by Oak, B. B.
Harriet did not. But leastways she did not tug her arm free of mine. We strolled in silence for a while. “I knew you would not be able to stay away from Adam,” she finally said.
“He is not the reason I came back.”
To show her disbelief Harriet gave out a sniff, a practice she must have picked up from Granny Tuttle, having been her ward for ten years. “What I cannot conjecture is why you bothered to leave Plumford in the first place if your intention was to return.”
“That was not my intention, I assure you.”
“And I suppose it was not your intention to send Adam on a wild goose chase to Paris, either.”
“Adam went to Paris?”
A frown creased Harriet’s high, smooth forehead. “You didn’t know?”
“No! This is the first I have heard of it.”
“Then I fear I have spoken out of turn. In truth, I wish I had not spoken to you at all!”
She tried to disengage her arm from my grasp, but I would not let it go. “When did Adam go to Paris? Whom did he see there?”
Harriet remained as silent as a stone. I own that I was tempted to twist her arm a bit to encourage her to talk, but instead I released it and off she dashed away from me.
Off I dashed too—but not in pursuit of her. It was Granny Tuttle I needed to talk to. My pace was as rapid as my heartbeat as I headed up the road toward Tuttle Farm, and despite the chill in the air, I became so overheated I threw open my cloak. I fastened it up again quick enough when I took a shortcut through the woods, where high pines shoulder out all the sunlight, and thoughts of that poor Concord man’s brutal murder crept into my mind. The wind howled through the trees most plangently, and for an instant I mistook a swooping crow for a black-caped vampyre.
I broke into a run, thankful there was no snow to impede my progress, and did not slow down until I came out of the woodland and onto a far pasture of Tuttle Farm. To get onto it I had to climb over a tossed stone fence that had been created many generations past by brawny Tuttle men. Adam, a Tuttle on his mother’s side, is the last of them, and I recalled how, as a boy, he once claimed that he would have seven strapping sons of his own one day to help him work the land. How would he get these sons? I’d asked him in complete innocence. He would not explain the process to me.
Today, as I crossed the frost-browned pasture, I conjured up the memory of how it had looked on sweet summer mornings those many years ago, when Adam would drive his grandmother’s cows there as a boy, and I would come from town to meet him. Sometimes we would lie on a verdant, dewy knoll amidst all the buttercups to stare up at an azure sky and interpret the shapes of clouds. More often we would go tramping over hill and dale, brook and bog. We were young freebooters without a care in the world, and we never considered the future. That was the realm of adults. But when adults threatened to separate us, after we had been inseparable for three idyllic years, we decided to take charge of our own destinies and run away. Such an easy solution could not be countenanced by those still in control of our lives, however. ’Twas Adam’s grandparents who hunted us down three days later, on a dusty highway heading west.
“Git in the wagon, my boy,” Grandpa Tuttle had commanded Adam in that gentle but resolute tone of his.
Granny, not so gentle, had grabbed me by the arm and hauled me up to sit beside her. She had spoken nary a word to me all the thirty miles back to Plumford. Nor had she come to the dock to bid me farewell when my father and I left for Europe the next week. She had allowed Adam to see me off, though. Much to my regret I had wept so hard that tears had blurred my last view of his freckled, twelve-year-old face. Never saw those dear freckles again. He’d outgrown them by the time I next laid eyes on him, a man of twenty-four.
As my thoughts brought me back to the past, my feet brought me closer and closer to the Tuttle homestead, and before I knew it I was at the back door. As I waited for a response to my knock I spotted a shiny new horseshoe nailed upon the lintel. To repel vampyres? It did not seem likely that such a sensible soul as Granny Tuttle would give any credence to them. I looked about the empty farmyard. Not a creature was in sight, and the only evidence of life was the lowing sound of cows and oxen in the attached barn. Then I heard angry barking, and a big, black dog came charging toward me.
At first I had no fear, supposing the dog to be the one Adam and I had found many years ago, lying in the road all torn up. “Patches!” I shouted, calling him by the name I’d dubbed him after Adam had stitched him up. “Don’t you remember me?”
