Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

  He breathed the crisp air, no longer tainted with the acrid ghost of burning, and said, “I’ll tend what remains, Uncle. For my time.”

  Whether or not that proved a lifetime, God would make it clear in His time.

  “Fois sìorruidh dha anam.” Rest in peace.

  It was then he heard the wild geese call and knew he’d been waiting for the sorrowing sound in that place of grief and his rebirth. He watched the break in the trees, expecting to see an arrow of dark shapes crossing the gap of blue above the graveyard clearing.

  There was only one, winging its lonely way southward.

  Charlie Spencer was waiting on the path when Ian started down the ridge, a skinny hound pressed against his knee.

  “Ye needn’t have lingered,” Ian told him, though he nodded appreciation of the gesture. Which, it turned out, was a good deal more besides.

  “Meant to tell ye sooner,” Spencer began, “but with the fire and whatnot . . .”

  Ian was reminded of the disconcerting emptiness that loomed over the ashen scar where the house had stood, broken by naked chimneys rising from the earth like withered trees. Naomi and Lily had swept and scrubbed Dawes’s old cabin—in which they found Rosalyn’s gown and Judith’s shoes, the very items Lucinda Cameron had, nearly a year ago, blamed Seona for stealing. Though besides that they had only what came out of the fire or had been in the washhouse, Judith and Naomi had found bedding and candles, a washbasin, a basket for their daughter’s bed, sacking for curtains at the single window. The Reynolds, Zeb Allen, and other neighbors had given what could be spared. And more, Ian was sure.

  “Tell me what?” Ian asked, brought up by Spencer’s hesitation.

  “Well. See . . . it’s to do with that rascal, Dawes—though I oughtn’t speak ill of the dead.”

  They’d buried Dawes as well. Not among Ian’s kin. “What of him?”

  “It’s a thing best seen. Bit of a trudge.” Spencer waved toward the ridgeline curving between Mountain Laurel and John Reynold’s land. “But ye need to clap eyes on it.”

  “Can ye give me a notion, Charlie? There’s a dinner commencing below.”

  “Try this for notions.” Spencer opened a palm shiny with calluses. Cupped in it was a thing Ian had never in his life set eyes on—not in the raw.

  High above the birch hollow, in a tight draw near the stream’s source, they found where Dawes had been living rough in a makeshift shelter. Of more interest to Ian were the scars of recent digging along the creek bed, spaced as methodically as the terrain allowed. All the excavations were abandoned a few feet in, save one; a tiny natural cave had been expanded to a tunnel large enough for a man to hunker down and enter. It ran some ten feet back into the ridge. Along one wall, between layers of white quartz, flowed a narrow glittering vein.

  “That what I think it is?” Spencer asked, stooping to peer into the widened crevice as Ian ran his hand along the bright seam.

  “Given I’ve never seen a gold mine before, I think so.”

  Behind him Spencer let out a throaty whoop. “I heard tell of the Almighty giving water from a rock, but this is something else entire!”

  Crouched in the tunnel, the scent of raw earth in his nose, Ian was busy linking a chain of seemingly random memories into a pattern that finally made sense. Ally used to spy those in the field or the creek, Seona had said of the arrowhead he’d carried since the day of Gabriel’s birth.

  Arrowheads and pretty stones. Ally must have found a bit of gold in one of the streams that cut the hills—a bright thing, a pretty thing to give a little girl. Seona put it in her basket and there in the garret it stayed, until the day that basket spilled its treasure under Lucinda’s shrewd eyes.

  Dawes must have tried his hand along every feeder creek on Hugh Cameron’s land, in search of the gold Lucinda hoped lay hidden under the earth of Mountain Laurel.

  “That’s what he was coming back to tell my aunt, the night of the fire. ‘The source,’ I heard her say. He never confirmed it.” Ian hadn’t given him time.

  Spencer scratched at his stubbled beard. “Notice yet whose land it’s on?”

  It took a moment for the implication to register. Though Ian hadn’t paid scrupulous heed to the boundary markers set down in his uncle’s ledger the year a parcel of land was sold off to pay expenditures, he recalled enough to gauge where it was they stood and on which side of the boundary stream the gold vein ran.

  “I do.” For the first time in days Ian felt a gladness of heart. “Let’s go tell him.”

