North by Night (12 page)

Am I a dolt? When will I ever learn to look beyond the obvious?

Thick clouds filled the sky today. While Cass napped, I studied them, trying to gauge whether they carried a light storm or a blizzard. I don’t like the notion of Will and Jeremiah in bad weather.

“Lucinda, you’re a million miles away,” Miss Aurelia said.

“I am,” I admitted. “Do you have work for me? I’ve caught up with my letters and journal writing, and Cass will sleep awhile.”

“Well, a child will arrive one of these days,” she said.
“You might stitch up some clothing. I’ve scraps in a trunk upstairs.”

“All right. How long do you suppose until she has the baby? Emma said a couple of months, but that was weeks ago.”

Not that I wish it to come right away. If anything, I worry about the baby’s coming. Mama’s last birthing has left me fearful.

“Have you warned the midwife, Mrs. Smith? We might need her soon.” I tried to keep the worry out of my voice.

Miss Aurelia smiled and spoke calmly. “I’ve sent a message. Her husband, Jonas, helps me at times, and I’ve spoken with him. We’ll talk to Cass after your brother returns with good news of her family.”

I nodded and looked out into the snowy afternoon. Where were they? Were they near Atwater, or had they been delayed in Cleveland? Bah! My wondering wasn’t about to hurry the wagons, so I went to fetch the cloth—flannel, muslin, calico, and trimmings.

Miss Aurelia provided me with scissors, a needle, and thread, and I cleared off the kitchen table and set to work. I had done this before with Mama, when Miranda was expected, and again for the child Mama lost last spring.

I started with the largest lengths of flannel and cut them into swaddling blankets.

Miss Aurelia sat across the room by the fire, and I heard the scratch of pencil on paper as I threaded my needle.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Sketching? Can you draw?”

“Well enough,” she said.

“Can I see?”

“Not yet. I’ll finish this, then you tell me what you think. I make my living with my pictures, you know.”

“By drawing? Did you paint all the pictures on the walls here? I never saw a house with so many.”

“Most of them are mine, yes.” She smiled.

I stared over her head at a painting of a field of wild-flowers in soft yellows and pinks. I could almost smell the fragrance of spring. “How do you make a living from drawing?”

She smiled again and kept her eyes on her work as she spoke. “I’m not exactly a farmer, Lucy. My drawings and stories bring me a good portion of my income.”

“You sell drawings and stories? Where?”

“Magazines. Newspapers. They like that I can draw as well as write, so they don’t have to find a separate artist.”

I shook my head, confused. “You said you weren’t a farmer. But I’ve seen your fields. You grow corn, hay, wheat, barley.”

“Lucy, for a perceptive girl, you’ve missed a bit. Did you never wonder how a widow woman might manage to plow and harvest? If you want pure truth, I’m not even a widow.”

I poked my thumb with the point of my needle. “Ouch!” I stuck the thumb in my mouth and sucked it for a minute.

Miss Aurelia laughed. “From the look on your face, we’ll need a long talk. Give me a moment to brew some tea. I’ll check Cass, then you and I will share secrets. No
doubt you’ll have three swaddling blankets finished by the time I’ve answered your questions.”

While she bustled with the kettle and went upstairs, I took a closer look at the pictures in the kitchen. Then I cut out more blankets. If we had an afternoon of secrets ahead, I didn’t want to cause any distraction. I’d just sit and stitch, and maybe sew some of Miss Aurelia’s words into the seams, for strength and for humor. I wanted to be ready for whatever secrets she was willing to share, woman to woman. In truth, I couldn’t wait.

M
ONDAY
, F
EBRUARY
10, 1851

I am still amazed. Miss Aurelia told me she’d had an unconventional life. What a puny word for such choices!

Her story started simply enough. Her family had come here, to Ohio’s Western Reserve, from Connecticut at the start of the century, same as mine had. They’d settled, cleared land, and established farms. Her father had been successful, his brother had not, so her family took charge of his farm too and the brother moved on.

“You know where Jonas and Bessie Smith live?” she asked. “My parents built that cabin. I lease the farm to the Smiths and this farm’s fields as well.”

That explained the cultivated fields. I turned the corner of the blanket I was hemming and folded down the third long side. Much of this history was as familiar to me as corn bread. I wanted to get on to the secrets.

