Naked in the Winter Wind
Page 24
“I do believe you are crazy, madam.” Julian snorted. “People flying through the air, indeed. Ridiculous.”
“Well, they’ll be in airplanes, kind of like long carriages, but I guess it’s easier for me to realize that I‘ve gone back in time than it is for you to believe that I’m from the future. After all, I have the knowledge of what’s going to happen and you…well…I guess I haven’t been able to show you solid, tangible proof.”
All was still. Sarah was wiping her face, composing herself after finding out her daughter and her family had returned safely to live at Jody’s family estate in Scotland. Julian, face red in anger, was staring at the floor, squishing a small dirt clod with the toe of his boot.
Sarah tried to speak, but only managed a pleading squeak, “Oh, Julian.”
“Wait! I’ve got it! Tangible proof! Sarah, did Ian leave my bag when he brought me here?”
Sarah opened the wooden chest, took out my backpack, and handed it to me as if she were awarding me an Academy Award. She cleared her throat and threw back her shoulders. “Here you are,” she said with a confident smile.
“Voila!” I said and pulled out an empty plastic Ziploc baggie. “Have you ever seen one of these?”
“It looks like a bladder of some sort.” Julian leaned forward to look at it, but didn’t want to touch it.
“Here, look at this.” I opened up the zippered top and set the bag on the table. Holding it open with one hand, I poured water from the ewer into it. I zipped it closed and held it upside down, just like in the commercials. “Ever seen anything like that?”
Sarah came over and looked closer. “They put zippers on plastic bags now? We only had the fold top kind when I came back. What else do you have in there?” she asked as she peered into the bag. “How about this?” she asked me, and pulled out the folded sheet of aluminum foil, crinkled from being folded so many times, but still intact.
“Oh, I’m sorry, you’ll want to see this, too, won’t you, Julian?” Sarah began unfolding the thin metal sheet. Julian took it in, but didn’t seem too impressed.
“Or this,” I said. I held up, squeezed, and flexed my souvenir plastic water bottle shaped like a locomotive. “Practically indestructible and totally waterproof; just don’t get it too hot or it’ll melt.”
Julian didn’t say anything with his mouth, but his eyes were open so wide, his eyelashes were touching his eyebrows. It looked like his breathing was a bit rapid, too.
“You’re not going to faint on us are you, Julian?” I asked, grinning like the cat that just ate the caviar. I was making progress.
His answer was to sit down with a thud. “Most amazing, madam,” he admitted, “flexible glass?”
“Not quite,” I answered, but didn’t expound on my wonder bottle. “Did you see this when I was cutting you loose?” I asked and pulled the Leatherman out of my pocket.
“No, I think I was a bit preoccupied at the time, trying to extricate myself from that filthy sack,” Julian growled, recalling his recent imprisonment.
“Here, check this out then.” I held the Leatherman flat in my palm, then turned it back on itself to reveal the pliers. “See,” I said as I picked up a pebble from the floor with the tool. “Now, this is where I grabbed the rope and cut through it.” I showed him the sharpened inner jaws of the tool. Next, I opened out the little mini scissors, screwdrivers, corkscrew, files, and knives one at a time, and then returned it to its original, blocky configuration. Just to add a flourish, I whipped the tool around, exposing the pliers in one quick flick of the wrist.
Julian’s head snapped back, his face once again trying to stay composed, but failing. I gave him a genuine smile; I knew I had him with the technology.
He sighed in resignation. “All right, you now have my full attention as well as my awe and respect. But why are Wallace and I so important to you; why us and not someone else?”
“I’ll do whatever I can to save you. You are more than just a good friend to Sarah and Jody. You are the father of his son. Saving the lives of you two, well, it can be so easy or so hard. It all depends on whether or not you believe me.”
A hard look suddenly took over Julian’s face. It was obvious to Sarah and me that he was both angry and disgusted, but why?
He shouted at me in a hoarse whisper, “What do you mean ‘I am the father of his son’?”
