Palmyra

by Susan Evans McCloud

  “Your child is well and safe,” I said to my mother. “It is over. While you slept Maggie Wells has cared for him. Right now, as we speak, she is bringing him here.”

  Her eyes widened, and for a moment her face looked as youthful and vulnerable as a girl’s. “A son!” She breathed the words like a prayer of thanksgiving. My father’s eyes shone.

  When I lowered the plump, squirming child into the curve of her arm she laughed softly, as though someone had told her a lovely secret she could not quite believe. For a long while she gazed at him, then reached out one thin hand and touched his cheek. I felt tears well behind my eyes, burn in my throat, and coughed nervously to clear them.

  “He looks like you, Jonah.”

  “He is as fair as any of your daughters,” my father replied.

  I backed out on tiptoe and left the two—rather, the three—of them together. For the first time I felt a loosening of the terrible constriction around my heart, enough to realize what a tenseness of apprehension and sorrow I had been laboring through.

  I hummed under my breath. I will stir up some lemon jelly for her, I thought. It is one of her favorites and will sit mild on her stomach after she has gone these long days without food.

  I do not know how much time passed before my father came out into the kitchen. I do not know if things would have been different had I been in the room, been with them when my mother announced the name she had selected for her son, for this miracle child which had emerged from her fear and her pain.

  My father was tight-lipped when he told me, his eyes veiled over with worry. “She wishes to call him Nathaniel.” He almost hissed the words out, as though he did not quite believe them himself.

  Might I have blurted the truth to her, unable to stop myself, in that horrifying moment when the word left her lips?

  “No, Father, no! Have you suggested another?”

  “Two or three. Urged them on her, despite my boast of leaving the whole thing in her hands.”

  I sat down, my legs feeling too weak to support me. “Whatever shall we do, Father? I had no idea!—I never dreamed—”

  He placed his hand on my arm. I could feel the lean, sinewy strength of it. “ ’Tis not your fault, Esther. Do not vex yourself so.”

  I called to Josephine, who was working the new butter in the pantry. “Heaven preserve us,” she said when Father told her. “There’s no way out of it now. Frying pan or the fire, that is all the choice we have, Esther.”

  I knew she spoke true. But what would be best—best for Mother? Tell her now, before she began to think of her son in terms of the name of a dead child, whose existence she was not even aware of? Or would that push her back into the darkness again? Wait, wait only until the following morning, let her build up even a little strength?

  Father was as distraught as I. “Go in to her, Josie,” I begged. “Sit with her, divert her. Talk of anything but the name! Father, go to your work for a couple of hours. I shall set the jelly to cooking and try to think what to do.” I shuddered at the very words I was speaking. “Come in early for dinner,” I told him. “We three shall counsel together and make our decision then.”

  He nodded, his forehead creased with concern, and went off, grateful I believe to have someone else take over, lift the hot coal out of his tender hands. I went about my work with a vengeance, struggling to make my stunned mind concentrate on the tricky problem at hand. Why, I agonized, do such things have to happen? What kind of omen is this?

  Then I chastised myself mentally for being so superstitious. If I could somehow turn it all to advantage, make my mother feel good about it! I fussed and stewed through the morning. In truth, I had not thought to pray. Perhaps my training in that area had been deficient; indeed, I knew that it had. My thoughts turned only inward, expecting to find the perfect solution within my own mind. It was a chance thing, really, that made my thoughts turn to Nathaniel—the Nathaniel I’d known.

  A little bird came to light on the ledge of the wide stone window frame and pranced his way into the kitchen, pretty as you please. He did not seem frightened, but rather attracted to the warm yellow color of my cooling jelly, and perhaps to the aroma as well. When I spoke to him he cocked his head and looked back at me, his eyes bright as buttons. I believe he was a finch of some kind. He chirruped something back at me, and with a sudden rise and fluttering of feathers, he lifted and flew toward me, landing on my wrist and twisting his head again in that quizzical manner.

