by Sarah McCoy
She nodded. “Maybe I’ll send you back with a portion.”
She’d picked enough for four. She didn’t know how to cook for any fewer.
“Now that you’ve got the French farm boy to feed, and we have one fewer.” Her eyes welled. She bit her lip.
John reached out to take her hand.
“No.” She pulled away. “Thank you but . . .”
“I only meant to . . .” He sighed. “We haven’t really had a chance to be alone since . . . you know.”
“Since the day my mother died? Yes, I know.” She lifted her chin hard. “I need to get back. Chores are waiting.” She started that way.
John stopped her by the elbow, his hand gently grasping her secret scar. She went slack.
“My father says grief can make a heart hard for a time. I understand, Marilla. I’m not going anywhere.”
A breeze caught the maples and rippled through. She leaned into him, ever so slightly, then straightened.
“I’ll leave the bannock in the kitchen for you.”
She didn’t look back over her shoulder as she walked to the Gables. It wasn’t until she was at the kitchen door that she heard the cowbells moving along.
* * *
Marilla wrapped the extra bannock wedge in wax paper and left it on the chopping table. It was there one minute and gone the next. John must’ve come in while she was sweeping the yard, and Matthew and Hugh were washing up for supper. She was glad she missed him—and sorry too.
Marilla fed the silent men at the table. She ate bites between washing dishes and wiping crumbs. Too hot from the day to sit indoors, they all went out on the back porch afterward. Hugh and Matthew lit their tobacco pipes, and Marilla took to her wicker chair. A flight of tree sparrows descended on the gravel, hopping back and forth and twittering some tune known only between their flock.
Hugh cleared his throat. “This place needs a name.”
It surprised Marilla.
“A name? But we have a name.”
Hugh shook his head. “Your mother wanted it to be called something particular. I’ve been thinking on it a time, but can’t seem to find the right thing.”
As they thought, the sun slowly sank into the horizon, throwing a golden shimmer across the Cuthbert pastureland. The last reach of day. Fireflies blinked and disappeared, blinked and disappeared. Here and gone, here and gone. The fields rolled green blade to green leaves to green gulf beyond . . .
“Green Gables,” said Marilla.
The men took a beat to consider.
“I like it,” said Matthew.
“Simple and good,” said Hugh. “Your mother would’ve agreed.”
The three of them stayed sitting there as the purple haze of night fell over all and the crickets began their bittersweet song. Marilla was exactly where she wanted to be—where she was meant to be. Home at Green Gables.
Part Two
Marilla of Avonlea
XV.
Rebellion
February 1838
“Matthew’s not taking supper again?” Marilla asked when Hugh alone came to the table. “That’s the third time this week.” She spooned out beef pie from the cast-iron. “Not sure how he’s going to keep up strength for the farm when he’s out every night fooling about.”
“It’s a political gathering. Boys his age feel the need for activism.”
Marilla placed a clean fork by her father’s plate. The metal gleamed in the lamplight. She’d taken to scouring things with vinegar.
“Enough activities in a day to stay busy.”
Hugh gently speared his beef pie, crumbling the crust into the sauce. “National activism, I mean. Young men get an itch to make their marks in the greater history. It’s hard for women to understand.”
“Why so?” she countered. “Don’t we get the same itch?”
Truthfully, she didn’t understand. Since her mother’s passing, all she could focus on were the particulars of the here and now: get out of bed in the morning, wash her face, plait her hair, put on her apron, grind the grist, beat the eggs, flip, fry, stew, serve, wash, and repeat. Day after day, month after month. Every minute felt on the cusp of overwhelming. She’d known that if she stopped for a beat, the grief would overtake her. Sometimes she had to close her eyes and tell herself to breathe: in and out; and again, in and out. Otherwise, the heaviness in her chest would hold her steady until her head throbbed and her whole body became a weather vane for pain. It took every ounce of will to get out of bed then. The only comfort she gleaned was in Green Gables. Clara was there. In the wooden slats of the floor she’d walked, the hearth she’d kindled, the prayers she’d said, and the poems they’d read aloud while turning water into red currant wine. Marilla wondered if the world outside had always been so cumbersome but she hadn’t known it because Clara had been her shelter. With her mother gone, there wasn’t a crevice that didn’t seem ashen.
