The Carpenter & the Queen

by Michelle Lashier

  The Carpenter and the Queen

  By Michelle Lashier

  Copyright 2014 by Michelle Lashier

  All Rights Reserved

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your used only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For Mom and Dad

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  Epilogue

  Time-Traveling Twins 1: Quivers and Quills

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  1

  Early January 2005, Lindberg, Michigan

  Snowflakes with black edges swirled around wind lines that encircled the castle tower. On a tiny balcony, just below the conical roof, stood a woman with thin limbs and large eyes that encompassed half her face. Her long hair, whipped by the air currents, twisted to the left. About her shoulders she clutched a thin wrap. Beneath it she wore only a negligee. The tower stretched to the top of the page. Near the bottom lay a white void. The woman’s mouth was a thin line curving down in an expression of despair. She was alone, cold, and unblinking in her black and white world high in the sky.

  “Mom?”

  Claire Matthews jumped, causing her marker to skip and draw a line across the woman’s face. Biting back the urge to voice her irritation, Claire looked up from her drawing table at the pajama-clad figure in the doorway.

  “What is it, Sammy?”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  Sam’s voice sounded in throaty notes that indicated he had been very much asleep until only a few seconds before. He rubbed his eyes and swayed on his feet.

  Claire went to him and crouched down to his eye level.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The wind is making too much noise. It scared me.”

  Claire put her arms around him. “Nothing’s going to hurt us,” she comforted. “The wind can’t get in.”

  “Can I stay up here with you?”

  “There’s no place for you to sleep. Let’s put you back to bed.”

  He pulled away and shook his head. “Uh-uh. I wanna be with you.”

  “Sammy . . .”

  The boy made a little whining sound, and Claire sighed. When Claire was a little girl, her own mother would have marched her straight back to bed. But Claire understood Sam’s concern. The old house creaked and groaned in ways their apartment building never had. And the house was so big. Claire felt disoriented in the space. Although she had hoped this house would bring her closer to her past, instead it was hurtling her toward the future at the speed of light. She found no place in her mind or her new property where she felt any relationship to anything except the open air . . . and this eight-year-old with the shaggy blond hair who was already going limp in her arms.

  “I’ll get the cot,” Claire said.

  She gently pushed Sam against the wall where he slid down and sat on the floor, his eyes heavy.

  She entered the dark hallway and opened the door to the musty bedroom she was using as a storage room. The army cot her brother had given her was just inside. Claire pulled it out and returned to her studio, setting the cot near the wall. She helped Sam climb onto it then went down the stairs to his room where she gathered his pillow and favorite blue blanket.

  Back in the studio, Sam was barely awake. Claire put her arm under his head and shoulders to lift him up in order to slide the pillow underneath. After tucking the blanket around him, she kissed his cheek.

  “Better?” she asked.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  He snuggled in, curling his knees up toward his chest, and fell asleep. Claire studied his face intently with the same concentration and appreciation she used when she studied art. Certainly the face of her child was more beautiful than anything else she had ever created. With the peachy complexion and blond hair Sam inherited from her as a canvas, Sam painted life in the same broad strokes as his father—attitude, possession, and vulnerability. One moment Sam dared the world to come after him, fighting off self-doubt with sparkling eyes and his father’s mischievous grin. The next, he was a frightened child who needed his mom. Now, relaxed in sleep, with his mouth slightly open, Claire could see both herself and Will in their son. Sam was a lovely boy.

  Running her hand through her bobbed hair, Claire sat down at the table and studied the drawing she had been working on. It was ruined. The skip lines intersected the mouth line and cheek in a way that could not be disguised while still preserving the original facial expression. Claire’s impulse was to crumple the paper and toss it into the waste basket. Her fingertips landed on the paper, ready to wrinkle it into a ball, but she hesitated.

  Surely there was some way she could fix it. She stared at the lines, envisioning what new ones she could draw to fix the damage. One solution would make the mouth too big. Another would give the woman a facial scar. Still another would obscure a quarter of her face with snowflakes. Claire didn’t like any of the options. She knew she would think of something eventually, but it wasn’t going to be tonight.

  She had chosen this tiny room as her studio because a series of three windows took up most of the wall. She liked the light and the view of the back yard and wooded area beyond. Her slanted drawing table pressed against the windows where a draft continually chilled her feet. Her desk with the computer was on the side wall to her right, and Sam’s cot was on the left wall. She barely had room to move her chair. Claire rolled the chair back a few inches and reached behind her into the desk drawer to pull out some invisible tape. She tore off a piece, rolled it onto the back of her picture, and secured it to the wall. She would let it hang there until she could decide what to do with it.

  Of course, when she pulled it down, the paint would probably come with it since the new drywall was only recently painted and hadn’t had time to cure yet. She shrugged. It was her house now. She could do as she pleased, including ripping off her own paint.