  They met John and Cecily, toting Robin, on the path headed home. John’s face showed relief at sight of Ian with Spencer, but their muddied clothes and dirt-streaked faces raised a brow. “We’ve speculated as to where on earth you two had vanished. Perhaps we ought to have been asking ourselves where under the earth?”

  Cecily shot her husband a flaring glance. John’s amiable expression froze. “Ian, forgive me. That was thoughtless.”

  “Hit the mark, though,” Spencer said.

  Ian shrugged aside the reminder of sorrow. “Never mind it, John. Charlie and I—we’ve something to tell ye both.”

  John and Cecily received the gold nugget, and the news of its finding, with laughing skepticism, which faded to stunned silence once they realized Ian was in earnest. “Ye did once say as ye’d like to plant trees, John, should the Almighty drop a bounty from heaven into your arms. This one’s from the earth, but no less from His hand.”

  Spencer went with the pair, still lost in wondering joy, to see Cecily home, then to show John the site of his newfound prosperity, but not before Ian impressed upon them the wisdom of keeping the matter silent. For now.

  He returned alone to Mountain Laurel, where Naomi took him, dirt and all, under wing.

  “There’s plenty set aside for you, Master Ian. Come get yourself washed and fed.”

  He went gladly, but hunger vanished upon finding two unexpected guests awaiting him in the kitchen. While Ian had been climbing the ridge with Spencer, Karl Gottfriedsen and his nephew—a strapping, straw-haired fellow called Jost—had come rattling up the carriage drive in their peddler’s wagon and joined in the burial dinner.

  Shock over the Camerons’ misfortunes had given way to sympathy by the time Ian sat across the table from the pair, while Naomi bustled about, putting together a plate of food.

  “It’s good to see ye again, Karl. Jost,” he added, having met the younger man when he’d escorted Gottfriedsen to Salem the previous autumn.

  While Ian ate, they talked of his uncle, of his marriage to Judith, their newborn daughter. He made a point of telling the aging peddler that he wasn’t responsible for those items he’d sold the Camerons last autumn turning up again in his wagon. “It was down to the machinations of my aunt and my uncle’s overseer, a means to get me away long enough to carry out another scheme, but ye’ve my apologies in their stead for the way ye were badly used.”

  An apology the man graciously accepted.

  Then Ian found himself speaking of what had been brought out of the fire and his need to see Seona and Lily to Boston before the spring.

  Though his back was to the door, he knew when Seona entered the kitchen. Even with her hair covered and a baby in arms, she drew the eye. Motherhood had deepened her, casting over her something of Lily’s mystery. He caught the peddlers’ trailing looks. Jost’s eyes held a frank, if shy, appreciation. There was something else in the older man’s eyes: startlement and a quick comprehension.

  “I cannot leave Judith for the time it would take me to travel to Boston and back,” Ian said after Seona went out again. “Not with only Malcolm and Ally for protection.”

  Slaves could provide no true protection in any case, not against the possible interference of Judith’s kin. He’d given Judith the option of following her mother’s exodus, one she’d resolutely refused. Still he feared he’d return to find his wife and daughter whisked off to Chesterfield, willing or no.

  “It is a predicament,” Ka
rl agreed, staring into the mug of cider cradled in his hands.

  “But not impossible.” Jost was nodding enthusiastically. “Manfred and Anna. Uncle, you remember—they are to leave Salem for Connecticut. Perhaps . . . ?” He left the statement dangling.

  “Ja,” said Karl, considering. “They have the two sons. One they could spare for driving a wagon for your freedwomen.”

  “All the way to Boston?” Ian asked, caught between startlement and doubt . . . and sensing an impending loss rushing at him with far more speed than he’d ever thought it could.

  Both men were nodding now. “It is not so much farther, ja? This could be arranged. But your two must be in Salem with all haste,” Karl added, “or the chance will be missed. If you cannot do this, we can see them there. Jost and I will do this for you.”

  “Karl, I don’t know.” Ian had thought to have weeks, months even, to prepare himself for the parting. But here was the chance and the means come right to his table barely two days after he’d learned of the need.

  Glancing around, he found they were alone. Naomi had left the kitchen unobserved. Seona and Lily would hear of Gottfriedsen’s offer before he put a foot out the door. He felt the weight of the inevitable bearing down.

