White as Ice Read online

  It has been yet another fortnight since I last wrote, and my dear Hubbard continues to avoid me. I know not what to do. I am becoming quite convinced that he has married someone else, the daughter of Miss Julia? Else why would he call her Mother? Why has she not told me? When I next speak with her privately, I will ask her directly.

  Are he and I both to be saddled with damned souls for that first marriage of ours?

  "I wish I’d lived back then,” Pat said. “I would have announced the truth to the whole village.”

  Ida gasped. “You couldn’t! You wouldn’t!”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?” Maddy broke in. “I’ll tell you why not. Because you would have gotten Mary Frances run out of town and her son would have been in disgrace and ...”

  She spluttered to a halt, for once unable to think of what else to say.

  "Those Ellis women seem to have gotten away with it," Pat argued. "They didn’t get run out of town."

  I couldn’t think of a rejoinder to that. Apparently, neither could anybody else. Carol filled in the silence. “It was a completely different time back then, Pat. People didn’t think the way we do about the roles of men and women or the place of the church in the daily workings of people’s lives. We have to take those differences into account while we’re reading these journals.”

  Pat harrumphed. “It stinks.”

  “Yeah, I agree. In many ways it does.” Carol sighed. “Don’t think I haven’t longed for a time machine so I could go back and make a difference.”

  “Wouldn’t work,” Ida said. “You can’t change history.”

  “Not,” Rebecca Jo said, “without running the risk of messing it up even worse.”

  “And probably getting yourself hanged in the process,” Ida said.

  Trying to soften the tension in the attic, I said, "All that rain doesn’t sound like much fun to deal with."

  "Sort of like all this snow and ice?"

  "We’re dealing okay, Melissa. It’s not that bad. At least we’re not soggy all the time."

  My mom looked toward the runnels of water coursing down the leaded glass panes on the front of the house. "Not as long as we stay inside."

  "Luckily," Melissa explained to Carol, "we don’t get too many bouts of constant rain here."

  "Take that back," Sadie said. "I can remember a lot of spells of rain that lasted a week. They were seldom very hard rains, though. We always called it duck weather.” She started laughing so hard she had to hold onto her middle. “My father used to made quacking sounds every time it rained an easy rain like that.” We all just sort of looked at her. “Well,” she said, “it was funny when I was five or six.”

  Pat rolled her eyes. “Why are you still laughing eighty years later?”

  “The name just sort of stuck.”

  So did the happy.

  “You’re right, Marmalade,” Carol said. “The happy stuck as well.”

  That got us all to chuckling. Marmalade was such a treasure.

  Thank you.

  “We called it Gray Rain,” Ida said. “I don’t know where it came from. Just one of those family things.”

  “Maybe because of the color of the clouds,” Maddy suggested.

  “Certainly was different than the rains with dark thunder clouds.”

  “My family called it a Mississippi drizzle,” Charlie said.

  “That’s a new one on me.” Rebecca Jo cocked her head to one side. “Why Mississippi?”

  “That’s the way it rains there. A lot.”

  I saw Sadie frown and open her mouth, as if to say something, but Easton spoke first. “I don’t even want to mention what my father called rain like that.”

  Carol looked like she was going to ask for an explanation, but Sadie put her hand on Carol’s arm. The rest of us all knew what Easton’s dad had been like, and nobody up here wanted to hear profanity.

  "Enough of the weather reports," Ida said. “Let’s keep going.”

  Tuesday, 15 October 1745

  Looking at the date of my last three entries, I find it has been more than two months since I discovered my dear husband was here in town. I have been unable to write, except for that brief mention of the excessive rain, which has since abated, for my evenings have been much taken up with visits from many of the women in town, most of them gossiping about Miss Julia of the divided skirts. Tonight, however, I must take these moments for myself to record a most revelatory meeting. Today, Miss Julia accompanied me—or rather young John and I accompanied her—to the meadow above the town. She accosted us as we walked past the Hastings home and thrust baskets into our hands. For mullein, she said, although I know that was but an excuse to speak privately with me. Except for great swatches of mullein spires that stood like sentinels guarding the late-blooming wild asters, the meadow was thankfully deserted. I say thankfully, for I am glad indeed that I heard what she had to say. She would not have said it if other ears had been about.

