Author's Notes
Of course,
Thread and Gone
is fiction. So far as I know no pieces of embroidery stitched by Mary, Queen of Scots, have been found in Maine attics. Although you never know what might turn up in the future!
It is true that Mary Stuart, her cousin Elizabeth I of England, and two hundred years later, Marie Antoinette, were all needlepointers.
And although this story is fictional, certainly Mary's life, and those of the “four Marys” who attended her, including Mary Seton, were real, as is the strange connection between Mary Seton and the lawyer who defended Marie Antoinette in 1793. And Talleyrand did visit Maine in 1794.
Mary Clough is fictional. But Captain Stephen Clough and his ship
Sally
were real, and they were in Le Havre during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, when many royalists were arrested and executed. And a prominent Bostonian, James Swan, who'd fought in the American Revolution with Clough and lived in Paris for several years, was a friend of Lafayette and Talleyrandâand had a financial interest in the
Sally.
Was Stephen Clough part of one of the attempts to free Queen Marie Antoinette?
We'll probably never know. In the early twentieth century, weary of answering questions about Marie Antoinette, the wife of one of Clough's descendants instructed her grandson to dump all the family's papers and ships' logs into the river. He filled his skiff twice. The papers were lost forever.
I believe Captain Clough, perhaps after failing to free the queen, was trying to help other royalist friends of James Swan's to escape from France. They filled his ship with their belongings in preparation for their journey, but were seized and executed before they could sail.
About forty thousand people were arrested and guillotined during the Reign of Terror that began in 1793.
Captain Clough left Le Havre and sailed to Boston, where James Swan's family claimed his ship's contents.
Today a room at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is filled with eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century French furnishings from James Swan's estate. His portrait, painted by John Singleton Copley (1738â1815), looks over furniture and porcelains and tapestries, some of which may have come from Captain Clough's ship,
Sally.
And although there are few, if any, Marys in the Clough family, Captain Stephen Clough named his youngest daughter, born after his most famous voyage, Hannah Antoinette. To this day there's an Antoinette in every generation of his family.
History or legend? You decide.
I know the story well because in the 1950s my family purchased the old Clough home. It's where I live and write today. I often think of the people who lived here in the past. Perhaps their spirits remain. But their ghosts must be content. They don't disturb me.
Thank you to Pamela Parmal and Meredith Montague of the Textile and Fashion Arts division of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and to Kathy Lynn Emerson, author and expert on Elizabethan England, for their help.
If you're interested in learning more about Mary, Queen of Scots', embroidery I suggest consulting Margaret Swain's
The Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots
, Michael Bath's
Emblems For a Queen: The Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots
, Santina M. Levey's
An Elizabethan Inheritance: The Hardwick Hall Textiles
, Lanto Synge's
Antique Needlework,
George Wingfield Digby's
Elizabethan Embroidery,
and the National Trust's
Hardwick Hall.
Many books are available on the life and times of Queen Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, and of Marie Antoinette.
If you're interested in stitching Elizabethan embroidery patterns, see Dorothy Clarke's
Exploring Elizabethan Embroidery
, which includes a number of designs by Stephanie Powell based on Elizabethan motifs. And if you'd like to know more about the various gadgets and devices used by needlepointers in the past, see Bridget McConnel's
The Story of Antique Needlework Tools
.
I thank the real Cos Curran, whose grandmother, Kate, won a character naming in a benefit for the Wiscasset Library, for the use of her name, and the real Sarah Byrne, who is from Australia, for the use of hers. As always, I thank my caring and patient husband, artist Bob Thomas, for living with a wife immersed in her writing. My sister Nancy Cantwell for being a “first reader.” My writing friends, especially Kathy Lynn Emerson, Kate Flora, and Barbara Ross, for their encouragement and support. And thank you to all the readers of
Twisted Threads
, the first in the Mainely Needlepoint series, who reviewed the book, needled me about minor errors (I'm still learning the fascinating craft of needlepoint), and encouraged me to continue Angie's story.