  “It’s a lot to ask of ye,” he managed. “And your kin.”

  Karl’s expression warmed. “I am glad to do this, for reasons you know.”

  Again Jost nodded. “We are in your debt, Herr Cameron. Manfred and Anna will want to do this.”

  Though touched by their eagerness to aid him, it took Ian a full minute to make his mouth form the words. “In the morning? Will that be soon enough?”

  Karl Gottfriedsen smiled, not without compassion. “Ja. In the morning we can start.”

  She’d feared Ian would decide against going with them even as far as Salem, until Mister Charlie agreed to bunk in an empty cabin and look after everybody for a spell. If Miss Judith minded, she never said so in Seona’s hearing. Miss Judith had other things to say to her.

  She came to the cabin that night, toting her newborn baby girl. Before Seona could say a word, Lily got up off her cot where she’d been changing Gabriel, took up the dirty clout, and left.

  Seona took over the task, taking the time to compose herself. They’d talked since the fire, she and Miss Judith—it could hardly be helped—but this felt different. Seona’s hands shook as she bent to pick up Ian’s son.

  “Would you leave him on the cot?”

  She straightened as Miss Judith laid her daughter next to Gabriel. Both babies were awake. Gabriel’s eyes were turning the blue of his daddy’s. Miss Judith’s daughter seemed tiny as a doll beside him, even dressed in a gown nearly twice her length.

  “Sit by me?” Miss Judith said, motioning to the other cot. She was looking spent, though she hadn’t made the walk up the ridge to the burying plot—not two days after giving birth. She’d never been strong. How would she get along with Naomi her only woman-help?

  Naomi. Malcolm. Ally. In the morning she was leaving them all. Seona’s eyes blurred with tears.

  Miss Judith didn’t speak right off. They stared at their babies lying side by side. Mandy, as she’d heard Ian call her, was too new to mind what was going on around her. Gabriel, three months old, set to flailing his legs and arms. A fist closed on the sleeve of his sister’s gown.

  Seona stiffened, knowing how those little fingers could pinch. But Mandy didn’t fuss. He wasn’t hurting her, just holding on.

  “Like he knows somehow,” Miss Judith said, and Seona felt something like a fish bone caught in her throat. She couldn’t speak past it. “Please understand,” Miss Judith went on, still watching the babies. “I know he loves you.”

  She didn’t mean Gabriel. “Miss Judith—”

  “No.” Miss Judith turned to her, pain in her tea-brown eyes. “Let me say this. Wrongs have been done. Some to me. More to you. Years and years of wrongs. God says in the Bible He will restore the years the locust has eaten. But I don’t see how He can do any such thing unless we’re of a mind to let it happen. And look there—our children have shown us the way.”

  Miss Judith touched Seona’s hand, lying on the cot between them. “Will you let me do what I need to do, so this can happen for us?”

  Seona understood. Ian’s wife had come to pray for her. She turned her hand over and let Judith clasp it in her own.

  45

  In the clearing off the road, Mister Gottfriedsen and his nephew had turned in for the night, sleeping under their wagon. Their mules were tied to the box, champing at oats. The horses were hobbled and ruckling down their noses to one another. The rest of them weren’t talking much. The ache of leaving squeezed Seona’s throat until she hadn’t the heart to force out any but the few needful words.

  Across from her and Lily, on a log rolled up to the fire, Ian sat, Gabriel sleeping on his lap. Now and then Ian’s lips moved—speaking to Gabriel or to God. Likely both. She’d kept her distance as they traveled, knowing he was struggling to be faithful, but now she got up, stepped round the fire, and settled beside him, wrapped warm in a new woolen shawl someone had given Miss Judith, who’d given it to her. A parting present.

  Ian looked across the fire. “Lily, will ye fetch a thing for me?”

  Her mama obliged, coming back with what he’d asked for: a thick, flat leather pouch, bound with tattered ribbon. He smiled his thanks. “Give it to Seona, please.”

  She took it from Lily, who sat beside her. “What is it?”

  “Letters to my da. I’ve written him every week since I came to Mountain Laurel.”

  “You never sent them?”

  His mouth drew up crooked. “Too much a coward. Would ye take them, see them safe to Boston and into his hands?”

