The Mapmaker's Children

A
LSO BY
S
ARAH
M
C
C
OY

The Baker's Daughter

The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Sarah McCoy

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN is a registered trademark and the Crown colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCoy, Sarah, 1980–

The mapmaker's children : a novel / Sarah McCoy.—First Edition.

pages; cm

1. Cartographers—Fiction. 2. Artists—Fiction. 3. Underground Railroad—Fiction. 4. Fugitive slaves—United States—Fiction. 5. United States—History—19th century—Fiction. 6. Conception—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3613.C38573M37 2015

813'.6—dc23         2014021797

ISBN 9780385348904

eBook ISBN 9780385348911

eBook design adapted from printed book design by Lauren Dong

Map illustration by Meredith Hamilton

Cover design by Na Kim

Cover photograph: © Lee Avison/Trevillion Images

v4.1

a

To Daddio, Curtis McCoy
,

the best role model of courage, faith, and loving fatherhood

N
EW
C
HARLESTOWN
, W
EST
V
IRGINIA
F
EBRUARY
2010

T
he old house on Apple Hill Lane shuddered against the weighty snow that burdened its pitch. The ancient beams moaned their secret pains to the wintering doves in the attic. The nesting duo pushed feathered bosoms together, blinked, and nodded quickly, as if to say,
Yes-yes, we hear, yes-yes, we know
, while down deep in the cellar, the metal within the doll's porcelain skull grew crystals along its ridges. Sharp as a knife. The skull did all it could to hold steady against the shattering temperature for just one more minute of one more hour.

The front door banged open, and a gust of snowy wind ran madly through the house's heart chambers.

“The newspapers and TV weathermen called it Snowmageddon!” said a silver-haired man, not yet old by the house's standards. He was followed by a woman bundled in thick knits and gloves. “There's another on the way. An Alberta clipper storm, driving down from Canada, apparently. Did we have to do this today?”

“We've waited long enough, Dad,” said a younger man, entering last.

“I know you're eager to flip this place, but there's no reward in being hasty,” the elder chastised. “Never mind that there's a blizzard out!”

“I've already scheduled the construction crew. The same one that did the market. They come next week. I want this place ready by spring. People are always looking for new places in the spring—new starts. And they want to move in by summer. We need to capitalize on that. If we wait, we could have this house sitting all next winter. People will start to wonder what's wrong with it.”

“But nothing's wrong with it. It's a beautiful old place,” said the
woman at last, placing her ungloved hand on the banister. Her voice and touch, a tickle of warmth against the house's bones. The house reciprocated in kind, and she smiled down at the curve of the warm wood in her palm. “The history is gold—worth waiting for.”

The younger man shifted his weight on the floorboards, which groaned. “All respect to you, Ms. Silverdash, but I don't really understand what you're doing here—this is a business deal between me and my dad and whoever has the bankroll to buy.”

“I completely understand, Mack.” She removed her hand from the banister, and the house chilled at the absence of her touch. “Morris invited me because we've been able to place nearly every Apple Hill home on the West Virginia National Register of Historic Places, and it's greatly increased the real estate value of the homes, the street—the whole town, in fact. But Mr. Potts, God rest his soul, was so averse to anyone coming in, and I honored his wishes. However, now that the opportunity has opened up…But I understand—you're right; it's not my place.”

The younger man ran his hand through his hair, the early silver of his father already threading his crown. “Aw, Ms. Silverdash, it's just…” He sighed, and it plumed the air between them.

“Now, listen to me, son,” the elder said, stepping forward. “I won't have you disrespecting Ms. Silverdash. She's got a master's degree in history, which is far more knowledge about this kind of thing than you—or I, for that matter—have.”

The younger snapped tall, affronted. “What's that supposed to mean? Because I didn't finish school, I'm an idiot?”

“That's not what I said, Mack. I'm simply advising us, from a
business
perspective, to listen to an expert here—wait a few weeks and have Niles do an appraisal. The renovation crew can't do a damned thing until the ice melts, anyhow. It's not school smarts, it's common sense. Ridiculous to schedule them now.”

