When Winter Comes

by V. A. Shannon

  WHEN WINTER COMES

  V.A. SHANNON

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  Author Notes

  Acknowledgments

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by V.A. Shannon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-1651-4

  eISBN-10: 1-4967-1651-5

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-1650-7

  Prologue

  December 1859

  Christmas Eve. Our parlor is decorated in readiness for the holiday. Twisted along the mantelshelf is a long skein of ivy and in the hearth below a fire of fragrant cedar logs blazes up. The golden-skinned winter apples that sit in a blue dish at my elbow mingle their scent with the spicy fragrance of the little evergreen tree over in the corner of the room. Jacob dug it up yesterday, and has planted it in a wooden pail.

  Beneath its branches the children have set out their shoes in a neat row, three sets of them filled with flowers, in the certain expectation that St. Nicholas will come in the night and exchange the flowers for gingerbread and oranges. Even Meggie, who at twelve—nearly thirteen—considers herself vastly grown up, and who knows that the gingerbread boys I made yesterday in our kitchen are the same gingerbread boys that will make their way into those shoes, and that jovial Saint Nick is really just her gray-beard old pa, has shined up her good leather boots in readiness.

  After the girls had finally gone to their beds, chattering and laughing and declaring that they would stay awake and creep downstairs at midnight to catch Saint Nick at his work, Jacob and I set to and decorated the tree so that it would be a surprise in the morning. Clipped to every branch is a tin holder with a candle waiting to be lit, and a little carved animal hanging from a string—pigs and horses, ducks and rabbits and bears. There are angels, too, and stars and hearts. Jacob has whittled these in the evenings, using scraps of wood left over from his work. My husband is a craftsman, making chairs and cupboards and tables that sell in Sacramento and Yuba, and even as far away as some of the fine shops in the big towns on the coast.

  This is my life, now. The Christmas tree and the evergreens on the hearth. The three little pairs of shoes, with their oranges and gingerbread. The gifts sent from Jacob’s family back in the Old Country waiting to be unwrapped and exclaimed over after breakfast in the morning; and, across the room, Jacob asleep in his big chair, his hands folded across his chest, which rises and falls with the slow rumble of his breathing.

  On the table before me is my journal, given to me by my husband this very evening. I cannot say it is a welcome gift, though it is a beautiful thing, bound in green leather with a little silver lock. There is a matching key on a silver chain that Jacob put round my neck, and a kiss with it.

  But truly, what is there to write? The purpose of a journal is to write down the events of the day, and for the past thirteen years every day has passed the same, and I guess I have been content it should be so; caring for my family, with nothing out of the ordinary to fill the pages. But I must show some signs of appreciating this kind thought. So I have set myself down with my pen and the blotter, a smile on my face and great reluctance in my heart, to record the events of this day.

  I write by candlelight and the light of the fire, so a long finger of black shadow follows my pen as it scratches across the clean white paper. Behind it comes a sad trail of crossings out and blots, for my penmanship leaves much to be desired. Around the room, shadows jump and startle, as the fire shifts and settles. A last tongue of flame suddenly snatches up an overlooked morsel of kindling. It flares up, bright and alive, before dying away, finally, to red embers. The red embers fall in upon themselves, and give up their heat at last, and crumble into gray ash. Outside the wind is rising. It moans, and rattles the windowpanes. And with it comes the snow.

  1

  There was a special service in church this morning, which was filled to bursting.

  Preacher Holden—well now, there is a storyteller. He can tell a Bible story like no one else I ever heard. His tales always seem to start somewhere in the middle, like a traveler who’s been set down smack in the middle of a wood. Off he sets on his journey, sometimes looking ahead and sometimes over his shoulder. Soon enough this thing reminds him of that, and that thing recalls another, and Preacher Holden wanders round the highways and byways of his story until, by some mystery known only to him, he arrives back where he began.

  His services are well attended, and not just out of a sense of duty, or a fear of being judged wanting by our neighbors. It’s because one minute we’re thinking how hard the benches are and what we’ll be eating for our dinners, and the next, we’re right along with Jonah, trapped in that whale’s stomach and feeling miserable as all get-out. At the same time we’re feeling sorry for the whale with that great undigested lump inside him, hammering and kicking at his insides and wailing to be set free.

  If it’s the feast for the prodigal son, our mouths water for the smell of the hot butter and cinnamon in Mrs. Jackson’s apple turnovers that she’s so famous for; or we’ll find ourselves sitting beside the happy couple at Cana and quietly wishing for something a bit stronger than water to toast them in.

  When he comes to the end of the story, Preacher Holden lets us sit for a minute and digest his words. Then we come to realize that along the way he’s managed to set traps for the unwary, adding in sly comments that point to those of us who’ve sinned somewhat and need a little gentle reminding of it. And he always ends up with a few home truths that catch out those of us that have let our minds wander away.