The dog stopped in his tracks, but his growl was hardly a sign of fond recognition. Noting the absence of white hair in his muzzle, I realized this dog was far too young to be the one I’d helped nurse back to health as a girl. Baring his teeth, he stalked toward me, tail between his legs, and I lost no further time waiting for my knock to be answered. Lifting up the iron latch, I pushed myself inside and promptly closed the door behind me.
The vast kitchen was just as I remembered it. Herbs hung from the thick ceiling beams, the rough plastered walls were freshly whitewashed, and the wide-planked floor, painted with a mixture of milk and ocher clay, looked clean enough to eat off except for a patch of sand spread in front of the massive fieldstone fireplace to catch grease spatters. A big teakettle hanging from the long crane hissed over the banked fire in the hearth, and the aroma of bread baking in the beehive oven wafted through the warmed air. And there in front of the fire, beside her little spinning wheel, sat Mrs. Betsey Tuttle, also just as I remembered, in a blue-checked apron and red neck-kerchief, her snow-white hair tucked under a neat muslin cap. She silently stared at me.
“You don’t look surprised to see me, ma’am,” I said. Nor did she look very pleased.
“I heard you was back,” she replied.
“Did you not hear me knocking on your door just now?”
“Nope. Could be I’m gettin’ a little deaf.” She pronounced it “deef.”
“You might indeed be getting deaf if you did not hear your dog’s crazed barking. He so frightened me that I took the liberty of letting myself in.”
“Oh, I heard Blackie all right, but paid him no mind. Nor should you have. His bark is far worse than his bite.”
“Hah! His fangs looked more fearsome than a vampyre’s.”
Granny gave one of her dismissive sniffs. “Are you so foolish as to believe in vampyres, Julia?”
“Don’t you? I saw the horseshoe hanging above your door.”
“Little Harriet nailed it there. All this blather about bloodsucking night stalkers has affrighted her. I reckoned she’d be better off in town fer the time bein’ and sent her to stay with friends there.”
“I met up with Harriet on the Green this morning. That is why I came to see you.”
“Did you suppose I was hard up for company? Well, I ain’t.”
“I shall depart soon enough if you find my presence here so irksome, ma’am.”
“Now don’t get all brustled up, Julia. I reckon I can tolerate your presence well enough. And I am very sorry Blackie greeted you so rudely.”
No apology for her own brusque greeting, however. And to think we had not seen each other for near two years. But no matter. I decided to attempt some polite chitchat before getting to my purpose for the visit. “At first I mistook Blackie for Patches,” I said.
“Patches sired him. Up and died last winter.”
“I am sorry to hear it.”
“No need to be sorry fer Patches. He lived a long, happy life thanks to Adam’s mendin’.”
I nodded. “Adam had fine doctoring skills even as a boy.”
“Can’t mend his own heart though,” Granny muttered.
“What was that?”
“Never you mind, Julia. Just make yerself to home and set with me a spell.” She gave me a good looking-over as I slipped off my cloak and hung it on a peg by the door. “Ain’t that yer Grandmother Walker’s cloak?”
“I’m surprised you recognized it,” I said, sitting down
on the settle across from Granny.
“Why, I am as familiar with that particular garment as I am with the back of my own hand,” she said. “The wool came from sheep I bred. And ’twas I who spun that wool into yahn, then dyed that yahn with apple root and wove it into fabric. Must have been . . . let me calculate . . . a good fifty years ago. John Adams had just come into office. And yer grandmother had just been delivered of her first child.”
“That must have been my mother’s elder brother.”
“That’s right. ’Twas yer uncle Owen.”
“Adam’s father,” I added.
Granny fell silent and gave me a long look. I wondered if she had forgotten her train of thought, but a moment later she got back on track. “Anyways, I warrant that cloak will last another fifty years,” she continued. “That’s how well we made garments back in them days. But I don’t spin wool anymore. I am not so elastic as I once was, and my old legs can’t take all that to-and-fro in front of a big walking wheel. Besides which, you can buy mill-made woolen cloth so cheap nowadays that it ain’t worth the effort. But linen is another matter entirely.” She dipped her fingers in a bowl of water and resumed her spinning. As her foot moved up and down on the treadle, she pulled strands down from a bundle of flax fibers tied to the distaff and fed them into the whirring wheel. “Store-bought ain’t near as good as home-spun. The bed linen in little Harriet’s dowry chest was all spun and woven by me. And of course I would not want Adam to wear mill linen against his body. I will make him a new shirt from the thread I am spinning now.”
“What a good grandmother you are to him,” I said, and thoroughly meant it.
But Granny Tuttle shook her head so vehemently her cap almost fell off. “No, I ain’t. I wronged him greatly. You too.”
“I don’t understand. Do you mean that you have also wronged me or that I have also wronged Adam?”
“Both,” she replied. She can be as maddening as the Sphinx.
“How can you claim I wronged Adam?” I demanded.
She took her foot off the treadle, and the wheel fell silent. “By runnin’ off on him like you done.”
“No! I did the right thing by leaving him. I have no regrets on that score. And when one day Adam holds a healthy babe he has sired in his arms, he will be thankful he did not marry me.”
“I doubt that day will ever come, Julia. He has shown little interest in takin’ a wife since he come back from France.”
“This is what I came to talk to you about! Pray when did Adam go to France?”
“You don’t know?’
“I only heard of it today from Harriet.”
“Well, he set sail less than a week after you did, Julia, intendin’ to fetch you back. But afore his feet touched dry ground, you had plighted yer troth to another. Yer father gave Adam the happy tidings. But I reckon he did not tell you of Adam’s visit to his studio.”
I shook my head, too stunned to speak.
“Ah well, I suppose your father felt it would have done you no good to know. I can see how miserable it is makin’ you feel even now. Best to let go of things you can’t do nothin’ about, Julia. I tell Adam the same, but I hope you pay me more mind than he does.”
“When he returned home without me, you must have been greatly relieved.”
“No, I was greatly grieved.”
“But I thought I was the last woman on God’s earth you wanted your grandson to marry.”
“True enough. I feared you would not make him a good mate.”
“And I would not have! When Grandfather Walker told me our family history, I realized that I could never wed my first cousin.”
“You should have ignored those stories from the past, Julia.”
“Are they not true?”
Without replying, Granny commenced pumping the treadle again.
“Are they not true?” I asked again, raising my voice over the whir of the spinning wheel.
“Yes, they are true!” she shouted back at me. “You reckon Doc Silas would lie to you? Enough jabberin’ about the past. Sich talk as that does no one any good.”
She rose from her stool and picked up a wooden paddle. She was frowning so deeply she looked ready to hit me with it. But she turned her attention to the chimney oven, pulling open the arched wooden door and sticking the paddle deep inside it. She pulled out a golden loaf of bread and tossed it in a basket.
“That’s fer you to take home,” she told me. She went into her pantry and came back with a big round of her much lauded cheese. “This too.” She wrapped it in a napkin and added it to the basket, along with a crock of applesauce and a hunk of gingerbread. “Fer that unfortunate orphan you took in,” she said.
And then she sent me on my way.
Upon my return home I found Noah alone in the kitchen blacking the cookstove. “This is far too hard a job for you to take on,” I told him. It must have sounded more like a reprimand than a commiseration, for he hung his head as if he’d been caught doing something wrong. “No, no, dear, I do not mean to chastise you,” I quickly said. “But where is Mrs. Swann?”
I gathered, from his mumbled words, that she had retired to her bedchamber once again. So what else could I do but help the boy finish up? To ready myself for the dirty job, I cut a hole in an old sheet and pulled it over my head, wrapped a dishrag around my head, and put on a pair of Grandfather’s old kid gloves. Noah found my getup as amusing as I found his laughter pleasing. Together we went at the stove with our brushes, rubbing on the blacklead paste and polishing it off, until every inch was shiny.
