Fantastical Ramblings (19 page)

“I have visited thirty-two of your closest relatives, Ms.
Whythe. The dog liked none of them. She is yours now, along with a great deal
of other responsibilities. Your Great-grandfather will be in touch. I’ll put
the dog’s food and toys into your kitchen and then lock up as I leave.” Ian
turned and approached a long black car that must get only four gallons to the
mile.

“Get out, dog!” Gabby screamed, trying to hold the pup by
the scruff of the neck.

Cymorth.

The strange word rang around Gabby’s mind.

Help you
.

“Ian, I need some help here.”

“You do indeed. But I cannot assist you. You must rely upon
the dog for help now.”

With that, Cymorth leaped across the gear shift and settled
into the passenger seat. She filled it to overflowing. That didn’t keep her
from turning her massive head to look expectantly at Gabby.

“Damnit, I don’t have time to fight with you, dog.” Gabby
climbed in and started the ignition.

Cymorth
, the word
came again
. Named Cymorth. Help you
.

Gabby shook her head to clear it of the alien voice and the
image of the proper spelling of the word.
Cymorth
.
Pronounced
ky-more-dth
, with the
emphasis on the first syllable. She knew instantly that it meant “help” in
Welsh.

“Coffee. I need coffee. Too many late nights. Not enough
sleep. I’m hallucinating. But I don’t have time to give in to it.”

She put the car in gear and sped across campus to her
museum.

A big green SUV awaited her in the four car parking lot
behind the white house. In 1849 When the Carter family built their home it was
the biggest building in town, other than their woolen mill beside the
waterfall.

“I’m only five minutes late,” Gabby muttered as she jerked
the parking brake into place. She tripped on the gravel in her haste to greet
the long-legged man in carefully pressed khakis, and a pristine green golf
shirt and down vest that perfectly matched his vehicle.

Cymorth bounced out of the car in her wake. Rudely she
sniffed the man’s shoes and circled him suspiciously. Then sat on Gabby’s foot,
leaning her substantial weight against her and shedding blonde guard hairs all
over her lovely blue suit.

If Gabby didn’t know better she’d think the dog cringed away
from the man.

No trust
.

The thought popped into Gabby’s head, much as the dog’s name
had. Immediately, she felt the fine hairs along her spine bristle, much as a
dog’s would.

The man held his hand out to Cymorth, palm down and let her
sniff his knuckles. He carefully looked to the side, not challenging the huge
dog.

Cymorth retreated behind Gabby.

“Irish Wolfhounds are usually more easy-going than this, not
much threatens them,” he said, puzzled.

“She’s young. I haven’t had her long.” Then remembering her
manners she stuck out her hand. “Hi, I’m Gabby Whythe.”

“Jed Marshall.” He shook her hand briefly with a firm dry
grip.

She took the opportunity to appraise the man. Younger than
she expected. Mid-thirties. Fit. With the square jaw and wind-swept brown hair
reminiscent of the portraits of his great, great, multi-great-grandfather.

Cymorth nudged Gabby’s hand away from the man’s and onto her
own head.

“And this imperious young lady is Cymorth.” Gabby refrained
from rolling her eyes.

Jed Marshal turned his attention back to the dog. “Pleased
to make your acquaintance, Miss Cymorth.”

The dog wiggled out from his attempt to scratch her ears.
She hadn’t been this shy about her first meeting with Gabby. What was wrong
with her?

“Sorry, I’m late. Traffic,” Gabby apologized.

“No problem. It’s my day off.”

“If you’ll come with me, I have some papers for you to sign.”

“I’ll bring the trunk with me.” He moved to open the back
hatch of his monster vehicle. It might get five gallons to the mile.

“I can get a hand truck...”

“Don’t bother. It’s not that big or heavy.” He slid a
blanket-wrapped box, about a yard long and two feet wide, out and hoisted it to
his shoulder as if it weighed no more than a pillow.

“A Dr. Gabriel Whythe came across on one of the early wagon
trains. You any relation?” Jed Marshall asked as he set the trunk in the middle
of Gabby’s office floor.

The guy knew his history if he remembered that little
factoid.