While Hugh ate, Marilla scrubbed the silver candlesticks. The flame and wax had left them smudged.
He pushed back from his empty plate. “Very good.”
“That’s the last of the butcher’s beef until spring.” She dipped the cloth into her vinegar-water bowl and rubbed hard until the silver flashed.
“One of the Blythes’ bulls. I can taste the strawberry apples. Only ones in Avonlea.”
She nodded. “Yes, John said they give them to the livestock. Sweetens the heifers’ milk too.”
John had worked through the autumn with them. Far longer than the initial offer. He’d come over straight after school to bring in the cows while Matthew and Hugh gathered the crops. He’d started to feel as much a part of Green Gables as any of them. When the harvest ended and the first snow arrived, he went back to his studies after school.
Then in November, a rebellion sparked. The Reformers were calling it the Patriote Movement. At the Battle of Saint-Denis, Canadian Reformers had surprised them all by defeating the British army. The uprising quickly spread across the provinces. Martial law was declared in Montreal. Handbills circulated.
Half of them cried out: “Independence for Canada! Down with the Monarchy!”
And the other half proclaimed: “United we stand! Long live the Queen!”
Each week the newspapers reported more outbreaks of violence between the two parties, Reformer against Tory. Soon the dissension had reached the Maritimes. Just as Mr. Murdock had foretold, British troops arrived to patrol the town. Everyone in Avonlea assumed anarchy was soon to follow. So they bolted their doors and kept arms close at hand. John had been right all those many months back. Rachel said her father had two new muskets: one by the front door and one by the back. It seemed that Hugh owned a rifle too. He brought it in from the barn one day and kept it behind his parlor chair. Marilla thought she’d feel more distress at its presence but was surprised to find it comforting instead. They were ready to defend Green Gables if necessary.
By the New Year, most of the rebel leaders had been shot, hanged, or arrested. But the Patriote Movement was not finished. Like an epidemic, it swelled in the hearts of the people. Even in Avonlea, the political factions had become all anybody talked about. From the mail runners to the sheepherders, everyone was at verbal war: the conservative Tories against the liberal Reformers. The young men of Avonlea were assembling to debate in an old barn missing half its roof, just off the road between the woods and the schoolhouse. They’d named it the Agora.
“It’s a cold night. Bet your brother’d be mighty grateful if his sister brought a warm pie to fill his stomach.” Hugh eyed the pan. “Enough there to feed two men, I reckon.”
Marilla put down her cleaning cloth. A lock of hair had come loose from her braid and hung down to tickle her nose. She pushed it back and caught a whiff of the vinegar on her hand.
“Women aren’t welcome at the Agora.”
“You’re not just a woman,” countered Hugh. “You’re Marilla Cuthbert. Matthew’s kin.” He took out his pipe and headed to the parlor, leaving Marilla alone over
her uneaten pie.
“Serve him right if I ate the rest myself,” she muttered to Skunk.
The cat sat at her heels, looking up with a gaze of utter obedience.
“If it were a mackerel pie, I’d give it to you in a snap, but it’s the last of the beef.”
So she wrapped the remaining pie in paper, washed her hands with lye soap, and rubbed a vanilla bean on her wrists to hide any leftover tang. Then she bundled up in her good winter coat, mittens, and quilted bonnet.
“If I’m not back in an hour, the wolves may have taken me.”
“There are no wolves on the island.” Hugh yawned.
“A guilty conscience can gnaw on a person is my point.”
“Near to fifteen years living in Avonlea, I trust you not to fall into the sea or be devoured by wild beasts.” He kissed her cheek and she set off.
