The Loves of Leopold Singer

by L. K. Rigel

  “I’ll have my own ship one day.” Josef felt an intuitive admiration for the old Jamaican who traveled with Mr. Adams.

  “That is surely best,” said James. “I wish you well, Josef Zehetner.”

  -oOo-

  Leopold Singer hoisted a saddle, just restored to some semblance of its former glory, onto the fence to dry in the late afternoon sun. He sighed and stroked the treated leather. “If only everything lost could be restored so easily,” he said to Willie, who sat on the fence and stared into nothing.

  Two days earlier Leopold had been in Boston with Jonathan and the older boys. As the two fathers walked along Charles Street, an excited Willie had come bounding around the corner.

  “Uncle Leopold! Father! Come with me now!”

  In a shop window facing the Common, they saw the saddle. Filthy almost beyond recognition, but it was the saddle that had been on Josef’s horse when he’d disappeared.

  Jonathan had slammed the shopkeeper against a wall, ready to do damage. “How did you come by that saddle?”

  But the man knew nothing. “I took it in trade three weeks back.”

  “Who brought it in?”

  “I swear I don’t know. Fella down on his luck, I’d say. He wanted boots.”

  “God’s grace, man,” Willie said. “Didn’t you think it was odd a man would take boots for a fine saddle?”

  “Not my business…”

  “How much?” Leopold had seethed. He could see no clue on the saddle as to where it had been. His mark, a carved daffodil, was unmolested at the base of the horn.

  “I don’t want any trouble. How about you pay me the cost of the boots?”

  “That and two dollars for your trouble.” Leopold wanted the man to think of them if the fellow came back. “Another five if you recall anything useful about the seller.”

  “Sir, I will tell all without payment.” But the insulted shopkeeper didn’t refuse the two dollars. Jonathan laid the money on the counter, and they were gone.

  “I miss him every day,” Willie said now. “He must be dead, or he would have written to Mother.” After a long silence, he said, “I do love the sound of crickets in the evening.”

  Leopold traced the carved daffodil on the saddle horn with his finger. “Where are you, Josef?” he wondered aloud, just as a woman’s screams spilled out from inside the house. The front door flew open, and a little boy scrambled down the stairs.

  “Papa!” The two-year-old flew into Leopold’s arms. “Mama crying.”

  “All is well, Harry,” Leopold kissed his son on the forehead. “There’s my good boy.” He started toward the house.

  “Uncle Leopold.” Willie motioned to a strange carriage coming up the driveway. It looked brand new, and the couple in it looked brand new, too. The man seemed nothing out of the ordinary, but the woman was an amalgam of Aphrodite and Athena, radiant. She acknowledged Leopold with a friendly, straightforward smile, and he felt as if he’d lost his balance. Equally remarkable was their exotic driver, a dark man with colorful clothes and a gold hoop in one ear.

  Minutes later, Leopold bounded into the hall, Josef’s letter in his hand and the Adamses trailing behind. “Mrs. Zehetner! Gisela!”

  “She’s with Aunt Marta,” Dieter said. Steadfast Dieter, unalarmed by Leopold’s use of his mother’s first name, sat waiting for the announcement of new life. “We are to keep out, Mutti says.”

  “Mr. Singer!” Gisela started to chastise him for entering the room.

  “Gisela, a letter has just come for you.”

  “Get out!” Marta screamed. “Get away from me. You did this to me!”

  Gisela paled at the sight of Josef’s handwriting. “She said that last time,” she said to Leopold absently. “You must pay her no mind.”

  Leopold did pay Marta mind. He took her hand, and she squeezed his until she must have broken it. He remembered his mother as Marta screamed again. He looked for Gisela, but she was gone.

  In the hall, Gisela ripped open the letter, trembling, “Josef. My Josef.” She saw Dieter, so she read the letter aloud:

  Dear Mutti and Vati:

  If you are reading this letter, then I am most grateful to the persons who have agreed to post it to you. First, know that I am well.

