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When Winter Comes

Page 28

by V. A. Shannon


  I asked him, straight out, “Sir, will you take me with you as your servant?” I could see that his plate was empty. “Didn’t you enjoy your dinner? And was the dessert good?” For again, it was all vanished.

  “You can see that I can cook,” I said. “I will keep a good house for you, and be honest in all my dealings, and I ask no more than a room to sleep in and food upon the table.”

  “No,” he said.

  My heart sank to my boots. I had talked myself into believing he would take me, and I had not thought beyond this chance.

  “I do not need a servant, for my sons are grown and gone. I am alone, and I live in one room at my lumberyard and eat in with the yard hands. But”—and he turned a fine shade of red—“I will build you a fine house and care for you, if you will do me the great honor of becoming my wife.”

  I did not love him. To marry without love, I thought, was no more than a way of earning my keep on my back, and made me no better than my ma, and the other wharfside whores. What I wanted was honest employment, where I would earn my own money for a day’s labor. But I could see that I had no choice, though I thought, even then, that I owed it to him to deal fair with him or not at all. So with a shaking voice and my eyes to the floor, I told him of my trouble.

  He reached across and took my hand.

  “Yes, my dear, I know of it. I have been married before and have two children of my own, and you are not as good at concealing secrets as you might think. But it makes no difference to me. And another thing”—and here, he looked anywhere but at me, and turned an even darker shade of red, if such a thing were possible—“another thing. I know not what you were doing before you came here, and if you wish to tell me you may. But I will never ask.”

  I looked him straight in the eye.

  “Sir, I cannot say. But I promise you it was nothing deceitful, and caused no harm to any living being.” He nodded. My word was enough for him.

  And with that my fate was sealed. I promised to care for him and keep him, and honor him. And I swore to myself, that I would do nothing to harm him. For these thirteen years, I have kept that promise. He has been everything I expected: a decent man.

  I thought myself grateful to him. There have been times when I have been sad that I cannot look at him and have my heart turn over with the passion and longing I once dreamed of. But even though I did not marry for love, it has grown within me over the years. I love this kind man, who has given me my house and my yard, my little town and my church and my neighbors. And my children, most of all.

  But this happiness is itself a kind of misery.

  For this is Mr. Eddy’s heroic deed. To have assisted in making Mr. Keseberg’s name the byword for depravity across our entire Nation. And to leave me in the very greatest of fear, beyond all fear that can be known, that one day my secret will be discovered. And then my husband will look at me with new eyes, and my happy life will be over.

  45

  This is a book of darkness. It is what lies within my heart, and no one knows of it but me. I carry it with me always, this tale of death and despair.

  I clothe it in homespun, darn it into stockings, bake it into apple pies, dig it into my vegetable plot, take it to church with me. The summer sky reminds me of it, and the fall wind that whistles down from the mountains; and the snow, worst of all.

  It hardly ever snows here, and I thank God for it.

  I draw a neat line beneath these words and put down my pen, and stare into the fire for a moment, thinking; yes, it is a terrible story. A story of such suffering that it haunts me, day and night, and will stay with me until I die.

  But in writing my journal I have remembered something else: the happy times we had. To outside eyes our little company might seem to have argued and fought its way across the great Continent of America; and a deal of that is true. But I had not grown up knowing such love and kindness as I did on our terrible journey, and it is a sobering thought.

  I pick up my pen again.

  At the bottom of the page, I write,

  “This is a true account of my journey with the Donner Party.”

  I sign my name. My real name, the one I was known by on that journey and before I married Jacob; and the date, November 6, 1860.

  I rise heavily to my feet, and take my journal into our bedroom. I lock it, for the last time, with the key that hangs around my neck on its silver chain. And I take the chain from around my neck, and place it with the journal, my pink kerchief, my silver dollars, Mrs. Donner’s drawing of bluebells, and Leanna’s lock of hair, under the floorboard beneath the bed.

  November 6, 1860; the day of the presidential election. Today it will be decided: the fate of our Nation.

  Although the new Township Hall will not be completed until the spring, elections have already been held for the council members. Jacob is to be the township officer, which is a great honor. As such, he is away all day helping to supervise the ballot, which is being held at the Dining Rooms on Main Street. It should be held at the local courthouse, but we don’t possess such a thing in our town. Disputes here are mostly settled by Sheriff Jackson—those that have not already been settled by a fistfight.

  It is expected to be exceedingly busy. Jacob tells me that the sheriff will be standing by with a couple of deputies, for there might be some trouble, given what strong opinions folks have.

  With a perfectly straight face—but despite himself, a smile in his voice—he adds that it is a good job the members of the Ladies’ Quilting Bee will not be attending the vote. News of our screeching and screaming and the subsequent imbibing of spirits spread through the town like wildfire, no doubt by Mrs. Gerald’s doing.

  Jacob and the other officials have a fine dinner planned for after the ballot is closed and the papers locked safely away. I doubt he will be back until well after dark. With no supper to cook for him, and an hour or so before the children arrive home from school, I think to rest for a while.

