by Sarah McCoy
It sent a chill down her back.
John motioned with the gun. “Get on.”
The men filed out the front door, down the porch steps, and onto their horses, with John moving the gun steadily from man to man.
“A pleasure meeting you, Miss Cuthbert,” Mitchell hollered, then gave his horse such a kick that it brayed in pain and shot off at a gallop. The four men followed.
John and Marilla stood on the porch long after the hoofbeats had receded, the cold night air creeping over them. The sweat of their brows shimmered a-frost in the clear winter’s night. Marilla didn’t realize she was shaking until John put an arm around her to steer her back into the house. Only then did she let down her guard. She curled into his chest. His head leaned onto hers, and he wrapped his arms around her. She pressed her ear to his heart and listened to the soft, fixed beating. No memory of the past. No worries of the future. Just the stroke of the seconds: now, now, now.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. His breath fanned across her forehead. “Come on, let’s get you inside before you catch ill.”
She moved only because he moved, her body tethered to his.
“H-How did you know to come?” Her teeth chattered.
John pulled her close to the fire and rubbed her arms until her skin kindled.
“Rachel. She saw the strangers ride past her farm to Green Gables. Thomas is away in Spencervale, so she sent Robert over to get me. This time of night, she knew whoever they were, they meant trouble.”
Marilla nodded, still wrapped in his arms. She might not have ever moved if she hadn’t remembered . . .
“The lads!”
She took the stairs as fast as her legs could carry her. John followed. In the West Gable sewing room, she threw open the horsehair trunk.
“Abraham! Al!”
From beneath the swaths of fabric rose two spindly, dark bodies and two sets of the most beaming beautiful eyes she’d ever seen. Marilla threw her arms about them, heads knocking into hers painlessly.
John stood alongside and marveled.
“This is Mr. John Blythe,” she told them. “He fought off the bad men.”
Tears streaked Al’s face. “Are they gone?”
John put a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, son, they’re gone.”
Abraham looked to the rifle John still carried. “Will you stay with us?”
“Yes.”
Then Abraham pulled his little brother to him, and they clung together like two links of a chain.
The boys wouldn’t sleep without Marilla and John close by, and truth be told, neither could Marilla without the three of them. She brought pillows and blankets to the sewing room. It was the safest place if the men returned. The boys could hide quickly.
“I can’t sleep,” Al whispered to his brother. “Momma tells us story-tales when Sandman won’t come.”
Abraham put a hand on his brother’s back. “I can’t think of any right now.”
Al sighed. “Miss Marilla, do you know any?”
“Well now, I don’t know if I could think one up afresh . . .” Marilla’s stomach dipped at the sight of Al’s tired, tearful eyes. “Miss Izzy used to read me rhymes when I was younger. They were happy stories that helped pass the time. Would you like to hear one?”
Both boys nodded.
She hadn’t thought of the nursery rhymes in years.
“My favorite was called ‘The Star.’” She cleared her throat. “‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high’ . . .” She paused, struggling to recall the next part.
“Like a diamond in the sky,” said John.
“Do you know it, Mr. Blythe?” whispered Al.
“That I do,” said John.
With his help, by the time they’d finished the poem, the boys had drifted off to steady breathing. Al curled kittenlike in the crook of John’s arm. Abraham’s head fell into Marilla’s lap with his mouth opened wide as a snow moon. She thought how much like baby Hughie he looked. Times ten years, of course. She tucked the downy blanket under his chin, and when she looked up, John was watching her. He smiled. She smiled. It seemed a slipstream between them, driving her mind back to wonder: Could it have been like this? Our own family?
The imagining made her feel as if she’d dropped over the edge of an unseen cliff and was falling down and flying up all at the same time.
“Thank you, John,” she whispered.
His eyes glimmered unspoken thoughts, and she knew she might never have the chance to speak hers again. But words of love were not the Cuthbert way.
“You have been the truest . . . the dearest friend of my life.”