“Yes, madam, do you mean to say that Mr. Pomeroy is my father?” It was a softly spoken, but urgent question from the now upright Wallace Urquhart, Viscount Cavendish.
I looked at Sarah, then Wallace and Julian, and then back again to a stunned and pained Sarah. I glanced up and saw that Jody had slipped in, and was now standing quietly behind her, his face totally devoid of any emotion, but his hand was white-knuckled. He had a firm grip on Sarah’s arm and was unintentionally hurting her. ‘Oh, boy,’ flashed through my mind. ‘Think fast.’
The three of them knew Jody was Wallace’s biological father. For that same unknown reason, I ‘knew,’ too. Jody had sired a child under duress when he and Sarah were separated by a couple of centuries. That part was fuzzy for me, but I did know it was a huge secret, and one that Wallace obviously had been protected from his entire life.
I slowly walked the few steps over to the chaise, hoping for—and then getting—inspiration. “Wallace, I need your assistance to explain this.” He looked puzzled, but nodded in agreement: he’d help me. I continued, “Unbutton the top few buttons of your coat and shirt, please.”
He lifted his chin up and worked the buttons without question. After he had the top four of both undone, he sat up straight and looked at me, not saying a word, but the blank stare of his blue eyes and crowded eyebrows inquiring, “Now what?”
“Let me see,” I said. I fumbled inside his shirt with my chilly, shaking hands. He was either very good at hiding his feelings or he didn’t have any to share. He wasn’t shying away from me or acting embarrassed, but dutifully submitted to my nervous, probing fingers. I had just challenged his parentage, but he remained still and quiet. He was sitting in front of the two men I had just said were his fathers, keeping his eyes vacant, not looking at either of them, nor saying a word. Yet even in his silence, I could tell he trusted me. Not many men of this time would submit to an unknown woman fumbling inside their shirt, touching their bare skin, without being drunk or in a bawdy house. I had essentially called him a bastard, but he was stoic. Evidently, this wasn’t the first time his parentage had been questioned…although I wouldn’t doubt that it was the first time in the presence of his stepfather, Julian. And, I knew by the set of his jaw that he wanted to know the truth, no matter how unsettling it was.
“Here,” I said as I wrapped my fingers around the worn, wood bead necklace I found tucked inside his shirt. I looked at Julian, “Did you know about this, Julian?”
“That appears to be a Catholic rosary. No, Wallace has never shown it to me,” he replied icily. He started to say more, but literally bit his lip.
I was certain he was biting off the question about what this had to do with Wallace’s parentage. I nodded to him, one corner of my mouth raised in a slight smile of appreciation, to thank him for his restraint and courtesy in this odd and curious exposé.
“I didn’t think so,” I said. “Would you care to tell us about its history, Wallace?”
The wary young man looked abashed as he started to explain, a slight flush rising from his exposed neck, his words spoken just above a whisper. “I got my first and only spanking from the man who gave this to me. I was only about five years old and spoiled rotten. I had just built a fire in one of the horse stalls. I was trying to roast an ear of corn. I wanted to make the kernels pop up like they had at the faire. The blaze got out of control, but our groom, Mac, doused it before it spread and did any real damage. He paddled my bottom as punishment. I threatened to have him dismissed for doing it. He said it didn’t matter because he was already going to leave. Those words hurt me much more than any spanking ever could.
Wallace was beginning to speak louder now. We were all still on edge, though, eager to hear the rest of the story.
“When Mac told me he was leaving, I cried and begged him to stay. He ignored my tears and pleas, waited until I had calmed down a bit, and then offered me his threadbare handkerchief to wipe my face. I can still feel the homespun, soft with age and wear.” Wallace reached up and subconsciously touched his cheek, his fingers tracing the recalled trail of tears.
“He said something about how he didn’t want to leave, but that was the way of it, and that we both had to accept it. Then he told me he had something for me. He hoisted me up to the sunny corner in the loft that he called his room and gave me a horse he had carved for me out of a deer antler.