But Mack had turned away, his mind far off on some distant thought, some ancient memory. “My whole life, you always did this—took
her
side over our family.”

The elder looked to Ms. Silverdash, then rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“And
you
always make reckless decisions, then expect others to clean up your mistakes without taking any responsibility,” he muttered.

“Like you?” Mack snapped back. “Mr. Noble. Mr. Chivalrous. Mr. Marry the Woman I Knocked Up on a Friday Night and Raise My No-Good Son! That's what you're thinking.”

The air around them crackled.

“I'm sorry,” Ms. Silverdash whispered. “This is a family matter. I shouldn't be here.”

The front door stuck, and she had to give a good pull to loosen its grip. Wind sucked at her knitted bonnet and howled low,
Noooo, don't go
.

“You,” growled the elder, “ungrateful, selfish—”

“Just say it, Dad.
Bastard
. Your biggest regret.”

His father stared. The house felt his heartbeats, thudding like the hooves of the horses that had once raced to its threshold. The doves in the attic shielded themselves with their wings. The skull below lost its resolve, and the preexisting crack widened, a lightning pattern across its brow.

He lifted a finger. “You are my
son
. You don't know the first thing about real love until you have children of your own.”

Mack stood rigid.

“When you're ready to apologize, you know where to find me,” said his father. “Until then, I'm not giving you a dime. If you're determined to renovate without my counsel, you're going to have to buy out my investment.”

With that, he stormed out of the house, leaving his son alone in the draft. Mack's lips trembled with unspoken regret. Only the house witnessed, voiceless to tell the story.

Outside, the sky had darkened. The bank of storm clouds opened. More snow.

N
ORTH
E
LBA
, N
EW
Y
ORK
A
PRIL
1859

T
hat winter wasn't as cold as the previous, but unlike before, the well froze solid. The bucket's rope had snapped like a forest twig just before Christmas. Sarah's father, John Brown, had promised to fish it out when he returned in the spring, but the freeze had yet to abandon its hold. So Sarah and her elder sister Annie had been tasked with melting snow into the timber kitchen barrel, a chore vital to their survival. She'd often look down into the jug and incant,
Sarah Brown, Sarah Brown, Sarah Brown
. The syllables would echo back until they rang foreign as a new song, just like the words around her did now.

“The water. It's in the water. The water…” said Dr. Nash. “Burn the drinking gourd.”

He pulled her cheeks down with his fingers, forcing the veil away, her eyes wide. Too sharp: the room, the bed, her parents at the foot, Annie to her right, Dr. Nash's face, clean-shaven as an apple. Her father's jowls were marble stiff and fortified with white whiskers.

“You've got a lot of living to do, Miss Sarah. Come on now, and get to it.”

Dr. Nash released her, and she let her chin fall to the right. The smell of her sister close by: garden heliotrope and candle wax on her skin, buttermilk on her breath. Sarah inhaled deeply.

“W-w-will she live?” her mother stammered.

She hadn't always been afflicted. Watson, Salmon, and Oliver said she spoke clear as a bell before Annie accidentally knocked a pot of scalding water onto their infant sister Kitty, who'd died before morning. Sarah had been too young to remember her or their mother's confident tongue.

“Yes, but…” Dr. Nash turned his back to Sarah's bed and lowered his voice. “She is damaged. The dysentery within was too severe. She will not bear children.”

Each word rang out like the crack of a horsewhip. Had she been asleep, the words might've passed without splintering the air and changing everything.

“Barren?” Mary gasped.

Damaged…too severe…not bear children…
Sarah said it back to herself, trying to soothe the razor edges of meaning.

Her mother sobbed. “Who will love her now?”

The air near Sarah's cheek chilled. Her sister had gone to their mother's aid. “I'll make us spearmint tea, Mama.”

The mention induced nausea. Sarah couldn't bear something so sweet—too contrary to everything else, like a teaspoon of maple syrup added to a mug of vinegar.

Who will love her now? Sarah Brown, Sarah Brown, Sarah Brown, who will love you now?

She pushed deeper into the pillow, where her tears were lost before they were found.

H
OURS LATER
, she woke. Her mouth, dry and bitter as a splinter. She was thirsty. For once, there was no tea or soup or family member ladling out either. The storm trapped in her belly for weeks had passed. She swung her legs over the mattress. The pain of weight shot from her hips to her ankles, but she willed her knees to hold strong and gingerly made her way to the kitchen.

At the door separating the kitchen from the scullery, a tail feather of light stroked the farmhouse floor. Voices murmured. Not the high twitter of Annie, little Ellen, or her mother but the slow rumble of coming thunder. Men in secrecy. It was a common melody in the Brown household, but she'd never been close enough to hear the chorus.

“Look hard, Miss Rolla,” instructed a man.

“You're almost there,” said Sarah's father. “See, that line is Canada—the
Promised Land. Freedom! A conductor awaits you on the threshold. All that's incumbent upon you is to get to the ferryboat. Our driver can only take you to the Plattsburgh junction; then you must follow this map. We can't give it to you, lest you be caught and the slave masters discover our stations. Please, my dear, practice your keenest memorization.”

“My what?” asked Rolla.

“Remember in your mind,” clarified her father's associate. “So that day or night, you'll know the way.”

“I'm trying, Mr. Hill, but lines, numbers, words, maps—they all look alike,” she explained. “You ain't got something with pictures? I does good with pictures.”

Sarah recognized the heavy sound of her father's disappointed sigh. It snagged and raked against his beard brambles.

A child cooed, “Mauma, mauma.”

“Hush now, Daisy-love.”

Sarah's knees pinched as she bent to peer through the kitchen door where her brother Watson had once cracked it with an angry kick.

Two black females and a child in slave clothes. Runaways. One stood at the table, flanked by Sarah's father and two men she didn't recognize. Sarah knew her father was deeply invested in the Great Abolition Calling. Her brothers had fought and died in Kansas Territory for it, but the Brown women had never been privy to their plans and actions. John thought it too dangerous. A woman's role was to be the helper—to tend to the household and raise strong children in service to God's purpose. Or that was how he interpreted the Scriptures.

“Maybe if I put the candle close enough, it'll burn into my mind's eye,” said Rolla.

Sarah had been on her deathbed and had risen a new person, tired of being on the outskirts, tired of waiting for fate to decide if she lived or died, tired of powerlessness. If she was damaged and never to have the family of her sisters and mother, what was there left to fear? In a quick drink of tainted water, it could all end. She was not about to let that moment draw near again without having fully lived first—without having found her new purpose.

She pushed open the kitchen door, ignoring her father's shocked gasp, and went straight to the table.

“I can make a picture for you.” She flipped over the line map and took hold of the charcoal.

She'd been to Plattsburgh many times. While her father did business in secret rooms, her mother, Mary, walked Sarah and her siblings through the village, shopping, after which they'd go picnicking along the banks of Lake Champlain. Sarah could picture the landscape by heart and did so now. Her hand moved in smooth sweeps and jagged strokes, the scenic landmarks rising off the page like a mirage. She'd never thought herself an artist before, never had the opportunity or inclination to try. But now drawing came as naturally as a smile and felt twice as good.

The men watched. Even her father remained uncharacteristically mute.

“There's a river shaped like an ear,” said Sarah.

“I sees it,” said Rolla.

“It curves from the forest junction to the water and riverboat landing.” Her hand arced gracefully. “All you have to do is follow it. When you see an oak tree with three gnarly eyes and roots that dip like long fingers into the river”—she drew the tree—“you'll know the dock is twenty paces over the lip of the city. You can't see Lake Champlain at first, but don't stop. It's there.”

She added rippling waves to finish the illustration, then pushed the page into the sphere of candlelight.

Mr. Hill, the man who'd encouraged Rolla to look hard, now did so himself. “It's true to the way. A pictograph.” He turned his face to her with a smile. “Well done, Miss—?”

“Sarah.”

“My second to youngest,” said John.

Mr. Hill nodded to her. “A talented artist could be very useful to our cause. There are many passengers who'd benefit from drawings like this, and outsiders would observe nothing but an inventive scene. Do you agree, Miss Rolla?”

“Why, yessum. Yes, I do.” She tapped her forehead and closed her eyes. “I can see it like I's already standing there.”

John cleared his throat. “Sarah, you ought to be in bed. You're not fully well.”

“I was thirsty, Father,” she explained.

“There's tea in the kettle. Pour yourself a cup, and be quick about it. Then I'll help you back up to bed.”

There was pride in his voice, like the babble of water under ice, and it warmed and quenched Sarah far more than any tea.

John and Mr. Hill conferred with the third man, who Sarah understood to be an Underground Railroad conductor. She poured her cup while the slave women prepared to move.

“Let go, Daisy,” the younger woman pleaded with the child on her lap.

Daisy cuddled one of their old rag dolls. Annie had just finished re-stuffing it with lavender. It helped little Ellen sleep.

“It ain't yours,” she continued, fighting the child's strong clutch.

Sarah could see that Daisy was on the brink of tears and would cry out the moment the doll was removed. The sound would wake her mother and sisters, attuned to the sorrow of babes.

“She can keep it,” said Sarah.

The young woman lowered her gaze to the floor. “No miss'um. We couldn't be takin' your family's belonging.”

“It's mine. I want her to have it.” This was partially true. It had been Sarah's when she was Ellen's age, passed down like the rest of their toys, clothes, games, and storybooks. Youthful possessions they each treasured, then outgrew and forgot.

Ellen had other dolls, ones with painted faces and newly sewn dresses. She wouldn't miss this one made of calico rags and dried herb wadding.

“It'll give the baby a quiet companion during the journey.”

The woman stopped her struggle with the child and dared look up. “Thank you. Mighty kind.”

No longer fighting to hold her grip, Daisy cooed and sucked on one of the rag doll's strips, seeking to consume the honeyed scent and growing sleepier with each inhalation.

Sarah ran her finger over the girl's soft, yellow-rose cheek. “There's secret magic inside.” The child's eyes batted closed in sleep.

“Chamomile does a similar trick.” The woman smiled.

Sarah lifted her teacup. “I pray that by this hour tomorrow night, all of us are sleeping safe and soundly to start afresh in the dawn.”

“No finer blessing be upon us,” said Rolla, coming to the side of her fellow travelers. “We wish the sames on you, Miss Brown.”

“Sarah,” her father called from the doorway, and she obeyed.

Upstairs, he tucked her back under the chilled covers and placed the teacup on the bedside table. The steam rose in blurred brushstrokes.

“Are you cross with me, Father?” she asked.

He'd said not a word, and the silence worried her.

“How can I be cross when you've been of service to the Lord's calling?”

She could not see his grin beneath the beard but imagined it by the squint of his eyes.

“Sarah, might you be able to do that again—paint a map in pictures?”

She knew she could and nodded.

“Good. I'll bring you supplies tomorrow, but you must make me a promise.” His countenance darkened then, narrowing to the daggers of light that speared congregations, businessmen, and family alike.

“This is to remain a secret, not to be spoken of to your mother, sisters, or brothers, and certainly no one outside of our family trust. These drawings—they are fraught with grave danger. For you, our kin, and, most notably, those undertaking this Pilgrim's Progress. Do you understand?”

Outside, the slave baby cried out, awakened by the cold air, then was quickly muffled within the wagon.

Mary's feet thumped the floor next door, followed by the sound of her approaching steps. Nightcap askew and rubbing bleary eyes, she asked, “Is everyone well? I heard a cry?”

“We are well, dear,” said John.

“One of the hunting dogs.” Sarah looked to her father for approval. “Dreaming of the chase in his sleep, no doubt.”

They did sound alike, and for all the proof that remained, it could've been either.