John didn’t blink. His gaze shone brighter.
“And you of mine.”
The gravity was too great. She gave over to sleep with the rhythm of the story following her through the darkness:
When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle all the night.
XXXV.
Morning Revelation
Marilla awoke to the startle of a horse’s neigh. She shot up on her feet before realizing that she was the only one in the room. What she’d thought was Abraham was, in fact, a pillow under her arm. John and the boys were gone. In alarm, she went out on the upper landing, smelling coffee and hearing the murmur of voices below.
“John?” she called.
No answer. She went across the hall to Izzy’s room, the East Gable, so she could look out through the bare boughs of the cherry tree to the road. There stood John beside their horse and buggy, with Matthew, Izzy, and Mr. Meachum aboard.
Marilla put a hand to the light-washed window, so grateful for morning. The pane of glass dewed at her touch, and her eyes followed suit. She wiped them dry and smoothed her hair back into her bun before going downstairs.
“Our operative received word of the slave hunters on their way to Green Gables,” explained Izzy. “Matthew drove all night to avoid them in Charlottetown and get back to you.”
John had cleaned the spilled pot in the kitchen and made breakfast while Marilla slept. The boys ate steaming bowls of oatmeal porridge. She hadn’t eaten since the morning before, but still had no appetite. Coffee was as much as she could stomach, and thankfully, John had brewed a good kettle. Izzy and Marilla sat at the wooden table with the boys while the men sentineled round.
“You saved my grandsons. I’m forever in your debt,” said Mr. Meachum.
John shook his head. “No debt. We live by a different creed than our neighbors to the south. Abegweit—that’s the original name of this place. A wise woman once called it ‘a land of new birth where all colors of men and beast are free to live their brightest.’ I never forgot that.”
Her words, so long ago penned, seemed leaden with all the years and regrets in between. They were a reminder that she’d once had a voice and still had a choice in her future.
“Abegweit,” Mr. Meachum repeated. “It has a beautiful sound to it.” He turned to Abraham and Al. “Starting now, when we speak of Green Gables, we call it Abegweit.”
“A secret name—like Canaan?” asked Abraham.
“Canaan is Underground Railroad talk for Canada,” explained Mr. Meachum.
“Miss Cuthbert be a shepherd on the Gospel train?” asked Al.
“Of a kind, yes.”
Al thunked his porridge spoon. “I knew it the minute I come. Miss Marilla’s house is a dream station.”
Marilla had to smile too. It was a pretty thought, if only in dreaming.
Then came a rapping at the front door, and all of them jumped up from the table.
“Miss Cuthbert—Marilla? John?”
It was Kitty, dressed in riding skirt and boots. Her horse was tied to the fence post, snorting puffs of exasperation into the morning air. Marilla had to admire her pluck. She opened the door.
“Praise be!” Kitty embraced her. “I didn’t sl
eep a wink.”
Seeing her husband in the foyer, she released Marilla and threw her arms around his neck in a kiss. Marilla felt the part of her that had come loose overnight suddenly stitch up.
“Husband!” Kitty’s relief was palpable.
“I’m fine. Glad I came over when I did.”
Keeping one arm around John’s waist, she turned to face them. “When Robert Lynde said there were men on horseback going to Green Gables, I told John, ‘That’s wickedness. You must go this instant. Marilla needs you!’ But I couldn’t stay at the farm another hour. I came as soon as there was light—worried sick. After all, we need you too.” She put a hand to her belly.
John looked her over a moment. “We?”
She nodded.
He shook his head. “So soon?”
“We’ve been man and wife going on two months.” She blushed. “These things don’t take much time.”
Didn’t they? thought Marilla.
The room pinwheeled, with Kitty and John at the center. The rest was an incidental blur. John picked up his wife, then set her down so carefully, it was as if her feet were made of flower petals. The floor slipped away from Marilla, but she dared not sit or she might never be able to stand again. A child. His child. Their child. This was what she’d prayed for all these years. She wanted life for him.