“I remember how bare the room was; nothing in it save a pallet on the floor and a small table with an icon on it, a small candle, burnt down to the nubbin, in front of it. I told him only stinkin’ Papists burned candles in front of pictures. He said that he was a stinkin’ Papist. I told him then I wanted to be a stinkin’ Papist, too. So, he got some water and made the sign of the cross on my forehead, gave me this rosary, and a new name. He left the next week, and I never saw him again.”
“What name did he give you?” I asked.
“Joseph. He said my name was now Wallace Joseph. I told him I already had three other names, but he said that Joseph was my Papist name.” Wallace started talking softly again, “He said his name was Joseph, too,” then looked over at Jody.
“By any chance, do you recall the groom’s full name?” I asked.
Wallace looked back at me and shook his head. “I only knew him as Mac.”
“Your father—Lord Julian, that is—knew his name. He was the one who arranged for Mac to work at your grandfather’s estate as a groom. Mac saved your life the day your mother died. You were only a day old, had been stolen away, stashed in a corncrib, when he came upon you, blue and half-frozen. You probably didn’t know about that either. Your mother gave you life, and Mac saved it. He stayed and watched you grow until Lord Julian came to marry your Aunt Irene. Mac baptized you with his first name before he left, to make sure you bore God’s protection. His full name was…
“Joseph Alexander MacKay Pomeroy,” Sarah, Jody, and Julian whispered softly in unison.
I broke the tension, quickly adding, “Where I come from, it’s considered rude to use the word ‘step,’ as in stepfather. We just say father. We always considered and called stepfathers, godfathers, and biological fathers simply ‘fathers.’ Only lawyers used the clinical or legal prefixes with father. And that is why I said Lord Julian,” I nodded at Julian, “was the father of his,” then nodded to Jody, “Jody’s, son.”
I knew it was a lame explanation, but it was the best I could do on such short notice.
There was a collective sigh in the room. Mine was because I had been able to do some fast thinking to save myself from the wrath of Lord Julian. I hoped Wallace’s sigh was of satisfaction at my explanation. I don’t know what Jody, Sarah, or Julian’s sighs were for, but at least no one was cursing, screaming, or getting red-faced with choler.
Wallace stood up, mute, but intense. I could see the bubbles brewing behind his eyes. He looked down at his hands, then at Jody’s, large, long-fingered, and with wide palms like his own. He walked over to his newly acknowledged godfather, stopping less than a foot away. He gazed into Jody’s sky blue eyes, a mirror image of his own. He put his left hand on Jody’s shoulder and said, “Thanks for saving my life. I’m very happy to have found you again,” he swallowed a hard gulp, and added, “father.”
Jody didn’t even try to stop himself from responding. He put his hand on Wallace’s shoulder and, one blink later, the two of them were hugging.
Jody was overcome. To hear Wallace call him father was more than he could ever have wished. For so long, he had hoped his ‘surprise’ child would remember the man who had baptized him with his own name of Joseph. He could never share his last name, Pomeroy. That would entail Wallace giving up his title, land, and a fortune. But now, thanks to Evie, he was his son’s acknowledged godfather. That was close enough. They could be in each other’s lives forever, God willing.
“Thanks for giving me life, too,” Wallace whispered in Jody’s ear just before the two pulled away from each other.
Jody clasped the joy close to his heart. He could rejoice later, in private.
Wallace turned and addressed everyone, declaring, “You’re right, Miss Evie; it does feel better to say I have two fathers. Thank you for letting the truth be known.”
“You’re very welcome, sir. I guess I let the cat out of the bag after I let the two men out of the bags.” I giggled, then covered my mouth in embarrassment at my lame pun.
The men looked at me as if I were speaking Swahili. “It’s just a saying from where I come from. It just means I revealed a secret. Oh, and I’m not a Miss, I’m married. I’m Mrs. Ian Kincaid.”
“What? Ian got himself a wife?” Jody exclaimed, acting surprised. He didn’t want Sarah or anyone else to know that he had intercepted Ian just moments before. “Why dinna anyone tell me so?”
