Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “Our next camp session starts Sunday,” Sarah told Kathleen. “We could sign you up for Beginning Piecing, if you like.”

  “Camp will conclude for the season soon,” said Sylvia, “but afterward, I’d be happy to continue your lessons myself.”

  “Say yes,” advised Sarah. “Sylvia’s a wonderful teacher.”

  “Say yes,” echoed Rosemary, and to Sylvia, added, “We’ve got to get her hooked while we have the chance.”

  “I heard that,” said Kathleen, laughing, but within minutes she and Sylvia had made the arrangements, and Sylvia had added another weekly get-together to her schedule. Perhaps the coming winter without the campers wouldn’t be so lonely after all.

  After Kathleen and Rosemary left, Sylvia fell silent, Thomas’s words haunting her. Andrew put an arm around her shoulders and absently stroked her hair as lines from Thomas’s letter played in her thoughts. Thomas knew what it meant to find one’s great love, he had written, and he could not imagine living without her or being married to another. He had pitied Jonathan for the obstinacy that had led him to marry Charlotte when his heart belonged to Gerda. Jonathan meant to do what was honorable no matter how much it pained him, but he had wounded Gerda at least as much as himself, and he had no right to do that.

  Sylvia didn’t know if Andrew was her great love or if she was his, and there was certainly no question of her marrying anyone else, but she had learned from her ancestors’ history and had no intention of repeating it.

  She rose and took Andrew’s hand. “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  She tried to pull him to his feet, impatient. “We’re going for a walk.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Now?”

  “Yes, now. Get up.”

  “What about Margaret and Evelyn?” asked Sarah as Andrew shrugged and stood.

  “If we aren’t back in time, you and Summer can amuse them until we return.” She ignored the puzzled look Sarah and Summer exchanged, took Andrew’s arm, and steered him from the room.

  “What’s all this about?” asked Andrew as they left the manor by way of the cornerstone patio.

  “I just wanted a moment alone with you, that’s all.”

  “I gathered that, but why?”

  “You’ll find out in a minute. Honestly. I’m not taking you to the far side of the moon. Have some patience.”

  He almost managed to stifle his laugh, so Sylvia pretended she had not heard it. She quickened her step, eager to get to the north gardens and say her piece before she changed her mind.

  They sat side by side in the gazebo as they had so many times before. Sylvia took his hands in hers, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. When she open her eyes, she found Andrew staring at her curiously. “Sylvia, are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” Or perhaps she was completely out of her mind. “Andrew, dear, do you remember a particular question you asked me here, last summer in this exact spot, a very important question?”

  Andrew studied her, his face expressionless. Then he nodded.

  “Well, if you wouldn’t mind—” She cleared her throat. “I would like very much if you would ask me again.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m absolutely sure.”

  He considered. “Well, okay then.” He paused. “Sylvia . . .”

  “Yes, Andrew?”

  “What do you want for lunch?”

  “Not that question,” she spluttered, but her embarrassment turned to indignation in the moment it took her to realize he was laughing at her. “Andrew Cooper, you rascal, you know very well which question I meant.”

  “You can’t blame me for teasing you after all the times I’ve asked and you’ve refused.” He grinned. “Maybe I should wait for you to ask me.”

  Sylvia was prepared to do just that, but only as a last resort. “We’re going to do this properly or not at all,” she said, her voice as stern as she could make it considering how warmly Andrew was smiling at her. “So unless you’re no longer interested—”

  “I’m interested.”

  He took her hands again, and in words as simple and straightforward as they were affectionate, he told her again how much he loved her, and how he had loved her since he was a boy. He told her that he would love her the rest of his life and that he would prove that to her every day they were together. He promised to do everything in his power to make her as happy as she made him, and that he would be the luckiest and proudest man alive if she would consent to be his wife.

  This time, Sylvia told him she would.

  Andrew was dancing Sylvia about the gazebo in celebration when Sarah arrived to warn them that a car was coming up the drive. She had to call out over the sound of their laughter, and after she delivered the message, she regarded them curiously. “What are you two so happy about?”