  She made a point of telling me that Hubbard has remained true to me. 'You are his only wife and his only true love,' she said, and her words were balm to my aching heart.

  "Great!" Dee raised a triumphant fist into the air. "It’s about time Mary Frances had some good news."

  She told me much about her journey here with Hubbard and Ira. The one-armed man who fell from the cliff was Hubbard’s brother, as I discovered when Miss Julia and I first spoke about the stranger who had fallen from the cliff. The story she told me further of how much Ira had changed on their journey was a marvel to be sure. He may have left Brandtburg filled with desire for vengeance, but at the end he arrived here not for retaliation—for it was Homer Martin’s knife thrust that caused Ira to lose half his arm—but to beg Homer’s forgiveness for the inadvertent murder of Homer’s wife, my dear Myra Sue. If Hubbard had not been with Miss Julia on the journey, I would have believed she was talking not about Ira Brandt, but about another man altogether.

  What Ira did to Hubbard, though, early in their journey, sounded so like the Ira Brandt I knew from before that I felt my bile rise. Ira is the one who shoved Hubbard face-first into a bed of coals, which is the reason my dear husband’s face is so badly ravaged. Miss Julia assured me that it was an accident brought on by Ira’s overly impulsive nature, but I find my heart hardening even more against him. If he had not injured Hubbard so, my husband surely would have caught us up along the trail. And Miss Julia told me that Hubbard’s heart has seemed to bother him ever since that horrible accident. This is but another reason for me to blame Ira.

  “His heart again,” Melissa said. “That sounds bad.”

  “I hope he’ll be okay,” Maddy said. “What could people do for hearts back then?”

  “You mean your gr-r-r-eat, consider-r-r-able r-r-research didn’t tell you about colonial heart attacks?” Dee rolled her r’s dramatically.

  Maddy rolled her eyes, just as dramatically. "My research didn’t involve heart attacks."

  “If somebody had a heart problem,” Carol said, “they were often treated with plants that had heart-shaped leaves or red roots.”

  “And that worked?” I know I sounded incredulous, but that’s because I was.

  “As well as any other thing they did back then. Bloodroot was one of the most effective tonics, and it’s actually been shown to be effective at lowering high blood pressure.”

  “Really?” I thought back to the spring and could almost see the plant’s graceful leaves. “I have bloodroot growing in my yard, in one of those front flower beds.” I’d always liked the bright white flowers and the red stems.

  “I wouldn’t suggest using it,” Carol said. “It can be highly toxic if you use the wrong amount.”

  “Maybe I’ll just enjoy watching it bloom, then.”

  “Good idea. I’ll look for it when I come back to see the daylilies in the park.”

  “If you’ll let me,” Ida said, “I’ll continue this entry?”

  Her words sounded like a question, but her tone was per
emptory. We shut up.

  Another reason for me to blame Ira, she repeated.

  To be fair, though, Ira nursed Hubbard and managed to get him to Miss Julia, who was able to complete the healing process. I recall, too, that sometimes back in B the town we came from, there were times when my Hubbard seemed to run out of breath. Even on our wedding night, he—I cannot say it.

  It may have been divine retribution that Ira contracted yellow fever and so he and Hubbard were delayed at Miss Julia’s household for more than a year while Ira slowly regained his strength, but I cannot understand why our Lord would want to keep my husband from me. At least I have the consolation of knowing that my Hubbard has remained true to me and did not remarry as I so pointlessly worried.

  "You should have asked us," Melissa said. "We could have told you he was a good guy."

  My soul is already compromised by this false marriage, so I feel no compunction against the sin of wishing, praying, that Ira’s aim had proved true and he had killed Homer on the church steps instead of Myra Sue. Perhaps if I had not stepped between them. But it is senseless to play that game, for no one can know what might have happened.