  I lower myself onto the bed, and pull the quilt over me. The new baby kicks inside me. The dust motes swirl in the thin afternoon sunshine. I watch them for a while, my eyes heavy.

  The trees have turned color and the leaves begun to drop. It is a blessing to welcome these days of crisp mornings, the nights turning cool at long last. Some things have changed in our town.

  Mr. McGillivray, whose children came to school at the beginning of the year in rags and bare feet, struck lucky with his gold claim after all these long years. He came into town looking for land to buy and wishing to build himself a great house to show off his wealth. Jacob accepted the commission to build the house, and I managed to persuade him to sell Mr. McGillivray the land over at the lake.

  When the McGillivray house is finished, Jacob will start on ours. I gave in to his dream of a grand house when I realized that four children in one room was an impossibility; but Jacob has agreed for us to stay here, and has purchased the woodland that butts onto our land at the back, so he can add to what we already have. He is thrilled with the notion that at long last he will be getting his beloved wraparound porch and fancy balustrades and the rest.

  I am thankful that I will not lose my garden, though my view across the pasture is something spoiled. The land has been purchased by some farm people. They have fenced it round and ploughed up the violets and poppies and tall grasses, and are hard at work planting rows of orange trees.

  As I expected, a new schoolteacher arrived at the start of October, formally appointed by the school board. She is something young and from a smart college back East and full of modern ideas about education for women. Even though school has only been back a few weeks, she has already filled Meggie’s head with notions about applying to go away to college herself, when she turns sixteen.

  I wish with all my heart that my clever girl should do something wonderful with her life, but the thought of her traveling back East and leaving me behind is almost more than I can bear. Like many things, I keep that thought to myself. Meggie is thrilled at the prospect, an
d Jacob mighty proud of her, and beginning to put aside the money to pay for it.

  I have no need of Martha now, with so much time on my hands. She did not marry her young man, Simon Cooke. He left his employment at the blacksmithery and went off to join the railroad company. There has been some talk these months past of building a railroad that will enable a journey all the way from the East Coast to the West in a matter of days. Nothing is decided, and Jacob says it will be years, perhaps, before this plan comes to anything. But in the meantime the railroad company decided to carry out some work to see if it would be possible to open up a pass through the mountain range. They came recruiting for laborers, and I guess Simon Cooke thought to earn a good wage with them; he needed to provide not only for Martha when they married but also his widowed mother and his two little sisters. But he was killed in an accident when they were blasting with dynamite.

  Martha finds herself in a poor fix, now, with a child on the way and no husband. She has stayed living at home with her mother, who makes her life a misery, or so I hear.

  Mr. Sahid’s lending library has done well, though his store did not. It seems that few folks share my love of exotic foods and spices. So Mr. Sahid cleared out the shop space and turned it into an office, with a desk and a printing press, and now we have a town newspaper.

  Folks have been quick to step up with a story or two for print. First of all was an account given by Mr. McGillivray about his years spent working his mine claim, and how it felt to strike it rich at long last. Some folks think of his story as boastful pride in his new money, and I doubt his wife is so pleased to see her name in print, with a description of their privations and how their children suffered. But the story sold a number of newspapers and I guess Mr. Sahid was thrilled with the success of his new venture.

  It seems to have given him the idea for a series of articles about leading figures in the town, and he stops me one day when I am passing on my way to the mercantile, saying that he would like to write up something about Jacob. Would I ask him to step into Mr. Sahid’s office one day, when it is convenient? Of course, I will not.

  I do not use the lending library anymore, and miss it greatly. And I walk a different route to the mercantile now, and avoid speaking to Mr. Sahid if I can.

  “Mama?”

  I open my eyes.

  Meggie is standing beside me, holding Clara by the hand. Hannah is there, too. Meggie, bless the child, has given the little ones their supper. Their hair is neatly braided and their faces scrubbed, ready for bed.

  I must have slept a long time. The sun has gone. The room is shadowed and dim, and the evening air strikes chill. Meggie crosses to the dresser, and lights the oil lamp that stands there. Its gentle light blooms around her and I see how her eyes are the purple-blue of the anemones that grow at the feet of my rosebushes, and her hair corn-color. My lovely girl, slim and tall and as unlike her sisters as can be, for Clara and Hannah are two sweet little dumplings of girls, with their father’s mild blue eyes and silvery fair hair that shades to a mousy brown in the winter.

  “We want you to read to us, Mama,” says Hannah, holding out the Grimms’ Book of Fairy Tales that Jacob’s family sent for her birthday. Meggie takes my hand, and helps me to my feet and we set off to their room, with the girls’ new little kitten, Bertie, whisking up the stairs ahead of us.

  Clara and Hannah climb into bed and I sit beside them. Bertie jumps up and walks round and round in a circle, kneading the covers until they are to his liking, and Meggie perches herself at the foot of the bed, unwilling to forgo a story at bedtime, no matter how grown up she considers herself.

  Clara turns over the pages of the book until she finds the right page, and Meggie sighs.

  “Not that one again! Clarrie, I have heard this story more times than I can count!” Clara ignores her, and sticks her thumb in her mouth, a habit I cannot cure, no matter how much bitter aloe juice I paint on it.

