The Mapmaker's Children (12 page)

“The Apple Hill house, next door to the Bronners. Great property.” He shook warmly. “Annemarie's going to be jealous I met the new neighbors before her. She's been after me to bring y'all some welcoming cider doughnuts.”

“Those are my favorites.” Cleo made a
Mmm
sound.

Eden demurred: “Very kind of you, but really I ought to be the one giving congratulations. I hear you have a new baby in the house.”

Mack beamed. “My first. Matthew.”

“All the Miltons got
M
names. It's a family tradition,” explained Cleo.

“Ah, I see,” said Eden. “Cleo's been giving me the New Charlestown Milton primer. Matthew and Mack of Milton's Market. Then there's your brother, Mett, at the café and your dad, Morris…”

At that mention, Mack stoned up. Eden had spoken the unspeakable, and it seemed to flash-freeze the air around them.

“Gotta jet!” Cleo jumped to Eden's side, swooping up the brown grocery bag. “Children's Story Hour is 'bout to finish. I got to swap a book. Ms. Silverdash is expecting us.”

This was news to Eden. She rolled her lower lip to hide her surprise.

“You best be off, then. Good meeting you, Eden.”

“You, too. I'll be eager to meet the rest of your family—and introduce my husband, Jack.”

If they stayed in town and together long enough. It was a conventional slip—the habit of introducing herself as a couple. But the Anderson duo had never been problematic. In fact, Jack and she had been quite stellar as a pair, loving and successful in their careers. They'd boasted at dinner parties that it was like finding their other magnet half.
Click
. On that
principle they'd stood strong. On that principle they'd wed. It was the attempt to insert a third that had caused separation. Just like a magnet, the dyad forces of attraction could extend only so far.

Cleo pulled Eden's sleeve toward the exit. Her Schwinn leaned against a parking meter a few yards away.

When they reached it, Eden sighed. “I guess bringing up a family feud doesn't make the best nice-to-meet-ya.”

Cleo shrugged. “It's not like it's a secret anyhow.”

She placed Eden's grocery bag inside her front basket, flicked up the kickstand, and rolled the bike along the sidewalk by the handlebars.

Somewhere, an unseen ice-cream truck's song jingled the tune “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.”
Follow, follow, follow, follow
, Eden hummed to the
tick-tick, tick-tick
of the sherbet-colored reflectors falling up and down Cleo's bike spokes. She was off to meet Ms. Silverdash.

N
ORTH
E
LBA
, N
EW
Y
ORK
D
ECEMBER
23, 1859

B
efore dawn, Sarah and Annie had cut snowy evergreen branches and holly clusters from the woods behind their house. It wasn't fair, they decided, to stamp out Ellen's Christmas joy for the sake of funeral propriety. Black drapes hung over all the windows and mirrors, and the Lake Placid winter had blustered up a blizzard, banking snow thigh-high. They were glad they'd buried their father as soon as they'd returned. If they hadn't, they might still have his coffin in their parlor that very minute.

The Alcotts had sent a copy of Charles Dickens's
A Christmas Carol
, which Sarah enjoyed—except for the beginning with ghost Marley in his chains. She was in the midst of reading it to little Ellen, skipping the particulars of those pages.
A ghost named Marley came to warn Scrooge of three spirits' visitation…
She kept it simple. That was all that was required to understand the rest of the story.

Sarah and Annie tied the cut pine boughs over their door lintels with scarlet ribbon. The fragrance reminded Sarah of Virginia and Freddy and kind neighbors come with wreaths in their arms. She pressed her sappy fingers to her lips and nose.

Annie caught her, hand to face, inhaling deeply. “I know,” she said. “It reminds me of that horrible day, too.” She sighed as if their father had died all over again. She'd been gloom and doom since returning from the South. “Will we ever be able to smell jack pine again without cringing?”

Sarah worked the holly stems into the evergreen needles. It was a wonder to her that a scent could evoke such opposing responses. She didn't wash the sap off until it was time to help her mother cook.

Mr. George Stearns and Mr. Franklin Sanborn, two of her father's Secret Committee of Six, were traveling down from Canada, where they'd taken refuge after the raid on Harpers Ferry. They were men of great wealth and influence for whom Sarah had painted a number of pictorial maps on papyrus paper, including the very one that directed their journey to the border of “Heaven”—the code word for Canada. With southern justice recompensed by her father's blood, the men were returning to their families and stopping at the Brown farm to pay their respects. Sarah planned to pass them a note vowing her unwavering assistance to the UGRR as soon as she found the opportunity. Before dinner, she hoped.