Marilla looked round at the faces surrounding her in the house her father and mother had built. In each pock and pit, she saw the choices that had shaped her and led her to this moment. She couldn’t change one without affecting the whole.
“Marilla.” Matthew called her from her thoughts. “Mr. Meachum’s carriage is loaded. The posse’s headed to Charlottetown, but it won’t take long for them to catch the trail. The agent is waiting for the boys on the coast. They need to go now.”
While Mr. Meachum tucked the boys safely into the carriage, John helped Kitty onto her horse.
“Is it safe for you to ride?”
“Being with child doesn’t make a woman frail, John,” said Kitty.
Marilla felt her knee pop with a step. Her back twinged from lying on the hard floor all night. Kitty was younger and strong. Their child would be the embodiment of everything new and good. Kitty would love John the way he deserved.
“Thank you, Kitty,” said Marilla. “For John—sending him and everything.”
Kitty smiled. John bowed. Then they turned their horses together and set off toward the Blythe homestead.
Dressed again in her blue cloak for the journey, Izzy came to Marilla’s side. She understood the pain of loving at arm’s length. Such a short distance, yet it might as well be an ocean to the heart. The two women watched as the riders quickly grew small. The sun arced high above the snowy pasture rutted in hoof prints and paw prints and boot prints alike.
“Look,” Izzy pointed.
Just shy of the woods stood a doe, as sepia smooth as she was graceful. Her fawn nibbled the needles of a white pine nearby. She watched them watching her.
“Nature’s tracks don’t deceive. They lead to life. Where there are hearts beating, there is love. Keep yourself open to unexpected blessings, dear.”
Izzy looped her arm through Marilla’s. Like a rosette stitch, it knit them together. The fragrance of her lilac powder bloomed through the mineral tang of the snow, and it brought Marilla comfort. She couldn’t honestly remember what Clara had smelled like anymore. She’d only known her for thirteen years. She’d known Izzy for double that. Twin sisters, cut from the same cloth. Marilla wondered if their spirit had been too much for the world. So great it had split during creation and then condensed back to one. In that way, her mother was there in Izzy and always had been.
John’s and Kitty’s figures finally dipped out of sight, like the last line of a fairy tale. Marilla had never thought about what came after.
Izzy reached down and scooped up two pieces of sandy rose quartz from the yard.
“It isn’t Hope River, but it’ll do.” She closed her eyes a beat, then flung one of the rocks into the white pasture. It slid across the snow and stood like a dot of ink from a paused pen.
She handed Marilla the second stone. “Make a wish.”
Marilla took it, smoothing it between her fingers before finally speaking her heart aloud. She’d been silent too long.
“It would be nice to know the love of a child one day.”
Izzy kissed her cheek. “And so you shall.”
Then Marilla pitched the stone into the pasture with all her might.
Author’s Note
I wrote this novel with no grand ambition. Instead, I started with the cryptic un-telling—a mystery woven into Anne of Green Gables, Chapter XXXVII:
“What a nice-looking fellow he is,” said Marilla absently. “I saw him in church last Sunday and he seemed so tall and manly. He looks a lot like his father did at the same age. John Blythe was a nice boy. We used to be real good friends, he and I. People called him my beau.”
Anne looked up with swift interest.
“Oh, Marilla—and what happened?”
Anne’s question echoed in my heart my whole life: Oh, Marilla, what happened? This novel is my answer to that. It is my invention of Marilla Cuthbert and the foundation of Green Gables before Anne Shirley arrived with her whimsical free spirit.
This novel is unusual in that we already know the ending. Lucy Maud Montgomery provided us with the Cuthberts’ finale in glorious dénouement. We’re working backward in the storytelling loop, connecting the journey’s end to the start. Imagine it like an infinity symbol, weaving around and through time and place, real and fictional, season upon season. Art imitating life.
