Emily's Song

by Christine Marciniak

  The large ledger lay open in front of him, but the numbers had stopped making sense long ago. Things were purchased, but never seemed to appear in any other ledger; they were never used. What happened to them? The books simply didn’t add up, and he didn’t know why.

  He took a piece of blank paper out from the desk and dipped his pen in ink. He glanced at Miss Parks, peacefully sleeping in the wing chair. Where had she come from? Why was she here?

  A sprite from out the land of Faerie

  Bewitching me with a glance

  He scribbled on the page. Was she really from the land of the faeries? That was certainly an attractive explanation. Had she bewitched him? Dinah certainly thought so. But bewitched? No, intrigued was a better term.

  In the chair, the woman shifted, and the afghan fell to the ground. She opened her eyes, and he shoved the paper into the desk drawer. He watched as she looked around, confused, taking in her surroundings.

  “You’ve had a long day.” He kept his voice soft so as not to startle her. She reminded him of a wild animal about to bolt. “You drifted off after drinking the brandy.”

  Her face flushed, and Sam’s heart melted a little more toward her.

  “Did I? I’m so sorry. What a horrible way to repay your hospitality.”

  “Not at all,” Sam said.

  He glanced down at the open ledger and sighed. If he could solve one of his problems, either the uncooperative numbers or the origins of Miss Parks, he’d consider it a good day, week even.

  Across the room, she craned her neck to see what he was looking at. “Accounting problems?”

  “Of a sort,” he answered. “I can’t make the numbers add up.”

  “May I take a look at it?”

  He should say “no.” The running of the farm was none of her affair. She was a stranger, a woman, a complete unknown, but yet, he was so tired of looking at it himself that he stood and offered his seat to her.

  “If you’d like.”

  She sat down in his desk chair, adjusting her skirts the best she could. Instead of looking slightly bewildered, or intentionally flirtatious, she looked intent and serious. She turned the pages back to get a larger feel for the numbers.

  “This here is what you’ve purchased from outside sources? And this is items used, correct?” She pointed at two columns.

  “Yes. So you can see here.” He pointed to one number. “This is how much flour was purchased last month, and this is how much was used.”

  “You used a lot less than purchased.”

  “So it would seem.” That was the crux of his problem.

  She looked up at him sharply. “There’s no physical excess?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. And it’s not the only item either.”

  “I see that,” she said. She turned more pages, running her fingers up and down the columns. “Who does the purchasing?”

  “I do.” He moved the lamp closer so she wouldn’t have to strain her eyes.

  “And what do you base your numbers on? How do you know how much to get?”

  She was so business-like and sure of herself. This was an entirely different Miss Parks than he’d been dealing with the rest of the day. Who was this woman?

  “Depends on the source. Some things, it’s Sally in the kitchen. Some things it’s Wilkins.”

  He could see her shoulders tense at the name.

  “I don’t like that man.”

  “Understandable.” His voice caught on the word, and he cleared his throat.

  She continued poring over the ledgers. “The income comes from the tobacco you’ve sold?”

  “Mainly, yes.” He perched on the edge of the desk and walked her through the way the plantation was run and how the numbers were supposed to match up.

  “Someone’s stealing from you.” She looked up at him with her clear brown eyes.

  That was the solution that had presented itself to him as well, but he hadn’t wanted to see it.

  “I think it’s Wilkins.” She said the name as if even speaking it left a bad taste in her mouth.

  He thought so, too. The problem was that he didn’t have enough proof, and even with it, he still couldn’t fire the man. He needed an overseer, and everyone else was going to war. He ran his hand over his face. He should have gone over this with his father this morning. Why hadn’t he? Because he’d been too proud to admit he was having trouble.

  “You need to do an inventory.” She tapped her finger on the page. “You need to find out how much of everything you actually have in stock, if anything, and then only order what’s been used. Don’t rely on Wilkins. Sally may simply be telling you what Wilkins wants you to hear. I wouldn’t come down too hard on her.”

  “Oh!” He hadn’t expected advice. For that matter he hadn’t expected her to grasp the situation so quickly, when he’d been struggling against the obvious to figure it out himself. “No, I would never blame Sally.”

  “You don’t want to blame Wilkins, either.” He was surprised how quickly she was able to sum up his feelings.

  “He’s quite good at his job, and he’s been here ten years. I find it hard to believe he would steal from me.”

  Her shoulders twitched, and he remembered the lash that Wilkins laid across her back. She of course would have absolutely no reason to trust him.

  “You obviously know him better than I do.” She sat back in the chair and rubbed her hands over her eyes. “But the numbers are showing something out of whack, and if you want to find out why, I think he’s the place to start.”

  The door opened, and Tobias came in. His wide eyes took in Miss Parks sitting at the desk.

  “Supper is ready, sir.”

  “Thank you, Tobias. We’ll be right in.” How did it look to his servant, to see this stranger studying the books, sitting at his father’s desk? His desk, he reminded himself, and he had the right to let anyone sit there he wanted.

  Sam held out a hand to his guest. “May I escort you into dinner, Miss Parks.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Marshall.” She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm as if they’d been doing this their whole life.