  I was standing near the docks in Boston, so long ago that I cannot remember why. Two sailors invited me to see their ship. They kept calling me Roderick, as if they thought they knew me.

  Before I realized what was happening, she put out to sea. I was pressed to labor as a seaman. That unfortunate ship was lost when a Spanish barque tried to take her, and I floated in a jolly boat for a week with several of my crewmates until we were picked up by the Mathilde, a British merchant ship where I now serve.

  It has been hard work, but you know I have always longed for the sea so I cannot complain too much. I am not allowed to leave the ship, but that will not be the case forever. Know that I am happy. I hope one day to see you again.

  All my love, your son,

  Josef Zehetner.

  That evening, Leopold Singer opened a bottle of the Armagnac he had brought from Europe. “To this beautiful day,” he toasted. “To the beautiful Mr. and Mrs. Adams who brought one son back to us. To my beautiful bride who has given me another beautiful son, Samuel Augustin Singer. May beautiful Fortune continue to bless us all, beautiful as we are.”

  Penelope and Franklin Adams, having brought such beautiful news, were made welcome in Shermer Landing, the very place to live their ordinary life.

  Book Three

  Igraine

  1805, Ohio

  On their way west in 1805, John and Johanna Fiddyment’s wagon alternately lurched and rolled through the ruts and the smooth places made by those few who had gone before. Four young Fiddyments leaned here and there out of the vehicle, each straining to be the first one to see the site of their future home.

  “Hold!” called the man on horseback ahead of them, and the three boys jumped down to listen to their father discuss with the man where best to build.

  Johanna stayed behind, grateful the baby still slept. If she could have only three minutes together with no one yap-yapping at her, it would be a grand thing. She sighed heavily and looked around through half-closed eyes. All she saw were trees to fell and shape into board lumber, stumps to break apart and wrench from the ground, rocks to haul away and more rocks to haul away.

  Ten-year-old Igraine climbed down from the wagon. It was wonderful here, just like Sherwood Forest! When she looked deep into the trees, she anticipated Robin, Maid Marian, and Will Scarlet where her mother saw wolves, snakes, and Indians.

  For the next two years, as they clawed a home out of the land, John and Johanna tried everything from threats to beatings to pleading to get some labor out of their daughter, but she was a hopeless dreamer and never accomplished much. Igraine’s little fingers were willing, but her imagination sabotaged every resolution she made to work hard.

  She was happiest in the evenings. When the attempted work of the day was forgotten in the magical hour before bedtime, John would bring out his guitar, and Johanna sang old ballads she’d learned from her mother along with popular new songs. Igraine and her brothers sometimes joined in and sang in harmony. This was when life was sweet, when her father liked her and her brothers halted their teasing.

  Johanna’s voice was a gift from heaven. She sang loud and soft, high and low. Her alto could be a rumble like a belly laugh or a sigh like a grandmother’s hug. She used that low voice for Copper Kettle, the song about the whiskey rebels who were damned if they would pay that federalist tax:

  My daddy, he made whiskey.

  My granddaddy did too.

  We ain’t paid no whiskey tax

  Since 1792.

  We just lay there by the juniper

  While the moon is bright

  Watch them jugs a’fillin’

  In the pale moonlight.

  When Igraine heard Copper Kettle, she wanted to run away and join the Wh
iskey Rebellion, wherever it was.

  Then there was the song about poor Geordie her mother sang in a crystalline, bell-like soprano. To Igraine it was disturbing, about a woman who pleads with the judge for the life of her husband about to be hanged for hunting the King’s deer.

  Two pretty babies have I born,

  The third lies in my body.

  I’d freely part with them, every one.

  If you’d spare the life of Geordie.

  When she finished Geordie, Johanna always sat closer to her husband, and Igraine felt locked out by the gaze her parents shared. She had no doubt her mother would forsake them all if her father required it.