“The doctor who treated cholera at the cost of his own life
in 1845 was a younger son of a mutual ancestor,” Gabby explained. “He died
without issue. I grew up in Boston.”

“Pity. I was wondering why you hadn’t joined the Sons &
Daughters of the Oregon Trail.” He sat in the chair beside the desk and
stretched out his long legs. “I’m treasurer this year. We’re always looking for
new members. Too many people these days have lost interest in their heritage.”

Gabby perched on the edge of her chair. Cymorth circled and
settled in the knee hole beneath the desk as if that had always been her place.

“Have you read the journals in that trunk?” Gabby’s hands
itched to remove the dusty blanket from the trunk and begin digging in. From
the looks of it, the blanket could be an original trade blanket from the Hudson’s
Bay. Cream-colored wool with the distinctive red, black, and green stripes, two
black hash marks woven into one border. Worth two beaver pelts and would fit a
standard sized bed of the time. Barely big enough for a modern double bed.

“I glanced at them as a kid in my grandparent’s attic. I
stumbled across them when I cleaned the place out to put it up for sale last
month. You’ve got better facilities to protect them than I do.”

“And I appreciate the donation. But I have to ask, why didn’t
you contact the university? I’ll be taking them to their preservation lab as
soon as I catalogue them. I’m pretty sure the papers will need de-acidification
before putting them on display.”

“Thought about it. Decided you’d make better use of them.
The university’s got lots of items. Can’t display a tenth of what they’ve got.
They’d probably sit in archives for decades before some grad student got around
to reading them.”

“May I?” Gabby gestured to the trunk.

“I’m surprised you waited this long,” he chuckled.

Gently Gabby unfolded the layers of blanket. She wiggled her
nose to keep from sneezing at the dust she raised. Cymorth lifted her head and
sniffed too. Then she retreated into her hidey hole again.

“The blanket’s part of the donation. I’ve included it in the
inventory,” Jed Marshall said, holding up a sheet of paper folded in three. “I
don’t know how old it is.”

“Not real new,” Gabby chuckled. This time she had to turn
her head away and sneeze.

“Mind if I look around? I haven’t toured this museum since a
fourth grade field trip.”

“Certainly. My assistant will be here in a few minutes. She
can give you the full tour if you want.”

“Nah, I’ll just look around.”

Gabby dove into the jumbled assortment of journals, loose
documents and old photos that highlighted the family history from 1843, when
Old Josiah first arrived in the Oregon Country, to 1868. When the railroad
bypassed Marshall Flats, the town and its church withered away to a ghost town.
The inhabitants moved to the more convenient railhead.

The parish registry seemed missing. Gabby made a note to ask
if it had gone to another church. Including that book in a display would
complete the collection nicely.

Cymorth squeezed out from under the desk. She walked
daintily around the piles of half-sorted documents.

“Um... Cymorth, stay,” Gabby yelped just as the dog dropped
her nose to sniff at the oldest journal. She grabbed the dog by the scruff of
her neck and yanked her away from the precious artifact.

The dog resisted and continued to nose open the fragile
little book.

“No!” Gabby let go of the big dog to grab up the journal
with its cracked leather cover and frayed silk ribbon to tie the two covers
closed. She grasped it where the leaves fell open under the dog’s prodding.

Two words in the bold handwriting jumped out at her. “Emile
Carter.”

Anything to do with the town’s founder interested her.
Eagerly she read the entry for January 1, 1846, the day Dr. John McLoughlin
retired as Chief Factor of Hudson’s Bay Fort Vancouver. A number of trappers,
traders, and company officers left with him, unhappy with changes in company
administration that forced their beloved factor out.

Today I married six men to their Indian wives, having first
baptized all six women. They all chose the name Mary. Two McKays, one Stewart,
and three Carters.

Gabby’s heart skipped a beat. She forgot to breathe. This
was the missing piece to her dissertation. What happened when old inheritance
laws made a mistake? A multimillion dollar mistake that included a still
prospering woolen mill, the house, other real estate, and small businesses.
Wasn’t the local bank part of the original estate?

Emile Carter’s friends and colleagues had described him as a
man who wrote little and said less about himself. He considered his marriage a private
matter, no one had any right to question it but himself and his God. He had no
need to prove the legality of it. He probably never thought that his widow
would have to prove it.