It was a cold but windless night. The moon hung crescent as the pie she carried. The trees on the lane were naked and sheathed in ice, leaving her eyes to wander up to the starry sky that domed over in a giant, twinkling gable. The snow gave a gratifying crunch under boot, and the smell of burning pine grew bolder the closer she came to the Agora. In the warmer months, the meadow she crossed was a sea of bright violets. Now it was merely bruised shadows. On the opposite side of it, a bonfire smoldered through the Agora’s open barn loft. The hot smoke plumed up to the sky, then fell back down cold to crawl across the land. It made her eyes burn and turned everything hazy. She was glad when she finally reached the light of the door.
Pushing the latch aside, she opened it without invitation and was met by a dozen phantoms. The fire cast odd shadows under their eyes and across their jaws. While she knew them to be farmers’ sons, neighbors, and the boys who’d sat behind her in Avonlea School, they wore the masks of warring men. Matthew stood up from a bench at the far end. In the center was John, in midsentence, with his back to her.
“—cannot remain compliant with the way things are. Aristocracy by peerage does not predetermine leadership and cannot rule the modern people.” He turned in the direction of the men’s attention and smiled when he saw Marilla.
“I’ve brought beef pie,” she said. “For my brother Matthew and anyone else who might be missing supper.”
Matthew, familiar and true, was quickly by her side, taking the parcel and ushering her back out.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “I’ll be home soon.”
“Maybe we should hear from a feminine mind,” John announced to the circle.
A low grumble ensued.
“No women in the Agora,” said someone who sounded a lot like Clifford Sloane.
“You’re breaking the rules,” protested Sam Coates beside him.
“We’re here because of daring men who challenged the law!” John raised his fist. “Put it to a vote then. Who says nay?”
The room quieted. A log in the fire split and spit a mist of embers.
“Yea?” asked John.
He and Matthew locked eyes.
“Yea,” said Matthew.
“That’s two to none, so let the question be asked.”
Matthew led Marilla forward, although she dragged her feet. No one had asked her yea or nay to speak! Standing beside John, she seethed inwardly at being put on the spot like this. The heat of the bonfire was suddenly too much. She took off her mittens and hat and crossed her arms over her chest to keep her nerves at bay.
“As a young woman in our community, I ask you: whom do you side with on the matter of the rebellions—the Tories or the Reformers?”
Rachel had come over frequently since Clara’s death, feeling it her duty to fill Marilla’s emptiness with talk of the world. She’d told Marilla how the Whites had come down on the side of the liberal Reformers, proponents of progressive change for an egalitarian society and a more responsible government representing its citizens. She even went so far as to say her family favored no royal family at all, but an autonomous republic like the United States. Seditious talk! Marilla was flustered from the listening, but Rachel insisted that everyone was openly discussing these things, including the Blythes. The Whites and the Blythes being friends and business partners, they were in agreement that the old rules of class and wealth could not unite a nation.
Marilla had said nothing during Rachel’s harangues. Politics seemed inconsequential compared to the loss she felt and the regrets she carried.
Still, Marilla had brought it up with Hugh one evening.
“Where do you stand, Father?”
“We’re conservative Presbyterians—Tories—and loyal to the Crown. It’s the holy order of things. We must trust in God’s sovereignty and the sovereign hand that he anoints. Otherwise, what’s to stop every man from crowning himself a king?” Then he’d read a long, cautionary passage from Deuteronomy.
First and foremost, Marilla was a Cuthbert, loyal to her kin and their ways. So now, in the audience of the Agora, she deferred to her brother.
“Matthew speaks for the Cuthberts. Whatever he says, I agree.”
“Tories!” someone shouted proudly.
John raised a hand for quiet.
“We know what Matthew says. What do you say, Marilla?”
Frustrated by his insistence, she met his gaze straight on and frowned. Neither blinked for a long minute.
“I have nothing to say, John.”
“I don’t believe that. You’re too smart.”
The calls of “Tories!” and “Reformers!” returned and crescendoed.