  I sigh myself, and take a breath, and begin to read. “The story of the twelve dancing princesses. Once upon a time there were—”

  “Wait, Mama!” cries Hannah. “We haven’t chosen our dresses yet!”

  She and Clara turn to the color plate of all twelve princesses in a variety of colorful gowns, and huddle together picking out which they would like to be. Hannah wishes to be the princess in the gold dress, and Clara in red. I am to be in blue, and Meggie in green.

  When that is settled, I continue with the story. “Each night their father, the king, locks them in their room in the castle to keep them from harm’s way. But each morning the servants find a pair of worn-out dancing shoes at the foot of each bed.”

  “What a mystery!” I say, widening my eyes at the girls. Clara takes her thumb out of her mouth long enough to giggle.

  “So,” I continue, “the king offers a reward to any brave man who can solve the mystery. If he does, he can marry one of the princesses. And if he doesn’t . . . ?”

  “He will have his head chopped off!” cries Clara, gleefully.

  Hannah frowns at this. She has a very strong sense of what is fair and what is not, and feels that the punishment is something unjust. “You shouldn’t be punished if you do your best but it doesn’t work,” she says virtuously, and I smile to hear my own words repeated back to me.

  “One day,” I continue, “a poor, weary soldier passes by the castle. As a young man he set out to see the world, but he has been journeying a long time. Now he thinks he would like to lay down his sword and have a home of his own. He sees one of the princesses and falls in love with her, and decides he must solve the mystery so he can marry her and live happily ever after in the castle.

  “Now, he is lucky enough to own a cloak that makes him invisible when he puts it round himself. That night he wraps himself up in his invisibility cloak, thinking it to be a fine thing that will allow him to go where he likes and do as he pleases, and all the while keep him safe from discovery.

  “He goes and stands beneath the window of the princesses’ room. Just as the clock strikes midnight, he hears music begin to play in the distance. The window opens and all the princesses climb out down a silken ladder. Then they set off to dance their way through the forest, following the sound of the music.

  “The soldier is as enchanted as they are, and can’t help his feet from dancing along behind them. They arrive at a magic palace all made of silver and glittering precious stones. The soldier follows them into the ballroom, but a terrible thing happens: As soon as he enters the ballroom the door slams shut behind him and he is trapped.

  “He thinks at first to hide, but there is nowhere, for the room is small and crowded, and the music makes him want to dance so he cannot stand still. And now he is very frightened. As he dances the princesses might see his feet peeping out from beneath the cloak; or maybe one of them will dance too close and catch the cloak as she passes and pull it from him and he will be discovered.

  “The cloak that he had thought to give him the freedom to do as he likes and go where he pleases and no one catch him, turns into a prison. He cannot take it off, and must spend all his time making sure he stays safe inside it.

  “The poor soldier passes the night in great fear, jumping out of the way as the princesses dance round him, and dodging from this side of the room to that, hopping and skipping as he goes but all the time frightened that the princess he loves so much will find him out, and then she will be very angry that he has been so deceitful, and then all his dreams of marrying her will come to nothing.”

  “And he will still have his head chopped off!” says Clara with satisfaction.

  “Yes,” I say. “I suppose he will have his head chopped off.”

  “Poor soldier,” says softhearted Hannah. “I expect he wishes he never had that cloak.”

  “No, indeed,” I say. “He thought that hiding under the cloak would keep him safe, but it put him in worse danger still. I daresay he wishes he had left well alone, and never clapped eyes on that beautiful princess, but just carrie
d on with his soldiering and gone to some other place, far away where no one knew of him. But he didn’t.

  “When the dawn comes the magic palace vanishes away and those princesses, carrying their dancing shoes that are quite worn-out, go home and go to bed, very tired to be sure. And the soldier tells the king the mystery is solved and he marries the princess, and they all live happily ever after.”

  No matter how many times I tell this story, Hannah is always outraged at the ending. I suspect she thinks that one day I will tell the story with a different ending, but of course I cannot. Now she sits bolt upright in bed, frowning.

  “I don’t think they could have been very happy if that princess ever found out that she was married to someone who would be so deceitful and play such a nasty trick on her and her sisters! I think it would be a better story if he was found out and all the princesses shouted at him!”

  “And threw stones at him and then pushed him into the lake!” adds Clara for good measure.

  I laugh a little at my daughters, looking so angelic and sounding so bloodthirsty, and stoop to kiss them both good night.

  Meggie and I make our way back down the stairs and into the parlor, where Meggie sets herself down at the little table and bends her head over her homework.

  I plump up the cushions in Jacob’s chair, and I sit myself, and gaze into the fire, thinking of the children’s story. I wonder if that soldier would one day tell the truth of the matter—how he came there and what he had done.

  Would he conclude that the relief of laying down the heavy burden of his secret was worth the risk of losing all? And would he say to that princess, whom he loved so dearly, that he wished for something more; that he needed to make his mark on the world, and if she truly loved him she would set out with him on his journey once more?

 

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