  Most of the downstairs rooms were wallpapered in atrocious cabbage-flower designs that had been popular back in . . . well, she wasn’t sure they had ever been popular. Claire did not considered herself an interior designer, but anything she could do to the old place was better than leaving it as it was. She would get new siding come summer with the money Luther left her. New windows, too. Until then, she could focus on the inside, making it the house it always had the potential to be. All it needed was someone to care about it and happy people to live inside of it. No one had cared for the house in thirty years. From what she knew of the house’s more recent history, no one had been happy here for at least that long, if not longer. By accepting the house when it was offered her, Claire had promised to care for it. But as for happiness—that would have to take care of itself.

  Maybe it was time to paint again.

  The thought surprised her. She hadn’t picked up an art brush in four years. All her drawings since then were black and white in the ligne claire style. She only colored her graphic design work now, but since that was on the computer, it didn’t count. Maybe it was time for color—on the walls first. Then, who knew? Perhaps she could bring out the brushes again. She wo
uld wait for a picture to present itself in her mind. Right now, she had nothing, and she knew forcing an image would never work.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds around her.

  The wind moaned as it circled around the front of the house.

  Sam’s slow, steady breathing filled the room. In. Out. In. Out.

  She saw it. Smiling, she uncapped her marker and drew two circles, one a few inches higher on the page than the other. Then the marker created two bulky bodies, two air-tank backpacks, two faces—Sam’s and hers—astronauts holding hands, floating in the universal expanse with a monochromatic planet in the distance, looking warm, friendly, and unattainable.

  2

  Chicago, Illinois

  Paul Sawyer, engulfed in the overstuffed sofa, closed his eyes and dozed. His sisters, Nora and Beth, chattered indistinctly in the kitchen, their soprano voices punctuated by the clanging of pots and thumping of cabinet doors. This nap was the first time Paul had had to himself in the last three days. He lay on his back, his feet stretched over the arm of the couch. His right leg ached a little, and intermittent with his dreamy sensations of floating, he knew another snow storm was coming. The change in barometric pressure always caused him some degree of discomfort.

  He never lay down like this at home. Sleep was something he needed very little of since he started living alone. With so little stimulation, his energy stores lasted late into the evening. But now, surrounded by children and four other adults, Paul felt more exhausted than he had in months. Drifting into a dream, he saw a misty game board populated with chess pieces aligned into the end game strategy he had been searching for all his life. Pure genius. The final, strategic stroke to achieve a long-sought victory.

  “Uncle Paul?”

  He opened his eyes to see his seven-year-old niece Emma holding a chess board over his head.

  “Are you awake?”

  Emma’s brown pigtails hung down as she bent over Paul, her dark eyes squinting in concentration.

  “Yeah.”

  “Will you play chess with us?”

  The two younger girls stood a few feet back. Aubrey, Emma’s younger sister, was doing her pathetic puppy dog impression. Their cousin Marissa, the youngest at age four, stood with her arms crossed and her face very serious.

  “Weren’t you watching a video?”

  “That’s boring. We want to play with you.”

  Of course they did.

  Paul had often wished he got warm fuzzy feelings around his nieces. He loved them, certainly, but he could never submerse himself into the roles required of him. His nieces wanted a fun uncle, someone willing to play the crazy games their parents didn’t have the energy for. But Paul wasn’t interested in becoming a human jungle gym or a favorite babysitter. Any child of his (and the possibility of having his own diminished every day) would have to possess some of Paul’s own reticence. Having been a cautious child himself, Paul understood the slow courtship of a vulnerable soul much more than he ever would the way his nieces threw themselves at him whole heartedly. The only thing Paul did understand about his nieces was that the more reluctant he was to play with them, the more they wanted him to. The easiest course of action was to give in right away and do what they wanted.

  “I’ll play a game,” Paul said, “at the table.”

  “On the floor,” Marissa insisted. “The carpet feels good.”

  Conceding, he swung his legs over the side and dropped to the floor, crawling on his hands and left knee to the spot in the center of the room where Marissa had already plopped down.

  “Who am I playing against?”

  “All three of us.” Emma exchanged a conspiratorial glance with her sister and cousin.

  “That hardly seems fair.”

  “We’re just kids, Uncle Paul.” Emma’s nose pointed up in an air or superiority. “We’ve got to even the odds.”

  Paul held back a smile. Emma was already too precocious for him to encourage her with a reaction.

  Aubrey opened the bag containing the plastic Stauntons and dumped them on the carpet. Paul separated the white pieces and set them up on the opposite side of the board for the girls.

  “I’m assuming you’ll want to go first,” he said.

  “The youngest player always goes first,” Marissa declared.

  Paul placed the queen’s knight and bishop, then a pawn.

