“Is it time for bed already?” He asked, mid-yawn. He stretched and scratched little minx between the ears as she struggled to stay awake in Grandmother’s lap.
“You go on to bed, Gerald.” Grandmother sighed. “Sera and I have a little bit of work left in our day, then I will join you.” Grandfather kissed her tenderly on the top of her greying head and wandered off toward the back of the cottage. He made a show of stretching and scratching his bottom until Seraphina couldn’t help but giggle at his antics. Her grandmother smiled gently as she watched her youngest grandchild happy and content in this small world that had been created for her, to keep her safe and allow her to grow up to be the lovely woman she had become.
“Grandmother, there isn’t any work left, is there? I thought we had everything done before the sun went down.” Sera snipped the loose ends of thread and set aside her finished darning. Her grandmother sighed at her and stroked the sleeping kitten on her legs.
“Fetch me a cup of tea, Sera, please?” Grandmother asked. Sera patted her on the shoulder and stoked the fire in the potbelly woodstove. She pumped water into the kettle from the sink and set it to boil. Into the sieve, she scooped a little of the loose tea. Her grandmother had taught her make it from the chamomile and mint leaves they grew in the garden, by carefully hanging the young plants to dry before crushing them in equal parts and storing them in the small airtight tins Grandmother had brought across from Ireland with her.
She inhaled the earthy minty smell of the tea and carefully closed the time and travel-worn tin, just as the kettle began to sing. She poured two teacups and set a small bowl of sugar and quickly retrieved some fresh cream from the cold cellar while the tea steeped. She placed the cream on the tray with the tea cups and the sugar, pulling the small sieves out by their delicate chains and rinsing them in what was left of the dish water in the sink.
Seraphina set the tray on the small table next to Grandmother’s chair by the fire. She added sugar and cream to the hot tea and stirred it before setting one at her grandmother’s elbow and mixing a very small amount of cream and sugar into her own cup.
“What is it, Grandmother?” Seraphina asked, tucking her feet under her as she curled up on the rug near the embers of the fire. “Is Grayson all right? Nothing bad has happened with him and his wife, has it?” Seraphina was anxious for her brother’s safety. She’d never been away from him, but now that he was married, he and his bride had gone back to her home in Pennsylvania, where he had agreed to work for his new father-in-law as an actuary.
“No Sera, your brother is fine, and as his sweet Emma wrote in her last letter, they are settling in nicely near her parents.” She smiled down at her granddaughter. “It is you that I needed to speak of this night, and your future we need to discuss.” Seraphina sighed. These conversations had been more and more frequent since her eighteenth birthday several weeks ago. While she would never wish harm upon her older brother, any news of Grayson, barring death or illness, would have been preferable to another lecture of her impending old maidenhood.
“I don’t know why we are speaking about me again, Grandmother.” Seraphina groused. She spread her skirt out around her knees and coaxed Zeus closer, stroking between his ears as he laid his big square head in her lap. “I’m fine, Nana, I don’t need anything I don’t have here.” She wheedled, using the name for her grandmother that she’d used when she was little.
“Well, about that…” Grandmother began, then let her voice trail off as she took a sip of tea. She gauged the look of suspicion on Seraphina’s face, marveling at how she’d grown in the few short years she and her brother had been with them. Her once chubby, sweet little face was still as soft, but had grown into a slender, pensive aspect, contemplative at rest, her sky blue eyes dreamy and kind.
“Go on, Nana.” Seraphina prompted her grandmother. “You might as well just spill it out, you can’t put it back now anyway.” She chided, using the adage her grandmother had used against her for years. The old lady chuckled and shook her head. It was long past the time when she could divert or stall her headstrong young ward.
“Sera, it is long overdue that you find yourself a nice man to take you away from us doddering old folks and give you a home and a family of your own.” The old woman chided. “I have letters for you from men that would like your company. Only in the proper way of course.” Grandmother quickly added before Seraphina could complain. “Your brother and Emma both agree with me on this, and Emma took it upon herself to write to one of those husband magazines for you.” Seraphina gasped in shock.
“Not Matrimonial magazine, Nana! Whatever could have possessed you all?” She cried out. “I am not going to marry some strange man, Nana. That’s been my problem for the better part of a year now.” Seraphina shuddered. Her parents had been forced to mortgage away her freedom to a family with money before they emigrated. The price for Seraphina to join them, was her hand in marriage. It turned out that what they really wanted was the family’s land. It wasn’t her father’s to sell, but Seraphina’s maternal grandfather had willed a portion of his land to Grayson and Seraphina each.
Now, with her grandfather gone, and her father, Seraphina was the last in a long line of landed nobles. Poor nobles to be sure, but with titles that could be traced back to the time when Queen Elizabeth had granted them the land for their loyalty and service to her monarchy. Nathaniel Gunn had been betrothed to her by their parents while he was barely a teen, and Seraphina still too young to understand what was happening to her. When she left the British Isles, she thought she’d left Nathaniel as well.
Months before her eighteenth birthday, Nathaniel had sent an oily, sharp-faced man to secure his betrothed for him and return her to her homeland. When she refused to go, he had hired larger men to help persuade her grandparents that they couldn’t protect her. Unfortunately for those men, Grayson and his friends were bigger, faster, and when protecting Seraphina, more prone to violence. Since they’d put his thugs out of commission, Nathaniel hadn’t been seen or heard from.
Seraphina sighed and rubbed her eyes. It had been such a long day of hard work, and she was willing to say just about anything to be released to go to bed. She accepted the small stack of letters her grandmother handed her.
“You wrote all these men to find me a husband?” She mused. “How did you decide who to write to?” Her grandmother pursed her lips and thought carefully before she responded.
“Wee love. I am not demanding of you to choose from these men. However, it is a good idea to get yourself out of this house and into a wedding ring, before Nathaniel decides to send more men to claim you.” She wrung her bony, age-spotted hands almost to the point of bruising. “Grayson isn’t here to protect you anymore. I’m afraid of what men like that could do to your grandfather if he tried to stand against them.”
Seraphina stared at the envelopes in her hand, numb and mute. It was her fault that her grandparents lived in fear of a man they’d known since childhood. If only that grasping bastard hadn’t found something of value in the old land, Seraphina was certain he would have left them alone. She shuffled the envelopes and picked out a cream-colored one with a dirt smudged fingerprint in one corner. The printing was tidy and even and, when she flipped the envelope over, she found a light green smudge on that side, also.
She lifted the missive to her nose and inhaled lavender, not from a bottle, but from the plant itself. A man who grew things couldn’t be all bad, she thought to herself. She looked at the concern that pulled her grandmother’s face in tight lines that made her look even frailer. Seraphina smiled. She wasn’t going to choose a man to marry out of desperation or just to keep Nathaniel away, but she would humor her grandmother and at least open all the letters. She knew she wasn’t a great prospect, her family wasn’t wealthy, and she wasn’t particularly beautiful.
But, she was educated, not only in how to care for a family, but in the herbs and plants that could heal illness or prevent it, staunch a bleeding wound, or bring d
own a fever. Her grandmother and mother were Cailleach, or wise-women, and Seraphina had been taught the ways of the druid all her life. It was a path of honoring nature and the human body, and the connection between the two. To her dismay, Seraphina had come up against no small amount of mistrust and even fear regarding her ability to diagnose and treat illnesses with plants and herbs.
A child had actually gone so far as to call her a witch as she walked past on her way to market one day. She had spun around and walked straight back to the child, who played in his mother’s garden. She smiled down at the young boy and pointed out to him, that if indeed she was a witch, he would be much safer being nice to her. She’d glanced up at his mother when the woman gasped, and stared at her long enough that the woman gathered up her child in her arms and fairly ran back into her cottage.
Seraphina chuckled mirthlessly to herself. Perhaps a change of scenery was overdue. If she could find a new place, she could change the way people saw her. She gathered up the tea tray and tidied the kitchen before wishing her grandmother a goodnight and turning down the damper to let the fire burn out. It was getting warmer, and stretching the firewood out meant less firewood she had to cut, in order to stop her grandfather from trying. Zeus and Apollo were sent to the barn, Minx was gathered up with the matrimonial missives, and Seraphina made her way to her room by the fluttering, dim light of one of the beeswax candles she and her grandmother made. The smudged, dirty envelope seemed to call to her as she readied herself for bed.
She sat at the desk her grandfather had built for her and brushed out her long auburn hair, pointedly ignoring the pile of mail laying unopened on the corner. She used the candle flame to light the lantern by her bed and turned it up high enough to read by. She started reading letters, leaving the most enticing for last. She was singularly unimpressed with the first few letters. They seemed to almost be a form letter, a list of attributes and the promise of a stable income to lure desperate women to the wilds of western towns. With a heavy sigh, she finally set the last of them aside and reached for the one hope she retained to make her grandmother’s efforts worth the time she had spent.
She opened the letter and immediately noticed that it lacked the starched and pressed feel of the form letters that had preceded it. She tucked her covers around her and turned up the lamp to its highest flame and began to read. The letter writer did not name himself, but described his home as a farm that had been in his family since his grandfather’s time. He explained that he had spent his youth caring for the farm for his father, who had been severely injured in an accident years before. As such, he went on to state, he had simply never made time for a family or a wife. He admitted that his life had become lonely, and he wanted to find a woman who shared his love of the land and felt connected to it. He wanted companionship more than children, and a woman who could be happy and content with what he could provide, and help him care for his aging parents.
She felt a kinship to the man in the letter, and his circumstances. She worried that this man may not have room for her own aging family, but decided to respond to him anyway, in the very least to be able to tell her grandmother she did so. She sat in her bed with the family bible in her lap, using it as a surface to write on. She wrote quickly, racing to get her thoughts on the paper before her good sense caught up with her and she changed her mind.
Satisfied that she’d at least been honest, if not flattering of herself, she folded the scented stationary Grayson had given her for her last birthday, and sealed it in an envelope. She set it aside and turned down the lamp. She would decide in the morning whether to mail it or not.
2.
