Wayward Winds (21 page)

 38 
Curiously Disappeared Bible

Catharine set out for her room to change into her riding habit. Her way took her back through the gallery. Like George, she had passed through it many times nearly every day of her life without giving any of the silent personalities a moment's thought. But today, with George's references to the portraits still fresh in her mind, her step slowed.

She gazed up at old Henry Rutherford. George was right—he seemed desirous of saying something. It certainly wasn't a happy face.

Slowly Catharine wandered about, gradually taking in face after face from the other portraits.

A certain family resemblance was clear enough—the lines of the face, the wide-set eyes, the high foreheads on most of the men. And as George had said, it was interesting to note what special items had been chosen as props for the various portraits. Two elderly women had been painted together, with a framed portrait sitting on an easel in the background. The brass plate on the frame identified the two subjects, but there was no way to tell who might be the woman whose portrait rested behind them. Catharine glanced about, but saw no earlier portrait hanging anywhere which might be the same picture.

Two other paintings featured a light cream-and-peach-colored marble pedestal beside the subjects. In one the pedestal held a potted plant. In the other it served as a base for what appeared to be an open family Bible. Catharine recognized the pedestal as the same
family heirloom that stood upstairs in their library right now with a small potted palm on it.

One of the largest portraits, a horizontal view, displayed a family grouping—a seated man and woman with their seven children standing gathered around and behind them. In the woman's lap lay the same large Bible.

Catharine moved as close as she could, though the painting hung higher than her head, to examine the mother's face. Yes . . . it was the same woman whose portrait stood on the background easel of the other painting.

Who are all these people?
said Catharine to herself.
What might they tell me if only they could speak!

As her eyes drifted about, she saw the Bible, variously placed, in a number of other portraits. Again her eyes came to rest on Henry Rutherford. There was the Bible beside him too, not being held but lying on a table beside him.

But . . . hmm, that was odd—none of the more recent portraits had the family Bible in them.

Catharine glanced about, looking at all the dates now. All the people who were painted posing with the Bible predated Henry Rutherford. His was the last portrait in which it appeared.

She would have to remember to ask her father about it, Catharine thought, then finally continued on the way to her room.

 39 
Catharine and Grandma Maggie

Catharine left the Hall in the direction of the stables. She saddled Black Fire and was soon on her way across the fields in the direction of the cottage where dwelt Robert and Margaret McFee, as close to spiritual parents to her own parents as two individuals can be. The old couple were thus affectionately known to George and Catharine as Grandma Maggie and Grandpa Bobby.

Their cottage stood at a point approximately between the Hall and the village, in the midst of a lightly forested region, about a mile and a half from the Hall. It had once been part of the lord of the manor's estate, constructed originally, as George had recently discovered, during the time of Broughton Rutherford as a gamekeeper's lodge. It had remained within the precincts of the lord of the manor's estate until the year 1847, when financial reversals and fear of scandal resulted in its ownership being transferred to a certain Arthur Crompton, bishop in the Church of England. When the repentant bishop died in the mid-1850s without heirs, his will stipulated that the cottage should go to a local peasant woman. No one ever knew why. It had been in Maggie's family ever since.

Catharine's conversation with George in the tower of Heathersleigh Hall put Catharine in a thoughtful mood of inquiry. As she set off across the fields northeastward toward the McFee place, her thoughts
were on the history of the region. She had been to the cottage many times throughout her years, as had George, for their parents visited the wise and friendly couple weekly, if not more often.

Catharine rode up and saw Maggie behind the cottage taking her laundry down from the line. She dismounted, tied Black Fire's reins to a post, then went to greet her spiritual grandmother with a loving embrace.

“Catharine, my dear!” said Maggie. “You make my heart glad just to see your smiling face.”

“How are you, Grandma Maggie?” said Catharine, reaching up to remove a towel and then working her way through the linens and shirts in the opposite direction.

“We're well indeed. But I declare you've grown another inch or two since I saw you last!”

“That was only last week, Grandma Maggie, when you and Grandpa Bobby were at the Hall for Mum's birthday. I can't have grown since then!”