  There were happy and boisterous songs for the middle range, tales of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, of course. There was Mary Hamilton who lost her head over the king—but only after she bore his baby; and Matty Groves who seduced all the wives behind the husbands’ backs; and the wife who left her house carpenter and their baby for a demon lover.

  This was the world Igraine longed for, the world of romance, of storytelling and adventure. She wasn’t a lazy child. Her mind was forever at work, telling and retelling stories to herself and her imagined friends. The first thing she asked visitors was if they had anything with them to read. The only book her family owned was a bible inherited from John’s mother. Igraine tried to read the scriptures, but there she was a failure: she didn’t always draw the same conclusions from her readings as she heard in preachers’ sermons.

  She wanted to be good, to be productive, to make her father proud, but she found out that she hated the wilderness. It terrified her, and that had come as a shock. She had expected it all to be a great adventure, but it was only excruciating hard work and worry and hunger. Her imagination was her refuge; it was necessary to her survival.

  One day as she set the table, her mother seemed different. She was smiling. Perhaps she had remembered Igraine’s birthday, for she was twelve years old that day. Her mother responded to her quizzical look by tweaking her nose. When everyone’s bowl was full of stew and grace had been said, the news came out.

  “I’ve heard from my sister in Boston,” Johanna said. “She’s eager for Igraine to come live with her and go to school.”

  “School, ha!” Her brothers laughed and stared at Igraine as they always did, as if she were a creature entirely apart.

  “School,” John Fiddyment grunted. “Learn to be a teacher, maybe. Do something to earn her keep.” It was settled that quickly. John Fiddyment would not miss his daughter. But Johanna already missed her grievously, which it would have surprised Igraine to know.

  In Boston, she thrived. Her Aunt Margaret and Uncle James had no living children of their own, and they delighted in her quick wit and her ability to recite poetry and tales with theatricality. They routinely had family discussion time in which politics, science, literature—anything that struck their fancy—was fair game. Igraine’s opinions were indulged; she was cherished and admired. For three years, life was golden.

  The austerity of Mr. Mark’s Girls’ School was a disappointment, but the gloom was compensated for by the sweetness of the school’s library. Igraine didn't board. She walked the five blocks there and back each day and was sorry for the girls who had to stay. It was a dreary place, and the kitchen smells were decidedly uninviting.

  Matthew Mark was a tall man who looked older than he was. He carried a soft belly and a thick waist on an otherwise slender frame. He had wispy fringes of blond hair long at the sides and back and balding at the forehead.

  His eyes were piercing. He used them like weapons and took pleasure in the discomfort his stare produced. Mr. Mark was a believer in Calvinism, especially its doctrine of corporal discipline. Igraine escaped his whip only because she returned to her aunt and uncle each day, and Mr. Mark would not like to explain the welts he might raise.

  In the evenings, she learned to spin and do cross-stitching while Uncle James read aloud from a newspaper or the latest English novel he had brought home. Uncle James was not like her father. He encouraged her imagination, applauded her reading, and made her feel cherished and worthy of happiness.

  As the rhythmic clack-clack of the spinning wheel accompanied Uncle James’s reading, Igraine would let her mind wander. She dreamed of a life other than that of a farmer’s wife. She would never return out west to Ohio.

  In that third year under her Aunt Margaret’s guidance, Igraine cross-stitched a scene of Robin Hood sitting on a fallen tree with Maid Marian, and she used the cloth to make a pillow which she sent to her mother. She smiled to think how her mother would be surprised by her artistry, and how her father would be shocked that she could make anything at all.

  At fifteen, Igraine looked forward to life as a Boston wife and mother, perhaps married to a sailor who would bring home exotic items from all points of the globe. She would be a good niece to her aunt and uncle, and her children would be like grandchildren to them. And she would write long, philosophical letters to her mother that her father would never understand.

  Then the influenza scourged Boston, and Aunt Margaret and Uncle James didn’t escape. When they became sick, Igraine was sent to lodge with Mr. Mark. They died while she was away from them; she wasn’t allowed to see their bodies. While she packed to leave for her parents’ farm, a place she couldn’t think of as home, she was called down to Mr. Mark’s study.