  He had plenty of those today, for it is during his story that the snow begins falling on the other side of the big arched window that we subscribed for last spring. Snow on Christmas Eve! The children are wriggling in their seats, desperate to get outside, and even the older folks who should know better are nudging their neighbors, jerking their heads toward the windows with their eyebrows raised and smiling themselves silly, as if they’d never seen snow before.

  Perhaps some of them hadn’t, for it almost never snows here. We have a few days of pretty heavy rain through D
ecember and January, but other than that, even when it’s cold enough to want the fires lit from breakfast onward and an extra quilt or two on the beds, most days give us blue skies and sun. The grass stays green and the crops are good and lush year-round, and the animals fare well.

  Our own animals do better than most, for I feed them with a generous hand. They don’t amount to much, a few chickens and a goat or two. We don’t have cows. I don’t like to hear their lowing, a sad and lonely noise to my way of thinking. The rooster crowing, good and loud, and the hens squawking over which has the choicest bit of potato peeling or the last shuck of corn, that’s a noise I like to hear.

  I wonder if Jacob thought to shut them safely into the henhouse when the snow started up. Once the thought has entered my head I cannot shift it, and I stop listening to the Bible story and think about the snow instead.

  Preacher Holden announces the last hymn. It’s one of my favorites, “Lord, We Thank Thee for This Day.” Bustling up the aisle toward the little upright pianoforte comes Mrs. Holden—his mother, not his wife, for Preacher Holden is a single young man of but eight-and-twenty. He is exceeding handsome, with dark flashing eyes and brown hair curling over his starched white collar, so attendance at his church might not be just on account of his storytelling skills. But he has his eye on Betsey Mueller, a pretty girl of eighteen or so. With three much older sisters all long since married and families of their own, I guess Betsey’s arrival was a surprise to her ma, who must have thought herself long since free of the burden of child-rearing. I know the family well. Betsey’s father, Heinrich, owns the lumberyard along with my husband, and Heinrich and Jacob were young men together in Germany before they set out to adventure to the New World and pitched up here in California.

  Mrs. Holden is a widow, and on the lookout for husband number three, or so they say. She’s in an outfit I’ve not seen before. It’s a sober enough shade of blue, in keeping with Preacher Holden’s views on appropriate dress for women, but even so, as she rustles past me I hear the distinctive sound of a silk taffeta petticoat. There’s a hint of lace at her wrists, too, and some startling green and yellow feathers in her bonnet. She seats herself at the keyboard with a girlish shake of her head that sets her curls dancing—curls that have surely seen the benefit of blacking lotion as well as the curl papers—and a single yellow feather detaches itself from the bonnet and goes floating up into the air.

  My close friend Minnie Arbuthnot raises her eyebrows at me from across the aisle. Her mouth twitches, and despite my increasing fears for my poor chickens, mine does the same. Respectable wives and mothers we might be, but when we are together we can’t help laughing over any silly thing, just as much as the foolish girls in the schoolroom. I bite my lips together, my shoulders shaking, and look down at the floor until I can control myself.

  I’ve left seven-year-old Hannah and six-year-old Clara at home with Jacob, who has a head cold and needs to stay in the warm. But I have my Meggie to one side of me, and we raise to our feet along with the rest, opening our hymnals. On the other side of me is old Peabody, the owner of the town mercantile, as close with a smile as he is with a cent. He only comes to church as the chance to get warm for nothing. But even Mr. Peabody can’t sit when all else are standing, so with a great show of suffering he pulls himself to his feet, disclosing the fact that he has been sitting upon a newspaper. It’s one of the local scandal sheets that spreads speculation and tittle-tattle, not a respectable sort of periodical at all.

  Mrs. Holden strikes up the opening chords of the hymn. I open my mouth and take a deep breath, ready to sing. Mr. Peabody’s newspaper slithers to the floor and my eyes follow it, and I suddenly make sense of the upside-down print of the headline. My mouth stays open but not a sound comes out.

  We come out of church to find that the snow has stopped, with the paths and tree branches frosted as thick as a white layer cake. Folks are saying how it looks a right pretty picture, and asking one another if they think it’ll stay put for a day or two more. But I have no need to squint up at the flat white sky above us to know that a big storm is on the way. I can smell it and taste it in the air.

  I take a firm hold of Meggie’s hand, and we set off along the path that will lead us around the back of the church and out of the town. I move at such a pace that the poor child has to fairly run to keep up with me, nodding and smiling at my neighbors as I go and hoping I look sociable enough, but with no desire to stop and pass the time of day. Our headlong flight is checked, though. Preacher Holden emerges from the crowd with his mother on his arm, and I am bidden by good manners to stop in my tracks and bid them Season’s Greetings.