“You know how old folks' eyes see years passing like they were days.”

“You're not
that
old, Grandma Maggie.”

“True enough, there's a world of difference between being old and thinking old. I hope I never start doing the one, but nothing man or woman does can stop the other from coming at its appointed time. I'll be seventy-four in a month's time.—There, that's the last of my Bobby's shirts. Thank you, lass!”

Catharine walked toward her and placed her load of sun-ripened laundry on top of Maggie's wicker basket, then picked it up with her two strong hands and began walking toward the cottage. Maggie opened the door and led the way inside and into the large sitting room.

“Set it there, Catharine dear,” said Maggie, pointing to the couch.

Catharine did so. Of one accord both women began removing the topmost items, folding and setting them aside in two or three piles.

“Where's Grandpa Bobby?” asked Catharine.

“He's out to Mr. Mudgley's,” answered Maggie. “One of his rams is ailing.”

They continued about the task a minute or two in silence.

“What's this?” asked Catharine, holding up a piece of white lace.

“That's a bit of Irish handwork,” answered Maggie. “Bobby's mother gave it to me.”

“It doesn't look like tatting.”

“It's not tatting exactly, like I've been teaching you, Catharine. But similar.”

“This is beautiful. Can you show me how to do this too?”

“I'd be happy to, lass, if I knew it myself.”

“Mrs. McFee didn't show you the stitch—did she make this herself?”

“That she did. But she was old when she passed on to me a chestful of her linens. This was in the box with the rest, but she never taught me the secret.”

“We could figure it out!” said Catharine excitedly. “It looks enough like tatting. Let's try, Grandma Maggie!”

Maggie laughed. “You think we can, eh, lass?”

“Why not!”

Maggie rose from the couch and walked across the room to an oak secretary that appeared somewhat too ornate for the tastes of the humble couple dwelling in the cottage. But it was one of two ancient family heirlooms which Maggie treasured, fabricated by her own great-grandfather. From one of its front drawers facing the room Maggie withdrew two odd-looking clumps of white thread, to which were attached what appeared to be half-completed doilies, linked by single threads to two small contraptions known as tatting shuttles, one of carved whale bone, the other of solid ivory. Whenever Catharine came for a visit, they would sit on the couch together, working side by side as Maggie taught Catharine the little-known skill, and chatted together for hours. Maggie had done her best to interest Amanda in it as well, but to little avail. Catharine, however, had taken to it immediately. She and Maggie had worked on various tatting projects together for years, and the moments shared together in this way were among the most enjoyable and special in the memories of both.

As Maggie returned, Catharine's eyes followed her movements with an expression of curiosity.

“I've watched you open that drawer and take out our tatting a hundred times,” she said. “But I never noticed the cabinet before. It's funny how your eyes see and grasp more as you get older.”

“It's one of the facts of life, lass,” replied Maggie. “Young people's eyes
think
they see everything clearly. But it takes years to begin seeing inside of things. What made you notice the old cabinet?”

“It looks just like one in the Hall,” said Catharine.

“The one that's in your father's library, you'll be meaning, no doubt.”

“How did you know!”

“I've seen it there, lass.”

“Why are they so alike, Grandma Maggie?” As Catharine spoke, she rose and went across the sitting room to examine the secretary more closely. “They're practically identical.”

“As to the why, I can't say,” said Maggie. “But it might be explained by the fact that this particular cabinet was made by my very own great-grandfather.”

“How does that explain it?”

“Because just maybe he did similar work for the lord of the manor. Back in those days, all the local tradesmen and craftsmen would have had occasion to work for him at one time or another.”

“I still don't see how that explains it.”

“No doubt he made one for the Hall that he liked so much he made another one for himself, or the other way round.”

Full of thoughts, Catharine returned to the couch. Maggie had already moved the laundry aside. Catharine sat down beside her. As was their custom, their fingers unconsciously fell into the pattern of the tatting motion, Maggie's moving with such rapidity that an observer would have seen only a blur. She picked up the shuttle with her right hand, pulled out the thread, and deftly wrapped it around her left hand. The shuttle began to fly back and forth over and under the thread in the left hand, back and forth, back and forth, stopping every eighth time to make a picot. She repeated the pattern several times, then pulled the ring of thread tight and then began the next ring. She had taught Catharine and Jocelyn the skill years before, yet beside her, Catharine's fingers moved at only about half the speed.