  Igraine had fierce loves and tenacious hates. She hated Mr. Mark.

  He was a hypocrite, her least favorite of human types. He had mastered the art of appearing charming and wise to parents and guardians while he simultaneously worked to crush the spirit of every young girl who fell into his sway.

  “My poor sad girl,” he said. “I have even more horrible news for you.” Mr. Mark held out his hand, trembling with a sheet of paper. “A party of Shawnee led by the Prophet attacked the farms in the valley where your family was settled. They have been massacred.”

  “My mother!”

  “They are all gone.”

  The letter was dated three weeks earlier, addressed to her uncle.

  Dear Mr. Flanders:

  My name is Leviticus Armstrong. John Fiddyment was my neighbor. Some time last month, Shawnee renegades led by the miscreant Prophet attacked John Fiddyment’s farm. Our preacher came upon the devastation. All was razed by fire, the entire family lost, even the infant’s young bones did not come through the inferno. This evening my wife has the thought that word may not have reached the daughter Igraine who is in your care. She begs me to send you this sorry news. I trust you will inform the girl of these woeful tidings. Providence knows what will become of her now.

  Yours in Christ,

  Leviticus Armstrong

  While the information seeped its way into Igraine’s brain, Mr. Mark brought her a glass of brandy and sighed in an attempt to display sympathy. Igraine had never touched spirits, but she took the drink now. The burn she felt ripping down through her chest was the only thing that told her she was still alive.

  Tecumseh’s brother, called the Prophet, had slaughtered her family. They had been dead for weeks, and she hadn’t known it. If that letter hadn’t come, she’d still have them. And a baby? For as long as it had taken to read a sentence, she had had a new brother or sister. And then not.

  Just this week, she had given an oral report on the great Shawnee chief. She admired Tecumseh. It was said his brother was a madman, a mystic who violently fought the westward migration of the white man. Tecumseh, however, wanted peace and preferred diplomacy to fighting. She had argued that in Tecumseh there was evidence that the Indian was not inherently savage as so many said. And now his brother had savagely butchered her mother, father, brothers, and perhaps sister.

  She didn’t know what to do. She must speak or stand or cry, something, soon, but not at this moment. Not at this very moment. Mr. Mark put his hand on her shoulder. Standing behind her, he didn’t see her grimace.

  “Miss Fiddyment,” he began finally. She looked at his h
and still on her shoulder, and he removed it. “This is a terrible tragedy.”

  My mother will never sing again.

  “I am not without pity. I cannot think of turning you out.”

  “Turning me out,” she repeated dully. Yes. Yes. I’ll be turned out. My Lord! I am an orphan.

  “However, there are expenses involved in feeding and clothing an orphan, not to say continuing an orphan’s education.”

  Orphan. Orphan. Her face worked into a scowl. Was he simple in the head? Did he think she couldn’t understand these facts?

  Mr. Mark sighed again. “My child,” he almost cooed. “I don’t want to turn you out to the streets or to see you end your studies. You show promise. The question is how to earn your keep?”

  Earn my keep.

  “I believe you’re ready to take on a few classes of younger students. That would account for some of it. If you would in addition help Cook in the kitchen, I could justify keeping you on here as a student. And when you finish, you will become a full teacher.” He added his own special incentive. “It is a pity you are so plain. Even with no family connections, a pretty girl can make some kind of marriage.” He sighed again, as if he truly pitied her. “But what you lack in beauty, you make up for in intellect; and if you work hard, you might make a life here at the school.”

  There was nothing to say but, “Thank you, Mr. Mark.”

  She found her things were already removed to a small, cheerless room on the third floor which she was to share with the maid of all work. The walls, whitewashed in the distant past, were a dull gray. There was no decoration, no fire, and only one tiny, bare window too high in the wall to provide a view. Below the window hung a small glass where Igraine examined her features as if for the first time. She had not known she was plain.