  “Do we need to go over how the pieces move?” he asked. He didn’t wait for a response before he continued. “What’s this piece right here?”

  “A pawn,” Emma said.

  “Right. It moves forward only one at a time—except the first time it can move two. It attacks diagonally. And this one?” He held up a piece for their inspection.

  “The horse!” Marissa exclaimed.

  “Knight,” Paul corrected. “How many spaces can he move?”

  “Three?” Aubrey answered this time.

  “Right. Two one direction, one another, like an L.”

  “Why can’t it move all in one direction?” Emma chewed her bottom lip.

  “I don’t know.” Paul frowned. “Maybe he’s got a war injury and he can’t walk straight.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Emma declared.

  “He’s the only piece that can jump.” Paul lifted the black knight and held him up for the girls to see. “That’s why he can get to pieces that the others can’t.”

  “Could he still jump if he didn’t move in an L?”

  Paul rubbed his palm over his crew cut as he thought. With as much as he knew about the game, and as little as the girls did, they could still stump him.

  “Emma, I have no idea. It’s just the way it is.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Now,” he asked trying to regain his instructional momentum, “what piece is the most important?”

  “The king!” Emma and Aubrey called it out at the same time.

  “Right. Lose him and you’ve lost the game.”

  Paul set the black king on the light square next to the black queen. “Oh, what’s this piece next to him?”

  “His wife,” Marissa said.

  “The queen. She can move any direction, as many spaces as she wants, so she’s valuable for protecting the king.”

  “Can she jump?” Aubrey asked.

  “No, no jumping. Somebody has to clear the way for her first.”

  The girls nodded.

  “You first,” Paul prompted.

  The girls argued amongst themselves about which piece to move first. Marissa insisted they move the king, but Emma prevailed in her choice and brought out the king’s knight.

  “I want him to jump,” she explained.

  “The Zukertort opening,” Paul observed. “Impressive.”

  None of the girls had any idea what he meant, but they smiled at the praise. Paul advanced his queen’s pawn two squares and waited for the girls to return. After much consulting, the girls decided that each would take a turn moving pieces instead of their having to agree on each move. Marissa got the next move, and she brought out her rook diagonally, past the pawns blocking its way. Paul pursed his lips, considering if he should correct the girls or not. He decided to leave things alone, see what his nieces would do. They would win, of course, but it didn’t matter. He was used to losing.

  When Paul’s sister Beth entered the room several minutes later, Paul had lost a knight, a bishop, four pawns, and a rook.

  “You people getting hungry?”

  “Dreadfully,” Emma proclaimed.

  Paul looked up to exchange an amused glance with Beth, but her eyes did not meet his. She was watching the girls. Paul caught a movement in his peripheral vision. Marissa, who was sitting on her knees, bounced up and down, giggling. What she had done was immediately evident when Paul looked at the board.

  “Hey, my queen is missing. And my bishop! Who’s taking my pieces?”

  “They’re captured,” Aubrey said, now giggling as well. “We’re winning.”

 
; “You’re cheating,” Paul said.

  Beth laughed and returned to the kitchen.

  With her mother gone, Marissa felt even braver. With no stealth whatsoever she reached out and grabbed the last of Paul’s knights and stuck it in the hiding place under her legs.

  “What’s going on?” Paul asked.

  While her sister and cousin continued giggling, Emma chewed her bottom lip, then moved her queen to knock over Paul’s king.

  “Do I say checkmate now?” she asked.

  Paul feigned irritation at his loss. “You girls are ruthless,” he said. “This old man never had a chance.” He was only forty-two, but he felt ancient compared to the single-digit crowd.

  Marissa now burst out laughing and stood up, pulling out his pieces from beneath her.

  “So that’s what happened,” Paul said.

  “Tickle fight!” Marissa yelled and took a flying leap for Paul.

  He saved his vital organs by catching her under the arms, but the force of her jump pushed his back to the floor and wrenched his right leg. He swung her to the floor, rolling on his side and wincing in pain.

  “Watch out for the war wound.”

  The girls laughed.

  “Let’s play tag,” Aubrey suggested.

  “No, we’re done. Time to clean up.”

  Motioning for the girls to follow his order, Paul pulled himself up painfully, unable to conceal his grimace.

  “Will you play tag with us, Uncle Paul?”

  “No.” He sensed his own sharpness and tried to explain. “You wore me out for now.”

  The girls pouted but did not follow him out of the room.

  He limped down the hall toward the bathroom, dragging his leg. The limp was less on good days, but this wasn’t one of them. He would need to be careful or his sisters would notice and fuss over him. Once in the bathroom, he closed the door behind him and opened the medicine cabinet to search for the pain relievers. He was ready to get back to a life of solitude and peace. He found the bottle he needed, opened it, and shook two tablets into his hand.