  In his hand he carries old Peabody’s paper. He sees me looking at it and gives a half laugh.

  “I see you have noticed—I’m afraid I had reason to reprimand Mr. Peabody for bringing this vulgar gossip-sheet into the Lord’s House.” He clears his throat. “But I reckon that if anyone is deserving of being in the Lord’s presence this day, it is this fine gentleman.”

  He holds the paper up, to display what had snagged my attention in church: the likeness of a weak-faced man with wispy fine hair, and the headline.

  DIED. In Sonoma County, Mr. HENRY

  EDDY, age 43, late of Mass., a pioneer of

  1846, and well known as the heroic rescuer

  of the “Donner party.”

  With an effort, I wrench my eyes away from the paper and bring them back to Preacher Holden’s face. There is an avid look in his eyes that no amount of piety can conceal. I know what his next words will be before he even opens his mouth.

  “And as for that other wretched fellow who accompanied him on his journey—Keseberg—well, he is in sore need of our prayers, that much is certain.”

  I can make no answer. I mutter something foolish about the snow; then I pick up my skirts and fairly run out of the churchyard, Meggie at my heels, and Preacher and Mrs. Holden openmouthed behind me.

  2

  I have always believed that I would meet Mr. Eddy again. It would be a day like any other; a blowy day in spring maybe, or the high heat of midsummer. I would be walking along the street in my print frock and bonnet, on my way to the mercantile perhaps, or taking the air with my husband and children on a Sunday afternoon.

  And Mr. Eddy would be there.

  He would walk toward me, and as he passed by he would look at me something quizzical. His stride might falter some, thinking that perhaps he knew me. He’d tip his hat. He might smile a little. But then he would look again.

  In that moment, sick horror would go sliding across his face, and oh! I would fall upon Mr. Eddy! My nails out to claw at his face and my fists ready to knock his teeth down his throat!

  My poor husband would have to pull me away in shame, with all the townsfolk watching. Mr. Eddy would turn tail and flee. But no matter how fast he might go flying down the street, my words would go screaming along behind him, “Liar! LIAR! LIAR!”

  It is what I have been waiting for, all these years. But I have been cheated. He has died a hero, and been written in the newspapers so; and his lies will live on, immortalized.

  Dear God, there is no justice in the world!

  If I cannot tell Mr. Eddy what I think of him to his face, then I must use my pen to cut through the twisty tangle of lies that he planted and that have grown up these long years to conceal the truth. Now they will fall away and the straight facts of the matter show through at long last. How I knew Mr. Eddy, and Mr. Keseberg, too; and how Mr. Eddy, carpenter, coffin maker, betrayed us both at the last.

  Mr. Eddy’s death is not the beginning of my story. It is where my story ends. But with the ending comes the beginning, and my story starts back in Cincinnati, when I was but fifteen. Yes. I may as well start there as anywhere.

  My parents were both born in Cincinnati, when it was nothing more than a handful of little farms, with a population of maybe thirty families. It never was a peaceful place. Even then it was known for lawlessness, with the farmers turnin
g their corn crop into moonshine and selling it to the soldiers stationed at Fort Washington. In no more than thirty years, this little hamlet changed beyond recognition, and by the time I was born it was become a city, grown fat on the proceeds of slaughter.

  Great herds of pigs, a hundred strong or more, were whipped hourly through the unpaved streets, leaving a thick, stinking trail behind them, and their desperate squealing chorus from the slaughterhouses was in our ears from dawn until dusk. Grindhouses turned teeth, snouts, tusks, tails, and gristle into fertilizer, to be shipped to the South for use on the great cotton plantations. And in every other street in our part of the city were the render-houses where they boiled down the pig fat. Some of this went to the army to grease their bullet casings, and some to the cotton mills of the North to lubricate the spinning and weaving machines. What was left went to the other factories in the city, and the creeks and streams that fed into the mighty Ohio River foamed with the foul-smelling run-off from the dyers, tanners, candle-makers, soapmakers, and the rest. The sky and the streets alike were clotted with the smoking stench from the factory chimneys, a ripe, greasy fog that clung to everything it touched; and the black smoke of the steamers churning their way up and down the river all the livelong day contributed to the choking miasma that filled our lungs and stung our eyes.

  Cincinnati was a rich city, with money streaming in just as fast as the hog meat was shipped out. For the factory owners living in their grand mansions in the leafy airiness of Auburn Hill, I daresay it was a splendid life. But my life was not. For the life I was born into was a hard one, and a brutal one.

  I had two brothers a couple of years younger than me, and then a whole parcel of snot-nosed, grizzling little sisters. With them and Ma and Pa, there were ten of us in two rooms. We dealt with one another with a cruel, low cunning, using fists and teeth without a second thought, if it meant a rag to sleep under for the night or some scrap of food.