  It was just the two of them at dinner, and he found himself discussing the various aspects of running a plantation. He’d tried to discuss this with Dinah once, and she’d simply laughed and said she trusted him implicitly to take care of that. She maintained she had no head for numbers or organizational details. Miss Parks on the other hand knew the questions to ask and didn’t simper and giggle but was able to discuss things reasonably.

  After dinner they sat in the parlor and had another glass of brandy and talked about the coming war and the political implications of it. There was no discussion of hats or fashion or even when the next ball would be. It was more like talking to George than to a woman.

  When he saw her hide a yawn, he realized she’d had quite an eventful day and perhaps was ready for sleep.

  “Should I ring for Beck to get you ready for bed?” He was reluctant for the evening to come to an end.

  “Oh.” She looked liked she was about to protest, but then nodded. “Yes, please. I’m sorry. I’m very tired. It’s been a long day.”

  “No need to apologize.”

  He escorted her upstairs and turned her over to the ministrations of Beck before heading back down to the study.

  Back at his desk he closed the ledger. Miss Parks was right. Someone was stealing from him and he needed to investigate but the ledgers wouldn’t give him any more answers tonight. He took his started poem out of the desk and stared at it. All that talking this evening and he still didn’t know where she came from, or how the pond figured in.

  The pond.

  That seemed to be important.

  But why?

  He let his mind drift to a long ago day under the cottonwood trees, listening to Moses tell stories.

  “You believe in fairies?” Moses had asked, directing the question straight at him. He was eight or nine, definitely too old to believe in fairies
, and he balked at being asked the question.

  “Course not,” he’d said, his young voice squeaking, trying to make himself tall as he sat on a cut log.

  Moses had fixed him with a long hard stare, and he started to squirm under the scrutiny.

  “Fairies aren’t real!” he’d finally defended himself.

  “Aren’t they?” Moses cleaned a saddle while he spoke. His hands were never idle.

  “Only fools believe in fairies.” He knew he was on solid ground here.

  “If you don’t believe I guess you won’t want to be hearing my story then.”

  He squirmed. Despite himself, he was curious. Should he hear a fairy story, or was that only for babies? But Moses didn’t tell baby stories, and he did want to know why he’d been talking about fairies, of all things.

  “You don’t have a story about fairies.” He stuck out his lower lip and balled his fists.

  “Don’t I?” Moses was maddeningly nonchalant about it.

  He needed to know the story.

  “Tell me then!” He jumped up from the log and stared down at Moses who calmly continued working the damp sponge in small circles on the saddle.

  “Sit down.” Moses never got excited about anything. Sam didn’t know how he always kept so calm. He sat down and waited for the story to begin.

  “It was a long time ago.” Moses’ deep voice had a soothing sonorous quality to it.

  He snorted. “All fairy stories always say they were a long time ago. That’s so no one can ever check to see if they were true.”

  Moses looked at him for a long moment and then continued. “A long time ago, when I was a lad, about your age.”

  Oh. That was different. A long time ago, but when Moses was little. This story could be true then. He leaned forward, giving all his attention to the old groom.

  “One day the fairies brought DayJon and took away Elsbeth.”

  “Wait!” He put up one hand, feeling the right as the master’s son to interrupt. “Who is Elsbeth?”

  “You don’t know Elsbeth?” Moses glanced up from the saddle and studied the boy as if he couldn’t believe that was true.

  “How could I? If this story took place when you were a little boy, why then my father wasn’t even born yet.”

  “That’s right; he wasn’t.” Moses concentrated once more on the saddle, this time running a dry cloth over it. “Elsbeth would have been his aunt. Your grandfather’s sister.”

  Aunt Elsbeth? He’d never heard about her. Clearly this story was as made up as any other fairy story.

  “And who was DayJon?”

  “You gonna let me tell the story, boy? Or are you going to keep interrupting?” Moses gave him a stern look, but then went back to concentrating on the saddle, putting linseed oil on a cloth and rubbing it into the leather.

  “You can tell it,” he said, but he wasn’t at all convinced it was real.

  “Elsbeth, she was this real pretty lady. Everyone said she was the most beautiful girl this side of the Mississippi. I didn’t know where the Mississippi was, but I knew she was pretty. She was engaged to be married, and the wedding was days away. All the slaves in the kitchen were working extra hard to make party foods, and I wasn’t allowed even to touch one pastry.”

  That Sam could sympathize with. Why was it whenever they made things that looked especially good he was never allowed a taste?

  “Then one day they couldn’t find her.”

  “Did she run off and get married in private?” he asked, feeling very grown up to have thought of that solution. Someone in the neighborhood had done that a year ago, and for weeks it was all the grown ups could talk about.

  “She left her fiancé here, so that seems unlikely.”

  He frowned. “Did they ever find her?”

  “They looked and looked everywhere they could think of but never found a trace of her, except for one shoe by the pond.”

  “A shoe?” He rolled his eyes. “Can’t you even be original Moses? That’s Cinderella. Everyone knows that story.”

  “And tell me that story,” Moses said.