Cymorth wedged her head beneath Gabby’s arm.
Cymorth help Gabby
.

“Yes, my dear. You did help. But you’ll help more if you
stay off these papers.”

Trust Cymorth. No
Trust man
.

“Whatever.” Gabby read on, hoping for more information.
Nothing to indicate the first names of the men who had legalized their
marriages that day. One of the big problems in tracking genealogy through the
fur trades was a frequent repetition of names. Whole clans of Scots displaced
by The Clearances, refugee Huguenots, and Quebecois farmers with itchy feet,
enlisted at the same time. Fathers and sons, Brothers, Uncles, Cousins, all
with the same last name and many with the same
first
names.

“Mr. Marshall?” Gabby called as his long shadow passed her
office door.

“Hm?” He poked his head inside the doorway.

“Do you have any idea where the parish registry went?” She
tried to look curious rather than too eager. No sense getting excited until she
had the evidence.

“Isn’t it in there?”

“I didn’t see it.”

“It’s on the inventory.”

“But I don’t see it.” Gabby looked into the trunk again. No
big bound book.

“Let me look in the back of my rig. I may have put it in the
box of books to go to the used book store.”

Gabby let go the breath she was holding.

No trust
, Cymorth
reminded her
. No trust
.

“He said he hadn’t looked at these documents in years,
except to inventory them. So why would he put the registry in the wrong box?”

Not knowing precisely why, she followed him to the parking
lot. The prickles along her spine continued.

“Why shouldn’t I trust him. He has nothing to gain in this,”
she muttered to herself and to the dog who trotted at her heels.

Watch him
.

“Here it is!” Jed Marshall proclaimed as Gabby approached
his SUV. “I was in a hurry and put it in the wrong box.”

He said he hadn’t read
the journals since childhood
, Gabby reminded herself. She took the fat book
with the cracked leather cover from him silently. The moment her hands touched
it a jolt of something... something negative coursed through her veins.

“You altered it!” she blurted out without thinking.

Pain and shock crossed his face before he masked it. “Why
would I do such a thing?” His hurt was feigned.

She knew it in her bones.

Told you so
,
Cymorth reminded her.

“Why indeed? The only person with something to gain would be
a descendant of Hannah Carter, Emile’s and Mary’s daughter. She disappeared
from the historical record the day the courts agreed with her disinheritance.
July 15, 1852.” Two years before Peter Skene Ogden’s heirs proved the
legitimacy of company marriages.

“She married the eldest son of Josiah Marshall,” he said
quietly.

“Trouble is, Hannah was a very popular name at the time.
Three men with the last name of Carter married women by the name of Mary on the
same day. Who is to say they didn’t all name their daughters Hannah.”

“My Great-grandmother was
the
Hannah Carter!” His face flushed a deep red.

Gabby could almost feel the waves of anger and... and greed
that poured off of him.

Cymorth eased in front of Gabby and took a firm stance,
teeth bared. One hundred pounds of dog ready to protect and defend her partner.

“Since you’ve destroyed the provenance of the parish
registry, that makes the journal suspect as well. You’ve destroyed your only
hope of proving any claim to the heritage.” Inside, Gabby wept. Her
dissertation would have to wait for extensive and time-consuming laboratory
tests to prove the journal correct.

“I defy you to prove anything in the registry is a forgery,”
Marshal snarled.

“I will know the truth. Your greed and impatience overcame
good sense. The journal and your DNA would have been enough. But you had to
cheat.”

“The truth isn’t cheating.”

Gabby opened the huge tome unerringly to a page near the
middle. Three pages of a long and rambling reminiscence written by old Josiah
during a long cold winter. She sensed by the vibrations in her fingertips that
the center page had been altered. Four sentences had been added. The
handwriting was a near perfect match, the ink properly faded, possibly even the
same chemical composition of the old lampblack inks.

I consider it a great honor to welcome into my family the
daughter of my old friend Emile Carter. She took refuge with us when the world
cast her out. My son fell in love with her and married her. They have given me
three grandchildren to lighten my last years.