I lay myself plainly before you: I am not Lucy Maud Montgomery. The esteemed, beloved works we have by her are all there are in the world and all there ever will be. This is a novel by me, Sarah McCoy. I wrote from a place of grateful reverence to a fictional landscape that has given me much scope for imagination. I wrote praying each hour that I would honor that world and add to it in a way that would make its creator proud. And now I write again with the hope that readers will understand Marilla for who she is as a woman unto herself . . . as I am unto mine.
To do Marilla justice, I rigorously studied the Anne of Green Gables book series. In addition, I researched as much about Lucy Maud Montgomery’s life as possible, including a trip to Prince Edward Island, Canada. I walked in her real-life footsteps: down the pasture paths she took; through the balsam and “haunted” woods; and across the yards of her childhood home with her grandparents the MacNeills; her cousin’s home next door, now Green Gables Heritage Place; and her favorite aunt Annie Campbell’s farm, Silver Bush. I watched the island turn red as fire from Cavendish Beach and shielded my eyes from the sparkle of the Lake of Shining Waters. I met and spent happy hours talking with her family relations who still live on the island and run the Anne of Green Gables Museum. I touched her birthplace and her grave, spoke promises to her bones, and said prayers to her spirit. I did all of this so that my Green Gables story world would be suffused with hers. I wanted her blessing, yes. Just as she so earnestly sought the blessings of her readers, I seek the same.
* * *
Technical notes regarding the research and writing:
I bowed to the vernacular of the period, which would’ve been Marilla’s lexicon, for the spellings and names of many people, places, and things. These were sanctioned by a key set of Canadian Cultural Accuracy Readers to whom I am ever appreciative. Still, we must remember that this is Lucy Maud Montgomery’s fictitious rendering of Canada, Prince Edward Island, and the world at large, which I have now expounded upon through my own authorial lens. Avonlea and the surrounding villages never existed except for here on the page.
Below is a list of resources that I turned to time and time again during the writing process. I’m ever grateful to the authors, all Green Gables kindreds.
The Anne series by Lucy Maud Montgomery: Anne of Green Gables
Anne of Avonlea
/> Anne of the Island
Anne of Windy Poplars
Anne’s House of Dreams
Anne of Ingleside
Rainbow Valley
Rilla of Ingleside
The Annotated Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery, edited by Wendy Elizabeth Barry, Margaret Anne Doody, and Mary E. Doody Jones
Anne’s World, Maud’s World: The Sacred Sites of L.M. Montgomery, by Nancy Rootland
In Armageddon’s Shadow: The Civil War and Canada’s Maritime Provinces, by Greg Marquis
Black Islanders, by Jim Hornby
Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815–1860, by Harvey Amani Whitfield
A Desperate Road to Freedom (Dear Canada), by Karleen Bradford
Finding Anne on Prince Edward Island, by Kathleen I. Hamilton and Sibyl Frei
L.M. Montgomery Online, edited by Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre
North to Bondage: Loyalist Slavery in the Maritimes, by Harvey Amani Whitfield
Provincial Freeman Paper, 1854–1857, by Mary Ann Shadd Carey
Rhymes for the Nursery, by Jane Taylor and Ann Taylor, first published in 1806
Spirit of Place: Lucy Maud Montgomery and Prince Edward Island, by Francis W. P. Bolger, Wayne Barrett, and Anne MacKay
“Slave Life and Slave Law in Colonial Prince Edward Island, 1769–1825,” by Harvey Amani Whitfield and Barry Cahill, Acadiensis Vol. 38, No. 2 (Summer/Autumn-Été/Automne 2009): 29–51, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41501737?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
The African Canadian Legal Odyssey: Historical Essays, edited by Barrington Walker
The History of New Brunswick and the Other Maritime Provinces, by John Murdoch Harper
The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album, by Kevin McCabe, edited by Alexandra Heilbron
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. 1: 1889–1910, edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston
Acknowledgments
The writing of any book is a journey of mind and heart. I’m infinitely grateful to many people who came alongside me to help make this book all that it could be: