By long habit, my eyes immediately found my birth mother’s marker: MRS. SUBMIT FAITHFUL WINTER, WIFE TO MR. DAVID WINTER, DEC’D OCT’R 10 1792 IN YE 18 OF HER AGE.
I had been taught little more about my mother than what these shallowly inscribed details provided. My father, while far from coldhearted, was not sentimental. He never led me to believe he still mourned his loss and certainly didn’t wallow in romantic recollections. Plus, his second wife, hardworking, cheerful, handy in the kitchen, and quick with the needle, well pleased him, as she did all of us. She was the only mother I’d ever known, and I loved her as if she were the one who’d borne me.
But I frequently wondered about this Submit Faithful Winter. The handful of letters and numbers, encircled with a scroll border and topped with a winged skull and crossed bones, told a sad story. The most telling detail, of course, was her death date. It coincided precisely with my birthday.
The other headstones looked similar to hers, all jutting out of the winter-ravaged ground, as if this ragged oval plot were the mouth of the earth, baring its teeth. The predominant surname was Knowles, my birth mother’s maiden name. She had been the last Knowles in these parts, and my father, having married and outlived her, had inherited her home: the land, the house, and this, all that was left of her family’s remains.
More females than males occupied the lot, since many a Knowles man had lived to enjoy two, even three, wives in succession. The women’s names, especially Patience, Thankful, Mercy, and Temperance, either amused or piqued me, depending on my mood. Today I found them thoroughly irritating. Every man got to be himself, a plain Richard or a regular Edward. These women, however, had to grow up lugging around the weighty expectations tied to whatever names their parents had chosen for them.
“‘Mrs. Hope, wife to Mr. James Knowles, deceased June 17, 1775, aged nineteen years.’ That was my mother’s mother. Hope.” I sniffed. “All these women could play a part in an allegory.”
“An ironic one, considering when your grandmother passed away. Hope died fast.”
“They all do.” I scanned the markers. Hardly a woman buried here lived to see her twenty-first year. “A stranger might gather each married a bluebeard.”
With his best Scottish burr, Gideon sang softly, “‘Loup off the steed,’ says false Sir John. ‘Your bridal bed you see. For I have drowned seven young ladies. The eighth one you shall be.’”
“Very nice. Of course, in the tale, the last bride’s brother gallops to the castle to rescue her and dispatches the monster in the process. I suppose, since my favorite brother plans to pioneer in the wilds of the Genesee Valley, I’ll end up like all the others in here: young and dead.” I shot him a sour look. “Perhaps you’ll return for a visit after your first great harvest. You can rest a pumpkin on my little plot as a token of remembrance.”
He nodded and took a step back, resting a heel on his sleigh. “You are excessively fond of pumpkin pie. Ouch.” He rubbed his arm where I pinched him. “Don’t be dramatic, Harry. Chances are you won’t marry a wife killer.” He waved an airy hand to indicate the crowded little lot. “Disease probably scotched most of the unfortunates here.”
“Note their ages, stupid. The women obviously died giving birth to their babes.”
“Well, you can’t blame the poor husbands for that.”
“Who else would I blame?”
He looked stumped for a moment. “A drunk midwife?”
“No.” I slowly shook my head. “Childbirth’s a common way for a woman to die.” I eyed the excess of female appellations on the markers and added dryly, “Particularly in my family. According to Old Nancy in the village, my birth mother was very slight, not made for easy birthing.”
He gave my back a brisk pat and, as one determined to look on the bright side, said, “But she was also a noted beauty.”
I grunted. If there was one thing I had learned about Submit Faithful Winter, it was that. Among family and acquaintances, I’d frequently heard about the Knowles women’s famous beauty. Apparently, it was inheritable. Until I came along. I was a typical Winter: spare, pale, and lanky.
“Cheer up, Harry. I can’t see you suffering the same fate. You’re almost as tall as me—certainly no slip of a girl.”
I tapped the top of his head. “Almost? I’m just as tall.”
“But with more bones than skin, as Papa says.” He smirked.
“He makes me sound like a walking skeleton.”
“Yes. Rather. But you’ve got a lot of yellow hair and an interesting face,” he said before ruining the already-tepid compliment with “though your mouth is too wide and your eyes too big. And you could better mind that sharp tongue of yours if you tried.” He grinned. “Otherwise, though, I think you’re perfect.”
I snorted.
“So does Daniel Long.”
I glared toward Mount Chester. Mr. Long’s estate was nestled at its foot. “Too bad Mama can’t take a second husband. She holds His Dullness in such high esteem.”
Gideon smiled at me quizzically. “I can’t understand why you don’t. He’s an honest friend, kind, industrious, fair, generous, intelligent—”
“Handsome?”
He refused to rise to the bait. “Sure. Handsome as well. Frankly, I like him vastly better than our brothers. I don’t know why you don’t.”
I shrugged. How did I explain a reaction I couldn’t entirely reason for myself? Perhaps it had something to do with getting written into someone else’s story, without a chance to tell my own. “I’m handy; that’s all. A practical way to bridge the two farms.”
“You underestimate Daniel Long.”
“Is it wrong to want something more than practicality in a marriage?”
“If you think that’s all he sees in you, you’re foolish.” Then, with a sidelong twinkle: “Not to mention rhetorical.” He started making his way back to the downed hickory.
“I suppose you, with your frontier ambitions, are the only one of us who gets to choose excitement.”
“Mr. Long has the best farm in these parts. If I were a woman and he proposed, I’d marry him faster than Luke can tipple a bottle of rum.”
I smiled. “Faster than Matthew can hazard his new boots at the card table?”
“Faster than Betsy can spill a sacred secret.”
“Even faster than Grace can sniffle her way into a hot mustard footbath?”
Grinning, he retrieved his ax from the trunk. “Even faster than that. Anyway, I’d like to see you good and settled before I leave next March.”
Before I leave next March. The words stole the smile from my face.
Gideon was more than the brother who matched me in age, nature, and size. He was my best friend. We’d grown up shadowing each other, collecting tadpoles in the stream, playing one-a-cat, racing our sleds in the winter. We hadn’t been grown long enough for me to forget our childhood games. Contemplating losing him pained me. I turned away to hide the sting of tears, and for a moment the mountains blurred into the clouds above them. I blinked and took a steadying breath.
But when I could see clearly again, the range persisted in looking strange. Though yet like lolling giants, the rocky formations no longer seemed to guard the faraway lands. Rather, they struck me as a meaner front: the stern keepers of here.
I shivered. Wishing I’d remembered my mittens to stave off the nip of the March morning, I fisted my hands under the cape and slid them into my apron’s front pocket.
There I encountered something hard. Taking hold of it, I realized it was the spile Mr. Long had carved for me. I must have stashed it in the pocket and forgotten it.
I brought the spile out into the daylight, ran a finger over the intricate vine, and turned the spout to find his initials. Just as I was about to stuff it back into my pocket and return to the house, the other set of initials seized my attention. “What? The devil!”
Gideon, roping the hickory onto the sleigh, looked up.
I stomped to his side and, borrowing from our older brothers’ vocabulary, muttered a string of what I reckoned must be terrible expletives.