I then went at Noah with soap and water, scrubbing his smudged face and hands almost as hard as we’d scrubbed the stove. He did not find that half so amusing, but tolerated my ministrations well enough. I proposed that after the water in the stove boiler tank heated up again, he might avail himself of the wash tub in the kitchen alcove, where I myself had bathed as a child, but he did not seem inclined to take up my suggestion. Thinking him an exceptionally modest boy, I next proposed he use the zinc hip bath in my chamber, promising him complete privacy. I even offered to help him carry up the heavy cans of hot water for he is such a slight little lad. But he shrugged off my offer, and I let the matter go for the time being.
We rewarded ourselves for our hard work with a meal of Granny’s delicious victuals, and then I adjourned to my studio to ready it for another session with the Phyfe sisters. Noah followed me there and, unbidden, got a roaring blaze going in the hearth. He does so love to poke at fires, but when I gave him a pencil and a sheet of paper he just as happily amused himself with drawing instead. Peeking over his shoulder, I saw that he had an innate talent and could not resist giving him a lesson. He is both eager and quick to learn. If only he could make himself better understood, people would not judge him so backward, but his deformity prevents him from enunciating words correctly.
I answered the door to the Phyfe sisters at two. When I led them into the studio, I was not surprised that Noah had vacated it. He only feels comfortable in my company or Adam’s. But not in Mrs. Swann’s company, I am sorry to say. Indeed, he reacts to her like a mistrustful cat with hackles raised whenever she makes overtures of friendship toward him.
My pretty young subjects, on the other hand, welcomed Mrs. Swann’s friendly advances most readily when she joined us for their sitting. As she took it upon herself to tenderly arrange them in yesterday’s pose, she seemed completely recovered from whatever malady it is that keeps her to her room for so many hours each day.
After the girls were posed, I took up my pencil with the firm resolution to execute their portrait with the highest degree of art I am capable of producing. It matters not that Justice Phyfe considers me no better than any self-taught, itinerant country limner for hire; I shall keep my vision pure and my standards high. With this in mind as I sketched, I discarded my initial conception of portraying the Phyfe sisters as vacuous hothouse flowers. They are three individual souls, after all, and it is therefore my duty as an artist to try
and capture each girl’s essential nature.
Easier said than done, however, for they are a fidgety threesome indeed. Arabel is the worst, often excusing herself to stroll about the house to prevent her limbs from getting numb. The other two are constantly rearranging the folds in their skirts, the ribbons in their ringlets, and the multitude of decorative silk cords in various hues around their necks and wrists. They keep their fingers busy braiding these cords from long strands of thin ribbon they store in their reticules, and they are always swapping colors back and forth, except for Arabel, who works only in black.
Mrs. Swann, to her credit, managed to settle them down when she commenced reading to them in her deep, mellifluous voice. The story started off with a heroine named Fanny repairing to London with her guardian. Reckoning it to be a sentimental romance of little consequence, I stopped listening.
Instead, I gave my full attention to my subjects, concentrating first on Arabel. She appeared even less well than she had yesterday, her cheeks more sunken, her complexion more wan. Is she truly ailing? Or is she simply trying to look like the listless, fragile creatures depicted in fashion plates? Like many a foolish girl, Arabel probably doses herself with arsenic and belladonna to achieve this look, and she most likely eats chalk for good measure to keep her figure as sylphlike and willowy as those of the models in Godey’s Lady’s Book. Yet the aura of melancholy emanating from her eyes seemed genuine enough, and I began to regard her with more and more sympathy as I delineated her delicate features.
My pencil came to a sudden stop, however, when the words Mrs. Swann was reading aloud made their way into my consciousness: “He revealed to me a member so large and of such prodigious stiffness that I knew my satisfaction was assured when we engaged in congress.”
“Mrs. Swann!” I cried out. “What in God’s name are you reading to them?”
“Why, The Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.”
“Cease immediately! Chaste young ladies should not hear such things.”