Jane Elizabeth did not intend to forget things.
She often wondered if Edna was happy living here. Edna had only recently begun to relish the way Jane Elizabeth cooked. But where else could Edna have lived? She had nowhere to go after Charles died. Here or the big house where Alonzo and Margaret lived. And all the rest of that tribe.
Jane Elizabeth smiled to herself. She doubted that Margaret would have wanted Edna in Beechnut House, and Edna would never have wanted to live in the old inn along with her son Alonzo and his wife Margaret, and their three children. Lydia, Reuben, and Ethan, even as young as they were, could make a shocking clamor as they ran around Beechnut House.
She sent up a brief prayer for the repose of the souls of her husband Robert and her son Charles. How tragic that they had died within two months of each other.
She was not one, though, to let past sadness color her life. She kept cooking, patting the letter in her apron pocket now and again in happy expectation.
She rather liked the idea of anticipating who the letter writer might be. After all, once a letter was read, there would be no more suspense.
Only occasionally were the letters she received of enough interest to be read over and over again. This one was probably from her daughter-in-law Fionella, who wrote the most interesting letters. Jane Elizabeth had been distraught when her second son, Lucius, left Martinsville to go up the valley with Able Garner and Willy Breeton and their wives, but Lucius had done well enough for himself, and his farm this side of Garner Creek was, according to the last note she had received from Fionella, seeming fit to become a regular settlement, now that Fionella’s extensive brood had begun taking wives or husbands and having children of their own. They had even taken to calling the settlement Hastings. The valley was wide there, too, with plenty of room for farms to spread out. Lucius had chosen well, even though Jane Elizabeth still regretted that his and Fionella’s children were so far from her. At least she still had Edna, of course, and the others—Bridget and Pioneer, Clarissa and Miles, and Cordilia and Emmett. And she could never forget all her wonderful grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She wished sometimes that this corner house were large enough to encompass them all, but the fire that had destroyed the back two-thirds of the house had left an undamaged portion that was just the right size for Jane Elizabeth and Edna, with a few spare rooms in case Lucius and Fionella ever came for a visit with their various children.
It was well into the evening, after Edna returned from whatever errands she had been on, after they had eaten a late supper of turnips—the last of the ones left from winter storage—and cabbage and squash, along with a mixture of three varieties of beans, which Miss Julia had taught Jane Elizabeth to prepare in a most tasty way, with herbs aplenty.
The night had closed in, and it was full dark around their house when she lit an extra candle, sat in her favorite chair, pulled out her spectacles, and inspected the envelope.
“What is wrong, Mother Hastings?” Edna looked concerned, as well she might, for Jane Elizabeth felt the blood drain from her face.
“This letter is addressed to Miss Julia.”
“Oh.” Edna settled heavily into the sturdy chair on the other side of the hearth. “Oh, I know that must pain you.”
“It is from Caroline Edgerton.” When Edna looked blank, Jane Elizabeth added, “Miss Julia’s friend, the one in Harrisburg that she sent that long letter to several years ago.” Four years? Five years? Jane Elizabeth could not recall precisely when Miss Julia had sent it on its way. The letter—a package, really—had contained more than two decades worth of news.
She ran a gentle finger across the top of the envelope she now held. “What should we do with this?”
“Now that Miss Julia is dead these three years, she can have no use for it.”
“I know you do not intend to be unkind, Daughter, but your words hurt me.”
“There is naught you can do for her.” Edna swatted at a pesky mosquito.
Jane Elizabeth let out an exasperated sigh. “I know that. I know that full well. But my heart aches, for I miss her so.”
The usually solemn Edna frowned even more deeply. “She was ever a good friend to you.”
“A dear friend,” Jane Elizabeth agreed. “I bless the day she and her son came to this valley.” She laid the envelope on her lap and pressed it flat with the palms of her hands, as if she could soothe her spirit by such a homely action. “I must read it,” she finally decided. “And then I must write to let Mistress Edgerton know of her friend’s death, although with the troubles throughout the colonies, the letter may be a long time on its journey.”
Little of the world outside this secluded river valley seeped into their town, but of late there had been a tinker who had braved the long journey, only to have to retrace his steps the long miles back to Reverend Russell’s gap in the cliffs when he found that he could travel no farther south from here.
The tinker had given them what news he had—and that was much, as best he understood it—about the happenings in the rest of the colonies and the fighting with the red-coated soldiers of the king. Before he left, the man was no wiser than he had been before about the identity of the townspeople, for Homer Martin’s constraint on knowledge of Martin’s Village reaching the outer world still held firm after all these years. No one in the town had revealed that there was a path at the top of the cliff that led to the Endicott settlement a mile to the south. The Endicotts could not be trusted, after all, to hold their counsel about where they had all come from in the north.
Edna’s grave face lightened somewhat. “I cannot help but recall how you have told me of the way your Miss Julia gradually changed your eating habits.” She pulled her knitting from a nearby basket and settled into a steady rhythm. “She was ever after you to join in the eating of her weeds.”
