Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  They began with the unoccupied rooms, and since it was late August, there were more of these than there would have been earlier in the summer. But while the closets in the first four rooms were not very big, especially by modern standards, they were substantially larger than a “nook” or an “alcove,” the two words Gerda had used to describe the hiding place.

  “The closets could have been enlarged in the renovations,” said Sarah.

  Sylvia had no choice but to agree, and felt their chances of identifying the correct room dwindling.

  She hesitated before entering the last vacant room. She allowed this suite to go unoccupied during all but their busiest weeks, and even then she had to resist the urge to ask campers to double up rather than assign someone to it. The pink, white, and yellow Grape Basket quilt remained on the wall where Sylvia had discovered it upon her return to Elm Creek Manor, but she and Sarah had long ago substituted a strip-pieced Trip Around the World quilt for the pink-and-white Flying Geese quilt that had once adorned the queen-size bed. Whether because of their estrangement or in spite of it, Sylvia could not bear the thought of someone else, even a friendly quilter, sleeping beneath the quilt her sister Claudia had used as her own.

  Sylvia pursed her lips and opened the door. “This closet is certainly large enough,” she said briskly, to disguise the hesitation she always felt upon entering her late sister’s room. “Claudia wouldn’t have settled for anything else. I’m surprised she chose rooms in the west wing, since the south-wing suites are larger and more comfortable.”

  Sarah led the way into the adjoining room. “I’m surprised there are any suites in the west wing at all.”

  “There weren’t, originally. My father had doorways cut in some of the walls to turn adjacent rooms into suites.” She looked around the room. “Well, there’s no closet here, large or small. I suppose we’ll have to disturb our campers after all.”

  “Wait.” Sarah placed a hand on her arm to prevent Sylvia from leaving. “What about the loveseat?”

  Sylvia eyed the floral tapestry cushions. “What of it?”

  “It’s set into a nook. Don’t you see?” Sarah crossed the room and measured the depth with her hand. “I’d say it’s about a foot and a half deep.”

  “That’s not a closet,” scoffed Sylvia. “In the room on the other side of the wall, there are two closets, there and there.” She pointed to the corners on either end of the concavity in turn. “They encroach on this room’s space.”

  “All the more reason to believe there was once a closet on this side, too. This wall was a part of Hans’s original design, right?”

  “I can’t say for certain . . .” Sylvia hesitated. “I suppose it must have been. My father had a predilection for enlarging spaces, not for making them more intimate.”

  “Gerda did say the hiding place was shallow, even for a closet.”

  “True.” Sylvia joined Sarah and inspected the wall. Sarah’s measurement was conservative, but even so, the alcove could not have been more than two feet deep and five feet long, and Hans’s false wall would have taken up some of that space. It was difficult to imagine anyone hiding there for long, in stifling darkness, listening to the bewildering noise of the search, with nothing but a thin wall of plaster separating the fugitive from the pursuer. “I suppose its very narrowness makes it a better hiding place.”

  “And harder to detect by someone searching in the other room. If it had been any larger, the missing space would have attracted attention.”

  Sylvia ran her fingertips along the wall, then flipped back the braided rag rug on the floor, but if Hans’s false wall had once occupied the space, no sign of it remained. “I’ll reserve judgment until I see the other rooms.”

  They collected an eager group of assistants as they went from one camper’s room to the next, explaining their errand and searching for an alcove resembling Gerda’s description. Upon completing the last room, however, they concluded that Claudia’s room was the most likely candidate.

  “That doesn’t mean it’s definitely the one,” cautioned Sarah, when she and Sylvia were alone again. “Gerda doesn’t say that Anneke’s sewing room was the only one in the house with a nook instead of a proper closet. There might have been others.”

  “Yes, either lost when the addition was put on or renovated beyond recognition.” Sylvia shook her head, exasperated. “Why is it that every time I think we’ve obtained some evidence, something tangible to prove Gerda’s story true, we end up with so many cautions and qualifiers that we’re no better off than when we started?”