I thank my agent, John Talbot, my editor, John Scognamiglio, and all the hardworking people at Kensington Publishing, especially publicist extraordinaire Morgan Elwell, who brought Angie and Charlotte and the Mainely Needlepointers to so many readers.
As always, any errors in
Thread and Gone
are mine.
I invite you to friend me on Facebook and Goodreads, check my Web site at
www.leawait.com
for more about me and my books, including discussion questions for groups reading
Thread and Gone
, and read
www.MaineCrimeWriters.com
, the blog I write with other authors who write mysteries set in the wonderful, and sometimes mysterious, state of Maine.
Â
Lea Wait
Chapter 1
“Time has wings and swiftly flies
Youth and Beauty Fade away
Virtue is the only Prize
Whose Joys never will decay.”
Â
âSampler stitched by Chloe Trask in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, about 1800. Originally dated with four digits, in later years someone (probably Chloe herself) removed the stitching on the final two numbers to conceal her age.
The August fog was damp and soft on my face. I sat on a bench on Wharf Street, watched anchored boats in Haven Harbor appear and disappear in the mists, and sipped my coffee.
A man in a small gray skiff rowed smoothly toward shore, out of the morning fog. Whoever he was, he knew the waters and was at home with them. I watched as he tied his skiff to the town pier and pulled himself onto the dock. That's when I realized something was wrong with his left leg.
I knew Haven Harbor's boats and their owners. I didn't remember ever seeing that skiff or its occupant.
I'd been back in Haven Harbor over three months now, and was beginning to feel comfortable again in the house that had seen both the joys and pains of my growing up. I'd agreed to stay six months; settle in, manage Mainely Needlepoint, the business Gram had started, and come to terms with the past.
I was already thinking six months wasn't long enough. I'd be staying longer.
Still, some mornings, like today, I was restless.
When I felt like that nothing but the sights and sounds of the sea would soothe me. Those ten years I'd spent in Arizona, far from the consistent tides I'd depended on to bring order to my life, had left a hole that only closeness to the water could fill.
Too often in the past weeks I'd woken to the motors of lobster boats leaving the docks and the screeching of the gulls who followed them.
I'd fill a travel mug with coffee and head for the wharves, where I could be close to the sea; could smell the salt air and dried rockweed.
This morning heavy gray fog covered the harbor, hiding the three islands that protected it from the ocean's strength. In the distance I heard the motor of a lobster boat making early morning stops to check traps just outside the harbor.
The man tied his skiff to the end of the town pier. He was tall and thin, with skin almost the color of his straggly gray beard. He might have been forty, or sixty. His flannel shirt hung on him as though it was intended for someone heavier; someone stronger. His jeans were tied with a rope.
He walked up the ramp toward where I was sitting, limping, but not hesitating. Not looking at me or at Arvin Fraser, who'd finished hoisting his bait barrels on board the
Little Lady
and was preparing to leave the dock with Rob Trask, his sternman.
Whoever that man was, he was on a mission.
Curious, I watched him head south on Wharf Street until his figure was lost in the fog.
I walked down the ramp to where Arvin and Rob were preparing to cast off.
“Morning Angie,” said Rob. “You're out early again.”
“Who was that man?” I asked. I pointed to his skiff, gray as the morning, “The man who rowed in.”
Arvin grinned. “Guess you ain't never seen him before. He's a character, but he don't bother no one. Lives out on one of the islands beyond the Three Sisters.”
“I didn't know anyone lived out there,” I said. “Islands there are just outcroppings of ledges. No houses that I remember. No water, no electricity. Just birds.”
“Right,” said Rob. “He don't seem to mind, though. Been out there a couple of years.”
“What's his name?” I asked.
Arvin and Rob looked at each other. Arvin shrugged. “Don't rightly know. Folks in town call him The Solitary.”