Miss Aurelia continued. “Father traded timber for finished furniture. He trapped game and sold the pelts at
good prices. I met Andrew Mercer through Father’s fur trading.

“First, I should tell you that I was my parents’ only child. Mother had miscarriage after miscarriage. I was born six years after their marriage, and they’d nearly given up hope of a child by then. So they indulged me. Gave me my way.

“Andrew trapped and worked with Father. When I set my eye on him, Father and Mother agreed, of course. They determined to give my uncle’s farm to us. This farm. Father and Andrew began building this house, and while it went up, Father hired a furniture maker from Pittsburgh to come and build the tables and chairs and beds, all crafted from our own fine hardwood trees. They planned a grand and glorious house for their only daughter.”

Miss Aurelia spoke lightly, as if making fun. But I’d found the house grand and glorious from the moment I walked in the door.

“I should have paid more attention to the people around me than to the poster beds and canopies,” she said. “Mother grew ill. Female troubles, probably related to all those lost children. And she wouldn’t spoil my happiness with complaints.

“When we realized she was seriously ill, Andrew and I married quickly, so she could see her daughter’s future assured before she died. How foolish—I, an indulged only child, was about to lose my mother. What a terrible time to wed! And then, of course, Andrew was a trapper, a man who liked his rough cabin deep in the forest. His
notion of a good life didn’t necessarily include staying home in a grand house.”

“You said you aren’t a widow,” I ventured. “Did you get a … a divorce?” I knew the word, from novels. But I didn’t know a soul who actually
had
divorced, or a family that admitted one in its farthest branches.

“No. That would have shocked even me. Andrew was a good man. He and I just didn’t suit. He stayed until Mother died, then he left: me here to care for Father while he made a trapping excursion into the Michigan Territories. We’d planned it out. When he had traveled far from Ohio, he sent a letter informing me of Andrew Mercer’s death. I became a widow in the sight of the village. He rechristened himself Mark Andrews and continued to trap and explore and live on the edge of the frontier.”

“So that’s why you haven’t remarried,” I said. “You don’t know if your husband is dead or alive.”

“Oh, he’s alive, all right. We remain friends in an odd way. I get messages from him now and again. Several bundles of furs have arrived over the years. Why, just last spring I received a package from California, of all places. My
cousin
, Mark Andrews, had found a big strike and wanted to share his good fortune. Gold nuggets, resting safely in the bank just now.”

“But you couldn’t remarry.…”

“Wouldn’t want to.” She laughed. “You young girls. Romance fills your heads and you never see what comes after. Perhaps I saw too clearly, losing Mother as I did. Marriage can bring a woman’s downfall. She loses her independence, her property. Her health and energy, too. That’s not for me. Father hadn’t taken the time to deed
the farm to Andrew at our marriage because Mother was so sick. As time passed, I think he had suspicions, and he wrote his will so that both farms became mine alone, to do with as I chose.”

My head whirled. Widow Mercer has lived such a complicated life. I doubt any of the townspeople know a word of this story.

“What made you tell me?” I asked at last. My tea had grown cold in its cup and the gingerbread sat uneaten.

“I don’t quite know,” she admitted. “Your confusion about your young men, perhaps. I detect a spark of rebelliousness in you, Lucinda. A spark I would encourage into flame. Or maybe I’m simply growing older and want to share my past. Seeing Cass so ill, it brings back the bad times, when I lost Mother.

“Anyway, I’ve finished this drawing and you may look. Actually, I’ve finished several in this afternoon’s long talk. Perhaps they’ll cheer Cass.” She passed me her sketchbook.

I opened the first page and felt a lightning shock. She’d captured me as I sat at the table and stitched, wearing a faraway, dreamy smile on my face. She had looked right into my heart, for as she told about her romance with Andrew Mercer, I’d thought about Jeremiah Strong.

I couldn’t bear to look anymore. She’d come too close. I flipped the page and saw portraits—Ben and Shad making snowballs, Emma nursing baby Lizzie, Naomi and Ruth sitting close together as they listened to their naming story, Daniel and Mesha eating pie. In each picture the people seemed ready to speak, to laugh.

“You’re amazing,” I said at last. “The most unusual woman I’ve ever met.”

I admire her unconventional life, but I also find her unnerving. For with those artist’s eyes of hers, Miss Aurelia sees too much.

T
UESDAY
, F
EBRUARY
11, 1851

The noise of horses woke me from a sound sleep in the small hours this morning. I tensed. Was it someone coming to search the house? Visions of Clayton Roberts’s evil blue eyes crossed my brain. I listened, hoping the sound would grow faint, but instead it came closer. I rapped on Miss Aurelia’s door and warned her.

A whistle shrilled through the icy night air and I relaxed. William. I grabbed a shawl and ran downstairs to greet my brother. “We waited so long! Are they safe? How was your trip? Is Jeremiah with you? Did the snow hold you up?”

I hugged him, and he hugged me back, surprising me with the strength of his arms. My brother was fast turning into a man.

“Jeremiah and I saw them onto the lake steamer, bound for Windsor, Canada West. With the snow, we stayed in Cleveland—in the house of a family of Quakers Jeremiah knows.”

“Thank the Lord,” Miss Aurelia whispered. “William, come and warm yourself. We’ll tell Cass your news.”

“I have something for her,” Will said. He patted his pocket.

Up in the attic, Cass was awake. My candle caught a
fearful look on her face. The noises had disturbed her sleep, too.

I sat beside her. “Cass, your family is in Canada. They’re safe. Free!”

“Glory be!” She sat up, and her face glowed. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “Tell me.”

“The trip north went smooth,” Will said. “We made Cleveland by Tuesday morning. We sheltered with Abraham in a fish warehouse near the lake. Did that stink! When it got dark, we smuggled the children on board the steamer. I loaned Emma a set of my clothes, and we all made like dockworkers. We set each child in an empty fish barrel and hauled them on board like salt perch. The captain saw them all safe, landed on Canada soil.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “A Baptist church sits close by the docks in Windsor. Go there for help. Abraham and Emma will have a place by the time you arrive. They’ll leave word at the church so that you can find their house.”

Will passed the paper to Cass, and she held it to her chest like a great treasure. “My babies. They free! God be praised.”

Miss Aurelia took her hands. “Yes, thanks be to God. Now let’s get you well and this youngster born.”

“Yes, Miss Aurelia. I do what you say. My babies free. This child and me, we join them real soon.”

She took hold of Will’s hand. “Thank you,” she said. “You just a boy, but you man enough to carry my babies to the promised land.”

Will shrugged. His face turned bright red.

“You a brave boy, and a strong one,” she said.

We went downstairs, and Miss Aurelia and I fed Will plate after plate of hot food.

“Never thought I’d get warm,” he said. “Trip up, the roads were muddy but not bad. Good thing we had a place to stay in Cleveland till the first snow wore itself out. The roads home weren’t no prize.”

“It snowed a lot?”

“Yep. ‘Specially up by Lake Erie. And it drifted. I’d get patches of dry road, and then places where Jeremiah and me had to dig for an hour to go a quarter mile. Then more snow came on Saturday.”

“Is Jeremiah home, too?”

“Should be,” Will said. He passed me an envelope. “He sent you a letter. I don’t suppose you’ll read it out loud.”

I snatched the letter from Will’s hand and blushed furiously.

“Would you stay here the night, William?” Miss Aurelia offered.

“Thank you, ma’am, but Mama will turn blue with worry if I’m gone much longer. I brought some fish, if you’d like, and I’ll carry news to Mama and Papa. Do you need anything? Supplies?”

How could Will rattle on about fish and supplies? I counted the minutes until I could rush upstairs and read Jeremiah’s letter.

“Fresh fish sounds nice, but otherwise we’re fine,” Miss Aurelia said. “Unless you’d like to go home now, Lucinda. I can manage on my own with just Cass for a bit. I’m sure your mother misses you.”

I tugged my thoughts away from Jeremiah. What had
she said? Home. Did I want to go home? Absolutely. Now that I’d seen Will, I wanted the rest of my family close around me. But Cass worried me. I couldn’t leave until her child was born. “I still think it’s safer with two of us here,” I said. “If Cass has trouble, I can ride for help.”

“Yes, but a day or two won’t hurt, surely.”

“I’ll think about it. But not tonight.”

I wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet, but I knew Will had to go home. Mama and Papa needed to see his face and hear his story.

I hugged him again, and as I passed him my latest letters for the family I fingered the one from Jeremiah. Another night without much sleep, but I didn’t mind in the least this time.