“They were not weeds, as well you know, Daughter. Well, perhaps some of them began as such, but when she cultivated them in the corner of my kitchen garden, they became very like one of our crops.” Jane Elizabeth snorted in unexpected merriment. “And you also know quite well that you have enjoyed the eating of them—once you became willing to try them.”
“Ah, yes. That took quite a while, did it not?”
“I think you needed to watch first to see whether she killed herself or me.”
“She was certainly hale, right up until the end.” Edna drew in a large breath and exhaled it loudly. “Even that tobacco substitute she suggested for Papa Hastings kept him most satisfied."
"That it did," Jane Elizabeth said, "and it seemed to work as well as cigar smoke to repel those blood-thirsty mosquitos, without the noxious smell of tobacco. Perhaps one of us should take up a pipe?"
Edna’s look of horror was replaced by a wry smile when she saw that her mother-in-law jested. Little did she know that Jane Elizabeth was sore tempted to try a puff or two. "I still occasionally long for venison, though,” Edna said.
“And when you do, you inveigle an invitation to dine with MaryAnne Russell or Constance Breeton.” Jane Elizabeth skewered her with a pointed look. “Do not think I do not perceive your tricks.”
They laughed together then, and Jane Elizabeth had to blink away tears, for she was reminded of her dear husband’s laugh, a merry laugh filled with many years of deep affection. Every time his laugh reached epic proportions, Jane Elizabeth could not help but join in. Her husband Robert had indeed been a cheerful man.
Jane Elizabeth wondered for a moment how fared Mistress Hannah Heath, her dear friend back in Brandtburg. She so missed Hannah’s merry laughter, to say nothing of her Apple Pan Dowdy, which had been the best in Brandtburg. Indeed, Jane Elizabeth had never since tasted its equal.
Eventually, though, this evening’s laughter faded away. Jane Elizabeth sat for a long time, simply turning the flattened envelope over and over, as Edna knitted quietly beside her. She and Miss Julia had truly become close friends only in the last three or four years of Miss Julia’s life, even though Miss Julia had lodged with them from the first day she came into Martinsville back in—when was it? It must have been 1745, soon after they first settled here in the valley. Miss Julia had come to town with her son—what was his name? John. The one with the face that was so badly burned he looked like he wore a mask. The one who had died so unexpectedly. And to think that Mary Frances Martin had been the one to discover his dead body on the church steps when she went there to pray early one morning.
Jane Elizabeth shivered. She could not imagine how painful those burns on the man’s face must have been. Then she shivered again. That was the trouble. She could imagine it.
The reason her friendship with Miss Julia had blossomed was that she and Miss Julia had spent hours, day and night, tending Jane Elizabeth’s grandson Addison, Cordilia’s boy, after he had fallen into the hearth and burned his arm so badly. Sometimes even now in the middle of the night, Jane Elizabeth still wakened from a deep sleep, remembering the child’s screams. The boy had survived, thanks in large part to Miss Julia’s expert care, and to that particular green salve she treated the boy’s arm with, but there had been hours when he lay in a stupor, almost dead from the pain. Hours during which she and Miss Julia had formed a deep bond. The bond of two women fighting to save a precious life.
She lifted the envelope and broke open the seal.
~ ~ ~
"OKAY," AMANDA SAID, "here goes."
Monday 18 October 1773
My dear Myra Sue,
I have news that is both joyous and devastating. Which would you like me to impart first?
"Looks like they’ve been asking that question a long time," Pat said.
"What are you talking about?" Maddy asked. "What question?"
"I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"
Amanda shook her head in irritation at the byplay. "Listen, would you?" I’d never heard her sound so exasperated.
My third grandchild was born in early September. Isaiah is his name. That is the best of my news, and I will write nothing this time about the goings-on in the town, for the second part of my news, the part that it pains me to write, is that John’s wife died shortly after Isaiah’s birth. Her birth pains lasted long, for the babe, according to Louetta who is a most accomplished midwife, lay sideways within her. Three days she laboured. How sad that she worked so hard and then died so soon. At least she had a chance to hold the babe, and even managed to suckle him, but she was far too weak. John held one of her arms about the babe, and I held the other, as the child ate his first meal, for we feared she had not the strength to support him. And she truly did not, for her blood began to pour freely from her and we could do naught to stop it. Isaiah fell asleep even as his mother’s arms fell away from him. John took the sleeping babe and held him to his heart, his tears baptizing the child’s head. My tears, even as numerous as they were, did little to help wash away the copious blood.
Marella and Jerrod are still too young to understand. Although they miss their mother, they have come to know in these past six weeks that I will be mother to them as much as I can. I delight in their warm soft arms about my neck. Isaiah lives, but has the same vacant look about his face as my brother Wilbur had. I love him regardless.
"That vacant look," Amanda said. "It sounds like he might have been deprived of oxygen during the birth." She looked around at us, but I for one didn’t have a clue.
She took a deep breath and continued.
Our goats give plenteous milk, so the babe will be sustained until he is old enough for other food.
It appears the children I had wanted to have with Hubbard are now truly here and a part of my life, except that they come to this world through Hubbard’s and my son. Pray God I may last long enough to see these three grandchildren grown to adulthood.