“Well, it was a bit exciting around here,” answered Sarah. “Ian came by this afternoon and asked me to look after his wife. He said she hadn’t been feeling well lately. He went to find you. Just after Evie got to feeling better, I got a message that my help was urgently needed at the Dunmore’s. It seems Mrs. Dunmore almost cut off her thumb. It took a lot of time to get the bleeding to stop, and then to stitch up the wound. I thought Dottie and Betty were going to stay here with Evie, but next thing I know, they’re both following behind me. They said there was a ruckus at the house, that I should come back quickly, and bring some strong men with me. I couldn’t just leave my patient, so I told Dottie to go to see if the Thorpes would come and help. When I got back, Evie was in here taking care of Wallace’s bruised head, with Julian looking very angry. Evidently the men had been kidnapped, stuffed into gunnysacks, and brought here. Evie took her fancy little tool here and got them ungagged and unbagged, and shooed off the kidnappers in short order. Oh, and did I tell you that she and I are family?”
“Nae, ye dinna mention it. Pleased to meet ye, Mrs. Kincaid. Are ye feeling well now? Did Sarah have a chance to tend to ye yet? It sounds as if ye’ve been verra busy today.”
“Uh, yeah, I mean yes, sir, I’ll do, and no, sir; Sarah and I haven’t had time to address my problems.”
I know I’m bug-eyed and trembling as well as tongue-tied. Here he is, Himself, big as life—no, bigger! He really does fill a room when he’s in it. He’s tall, broad shouldered—big, all right—but the man has a presence about him that is twice his physical size. And when he asked about my health, he was genuinely concerned. And he called me Mrs. Kincaid. How wonderful!
Jody must have said something else to me. “I’m sorry. I missed what you were saying.”
“How long have ye and Wee Ian been marrit?”
“Well, we didn’t have a calendar, but it’s been almost three moons, er, months. Did he find you? He did say his trip wouldn’t take too long. I thought he’d be coming back with you.”
“No, I’m sorry lass. But dinna fash. I’m sure his business willna take long. He’ll be wantin’ to return to his new wife ere lang.”
Now it was Sarah’s turn to take the floor. With a mixture of professional sternness and parental pride, she said, “Wallace, if you’re up to it, would you escort your fathers outside? It’s time for me to perform the long overdue examination of my good sister.”
“I’m sure we could all do with a bit of fresh air,” Jody said, his arms wide to usher the men to the door. “Let’s see if we can do a bit of investigatin’ around the barn. Maybe we ca
n find out who was behind the kidnappin’ of ye two.”
Sarah shut the door after them. “Now what is this?” she asked as she held up my lantern.
“Oh, this is just too cool. See, it has a built-in dynamo so it creates its own electricity. It also has a radio, but since there aren’t any radio waves yet, it’s useless. But see,” I said, and cranked the unit, “light!”
“Great. Now I have a light for my examination that doesn’t flicker or stink and won’t burn the house down. So, what seems to be the problem?” she asked as she guided me to the chaise.
“Well, look,” I joked as I pulled my shirt taut across my belly, “as William Penn said to his very pregnant wife, ‘Thou Swell.’ However,” I added more somberly, “I’m only two or three months pregnant. I think this is a bit bigger than normal. I don’t know if I’ve ever been pregnant, but if I keep growing this fast, I’ll explode!”
Sarah motioned for me to recline. “Lie back,” she said gently, “and let me take a look.”
I pulled up my shirts, gathering them under my breasts, as she tugged down the elastic waistband of my pants. She gently pushed on my belly, starting low, at my pubic bone, and worked her way up my firm womb until she found mushy gut, just below my belly button. It was as if she were measuring my womb by finger widths.
I had been doing my best to ignore the pregnancy. It was easy to do at first. When Little Bear performed his exploratory physical and announced that I was four months pregnant, it shocked me back into reality. I was terrified at the prospect of motherhood in this strange, primitive place. Women were having babies here, but I didn’t even want to think of how hard it would be for me without disposable diapers and washing machines, stores nearby for baby food or formula, new clothes when the baby grew a size or three, immunizations, a home with a roof and a solid door… Shoot, I’m getting overwhelmed again.