Sins of the Fathers (21 page)

Dr. Flo reached into the priority mail envelope and drew out a flat, dark object attached to an equally dark chain. “Here’s the locket. Agnes didn’t exaggerate when she said it was tarnished. It would take a lot of elbow grease to get this clean. I wonder if it has anything in it? Do you have a knife?”

Katharine fetched one with a sharp point, but Dr. Flo could not get it between the halves. “Do these things tarnish shut? Maybe I’d better take it to a jeweler. I don’t want to ruin it.” She dropped it reluctantly to the table with a faint
clunk
.

Katharine wondered how much a jeweler would charge to open it.

“Here’s the baby shoe—what’s left of it.” Dr. Flo held up a tiny flattened object of faded brown leather. “Maybe you are sentimental about baby shoes, but I find it hard to get mushy about a shoe when we don’t have a clue who it belonged to. I guess these are the letters.” She slid out an inner envelope, mellowed by age to a soft gold. As she opened it and spilled its contents onto the table top, she began to slap the table frantically with the outer envelope.

“Silverfish! Oh, Katharine, I’m sorry. I never imagined I was bringing varmints into your house. And look at the condition of these letters! I don’t know if we’ll be able to read them at all.” Still, her fingers stroked them reverently.

How must it feel
, Katharine wondered,
to touch actual documents that belonged to your ancestors?
She hoped she would get that chance one day.

She also hoped hers wouldn’t have silverfish. Two fat ones wriggled toward her as if eager for a snack. She smacked them with her bare palm, then went to scrub her hands. She wetted two paper towels and handed one to Dr. Flo. “Here. Weapons, of sorts.”

Dr. Flo grimaced. “I haven’t touched any of them yet that I know of, but I don’t think we ought to eat cookies while we go through this stuff, do you? Set the plate over yonder on the counter until we’re done and have sanitized our hands.”

The letters were yellow with age and stained with large jagged watermarks. Pieces of them had disintegrated. Other bits had apparently broken off in transit. The pile on the table looked less like history in the making than like a good fire waiting to start. Three more silverfish wriggled out as if escaping incipient flames.

Katharine smashed them with her paper towel and wished she had suggested they work on the patio table. It was a bit late now.

“We’ll do the best we can,” she said, as much to herself as to Dr. Flo. She smacked another silverfish and hoped none escaped to Tom’s office. They’d find so much to eat in there, they would grow fat and multiply. She’d have to evict them with a shovel.

Dr. Flo scooped up the remains of two more off the table into her paper towel. “I think that’s all of them.”

“Good. Here’s a trash can. And why don’t you just drop the priority mail envelope on the floor for now while we see what we can make of the letters?”

Dr. Flo picked up a fragment containing only pieces of words. “Now I know how the folks who first tried to read the Dead Sea Scrolls felt. Let’s start with the whole ones.”

They sat across from each other and each chose a letter. Dr. Flo gave hers a good shake to make sure no creatures hid inside, then unfolded it. “At least whoever wrote them dated them. This one is from August 17, 1877, written to Marie.”

“This one is January 12, 1875, also to Marie.”

“Here’s one written on September 10, 1878, and it starts, simply,
Dearie.
Oh! Whoever wrote it has just heard of Françoise’s death. Listen!” She read aloud.

Dr. Flo held out the page, and her finger traced its surface. “See the blots?” She continued.

Does any mother hear such a letter without filling in her own child’s name? Katharine’s chest grew tight at the thought that Jon or Susan might die where she could not reach them. Why had she ever let them go so far away? On the heels of that her mind pictured the small forlorn stone at the edge of the Georgia marsh. She blinked back tears.

Dr. Flo cleared her throat several times as if something had lodged there. “I am intrigued by that ‘for whom she was named’ bit. Would you guess that Françoise was named for Francis Bayard? He died the year before she was born.”

“Then maybe Claude Gilbert was named for Claude Bayard. You are going to turn out to be Burch’s cousin after all. Just wait.”

Dr. Flo’s lip curled. “I wonder who would be more disgusted, me or—what’s gotten into that cat?”

The large cat had crept from the utility room to the breakfast room unnoticed and was sniffing the priority mail envelope on the floor as if it held a mouse.

“Maybe he smells the silverfish,” Katharine suggested as the cat rubbed his jowls against the envelope’s surface.

“I’d guess he smells Agnes. Look at that.”

He had caught it in his teeth and was dragging it off to his lair.

Katharine shrugged. “Anything to keep him happy.”

“You said the little one is settling in a bit. What about that one?”

“He’s still hiding out in the utility room. I’m afraid the little one is staking out Tom’s library, though.”

“That’s good, since Tom isn’t here so much of the time.”

“Tell that to Tom.”

Dr. Flo started unfolding the other letters. “Maybe we ought to begin by sorting these by dates.”

In a few minutes the remains of nine letters lay in a stack on the table with unidentifiable fragments. The deed, blackened locket, and flattened shoe made a smaller pile at one end.

“Why don’t you read them aloud?” Katharine suggested. “It’s your family.”

“Possibly,” Dr. Flo reminded her. She took the top letter from the pile. “It’s dated July 15, 1873, and this one, too, is addressed only to
Dearie.
I wonder who she was.” She began to read.