Matthew pulled her out of the ring, through the Agora door, and into the moonlit barnyard. There in the quiet, his long exhalation colored the air gray between them.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
Silently, they retraced the footprints she’d made coming. But Marilla’s mind was back at the Agora, replaying the scene over and over, imagining what she could’ve said: That progress didn’t have to come with sacrificial bloodshed. That she had faith in her family and faith in the land. That they were farmers—they should know the ways of nature! A cow didn’t have to die to make way for a new calf, nor a monarchy for a new nation. But then she thought of her mother and Nathaniel buried together in the Presbyterian church cemetery. Her eyes welled. She closed them against a blast of cold air and trudged ahead.
By the time they got home, Hugh had gone to bed. The pie had congealed into a mass of mush from the to-and-fro. Matthew ate only the beef chunks from the pap. She gave the rest to Skunk, who’d vigilantly stayed awake as if knowing his time would come.
XVI.
Two to Study
March
A last light snow blew over the island, lacing the tree buds in silver frost while the sky opened clear as a bluebell. After the night at the Agora, Marilla found herself reading every newspaper clipping Matthew brought home, every political bulletin on the post office wall, every book lying around the Gables. Her mind was hungry for words. They kept her thoughts from wandering and her heart from feeling the dark sorrow.
“I think I’d like to take the school exit exam early,” she told Hugh over breakfast. “I’ll have to study,” she explained. “Which may take time away from my chores.”
Hugh lifted a shiny tin cup. Marilla had soaked it long enough to pickle the metal, then scrubbed until it looked better than new.
“I think that’d be all right. You’ll have to get Mr. Murdock’s permission.”
“Mr. Blythe asked to borrow our hoof nippers. I’m going over there tomorrow,” said Matthew.
“Schoolhouse is on the way,” Hugh replied.
Marilla looked from father to brother. Matthew winked and slurped his coffee. It warmed her to a grin.
It’d been so long since she’d gone to school that she’d outgrown her day dresses. All she had were her house frocks and Sunday best. So she ventured into her mother’s things. Izzy had pressed all of Clara’s white cotton shirts with her own lilac water. Marilla was grateful that they smelled of her aunt and not her mother. It t
ook all her will to open the trunk at all. She retrieved a cream blouse and a patterned skirt that she’d never seen Clara wear. A black spray of flowers against a forest green background. It fit her to a T.
The family was still in mourning. The black curtains remained over the windows all winter—to keep out the drafts, she’d told herself. It’d been nearly a full year, and the warmer months were approaching. She’d have to take them down soon. But she was determined to wear her mourning black no matter the season. She slipped the black crepe armband over her blouse. She hadn’t the energy to plait her hair, so she pulled it neatly into a bun. She wanted to prove to Mr. Murdock that she was more mature than her years and thus capable of passing the exam early.
Matthew waited with the sleigh. When she came out, he gave a shy whistle, which she ignored but appreciated. She needed all the confidence she could get.
The new snow was melting into the old as they slid across the fields to the east, through the woods, and over the road that led to the village of Newbridge. Outside the Avonlea School door, the students’ lunches were stacked in a row. A handful of pull sleighs were parked beside. The windows winked as bright and warm as she remembered. How simple life within had been: the hours broken into segments of learning. Each day filled up like a jar of beans to be taken home, digested, and filled up again tomorrow. If only they could’ve stayed that way.
Marilla timed it so that she wouldn’t interrupt Mr. Murdock’s lesson. He was a stickler for keeping schedule, and she wanted to stay in his good graces. He’d break for lunch recess soon.
Matthew brought Jericho to a stop on the east side of the schoolhouse beside the apple tree that bore forth unlimited after-school treats in the autumn. Now, however, it was barren as a bundle of brushwood.
“I’ll wait for you here,” said Matthew. He leaned back and tilted his hat to block the sunshine from his eyes.
Marilla hopped down from the sleigh and peeked through the schoolhouse window to see if Mr. Murdock was still at the board. He was, but before she could lean out of sight, one of the younger students caught a glimpse of her and began pointing frantically. Marilla put her finger in front of her lips to shush him, but that only made him cry out.