The women had mustered what foodstuffs they could: a Christmas mold and butter cookies. Sarah helped Mary assemble the dinner: shreds of roasted guinea hen, boiled eggs, and savory jelly to bind it into a single quivering mass. They put a cheese shroud over it and placed it outside, in the cold root cellar, to set up. Meanwhile, Annie and Ellen cut hearts and stars from rolled sugar dough to bake on buttered tins. Ellen giggled and nibbled raw strips.

Mary kissed the top of her head. “Not too much or you'll spoil your appetite.”

Since their mother's return from the execution, her stutter had vanished. None of the women had immediately noticed, too caught up in the whirlwind of attending to John's body and preparing for the journey home. But when it finally dawned on them that she was speaking without lisp or hesitation, the girls were shocked and somewhat afraid. Mary couldn't put a finger to when the miracle had occurred, but she was convinced it was one.

“Your father entreated to the Almighty on my behalf. A gift to temper a curse,” she said.

Whatever the cause, it cheered Sarah immeasurably to hear her mother speak in smooth succession. Even this mundane moment in the kitchen felt finer than any that had come before. A Christmas mold and butter cookies were not the feast of years gone by, when her brothers and their wives had gathered together to hear their father give glory. No,
they'd never have a house or table so full again. But that didn't mean there weren't blessings to be counted.

Sarah couldn't be like Annie, carrying the weight of the past around her neck like the chains of Marley's ghost. She was different from her blood kin. Her life and actions had already deviated from the traditional path.

She thought of Mr. Thoreau and his nature walks at Walden Pond, his grand ambling adventures, and then Freddy's face in the dim barn. She flushed at the memory of her brazenness, her naïve hope that her father would rise like a phoenix with her map as his tinder.

“You're red as a beet, child.” Mary stopped to put the inside of her wrist to Sarah's cheek. “Feeling poorly?”

“No.” She turned her face away from the stove. “Just excited for a little Christmas.”

Her mother smiled. “ ‘Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength,' ” she quoted, the words as melodic as a lullaby, a carol of the season, and so it fell on Sarah's heart as much as her ears.

Ellen danced her secondhand dolly along the kitchen table and hummed “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.” No painted mouth or embroidered smock of chestnut hair like Alice's; Ellen's doll was made of muslin and stuffed with beans. Sarah decided she'd buy it a shiny ribbon sash for Christmas. Ellen would like that.

Her mother moved on to finishing the tallow candles. A hung line of dipped wicks hardened in the window draft, waxy icicles that reeked of gaminess.

“Must we use those?” asked Sarah.

“It's either these or we eat in the dark,” replied Annie.

“They'll leave soot on the ceiling, and we'll be up on chairs through the New Year cleaning.”

The point resonated with their mother, who paused in mid-dip. “We'll put lamps over them. Like the Hills.”

Both Sarah and Annie stopped and stared at each other. It was the
first time Mary had spoken of their time in the South or the execution since returning to New York. They'd assumed it was a subject not to be broached.

“What was their town's name?” Mary tapped her chin. “Charles Town, was it?”

“No, that was the old town where Father was jailed,” said Annie, continuing to plunge tapers into the greasy white fat.

“New Charlestown,” corrected Sarah. “The Hills live in the
new
.”

“
New
Charlestown. Yes, that's it.” Their mother wiped her hands on her apron. “We received a letter from there this morn. It slipped my mind in the preparations for Mr. Stearns and Mr. Sanborn.”

From her pocket, she pulled a square letter, sealed with the letter
H
in thick red wax:

To Missus Brown, the Misses Brown, and Family

North Elba, New York

Sarah cracked the seal. Inside was a card with a black-and-white lithograph of Queen Victoria and her family around the royal Christmas tree. Painted by James Roberts some years ago, the image was common enough, but Sarah had never seen it reproduced on such luxurious paper and with such attention to detail. She could make out nearly every toy hanging between the branches, the dollies and jesters and horse-drawn carriages, and the children's dimpled faces and the king's and queen's glad expressions.

Like Dickens's Ebenezer Scrooge being shown around by the Ghost of Christmas Present, Sarah felt as if she were staring through a window into another's life, one happy and full. She held the card up to the firelight, attempting to imprint every corner of the illustration on her mind's eye, breathing in the smell of expensive ink and paper and miles traveled.

“Go on, child, read it to us.” Mary had moved over to the cookies,
patting the top of one to check its spring, then pushing them deeper into the oven's mouth.

Sarah cleared her throat. While alive, her father had been a staunch proponent of proper elocution. From her first recited word, she'd been taught to sit or stand with a straight back, chin raised, a full breath in the lungs, and clear diction on the tongue. She didn't know how to read any other way. She took the rhetorical position, with one arm holding the card at a proper distance so she could follow the sentences uninterrupted.

“ ‘Dear Family Brown,' ” she began. “ ‘Despite the brevity of your visit and its dire nature, you left no less of a lasting impression on our household. You are greatly admired.' ”

Sarah paused for effect and speculation as to who exactly was admired and by whom. Before the wonder-flies in her chest had a chance to beat their wings, she continued: “ ‘Though we know it will be arduous in light of those missing round your table, we pray that the peace of Christmas be upon your house and bless those within. Alice has included something for Miss Annie Brown, as she shares Alice's affinity for floriography. Freddy asks after Missus and the Misses Brown's healths. He hopes that you are engaging in many—many good nature walks for consti—' ”

Sarah stumbled over the words, embarrassed that Priscilla was penning Freddy's coded greeting, though it pleased her that he'd dared to include it at all. She understood his true meaning—about their secret meeting in the barn and discussion of the UGRR.

“ ‘…constitution. Fondest tidings, Mr. and Mrs. George Hill, Freddy, Alice, and, by special request, Gypsy. Postscript: Siby and the Fishers have asked that I pass along their merry tidings, as well.' ”

“How kind of them.” Annie pinned her last dripping candle to the window line, then came to Sarah's side with renewed interest.

Inside the envelope was a perfectly pressed set of snowdrops. The blooms flared from long-stemmed buds that'd been cut precisely to fit the envelope's dimensions. They reminded Sarah of fairy staffs.

Annie held one gently between her fingertips. “They say God sent Adam and Eve snowdrops as comfort after they were cast out of the Garden of Eden. Their message is hope and consolation.”

Mary leaned closer to see. “I've always thought snowdrops a strange flower. Blooming summertime in the midst of winter.”

“Like a specter,” said Annie.

“Like a miracle,” corrected their mother.

Priscilla's penmanship reminded Sarah of miniature snowdrops in a row, looping petals at the end of narrow lines. She drew her finger across the sentences, feeling the grooves of the pen in the ecru paper and wanting to paint the lines grass green and the letters eggshell white. How lovely that would look. She wondered if Freddy had been by Priscilla's side as she wrote. Gypsy at his knee. Alice sewing apple branches with the strands of hair she'd left behind. Siby's corn-bread pie in the oven. Her chest tightened. She trusted them more than any other family she knew, more than her own in some ways.

A spiteful newspaper commentator had written that her father ought to have been sentenced as those in the Far East were. There, treason was considered a plague of the mind, infecting those in close contact; thus, the man, his co-conspirators, friends, and family were all guilty by association and condemned to a similar fate. She thought it the most dreadful thing to wish upon people he'd never met. She'd thrown the article in the fire. The words had curled and shriveled to ash.

The Hills had welcomed them graciously, without a hint of scorn. The entire town had shown kindness despite so many reasons not to. For that and more, Sarah was devoted.

“Are the Christmas cookies done?” Ellen asked.

“Patience is a virtue,” Mary reminded her.

Ellen puckered her mouth incredulously and sat on the stool, tapping out the seconds with her feet.

Mary pushed aside two hanging candles and looked to the dusky sky. “Mr. Stearns and Mr. Sanborn could arrive at any hour, and look at us—a waxy mess of Browns.” She turned to Annie. “Save the leftover fat for soap and fetch the mold from the cellar. Sarah, dust the decanter. The men will want a sip against the chill. Then hurry up and change, girls. Rinse your faces and run combs through your hair. Use my good perfume to ward off the tallow smell. Just a dab on your wrists, mind you.”

“Imperial Tea Rose.” Ellen slurred it into one word:
Impeewee-all-tee-rose
. “Oh please, me, too?”

“Absolutely not,” said Mary. “Only for older girls.”

Ellen bit her lower lip, on the precipice of tears, until Sarah pulled the tray of cookies from the oven. Golden hearts and stars, twinkling-hot butter. One bite and Ellen had forgotten the rose perfume, smiling and humming carols as she munched. Sarah wondered when a person outgrew that—the ability to be unshackled from memory and desire, past and future. To live purely in the present moment. She hoped that unlike Scrooge in
A Christmas Carol
, one could achieve it without being haunted.

Sarah slipped the Hills' Christmas card into her front pocket. It'd be lost or ruined in the kitchen. Her mother would be grateful for its safekeeping when she went to do her weekly correspondences. Perhaps she'd ask if she could send a reply along, too, and maybe, just maybe, Freddy would cordially write back.