  “Have you been somebody’s pet, love?” I cooed, delighted, scarcely daring to breathe lest I frighten him off.

  I swear if he had been able he would have sat there and talked to me. I nearly reached out to touch him, so familiar he seemed. Then, with nothing to startle or divert him, he lifted suddenly off and returned to the ledge, where he hovered and fluttered a moment before removing his presence from me, leaving the room somehow empty because he had gone.

  Removing his presence. I felt the little bird to be some kind of messenger—to turn my thoughts, if nothing more; to lift my sights higher than my own sense of inadequacy and frustration.

  I put down the dish towel, walked back to my bedroom, and fell down on my knees. It was not the most eloquent of prayers I uttered, nor the longest, but it was sincere. By the time Father arrived I knew what I must do. When I told him he nodded assent.

  Mother’s room was cool and dim because the windows were shaded, yet it still felt stuffy inside. Tomorrow, I thought, I will let in some fresh air and sunshine, and bring out the mop to chase some of this stale dust away.

  She was lying awake, drowsy, perhaps half dreaming. When she saw me her eyes softened and she sighed contentedly.

  “I should like to feed him myself,” she confessed, “but I am grateful that Maggie is willing.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “But in good time it will come to that. He will be a constant drain on you soon enough.” We both smiled.

  “Mother . . .” I sat down on the bed beside her and reached for her hand. “I have something wonderful to tell you. Another miracle, really. Something I want to share with you—but it will not be easy for me.”

  She was all attention. Her eyes narrowed as she examined my face.

  “I had an experience, a more sacred and wonderful experience than I could ever imagine. I had it while you were sleeping, unconscious, your spirit hovering near yet away from us. I had a spirit experience, too.”

  “Esther.” She breathed the word. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “I am trying to tell you about your son Nathaniel Parke, Mother. I am trying to tell you about the child I was privileged for a few short hours to know and love.”

  I went on. I did not relate facts and details; I poured out my heart. I tried to make her see what I had seen, feel what I had felt. All the tender yearnings and sufferings of that day and night came back to me, formed themselves into a gentle shadow of the reality, like a memory imbued with substance and life. As I spoke she relaxed, yet at the same time she seemed to grow stronger. I like to think that Mother, too, felt Nathaniel’s presence there with us the way that I did.

  When I had finished speaking a silence fell between us, but the silence was good. She began to cry softly. I put my arms around her and pulled her head to my shoulder. There was acquiescence in her tears and an acceptance that I knew would make things all right.

  After a little while she asked for her handkerchief and blew her nose. “Jonathan is a good name,” she mused. “I have always been fond of it.”

  “A strong name. It means ‘given of God,’ ” I said.

  “Then Jonathan it shall be.”

  She took a lock of the baby’s fine, wispy hair and curled it around her finger. Jonathan slept on, breathing evenly. “He is very lovely,” I said.

  We sat together for a long time, until we heard Maggie’s voice in the kitchen with Josie. They came into the room together, chatting in a normal, cheerful manner that drew us in.

  “What have you decided to call
him, Rachel?” Maggie’s rose face was filled with curiosity.

  “Jonathan.”

  “Be that a family name?”

  Mother laughed a little. “It is now,” she said.

  “And a fair, strong one,” Maggie pronounced. “Looks like a Jonathan, don’t he?”

  I glanced over at Josephine. She arched an eyebrow as if to say, “How did you accomplish that?” I rose and smoothed my skirts out. “I’ll dish up some lemon jelly for both of you,” I said, “and a cup of iced ginger tea to go with it. You just sit here and talk.”

  I moved toward the door. “Come, Josie, and help me.” As I walked into the kitchen I realized how light I felt. The terrible burden had lifted. I could breathe again. I wanted to laugh; I wanted to dance. And summer was wafting her gentle wings through the air, chasing the dank shadows out of her fragrant, flowered domain.

  I found myself glancing heavenward before I turned to my duties with a grateful heart bubbling over, and a lilt to my step.

  Chapter Four

  Palmyra: August 1827

  I was actually the first to notice the stranger when he came into town. It was that day when I returned alone after burying Nathaniel. The canal is not far from the graveyard. But I remember thinking it strange that a gentleman, so finely attired, should be walking on his own into town. He had carried a rather remarkable walking stick of which I took note. It boasted the head of what looked like an old Egyptian goddess—gold-leafed, surely, for it fairly glittered despite the shortage of sun. He twirled it in his hand as he walked, seeming entirely at ease with himself. I remember that he was tall and carried himself well. He had a fine head of hair beneath his tall hat, and it curled around his temples in a becoming fashion. I did not see his eyes. Perhaps if I had seen his eyes, I would have known better.

  Summer wooed and lulled us, blessed our growing things with her warm breath, and with gratitude we accepted the pattern of long, pleasant, drawn-out days. Mother improved slowly, but her progress was steady. We saw much of Maggie those first weeks, bringing little Jonathan and fetching him back again. Mother’s milk never came in. After a time we began to supplement his diet with goat’s milk, and he seemed to like that well enough. Indeed, he was an agreeable little soul from the very start. Our kitchen is sunny, and Mother’s old rocker curves comfortably against the back. She spent most of her hours there, part of the hum and bustle of things going on around her, seemingly content to come along slowly and easily.

  At times I was not! I do not mind work; indeed, many forms of it I relish. But summer’s demands are many and never ending, and, like as not, when I turned round to find Josephine, in want of a little assistance, I would discover she had flitted away. Not to be bothered. That was her attitude her last summer with us. Alexander Hall was courting her in earnest now, and she delighted in his attentions. Once or twice, in frustration, I appealed to Mother, but she seemed in a daze, oblivious.

  “Your day will come, Esther,” she would sigh, in almost honeyed tones, and I knew she was remembering her own youthful days. “Josephine has allowed herself to play the field too long. It is right that she look seriously for a husband now, before she becomes too old and finds men looking another way.”

  As if that day would ever come! I steamed inwardly. Besides, it was not “right” that she be even more lazy and self-centered than usual. She is a better cook than I and she knows it. Yet most of the meals fell to me. My gardens alone, heaven knows, were enough to consume me. Piling all else on top of it, I had not a minute to breathe.

  But Jonathan’s presence was a veritable balm to all that, easing the sharpest headache, the dull throbs in the small of my back, the exhaustion of hours spent out in the sun. I marveled then and shall always marvel at the power infants and children have to draw people out of themselves and, in no way in particular, lift and refresh the spirit with the unspoken awareness that nothing else matters save what they embody of innocent beauty and love.

  The first day I allowed myself to go out and about following Mother’s recovery, I met with a sight that sincerely astounded me. I saw Tillie—our Tillie—promenading with the stranger who had walked into town from the boats. He cut a fine figure still, and she looked her best. Theodora may happen to be less pretty than some girls—her nose is a bit long, her skin sallow, and her hair thin and flyaway—but she makes up the difference by trying. She takes great pains with herself and enhances her good points, and is never sour or petty, as many girls are. Bolstered by her position in life as coming from the best family, she has learned the wisdom of capitalizing on her assets and brushing all else aside. But the stranger! I must learn something of it. I made bold to cross the street, that I might encounter them.

  Tillie’s eyes lit with pleasure when she spied me. “Oh, Esther, how well met! Come meet my new friend.”

  I turned my gaze upon the gentleman, who eyed me appraisingly. Presenting me first, as was proper, Tillie introduced her companion as Mr. Gerard Whittier, from the city; which, of course, meant New York.

  He bowed low over my hand in a most proper manner. “What has brought you to our little village?” I asked.

  “Banking. He has banking interests here, Esther.” And I wondered at the proud tone in Tillie’s voice.

  “And you are acquainted with Theodora’s father?” I pressed.

  Tillie made a face at me, but the gentleman replied. “Mr. Swift has been very kind to me, assisting my efforts to establish myself and extend my business involvements here.”

  Then I knew. Lawrence Swift, that miser, was grooming this haughty stranger for a future son-in-law. Had he already told Tillie that?

  We spent a few minutes in small talk before I excused myself and walked on down the street, resisting the strong temptation to glance behind me. Oh, Tillie. He was not fit for her! From the very first I knew that. Even though he had not yet met my gaze square in the eye.

  Georgeanna returned from Albany, and as though she were only waiting for her mistress’s arrival, her cat, Iris, gave birth to six kittens, each one a separate, delightful combination of color and design.

  We all came running like so many schoolgirls, pressing round the new creatures, exclaiming over this one and that. I could not help thinking, as the old cat lay contentedly washing her new offspring, how easy her maternity had been compared to my mother’s. Here Nature was fully in charge and did her work well. And, if any of the kittens had happened to die, Iris would not have mourned them, but would have got on with the business of living and taking care of the rest. All so simple, because the complex human element was missing.

  He is at peace with God now, free from the cares of this mortal life. I thought of Nathaniel and shivered. No pretty pictures came to me, no sense of resignation or peace.

  Each of us laid claim on our favorite kitten, and Georgie laughed at us. “You will change your minds half a dozen times,” she predicted, “before they are ready to leave the nest.”

  We knew she was right. Through the years Josie and I had adopted at least a dozen of Georgie’s kittens, and some had met rather ignoble fates. Only two were left, good mousers both of them, and they lived in the barn.

  “Perhaps a little house cat would be nice for Mother,” I mused.

  “A fitting replacement for Josephine,” Phoebe suggested. “How is the campaign coming, anyway?”

  “Nicely, as planned.” Josie preened a bit, because all eyes were on her.

  “Still a winter wedding?”

  “Indeed.”

  “And you’ve made your choice?”

  She hesitated.

  “I believe she has contrived that her choice has chosen her and is satisfactorily smitten,” I offered. “Now she must choose again, to accept the man who has chosen her and is waiting with baited breath.”

  Everyone appreciated my humor, but Josephine did not recognize the barbs hidden here and there in my words. She fancied herself clever; she always had. As long as she felt in control, things would go forward as planned.

/>   “Tillie may beat you to it,” Georgie grinned, “and you shall have to be content with a close second, Josephine.”

  Josie arched her back much like a vexed cat would. “Whatever do you mean, Georgeanna?”

  Theodora’s face colored uncomfortably, and she looked down at the ground.

  “What is this, Tillie?” I asked in a low voice. “Has it to do with Gerard Whittier?”

  She nodded, but would not raise her eyes.

  “Leave her alone,” I ventured. “ ’Tis a choice her father has made for her. Perhaps it will not come to pass.”

  “Oh, it shall ‘come to pass,’ all right, as you put it, dear Esther. I have nothing to say in the matter.”

  “Well, tell us, what is he like?” Josephine was all ears, her interest piqued more than she desired to admit. Had quiet Tillie landed a bigger fish than the one she was dangling on her line?

  “He is a gentleman from New York,” I ventured again. “Tall, well formed, with the polished air of the city about him, and I would say handsome features—wouldn’t you, Theodora?”

  My heart went out to her; I had to assist her somehow.

  “Yes, he is that,” she agreed cautiously.

  “And in banking,” Georgie interjected.

  Now Josephine really perked up. “Then he shall be able to take care of you properly.”

  “That is what Father believes.”

  “Do you like him well enough, Tillie?” sweet Phoebe asked, concerned, perhaps thinking on her own disappointments.

  “We have met but three times, I scarcely know him. But he appears to be . . . a gentleman sincerely.”

  “Well! Fancy this happening!” I smiled, seeing Josie could scarcely contain herself.

  “Father is pushing for a betrothal, and so is Gerard.” Tillie spoke the words softly, waiting to see our reaction.

  “So suddenly! What of Joel, Tillie?”

  I scowled at Josie for asking.

  Tillie shrugged her thin shoulders. “What of Joel—we are fond of each other, but it has not gone beyond that.”