  “We’ll tell you later,” said Sylvia before Andrew could speak. She wanted to enjoy their promise in privacy a little while longer before announcing the news to their friends.

  Sylvia and Andrew met Margaret and her mother at the front door. As soon as they entered, their smiles and cheerful greetings seemed to bring the crisp freshness of the bright autumn day in with them, banishing the few lingering worries Andrew’s proposal had not quite driven from Sylvia’s mind. By the time introductions were made, Sarah’s husband, Matt, had arrived to take the visitors’ bags to their rooms—except for one tote Evelyn wished to keep with her—and Sarah announced that lunch was ready.

  Sylvia and Andrew led Margaret and Evelyn to the banquet hall, where they found Summer making one last adjustment to the centerpiece. Sylvia thanked her with a smile. Her young friends realized how important this meeting was to her, and they had not overlooked even the smallest detail. Sylvia only hoped that if they had any more surprises in store for her, they would wait until Margaret and Evelyn retired for the night. She took more than a little pleasure in knowing that none of their surprises could beat the one she had for them.

  Matt and Sarah joined them, completing their party of seven. The cook himself served the meal, and he presented every dish in as elegant a fashion as Sylvia could have desired.

  As everyone got acquainted, Sylvia used the opportunity to take her guests’ measure. Evelyn reminded her of Rosemary Cullen in age and appearance, and she seemed somewhat shy and reserved, quite the opposite of her outgoing daughter. Sylvia had to hide a smile watching Margaret, for the former camper seemed so delighted to be at Elm Creek Manor again that Sylvia figured the cook could have served cold hamburgers from a local take-out joint and she might not have noticed. As they enjoyed the meal, Margaret described her camp experiences to her mother and reminisced with Sarah and Summer about the highlights of the week. She still kept in touch with all of the students in her Heirloom Machine Quilting class, and they had recently completed a row round-robin through the mail.

  “We’re planning a reunion here next summer,” said Margaret. “We’re just waiting for our registration forms.”

  “I’m glad you’ll be back,” said Sylvia, and she turned to Evelyn. “Will you be joining us, too?”

  Evelyn shrugged shyly. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I don’t travel much anymore. I’m more comfortable in my own place.”

  “We’d do our best to make you comfortable here, too,” said Summer, with the smile that never failed to charm the object of her attention.

  “Think about it, Mom,” urged Margaret.

  “If you wouldn’t think it an intrusion on your friends, I’d consider it, except—” Evelyn looked around the table. “I hate to admit it in such company, but I don’t know how to quilt.”

  “What better reason to attend quilt camp than to learn?” said Sarah, and Sylvia chimed in her agreement. After assuring Evelyn she would not be the only new quilter—or “Newbie,” as Summer called them—Evelyn brightened and said she would plan to come.

  Andrew leaned over to murmur in Sylvia’s ear. “First Kathleen and now Evelyn. Two converts in one day.
Not bad.”

  Sylvia pursed her lips at him as if to scold him for being saucy, but she knew he saw the merriment in her eyes.

  After dessert—a heavenly confection of fudge cake and white chocolate mousse that Sylvia decided ought to be added to their regular menu—the conversation turned to the memoir. Margaret and Evelyn peppered her with so many eager questions that Sylvia marveled they had been able to hold them in so long. She sent Sarah to fetch the memoir, and she read aloud from it when they asked her to elaborate on certain events she had mentioned in her letters. Evelyn and Margaret listened most intently when Sylvia read the passages in which Gerda described her unsuccessful attempts to find Joanna. Perhaps the stresses of the day had finally caught up with her, or perhaps it was sharing the journal with the woman whose startling inquires had been the impetus for all Sylvia had learned about her family, but Sylvia found herself so overcome with emotion that she frequently stumbled over the simplest phrases, until she was so embarrassed by her unusual lack of composure that she passed the book to her guests so they could read it for themselves. But no one at the table would permit it. Instead they gently urged her to read on, for they wanted to hear Gerda’s words in Sylvia’s voice.