  “It seems that way, doesn’t it?” Sarah laughed. “Then you’re really not going to like my next question.”

  Sylvia sighed wearily. “Pose it anyway.”

  “According to your family stories, the Log Cabin quilt with the black center square was the signal, but it turns out the Underground Railroad quilt was,” said Sarah. “So how does the Log Cabin quilt you found in Gerda’s hope chest figure into all this?”

  April 1859—

  in which our waiting ends

  Come springtime, talk around Creek’s Crossing turned to the rising tensions between North and South as often as it did to planting and the weather. Kansas, where we had once planned to settle, had become soaked in the blood of courageous Free-Staters and hostile Missouri raiders, but although I am loath to admit it, the Abolitionists committed their share of atrocities as well. More than once I thanked God for delivering us to Elm Creek Farm three years before, thus sparing us from the violence we otherwise would have faced. I saw the good we did in helping fugitive slaves as but a small show of gratitude for His Providence.

  With the return of fair weather came an increase in the number of fugitives who sought shelter with us, but it also increased the number of slave catchers poking about. Far too often I was forced to keep the Underground Railroad quilt inside because earlier that day a patrol had trespassed upon our property or had been bold enough to knock upon our door and inquire if we had seen any suspicious Negroes wandering about, who might be slaves passing as free. I would respond with a curt negative and send them on their way. But their questions did make me reflect upon the situation of the free coloreds around our town. It seemed to me they had been keeping to themselves even more than usual, and I cannot blame them for their wariness. Dorothea had spoken of treacherous slave catchers who, when unable to find their actual prey, would seize upon some poor freedman and pass him off as the runaway. Once spirited off to a Slave State, he could expect no one to believe his accusations against his deceitful white captors, and would be sold into slavery, leaving his family and friends ignorant of his fate and unable to rescue him even if they did know.

  Sometimes the slave catchers mentioned Mr. L. and assumed we were on friendly terms with him, since he had sold us his farm (as they believed); they assumed, too, we would offer them the same hospitality he had. Hans provided as little as he could, as cordially as he could. He wished to avoid making enemies or raising suspicions, but he did not want to encourage future visits, lest our secret activities be discovered.

  Then one night, I was roused not by a knock on the door but by a groan of pain from down the hall. My first thought was that Joanna’s time had come, but then Hans appeared in my doorway, carrying a light and beckoning me to help. It was Anneke’s cries I had heard, though her baby was not supposed to come for another month.

  I thought, at first, that it was a false labor, and that it would fade within an hour. I had seen that happen before, especially with a woman’s first child. But as the birth pangs grew more painful and more frequent, we all realized that the infant’s arrival was imminent.

  Hans raced from the house to fetch Jonathan, for I was not so confident in my own abilities that I did not welcome his guidance, especially considering that none of us had expected this child quite so soon. I had assisted my mother as she cared for women in labor, but never had I been alone at the bedside, nor even in charge with helpers of my own. I did what I co
uld to ease Anneke’s sufferings, bathing her brow, speaking of the joys she would soon feel upon holding her child, but nothing I did could comfort her for long. She cried from pain and from fear, repeating again and again that it was too soon, that it had to stop, and that I must help her. My longing to do so brought tears to my eyes, but I was powerless.

  Roused by Anneke’s cries, Joanna soon joined us. When Anneke screamed from the shooting pains in her lower back, Joanna immediately had her go upon her hands and knees on the bed. To my astonishment, this did seem to relieve much of the pain, but when I complimented Joanna on her cure, she only shook her head, grim-faced. “That mean the baby’s head the wrong way,” said she in an undertone. “Gonna be hard to push him out, so hard.”

  My alarm growing, I prayed Hans and Jonathan would return soon. When they did, it was so sudden that there was no time for Joanna to conceal herself within the secret alcove. Instead, with a speed that belied her cumbersome belly, she crawled beneath Anneke’s bed. I threw a quilt over her as the two men ran up the stairs.