The reigns slacked in his hand for the third time in two rows, and Zeke knew that he had completed just about as much as he would be able to for one day. As he patted his steers on their dry, parched noses, he looked over row upon row of plowed field that lay behind him. He looked ahead at the fifteen rows’ worth of space left to plow and decided that he’d take his boys in for some water and supper of their own, and finish the plowing after dinner, while there was still some light to see by.
He unhitched the plow and led the steers, brothers he’d named Butch and Kidd, back to the paddock and filled the trough with fresh water. He let them drink and forked some fresh hay into the pen, then hiked up to the farmhouse, where his parents waited.
“You need to hire someone.” His father declared as Zeke hit the front porch. His mother had taken to feeding them out here, where his father could watch over his land. The farmer spent most of his days out here now, waiting for the chance to be useful on his own land. Zeke had learned not to argue with his father, and to be sure, help would’ve been a blessing, but the men around here hadn’t been up to snuff, and Zeke hadn’t seen fit to keep anyone on for long.
“You need to eat and let your son do his job, Pa.” Zeke’s mother chided as she set a plate of cornbread in front of her husband. He helped himself to a generous portion and poured fresh cream over it. As he dug in, he looked over his son. The boy looked tired. Worse, he looked frustrated. It wasn’t like him to let the difficulties of the farm get him down. Jacob Ezekiel Calhoun glanced at his wife, who shared his worried expression. The patriarch of the Calhoun family wasn’t one for talking, and the cornbread, usually his favorite meal, sat heavy in his stomach.
Sister Calhoun brought out sweet potatoes and sat next to her husband. She could see the thoughts in his mind and, once again, silently expressed her thanks for a husband who hadn’t given up, who still cared about his family, unlike so many others in his circumstances who would’ve been tempted by the bottle. As was her wont to do, she spoke up for her husband, patting him on the hand and taking the lead. They had always shared their duties this way. People found the farmer difficult and closed off.
Sister knew her husband to be deeply caring and reticent to share his emotions. She was happy to be his voice in such subjects, and in his own way, he never failed to show her appreciated it. As a matter of fact, she had been trying to figure out a way to ask him for some pretty garden boxes for the kitchen window, a frivolous feature he would usually have scorned. She smiled to herself and gave her husband’s hand a squeeze. One heart-to-heart, for two window boxes seemed a fair trade to her.
“Ezekiel, you look worn down and unhappy. Is the plowing no going well?” She inquired when he was no longer chewing. He scowled in thought, but shook his head.
“No, the plowing is going very well, in fact, I think I might go finish it tonight, before the sun sets. There’s just so little left, it would be nice to wake up to free time to go into town tomorrow.” He replied.
“There is something. We can tell, and we’re concerned that you’re going to fall ill from working too hard, and taking too much on.” Zeke looked at his father and got a single terse nod of agreement.
“I do have something weighing on my mind.” Zeke admitted. “However, it is naught to do with the farm, and I think it will be remedied very shortly.” Zeke hated remaining mysterious, but he didn’t want to worry his parents with his marital prospects or have them even more worried for him if it didn’t work out.
Considering the subject closed, Zeke went back to his simple meal, savoring every bite. His hands had planted, cared for, and harvested this meal. The cream came from his cows the honey from the bees he kept in the far clover pasture. After the farm became his sole responsibility, he studied every journal and paper he could find on the newest and best ways to produce the crops he grew, when to plant, and the most efficient ways to harvest.
His father was a natural farmer, Zeke was not. He had learned a healthy respect for the value of plants of all kinds as he studied, from medicinal herbs used by tribes in the plains, to the little known variations of common crops that weathered drought better, or turned fruit over sooner. What his father would have maintained very well, Zeke had improved upon in every way he could think of, to maximize his ability to care for his parents, and to allow him to do everything that needed to be done, without h
elp.
But, tomorrow he would head into town and talk to the newest crop of hopefuls, fresh off the train and looking for work. It pained him, in the best way he supposed, that the farm was producing too much for him to handle alone. If he was going to grow the bumper crop he was aiming for, and harvest it successfully, he was going to need more hands at than just his own to do it.
He excused himself from the table and hitched Butch and Kidd up to the plow. As he finished the last few rows he became more and more aware of the small, lavender scented envelope in his pocket. He had sworn to leave it unopened until he had finished his work, but he could almost swear the small sealed bit of stationery was burning his skin through the pocket of his light coat.
Just as the lines of rows were getting difficult to see, Zeke and his team finished cutting the last row. He raised the plow blades and the steer team pulled it back to the barn, where he unhooked it to be cleaned the next day. The steers had earned treats for their hard work, and Zeke rubbed them both down and put them in their paddock with extra grain for their efforts.
When he got to his room, Zeke gratefully peeled off his sweat and dirt encrusted pants and climbed into the tub of hot water his mother had filled for him. He soaked off the dirt and worries of the day and laid back in the steaming water with his eyes closed. He awakened with a start when he heard his bedroom door close a few minutes later.
“Sorry, son, I was just trying to collect your dirties.” His mother murmured.
“There’s, there’s a letter in the jacket, please leave it behind.” He replied, closing his eyes and laying back in the tub. If his mother was curious about the lavender-scented letter, she knew better than to ask, and simply did as was requested of her.
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