  Heartened, Sylvia took a deep breath and continued until the final page of the memoir. Then she closed the book softly and rested it on her lap. She imagined Gerda sitting in her room in the west wing of Elm Creek Manor, pen in hand, pouring her grief and longing into the slender, leather-bound book, never knowing who would one day read her words or how they would be received. Or perhaps she had written in the peace of the north gardens, seated in the gazebo, which Hans might have designed not to conceal runaway slaves but to preserve the memory of one, the woman who had given him his beloved adopted son. She imagined Gerda wrapping the completed record in the Underground Railroad quilt and locking it safely away in her hope chest along with the Birds in the Air quilt and the unique Log Cabin quilt, which she had been unable to give to Joanna. Then, or perhaps years later, or perhaps not until her last will and testament, she had given the slender key to Lucinda, who eventually bestowed it upon Sylvia.

  After a long moment, Evelyn broke the silence. “Margaret—” She paused to clear her throat, and she removed her glasses to dab at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Margaret, dear, would you hand me my bag, please?”

  Margaret nodded, and after a quick, inscrutable glance at Sylvia, she retrieved the large tote from beneath the table and placed it on her mother’s lap, allowing most of the weight to fall upon her own hands. Evelyn unfastened the straps, pulled back the zipper, and withdrew a folded bundle wrapped in a cotton sheet. Sylvia immediately recognized it as a quilt, and judging by the reverence with which Evelyn cradled it, there could be no mistaking which quilt it was.

  Sylvia stifled a gasp of delight as Evelyn and Margaret unfolded their own Birds in the Air quilt and held it up so all could see. What a joy it was to behold the mysterious quilt again in all its tattered, water-stained glory!

  Sarah and Summer cried out in surprise, for Sylvia had told them how fragile the antique quilt was, and they had never expected to see it except in photographs. Sylvia watched fondly as her two young friends pointed out the features of the quilt to each other—the fabric held in place with careful, painstaking stitches; the worn batting with the cotton hulls still visible through the muslin lining; the delicate, cryptic quilting patterns that Sylvia had once dared think might depict scenes from Elm Creek Manor.

  “Thank you so much for bringing the quilt with you,” said Sylvia as all admired it. “I only wish my friend Grace Daniels were here. She would have been thrilled to see it.”

  “Oh, I imagine she’ll get her chance,” said Margaret.

  “I’m afraid she’s several hours away by airplane, or I’d be on the phone inviting her over at this very moment.”

  “Then she can see it the next time she’s in town,” said Evelyn.

  Puzzled, Sylvia glanced at Andrew before replying. “What do you mean?”

  Evelyn gazed at the quilt as if memorizing it, then sighed and passed it to Sylvia. “Just promise me you’ll take good care of it.”

  “What—” Sylvia took the quilt, but her eyes were fixed on her guest. “You can’t mean you’re giving this to me.”

  “I am.”

  “But . . . but it’s priceless. It’s a family heirloom.”

  “It is a family heirloom,” agreed Evelyn. “But not my family’s.”

  “Evelyn—” As much as Sylvia longed to keep the quilt, she could not do it, knowing her only claim to it was the name Evelyn’s mother had given it and a few odd quilting designs that could be interpreted many different and contradictory ways. “As much as I would love to, I simply can’t accept this. We have no proof that your quilt has any connection to me or to Elm Creek Manor. Just because it was once called the Elm Creek Quilt—”

  “We have more proof than that,” said Margaret. “You’re forgetting the quilt had another name. It was also called the Runaway Quilt.”

  Sylvia felt her reply catch in her throat.

  Gently, Evelyn said, “In her memoir, Gerda wrote that she learned Josiah Chester would sell off his captured runaways to family or acquaintances in Georgia or the Carolinas.”

  Sylvia could only nod. She took Andrew’s hand and held it tightly.

  “My grandfather had a brother,” said Evelyn. “That brother had a tobacco plantation in Virginia, and his name was Josiah Chester.”