Dr. Flo laid down the letter. “We’ve found the pirate.” Her eyes refused to meet Katharine’s across the table.

“I wish I had him in this kitchen right now. I’d smack him so hard he’d see stars. How could he?”

Dr. Flo could only shake her head.

“Do you think Dearie was his sister? That could explain his talk about being welcomed back and the bit about being healthy, happy, and safe.”

Dr. Flo gave a genteel snort. “That sounds to me like what a liar would tell his female relatives if he was endangering life and limb.”

Katharine reached for her tea with an unsteady hand. Jon, over in China, kept assuring her he was fine. As she took a fortifying sip, she reflected that raising children doesn’t get easier as they get older. Your worries grow with them.

“She has to have been his sister, though. To whom else could he send his black mistress and mulatto children?” Dr. Flo’s voice was flat. Dead, even.

“How old were those babies at the time?”

Before Katharine could do the math, Dr. Flo answered. “Four and six. Can you believe it? All that malarkey about his children being his most valuable treasures. So why didn’t he do the decent thing, and provide the poor little things a home where they wouldn’t be oddities?” Her hand shook as she picked up the letter and re-read it, then she dropped it at the end of the table with distaste. “Be careful about researching your ancestors, girlfriend. You may not always like what you find.”

Katharine wished she could think of anything to say that might alleviate Dr. Flo’s shock. “I guess the only Bayards at that point would have been Elizabeth and her son, Claude. Francis died in 1870, didn’t he? How old would Claude Bayard have been when the kids arrived?”

Dr. Flo reached into her purse, brought out her little notebook, and did a calculation. “Twenty-six. Old enough to be thinking of marriage.”

“Didn’t he have a five-year-old in the 1880 census?”

“That’s right, he did. I wonder how Claude’s wife liked having two mixed-race children in the household. And if Claude was anything like Dalt and Burch, I’ll bet he had a conniption.”

“But Elizabeth seems to have welcomed the children, and somebody bought marble for Françoise’s stone. Maybe Claude never forgave his mother, and that’s why he didn’t put ‘beloved’ on her tombstone. Shall we read the next letter?” Katharine held it out.

Dr. Flo flapped one hand. “You read it. I have enough to digest from the first one.”

As Katharine unfolded it, several loose bits floated down to the table. “This one is in such bad shape, I can’t make it all out. It’s addressed to Marie, dated November something—eleventh or seventeenth, I can’t tell—of the same year. Here’s what I can make out. The first paragraph is entirely blurred. The second begins—”

“I told you his wife wasn’t going to be happy,” Dr. Flo growled.

“And I said Claude was named for Claude. Give each contestant one point.” Katharine scanned the rest of the letter. “There’s a long blurred bit, then the letter ends,
‘…believe a separate residence is necessary, since we will be coming soon. However, do as you…’
That’s all I can make out. Can you read it any better?” Katharine handed it across the table.

Dr. Flo looked at it quickly and laid it back down. “No.”

“So how do you interpret the bit we’ve got?” Katharine retrieved the faded page and perused it again.

Dr. Flo’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “That no matter how Elizabeth reacted, Mallery’s nephew and his wife did not welcome his mulatto children and black mistress.”

“Stop calling them that. Marie might not have been his mistress. Maybe he married her.”

“Her name was Guilbert. The clearest point in that letter—and the only one that matters to me—is the fact that somebody was proposing to build a separate house for Marie and her children. That might help if Burch contests the deed.”

“And Mallery didn’t think the house was necessary, since he planned to come soon.”

“But he didn’t.” Dr. Flo’s voice was deep with disgust. “I cannot forgive him for not checking to see how those children were being treated by their relatives.”

“If Mallery’s captain was also enraged by their treatment of the children, would you guess Mallery was an officer on the ship?”

“Probably. Mallery certainly admires the captain. But it’s been several months, and the captain has not kept his promise to come back for the children. Those poor children. Pirating was obviously more important to their daddy than his offspring. I hate to think I’ve got his blood in my veins.” She rubbed the inner part of her forearm as if she would press the bad blood out.

“Do you want to read the rest of the letters?”

“We might as well, but we could probably write the story without reading them.”

As she had predicted, the letters held few surprises. Each letter promised to come soon. Most referred to letters received from Marie or the woman addressed as “Dearie”—whom they believed to be Elizabeth Bayard—describing the children’s progress. Some expressed anger at the way Marie and the children were being treated by Claude Bayard. Several letters to Dearie, however, referred to what one called “your great kindness and that of Hamilton to Claude and Marie. I am so glad you love them as I do, and that the boys are becoming friends, as is right.”

“That could explain the stipulation in Agnes’s deed,” Katharine concluded. “Remember how he called Claude ‘my childhood friend’? If Claude went to Atlanta and never returned, Hamilton must have missed him.”

“Unlike his own father.” Dr. Flo refused to be swayed from her anger at Mallery. “Listen to this, written to Marie.”

She dropped the letter as if it were putrid. “Of
course
. Holding up ships is far more important than taking care of a small boy who has already lost his sister. And it must have made Marie real happy to hear about the beauties of home when she could not be there.”