Maggie now paused and picked up the piece of Irish lace her mother-in-law had given her to examine its knots and loops more closely. A few experimental movements of her wrist followed, which she then examined and compared with the old lace. She went to the cabinet to fetch another ball of thread. She tied the second thread to her first and began working a chain between the original rings.

The two worked together for another thirty minutes or so, combining the efforts of Maggie's skillful fingers with Catharine's youthful eyes to see if they could unravel the mystery of the ancient Irish lace.

“When I'm working like this,” said Maggie, “I often wonder what kind of linens and lace it was that the Lord God instructed the old daughter of Israel to make for the priests' robes and the altar blankets and the cover for the ark. Can you imagine a lace pattern of God's own devising!”

“I'd like to know their patterns!” said Catharine. “But does it really mention linen and lace in the Bible?”

“It does indeed, dear—twined and fine linen, it's called. And lace there is too. And it talks about cord of fine linen, which is all we're making here, tiny cords. It's all in Exodus, somewhere around the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth—well, let's look at it, lass, and see what it says.”

Maggie set down her shuttle and clump of thread, rose, and again walked to the oak cabinet and picked up the Bible that had been in her family since before she herself was born, from where it lay on top of it. She carried it back to the couch with her and sat down beside her young friend.

The white-haired woman opened the ancient Bible and began flipping through it. But she did not come close to reaching the book of Exodus. Beside her on the couch, Catharine's eyes shot open wide as she turned back the cover and the first few pages.

“Wait!” she exclaimed. “I just saw something . . . a name.”

Maggie turned back to the presentation page.

“There—that's it,” said Catharine, pointing down. “
Kyrkwode
, I was right. I
knew
I'd seen it somewhere!”

“What do you mean, dear,” said Maggie in surprise, “that you were right?”

“George and I just ran across it earlier today, in some old records at home. I thought I recognized it.”

“You know the name?”

“I've heard it,” replied Catharine. “But I know nothing about it. I must have seen this page sometime when I was here. Your Bible's always out, and I've looked through it many times. That must be why I knew I'd seen it. So who is Orelia Kyrkwode?”

“You know, dear,” answered Maggie, “I must have told you more times than you can remember—this was my grandmother's Bible.”

“I don't remember hearing her name before.”

“That is my grandmother, Orelia Kyrkwode. She was a midwife—an honorable profession, despite what some people said back in those days. This Bible was given to her when she was confirmed. That was in 1797, as it says here. That was her name, of course, before she married. Then she became Orelia Moylan. The Bible passed to my mother, Grace Moylan, who became Grace Crawford, and then to me.”

“That's . . . you, written there?” said Catharine, pointing farther down the page.

“That's my maiden name,” answered Maggie, “—before I met Bobby.—There's my name written by my mother's hand—Margaret Crawford, 1837. Of course now everyone just knows me as Maggie. You see all the names here that have been added as the Bible's been passed down.”

“And the Bible was given first to Orelia—”

“By her parents Mary and Webley Kyrkwode on her confirmation.”

“Webley Kyrkwode,” repeated Catharine.

“He's the same man I was telling you about before, my great-grandfather that made the two secretaries—the one I still have, and the one that's in the library at the Hall.”

Webley Kyrkwode . . .
W. Kyrkwode
—the name in the ledger! What could it all mean?

The rest of the afternoon was taken up with halfhearted experimental attempts to copy old Mrs. McFee's tatting pattern. But Catharine's thoughts were far more taken up with the inscriptions in Orelia Kyrkwode's old Bible. She therefore continued to ply Maggie with questions about the history of her family's past and the cottage.

That evening she asked her father about the Bible she had noticed in the portraits.

“You know, that is a mystery, Catharine, my dear,” replied Charles. “I don't think I've ever seen that Bible in my life. But now that you bring it up, it seems I recall my cousin Gifford expressing an interest in the same thing some years back.”