What Emma Left Behind

by Anne Spackman

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  The flowers were blooming in spring over the hills and in the small town that had grown up along the coastline. Flower petals growing in clusters on the trees rained down on the land like pink snow in the bright afternoon breeze. The air was full of sounds: the ocean waves, the seagulls flying above the pier, a blacksmith hammering away on horseshoes in a nearby smithy.

  What a beautiful day it was, this third of April, 1768!

  Emma started running along the pier while her father arranged for Barney's shoes to be repaired with the journeyman blacksmith in a small shop. After a while, she gave up skipping about and returned to stand by the open carriage. The quick-eyed journeyman, Davey Smith, was no more than fourteen years old, but he nodded knowledgeably to her father's questions. When he spoke, it was in an English accent her father told her had been spoken in the poorer streets of London.

  Why didn't Davey ever have time to play as she did? she wondered. Why did he have to grow up so fast? Davey looked but a boy, but he had already crossed the ocean with his family to come to the American colonies. The Smiths were craftspeople, not indentured servants or convicts or refugees like so many of the other American colonials were or had been in days past. Davey also knew horses, and the Smith family kept a stable behind the shop.

  As her father finished talking to the lad, Davey's eyes momentarily shifted to her. His mouth crooked into a--was that a frown, though, and not a smile? She wondered, but she couldn't tell in time. Davey turned quickly and headed into the smithy, one side of the tie which bound his brown ponytail dangling down.

  Did Davey truly dislike her? she wondered, upset by the thought. Maybe he disliked her because he was jealous of her family's wealth? She thought about how Davey saw her. Her shoes weren't the block-toed colonial type crafted out of wood by William Jones, the cobbler. They were fancy, high-heeled, and made of satin, and her low-necked dress had been hand sewn of thin blue silk and Flanders lace. The dress was worn over a whalebone corset, stays, and layers and layers of frilly petticoats.

  He must have thought she led a carefree, easy life, but did Davey know how uncomfortable her corsets were, or how they pinched her, or how hard it was sometimes to breathe in them, much less play and frolic? Or did Davey dislike her, she wondered, because she could read and speak French and German, sing, paint, and play the pianoforte, dance the jigg and minuets, while he knew only the hard life of a poor laboring family and learned only to shoe horses and fashion keys all the day long?

  Then she frowned with another thought.

  Maybe Davey disliked her and her father just because they were Scots! Yes, that could have been it. For some reason, a lot of Colonials didn't like the Scots. After all, the English had been fighting the Scots for hundreds of years, and the two countries of England and Scotland hadn't united as one country until 1707. Not everyone in Scotland had been happy that their country was to be ruled by England under this new law, though. They had fought to try to regain their independence in what was called the Jacobite Rebellion.

  The last conflict between the Scottish clans supporting the Scottish Prince, Bonnie Prince Charlie, against the English armies had ended in the battle of Culloden Field in Scotland in 1746, just over twenty years ago. And with its greater armies, England had won.

  Maybe Davey didn't know about all of this, though. After all, he hadn't ever gone to school, she suddenly thought. He probably didn't have relatives, uncles and distant cousins who had fought and died in the Jacobite Rebellion, as she did. But he had to know that the English and Scots seldom got along, even though they had to live side by side when they came to the American Colonies.

  There were other people in the Colonies, too, and they all had to try to forget their differences and get along. There were lots of Germans, Swedes, Dutch to the south and mostly in New York, Welsh, Irish, Africans in the Southern Colonies, and even French. And American natives, too, like the Iroquois, though she had never seen any. Some of the native peoples of America had taken sides with the French and some had sided with the English in the recent French and Indian Wars, which happened in the 1750's.

  There were also large communities of Scotch-Irish in America who lived in the mountainous east, Scots who had lived in Ireland before coming to America. They were her people, people with names like MacDonald, Patterson, Murray, Douglas, and Ross.

  But should they keep their traditions here in this America? She wondered. Why couldn't the Scots, or the Germans, or the Swedes, just blend in with the English Colonists? It was difficult to live together when everyone spoke a different language.

  Emma didn't know what Davey thought about her, or how much he knew about the world. She was only twelve years old, but her father and uncles always talked about the problems facing the Colonials, even though most people in the Colonies only really knew and worried about their own town or region. Some Colonials were even saying now that the Colonies would be better off on their own, without English taxes to pay.

  What would the Colonies do without English law and order, though? she wondered. What would happen if the American natives decided they didn't want the British Colonials in America and fought to take back their homeland? She didn't know.

  Even though she was a girl and wasn't supposed to think about what was happening in the world, she often wondered what was going to happen to the American Colonies in the future.

  Could the Colonies break away from English rule and live independently? It would be difficult, since most Colonial raw materials were taken back to Britain, where the highest quality factories and textile industries were. How could the Colonies survive on their own?

  Of course, this was all just idle talk, she thought. The American Colonials couldn't separate themselves from the authority of the British crown!

  Davey had gone inside, and Emma looked to her father. Her father seemed upset about something, but she couldn't imagine what was bothering him. Was he worried about money? she wondered. How expensive could it be to have Barney re-shoed? She decided he couldn't be worried about that. After all, hadn't her father come to America with vast wealth from Argyll?

  She turned away and looked back to the pier.

  The sky suddenly darkened, and she was alone. She turned around, but there was no sign of her father, or of Davey, and the mists were circling around her. She was alone.

  Where had her father gone? Why wasn't he there? And why had the chill of a winter's evening replaced the warm spring day?

  She screamed, but no one heard her. She started running, but there was nowhere to go.

  I'm not ready to die! Emma thought, in rising fear. I want to see the future! I want to know what will happen to my home!

  When the hands closed about her throat, she found she couldn't scream.

  Why are you taking this life from me? she thought in despair. I will not die quietly. I will not rest!

  Help me, Caera—

  Caera awoke with a start, her heart racing. It was the middle of the night. She bolted out the door and into Claudia's room.

  "What's wrong?" Claudia asked in a sleepy voice.

  Caera stared at her, blinking. "Nothing." She whispered frightfully. "Can I sleep in here?"

  "I suppose." Claudia said through a yawn, pulling back the covers. Caera and Claudia had slept in the same room, in the same bed, until they were ten years old. Then, when they were ten, each had insisted on separate bedrooms. But sometimes, just sometimes, each of them wished they still shared the same room, especially at night when they still got scared.

  Caera was so glad she had Claudia as she crept in beside her sister and fell asleep.