  He didn’t often get to be the story teller. He cleared his throat and began. “A long time ago in a land far away. That’s how all good stories start,” he explained. “There was a girl who lived with her mean stepmother and stepsisters because both of her own parents were dead. You ever notice how so many stories are about children whose parents are dead?”

  “Maybe it’s because children with parents to watch out for them don’t get into the kind of trouble that makes for good stories,” Moses said, working the oil into the saddle.

  That made a certain amount of sense. “Anyway, there was going to be a ball so the prince could pick a wife, and all the girls in the kingdom were supposed to go, but the stepmother wouldn’t let Cinderella go because she wanted her own daughters to get the prince, even though they were ugly. So she made Cinderella stay home and do lots of work while everyone else went. But then her fairy godmother magicked up a dress and stuff so she could go. Then the prince fell in love with her, but she had to leave at midnight because the spell would wear off. So she ran away, but one shoe stayed behind. And that was lucky, because that old prince tried that shoe on every girl in the kingdom until he found Cinderella.” He left out the boring part about them getting married and living happily ever after.

  Moses shook his head. “Then it’s not the same. In Cinderella they found her because of that shoe. They never did find Elsbeth.”

  “Never?” That made it a mystery. He and George were always looking for mysteries to solve.

  “That’s what I said.” Moses shifted in his seat and stretched his back

  “But how do you know the fairies took her?” If it was a mystery there had to be clues.

  “Fairies never take something without leaving something in its place.”

  “Really?” He hadn’t heard that before, but it sounded reasonable. “What did they leave?”

  “They left DayJon.”

  “What’s a DayJon?” Maybe this was a clue.

  Moses got a faraway look in his eyes. “If Elsbeth was the most beautiful lady this side of the Mississippi, then DayJon was the most handsome man.”

  “The fairies left a man?” He wasn’t sure he liked the way this story was turning out. Couldn’t they have left a horse or something interesting like that?

  “Not just any man. He was taller than most and muscular and intelligent.”

  Sam snorted. “Sounds like you were in love with him, Moses!”

  Moses raised his eyebrows at the boy. “Everyone was in one way or another.”

  “How is this a fairy story?” he demanded. “You’re telling me that one person showed up and another one disappeared. I’m not a baby. I know there can be lots of reasons for that.”

  “Okay, then I’ll tell you what DayJon told us. He told us he was from the future, and that there would be a war between the northern states and the southern and when it was over the slaves would be free. He told us that sometime a black man would be President of the United States.”

  He laughed so hard at that he nearly fell off his log. “That ain’t never gonna happen! A slave as president! No way!” He slapped his knee as he laughed some more.

  “He said men would walk on the moon and drive in carriages with no horses. He said there would be buildings hundreds of stories tall, and people would as easy as you like get on a contraption that could take them to Europe in a couple of hours.”

  “Sounds like he was the one telling fairy stories, Moses.” He was disappointed. He’d heard much better stories from Moses.

  “Could be.” Moses stood up to put away the linseed oil and the saddle. “Just the same, be careful of fairies boy; you never know what they might do.”

  He stood up, brushing dirt and dried bark from his breeches. “I don’t believe in fairies, Moses.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  He had walked away that day and hadn’t thought more about it until now.
What was it Emily had said? Some sort of story about a magical fish pond? And this mysterious man had predicted the current unrest? How was that possible? Walking on the moon? Going to Europe in a few hours. Those things were all ridiculous embellishments on the story, but now he wondered. What did Moses know? What had he been trying to tell him, and how was it connected with Emily?

  It was too late to go and speak to Moses, that would have to wait until morning.

  One thing he could check now, though. He stood from his chair, stretching his tired muscles and studied the book shelves behind him. It didn’t take more than a minute to locate the family Bible. He pulled it out and laid it gently on the desk. Opening it to the front where births and deaths were recorded, he scanned the page for the name Elsbeth. His heart skipped a beat when he found it, there, beneath his grandfather: Elsbeth Marshall with a birth date inked in and information on her sacraments, even her wedding date was penned in, obviously by someone figuring there was no harm in putting it in a few days early, and then scratched out. After that no more information. No children, no death date, no mention at all of what might have happened to her.

  Then he remembered the portrait in the hall of a beautiful young girl. All he knew about it was that it was his grandfather’s sister. He’d always figured she’d died young and had never questioned it.

  Could she have been spirited away by fairies?

  He rubbed his hand over his face again. He was too tired. Obviously there were no fairies. He’d known that as a boy, and he knew that now. But what happened to Elsbeth? Who was DayJon and where had he come from and where did he go? How could he have known about the war that was starting now? Where had Emily come from. and why was she so attracted to the fishpond?

  Somehow the thought that the fairies had brought Emily to him was rather nice.

  He needed sleep. He’d figure this out in the morning.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Emily

  Cinnamon buns.

  Emily smelled them before she even opened her eyes.

  The soft pillowcase under her cheek, warm sunlight coming in through the window and cinnamon buns with a trace of nutmeg, like Dayna’s mother always makes. She stretched, luxuriating in a morning spent sleeping in. She knew exactly where she was: the Gordon’s house after a sleep over. A sense of peace and security washed over her. She’d had a bad dream, something about being lost in time, but the details were already getting lost in the haze of new morning.