  Joanna lay there as still as stone throughout the night and into the day, when the first light of dawn pinked the sky, and Anneke’s cries had grown faint and hoarse. It was as Joanna had said; the baby’s head was turned directly opposite the way it should have been, which made for long, exhausting hours of pushing. But, thanks be to God, by the time sunlight shone in through the windows, Anneke had delivered a beautiful son.

  Jonathan examined the baby and declared him apparently healthy in every way, despite his early arrival. I wept with joy when Jonathan handed him to me to bathe and wrap in a blanket. Afterward I kissed the babe’s head and placed him in Anneke’s arms, which were trembling from fatigue so that she could not clasp them about her son. Hans embraced her so that his arms supported hers around their precious bundle.

  When Jonathan spoke to me next, to ask my assistance in tending to Anneke, I felt his words like a jolt. As foolish as it might sound, until that moment I had thought of him only as the doctor, not as Jonathan, who had once been my Jonathan. I tried not to meet his gaze as we cared for the new mother and her child, but my every nerve was raw and conscious of his presence. When our eyes accidentally met, I knew at once that he was thinking, as I was, that we would never together know the joy Hans and Anneke now felt.

  But then my heart chilled against him. All that had prevented our mutual happiness was his stubbornness and a misguided sense of duty. He would very likely know the delights of fatherhood with Charlotte, while I would likely never know the joys of motherhood. Jonathan could have married me, if he had been courageous enough, if he had truly wished to. In that respect he was no different than, and no better than, E. Jonathan remained with Anneke for a little while, but as soon as he departed, I hastened to assist Joanna from her hiding place beneath the bed. She seemed weary, and little wonder, but when I asked her how she felt, she assured me she was fine. Only after I had helped her back into her own bed did she confide that she had never witnessed a birth as difficult as Anneke’s. “I hope mine go easier,” said she, faintly. “Don’t know if I could have done all she just done.”

  “You have endured more than I would have thought possible for any woman, or any man, for that matter,” said I, stroking her head. “You are stronger than you know. You will do just fine.”

  My words seemed to reassure her, and as she drifted off to sleep, I marveled that a woman who bore such scars upon her back and heart could doubt her ability to endure childbirth.

  Summer tilted her head to the side, scanning the titles on the spines of the books. If she had known the Waterford College Library had so many books on block patterns and quilt history, she would have visited this wing a long time ago. Not that she had lacked quilt information—in addition to those she bought from Grandma’s Attic with her employee discount, the Elm Creek Quilters routinely exchanged books from their personal libraries, and Sylvia was virtually a walking encyclopedia on the subject of all things quilt-related.

  But her friends’ resources weren’t exhaustive, or she wouldn’t be scanning the library shelves looking for more. Unfortunately, while she found many books about quilts from the Civil War era, books focusing on the years before the war were more scarce. Even those three that she had found did not mention signal quilts or the Underground Railroad in their indexes, but Summer planned to check them out anyway, in hopes that a closer examination might turn up, if not the specific information she sought, other references worth pursuing.

  She finished looking over the bottom shelf and moved on to the top shelf of the next case where the books on textile history continued. Most of the books were older titles, with enough dust to suggest they were rarely used. Her gaze lit upon a promising-looking volume, and as she rose on her tiptoes to reach for it, a man’s voice said, “Here. Let me get that for you.”

  “I’m fine—” Summer started to say, but the man reached past her and snatched the book so quickly that her fingertips brushed the back of his hand. “Thanks.” I guess, she added silently, since she had not needed his help.

  “Anytime.” The man grinned at her in such a cheerful manner that she found herself no longer minding his unnecessary assistance. He was about her age, with dark, tousled hair and wire-rimmed glasses, and he carried a stack of books under one arm. In the other hand, he still held Summer’s book.

  Summer suppressed a smile and held out her hand. “Did you want to read it first, or . . . ?”

  “Oh.” Quickly he handed her the book. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.” She turned back to the bookshelf and opened the book to the table of contents.

  “Is this for your local history project or are you starting something new?”

  Summer looked up, surprised. “How did you know about that?”

  She might have been mistaken, but for a moment, she thought he looked disappointed. “I’ve seen you in the historical society’s archives at least twice a week all summer.”

  Then Summer recognized him. “Oh, right. You’re the guy who helped me find the court files. You’re usually hunched over your books in the carrel by the window, oblivious to the world.”

  He grinned but said, “Not that oblivious.” He craned his neck to read the title of the book in Summer’s hands. “Quilts and Their Makers in Antebellum Pennsylvania. Sounds interesting.”

  Summer gave him an appraising look, wondering if he meant it. “It is,” she said when she decided he was sincere. “It’s related to my historical society research project.”

  “Can you talk about it, or”—he glanced over his shoulder as if to make sure no one could overhear—“are you afraid someone might steal your topic and publish the results before you do?”

  Summer couldn’t help laughing. “It’s not like that.” She explained the mystery that had brought her so frequently to the library archives. At first she provided only a sketchy narrative, but when she saw he was truly interested, she warmed to her subject and filled in more details. She concluded by telling him the focus of this particular library search: to find, if it existed, some mention of quilts used as signals on the Underground Railroad.

  “I haven’t found much,” admitted Summer, “and what I have found mentions signal quilts only in passing, as if it’s common knowledge that certain patterns were used to designate stations or to transmit directions. Not one book or article has provided a photo of one of these quilts or gives any other kind of concrete documentation that such quilts existed. It’s as if the author heard of them from one person, who heard about it from another person, and so on.”

  “That must be frustrating.”

  “That’s one of the milder words I’ve used.”

  He laughed, but then grew thoughtful. “You know, it’s the nature of secret signals that they aren’t published or even spoken about, or they lose their efficacy. There might not be any published records out there to be found.”

  “I realize that, but I thought by now diaries or other family records might have bee
n published, since revealing the secrets so many years after the Civil War, wouldn’t do any harm.”

  He shrugged. “More than fifty years ago, my grandfather and his parents fled from Nazi Germany to Switzerland with the help of the underground movement. He told me that even after they came to America, even when the war had been over for decades, his parents said very little about the secret signals and communications they used during their escape.”

  “Why?”

  “They said they couldn’t risk it, since one never knew if those signals would be needed again someday.”

  April into May 1859—

  in which we raise and attempt to dispel suspicions

  Anneke and Hans’s good news spread rapidly through town, and Elm Creek Farm was soon besieged with well-meaning well-wishers, bearing covered dishes and baby quilts, all eager for a peek at the beautiful little boy. Anneke delighted in the attention paid to her son, and I was grateful for the food, since I was so busy playing nurse I could scarcely find a moment to catch my breath, much less put together a meal for the new parents, Joanna, and myself. Hans and I had agreed we could not display the Underground Railroad quilt under such circumstances, and I was plagued by thoughts of fugitives spending the night in the woods within sight of our house, unable to receive food or clothing or the comfort of a reassuring word.

  Joanna helped me as she could, but with visitors arriving unannounced at all hours of the day, she found herself scrambling for the hiding place so often she finally decided it would be most prudent for her to remain there throughout the day. Thinking of her shut up in that confined place drove me to distraction, and I yearned for the flood of neighbors to slow to a trickle.

  Our most frequent visitor was someone who would have been chagrined to learn her presence kept Joanna shut up within the secret alcove: my dear friend Dorothea, who came over nearly every evening after her own chores were finished to assist me with mine. Would that every woman could be blessed with a friend possessing such a willing heart and generous spirit! Frequently during those weary days, when I was tempted to fall asleep on my feet or crawl under the bedclothes and stuff my quilt into my ears rather than help Anneke soothe her howling infant, Dorothea’s unwavering serenity and quiet confidence cheered me, and helped me marshal my strength so that I could be the kind of aunt my family needed.