  He couldn’t seem to hold her gaze. He dropped it to their baby on his lap. Seona put the pouch to her face and breathed. The leather smelled of smoke. Of him.

  “I will. But, Ian . . . Is Mountain Laurel going to be all right?” That wasn’t exactly what she wanted to ask, and he didn’t answer right off. She hoped because he was searching for a truthful answer, not trying to soften a hard one.

  Lily sat in silence, watching the fire. Listening.

  “Aye, by the Almighty’s grace,” he said at last. “My uncle’s farm will never be what it was, but I don’t believe it should be.”

  Tobacco couldn’t be planted like it was all these years past. Not with the field hands run off. But Ian sounded content with that, no matter the uncertainties looming. He didn’t sound bitter. Or afraid. She’d hoped he and Thomas had made their peace on the banks of the creek that day he came back to free the ones he could. Now she suspected they had, and it gladdened her.

  “But you, Mandy . . . Miss Judith?” she pressed, thinking, And Naomi, Malcolm, and Ally. It was a wrench to her heart, all these partings. “Will you get by all right, truly?”

  “Girl-baby,” her mama said, but Ian smiled.

  “We’ll grow enough to feed ourselves come spring. That’s about as far ahead as I’m looking just now.” He brushed the crown of Gabriel’s head, silky white blond.

  Another boy with moonbeam hair. This one forever hers. Seona stifled the urge to touch those curls too, to let her hand stray near to Ian’s.

  “It’s the past I want to talk to ye about, Seona,” he said. “I want to tell ye some of what they say, the letters. I never told ye what came between Da and me. I’ve spoken of it to no one. I gave my solemn word not to, ye see?”

  She didn’t. And wasn’t sure she wanted to. Past and future—both seemed fraught with pain. She wanted to stay wrapped in the fire’s warmth, in the sound of his voice, and never go forward another day. Another moment. How was she to live without him?

  She stuffed that grief down deep to wait its time.

  “I was a lad,” he was saying now, “with no notion of the cost my silence would exact. But I’ve learned a thing or two about secrets . . . sometimes the keeping of them only compounds the harm that was d
one in the first place.” He glanced at Lily, then at her. “My da deserves to know the truth, for his own comfort. Let God be the judge if I’m wrong to offer it.” He laid a fingertip to the leather pouch. “Ye’ll hear the lies in Boston, so I mean to give ye the truth as well.”

  “This is for your ears, girl-baby,” her mama whispered, then got up and headed for their bedroll, though Ian hadn’t asked her to go. Seona wasn’t sure he noticed.

  “I was thirteen when I was made apprentice to a master cabinetmaker, Wilburt Pringle, in the town of Cambridge, near Boston. It was a six-year indenture, meant to end in me becoming a journeyman in his shop. The Pringles had no children.”

  It had been a sadness to Pringle, Ian explained, a man of middle years having no son to carry on his trade. But for his wife the lack of a child had cut deeper. Anne Pringle had been three and twenty, married for five of those years, when Ian came to board in their house in Cambridge. She was an affectionate woman, often ruffling his hair or pressing a kiss to his brow at the close of day. So had she been with her husband’s other apprentice, a lad a year younger than Ian—even with Pringle’s new journeyman, who’d seemed grown to Ian at the time but was likely no more than eighteen. “I made nothing of it, save for the comfort it lent me. I was young enough to miss my mam.”

  Sparks went up from the fire into the tree limbs. Leaves came down in golden twists. Seona dreaded what was to come.

  “When I was seventeen, the journeyman left us—to become his own master, we assumed, though the manner of his leaving was odd. Sudden. Not a word of farewell. But then we hadn’t been close—I was a child in his eyes. I shrugged it off. Our lives settled down with a deal more work fallen to me. I relished the chance to prove myself, to master the craft.”

  Soon after the journeyman’s leaving, Anne Pringle’s manner toward him changed. Ian would catch her watching him across the table at meals. Other times. He began to be aware of her, and not as a stand-in mama. He found himself waiting for her to come to the shop with tea, anticipating the brush of their fingers, her smile, her laughter. She made sure there was plenty of brushing, smiling, laughing. “I reasoned away her behavior, never quite believing she wanted what it seemed she did. Her attention flattered me, but deep down I knew what was happening was wrong, no matter how I excused it.”