  CHAPTER 99

  Tuesday, 15 October 1745

  SILAS WATCHED HUBBARD—John Gilman—he had to be certain he called the man only by that counterfeit name—for Silas had not spoken falsely when he had said that the man’s life would be worth less than tuppence if Homer learned his true identity. Homer Martin never forgave anyone. Silas watched John Gilman walk down the hill, one hand holding the oak plank and the other extended almost as if the man were blind in both eyes, not only in the one.

  The terror in John Gilman’s eye the moment he knew his identity was discovered had been almost painful for Silas to watch. He could not even imagine what the man must be thinking now as he staggered down the hill.

  He knew almost without a doubt that there was something more to John’s story, something the man had not shared with him. He ran his hand across the half-carved birch tree on the door, recalling how gently, almost reverently, John had touched it. The man was a deep wellspring.

  Silas knew something of Hubbard’s—Gilman’s—dexterity in carving. He had over the years seen samples of it on the few occasions when he and Homer had had some business in the Brandt portion of the town. Then, too, Robert Hastings had displayed in his tavern beneath the beechnut tree a variety of fine wooden cups made by Hubbard Brandt and adorned with leaf images.

  Louetta’s face came to mind, and with it, an unbidden image of how he could combine his S and her L into a sinuous design, perhaps here near the top of the door, among the leaves of the sugar maple, with each letter clear and separate, yet with the two of them supporting, upholding each other—not the clinging vine design he had devised with his and Sophrona Blanchard’s initials, where each had lost its own identity. Mayhap he would carve this new image, this better image, on the side of a cup, one she used often, one she could wrap her long fingers around.

  He imagined her sitting across the table from him, her hands enveloping the S and the L. He imagined what her face would look like as he told her of this day’s conversation with John Gilman. She, after all, was the one who had encouraged him to elicit John’s help.

  But did he dare to do that? He would trust his wife with his very life. But did he have the right to trust the life of John Gilman to her strong hands as well?

  Still, he felt he needed to share this new knowledge with her. Every time he was in her presence, he felt buoyed up with a certainty that life held promise. His artist’s eye had seen the same look in her face—a sure knowing that the two of them could face any storm together.

  Most certainly, this situation with John Gilman was a storm in the brewing, and Silas Martin, despite the fact that he had never seen the ocean, could well imagine pounding waves breaking over the land.

  “WEDNESDAY, 16 OCTOBER,” Ida read.

  I interrupted her. “Hubbard wrote something on the fifteenth.”

  Ida waved her hand in a wide arc. “By all means, go ahead.” Her words sounded almost snippy, but her mouth was quirked up in a little grin. I think she enjoyed this back-and-forth as much as I did.

  I held up the journal. "I don’t know if any of you have noticed this, but Hubbard always underlines the date."

  "Of course we haven’t noticed it," Pat said. "You’re hoarding that journal like it belongs to you."

  "I am not. You could look at it any time you want to."

  "Cut it out!" Maddy’s sharp voice did the job. Pat subsided and, after a few deep breaths, so did I. I was so ready for this storm to move out of the valley. And these people to move out of my house.

  I will stay here with you.

  Marmalade pushed her nose under my free hand, and I obliged her with a short scratch before I began to read.

  Tuesday 15 October 1745. I found my brother’s grave today. It is no wonder Mother Julia and I saw no trace of him after we turned north from our campsite. I should have known he would not heed my advice, that he would search to the south instead. Oh, my brother, my brother. Remember the day you carried me home that time I fell out of a tree? I must have been four or five. I know I had not yet begun to attend classes at Master Ormsby’s school. I cried, for that was the day I injured my leg so badly, but I can still feel the rough comfort of your arms about me.

  "Oh," Glaze said. "What a sweet story."

  "I hope Hubbard held that image of Ira for the rest of his life," I said.

  Maddy muttered something, and I distinctly heard the word murderer. "Give it over, Maddy." I have to admit I was getting exasperated with her. "Ira changed."

  "He still—"

  "No!" I said. "Don’t you think he paid a heavy price already for what he did? Didn’t you ever hear about forgiveness?"

  She held her hands up as if to ward off my anger. But she didn’t apologize.

  I took another deep breath. Maybe I needed to light one more candle?

  "Forgiveness doesn’t change the past," Sadie said, "but it does change the future."

  "So?" Maddy still sounded incredibly belligerent.

  "You’re carrying around an awful lot of resentment," Sadie said. "It must be quite heavy."

  Maddy raised her chin and straightened her shoulders. I could understand why. Sadie was usually much more diplomatic. Maybe this storm was getting to her as well.

  At last, I can mourn him, but not in public. Only with Mother Julia. He lies now beneath a wooden cross that declares him ‘an Unknown Man.’ In many ways that is perhaps true, for no Martin would have recognized the man Ira became as we journeyed here. His contrition over the death of Myra Sue Russell—Myra Sue Martin—was deep and most real, so unlike the man who left Brandtburg more than four years ago. It is that new man I mourn.

  “I feel so blinking sorry for Hubbard,” Dee said. “He didn’t deserve all this.”

  Ida tilted her head toward my book. “Mary Frances wrote her next entry the day after that one.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Hubbard doesn’t say anything else until the end of November.”

  Wednesday, 16 October 1745

  I am most reluctant to speak with my dear Hubbard, lest I find myself unable to restrain my love, yet I long to let him know that I have remained true to him. I find—I fear—that I must now trust Miss Julia, for she knows that John is the son of Hubbard. One word of who the father of my child is, and our survival here would become precarious indeed. There is the possibility, too, that she might tell my Hubbard that I have recognized him and that I still consider myself his true wife, for she loves him like a son and must ache to relieve his pain, the pain he feels at thinking that I have spurned my marriage to him. If she does that, if she tells him the truth, will he throw caution aside and come to me?

  I think he will not, for he was ever a man to consider the consequences of his actions.

  I find that I am most comfortable in Miss Julia’s presence, and yet the threat still lurks that she, even without
meaning to do so, might endanger my son. Perhaps when we meet again, for she has promised to show me how she divides her skirts so gracefully, I may have the opportunity to ask—nay, to beg her to hold the knowledge of my true marriage to herself.

  My niece Parley is still perilously ill, but I find it hard to think about her since I am in such a quandary over what to do about my sweet Hubbard.

  Ida reached for the water she’d brought upstairs with her.

  After she drained her glass, she sat quietly for a moment. Nobody said a word as we watched her collect herself.

  17 October 1745

  I sit here thinking about my Hubbard and how different my life would have been if we had openly acknowledged our love, if we had married in the sight of men as well as of God, if my dear Myra Sue had never been killed. If, if, if—what a useless word. There is only now, what is, what cannot be changed.

  "She sounds very Zen," Amanda said.

  What is vereezin?

  "What do you mean?" I asked. It sounded like Marmalade was asking the same thing.

  "Well, all that stuff about now being all there is. That’s considered a very enlightened attitude nowadays."

  "Except that things can be changed," Glaze said.

  "Not really," Amanda countered. "All we can change is our reaction or response to things that have happened. That way those things might not repeat themselves."

  "Enough!" Pat sounded thoroughly fed up, and I wondered why she’d reacted so vociferously to such a bland comment. "Keep reading, Ida."

  On my wedding night, the night young John was conceived, I felt so buoyed up by the certainty that my life with Hubbard was assured. Buoyed up by my happiness and his. So happy to be facing a life that—yes—would have had its difficulties, but a life that the two of us would face together, each of us somehow stronger, more certain when we faced it side by side. Only occasionally do I feel any degree of certainty now, and it is always when I hold my son—Hubbard’s son—or watch him as he grows not only in height, but in strength as well. When he throws his arms around my neck and I look at his dear face, I see the face of my Hubbard, but also a face that holds some trace of me—the best of each of us combined in John’s small being. Then, and only then do I feel light.