  That evening, long after her guests and her friends had retired for the night, Sylvia lay awake in bed, her mind so full of wonder that she could not rest. Moonlight spilled in through her window, enticing her out from beneath her quilts. She dressed warmly and, with great care, took up the Runaway Quilt from the quilt rack in the corner.

  Outside the air was cool and still. She crossed the bridge over Elm Creek and made her way to the remains of the cabin Gerda, Hans, and Anneke had once called home. In the moonlight the half-buried logs looked straighter and sturdier than they seemed by day, and yet at the same time they more closely resembled the tree roots Sylvia had first thought them. The night had enchanted the ruin, making it both a more solid foundation and a living thing rooted in the earth, ever growing, ever changing.

  Sylvia tucked her hands into the fold of the quilt to warm them, marveling at chance and fate, and wondering if those long-ago events had not instead been shaped by a merciful providence. If Joanna had not lost her way in the storm, if she had not stumbled across the abandoned cabin and found shelter there, the lives of the Bergstrom family would have taken an entirely different, forever unknowable course. Sylvia might never have existed.

  Yet she very well might have. She would never know whether Joanna was truly her great-grandmother. She had reminded Margaret and Evelyn of this, repeatedly, warning them that they might be giving their precious family heirloom to someone with even less certain ties to the quiltmaker than their own. But they insisted Sylvia keep it, saying they were acting on faith rather than proven fact.

  So Sylvia accepted the quilt with a grateful heart.

  She allowed her gaze to travel from the ruins of the cabin to the sky. She found the North Star, as bright and as constant as when Joanna had followed it to freedom, but a freedom that was not destined to endure. For Joanna’s son, the dream had come true, although he was never to know the sacrifice his mother had made in allowing only herself to be taken away, though she must have longed to bring him with her, even into slavery, if only to hold him one last time.

  A wind stirred, rustling the boughs of the elm trees lining the road to the back of Elm Creek Manor. Sylvia snuggled her hands deeper into the quilt and turned back toward home.

  She passed the red barn Hans Bergstrom had built into the side of the hill, twenty paces east of what had once been the cabin’s front door. She crossed the bridge over Elm Creek, and from there she spotted a light in a window. Andrew’s room. He likely had heard her rise and depart, and even now waited for he
r safe return. She wondered if Joanna had seen a light in the window of the Bergstrom home upon her arrival so long ago, and if she had found comfort in its warm glow.

  Sylvia gazed to the heavens and said a prayer for Joanna, hoping, as Gerda had, that she had at last found the peace and comfort denied her in life. For Sylvia knew by faith if not by fact that Joanna had planned to return to Elm Creek Manor for her son. That much was evident in every stitch of the Runaway Quilt, which Joanna must have pieced by night after her day’s work was done, quilting patterns to help her remember where she had traveled, how she had made her journey, so that one day she could find her way back again. In stolen moments she had labored on her masterpiece, recalling the signal she had helped Gerda make, biding her time until she could once again take flight like the Birds in the Air she created from the castoff fabric of the household, piecing a symbolic map from the discarded clothing of her owners, who must have mocked “that runaway’s quilt” and the inscrutable effort of the woman who made it. Somehow Joanna had been prevented from following the patchwork cues north to Elm Creek Manor, and the descendants of those who had enslaved her had claimed her quilt as their own. Joanna would never know that generations later, her quilt would complete the journey she herself had been unable to undertake.

  Sylvia climbed the stairs and crossed the veranda. She was home. This was her home, and this was her family, as it had always been and would ever be. Whoever her real grandparents were, she was the descendant of Joanna and Anneke and Gerda. The women who had shaped her origins had shaped her, and she would cherish them all as her ancestors, and accept their mystery as she had all else they had bequeathed her.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Runaway Quilt is a work of fiction. The debate about the role of quilts as signals on the Underground Railroad is ongoing, with the oral tradition often at odds with documented historical fact. In this novel, I have tried to remain faithful to the historical record while also presenting a plausible explanation for the evolution of the legend. For more information about quilts during the era of the Underground Railroad and the Civil War, please see Barbara Brackman’s excellent resources, Clues in the Calico, Quilts from the Civil War, and Civil War Women.