Stitches in Time (39 page)

“What does that have to do with…” Pat's jaw dropped. “My God,” he said feebly.

Kara stiffened, her eyes widening. “My God is right. After all the nasty cracks I made about your chauvinist prejudices…I know about African-American quilts, they're quite different from the Anglo-American variety, a different tradition, one that has been overlooked and undervalued until recently. Our quilts weren't in that tradition, so it never occurred to me that…But I should have remembered about the sewing women. Slaves; skilled
seamstresses who did much of the endless sewing required to clothe and equip a large household. The mistress couldn't have done all of it herself. That would explain the bride's quilt! Mary Elizabeth didn't make it for herself; her sewing woman made it. Her slave—a woman of extraordinary talent, whose skills would have been noticed and encouraged—”

“Wait a minute!” Pat waved his arms wildly. “Never mind the quilts, I want to hear about the cemetery. I am not going to ask you how you know, you sneaky little bastard, I am going to ask why the hell you didn't tell me this before.”

“Since you aren't asking me how I know, I'll tell you,” Adam said calmly. “The burials weren't those of field workers; they wouldn't have rated even such paltry memorials as I found. These people were probably house slaves. The coffins, what was left of them, were plain, cheap pine. The builder had covered the ones he found, but he hadn't buried them deep. I also found two stones. That was the giveaway. They were small and crude, with no ornamentation, just the name and the dates. A first name, like that of a—a beloved pet. One of the names was Elijah.”

He paused, looking at each of their faces in turn, watching their expressions alter as they anticipated what he was going to say.

“The other name was Rachel. She was seventeen years old.”

 

They buried the mutilated remains of the quilt, and the things it had contained, in a corner of the MacDougals' dead garden later that night. Kara and Mark were spending the night with Tony. When Adam announced that he and Rachel were going out for a while, Tony had given them a paternal grin and told them to have a good time.

Kara had declined the invitation. “I've had enough black magic to last me for a while. And I think I need to spend some time with my husband.”

Clouds moved in slow procession across the moon; the light dimmed and brightened. The wind whispered in the branches of the enclosing trees. It would rain before morning.

“Hurry up,” Pat ordered. “Ruth is shivering.”

“I'm not cold,” Ruth said. “The wind is rising.”

Adam was, of course, doing the digging. “How deep?” he asked.

“Good and deep,” Pat said. “I hope you realize, Rachel, that you could blackmail me for years. If my so-called colleagues ever heard about this—”

“We decided this was the right thing.” Rachel held the quilt cradled in her arms.

“I agreed, didn't I? That should do it, Adam.”

Adam drove the shovel into the ground. It stood upright, quivering. “Do you want me to—”

“I'll do it.” Rachel knelt and lowered the tightly wrapped bundle into the hole he had dug. Rising to her feet, she gathered a handful of dirt from the piled-up earth and let it fall. She nodded at Adam, who began to fill in the excavation.

“There is something of her there too, isn't there?” Pat said quietly.

“Her hair,” Rachel said. “She used it to veil her rival's face and feather the arrow that pierced the two hearts. Long, dark hair. I was going to remove it before you destroyed the quilt, but perhaps this is better. I think we should say something. All I know is ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,' and the Lord's Prayer. Pat?”

It was an odd, brief little ceremony, and after Pat's deep voice had faded into silence they started back to the house.

“How about a nightcap?” Pat asked.

“My dear, how inappropriate,” Ruth exclaimed.

“Why? We're celebrating the triumph of good over evil, life over death, heaven—if there is such a thing—over hell. Let's hope she made it. Poor little devil,” Pat added. His voice was gentle, as if he were speaking of a hurt child, and Rachel thought that her namesake might have had worse epitaphs.

Adam politely declined the invitation. “It's late.”

“Not that late,” Pat began. Then an evil grin spread across his face. “Oh, I see. Run along, then, my children and enjoy yourselves. I have nothing to offer that could possibly compare with—”

“In that you are correct,” Adam said. “The thing is, we've got to be up early.”

“Why?” Pat demanded. “Kara will be there, and Ruth and I will come and help you clean the house and hide the evidence.”

“You mean you'll stand around and watch while the others do the cleaning,” Rachel said. “Adam and I won't be there. We'll be chained to a bulldozer.”

Easter was early that year and Adam had come to spend
his spring break with the MacDougals. The meeting had to be sub rosa, but since Rachel was now living in Manassas, Kara was the only one who had trouble getting away. She was the last to arrive and she came in grumbling.

“I had to tell Mark I was going to see Mrs. Grossmuller. He follows me every place I go these days, even from room to room, but he detests Mrs. G.”

“Is everything all right?” Ruth asked.

“Oh, sure. The doctor says I'm healthy as a horse. Mark is just being cute. He says he's going to insist on a couvade. What's a couvade? I didn't want to admit I didn't know.”

Adam laughed. “It's a custom in some tribes, where the expectant father takes to his bed when his wife is about to deliver, and pretends he's the one having the baby.”

“The dirty dog,” Kara exclaimed. “I suppose he gets all the sympathy, while she—”

“No, no, it's classic sympathetic magic,” Adam said. “Taking on her pain, making it easier for her.”

“Huh,” Kara said skeptically. “No couvade for Mark. I'm
beginning to wonder about him. None of you guys mentioned the quilt business to him, did you?”

“Of course not,” Ruth said. The others shook their heads.

Kara went on, “He's getting awfully superstitious. He didn't want me to see Mrs. Grossmuller—muttered something about the evil eye.”

“That's normal behavior for an expectant father,” Ruth said with a smile.

“She is a little uncanny,” Kara admitted. “Do you know what was in the last lot she brought us? Baby clothes. A whole layette, filthy and crumpled as usual, but exquisite. All hand-made. It laundered beautifully.”

“Are you going to keep it?” Rachel asked.

“I think I will. I wondered if maybe she made it herself.”

“That's sweet,” Ruth murmured.

“If you'll all excuse me I'm going over to Joe's and have a few beers with the boys,” Pat said caustically. “I thought this was supposed to be a business meeting. You two babbling about babies, and Rachel and Adam…Get your hands off him, girl, can't you show a little decent restraint in the presence of your elders?”

“I haven't seen him for three weeks,” Rachel said, unabashed.

“And you haven't done anything for the past three months except knit socks for him.”

“They're beautiful socks,” Adam said loyally.

“They're hideous,” Pat said. “Why purple?”

“It's my favorite color.” Adam stuck out his large feet and gazed admiringly at his socks. They were very purple.

“If she doesn't stop knitting hideous socks and get down to work she'll never finish that dissertation,” Pat grumbled.

“If I don't, the world probably won't come to an end.”
Rachel grinned at Pat, who snarled wordlessly back at her. This wasn't the first time they had discussed the subject. Sobering, she removed herself from Adam's lap—the position was distracting—and settled down next to him. “I'm having trouble deciding exactly what I want to do. The original subject is out. I can't deal with it dispassionately now, and anyhow, I haven't been able to find any concrete examples—except the one I can't use.”

Adam wrapped a long arm around her and squeezed her shoulders. “Maybe you'll think of something this summer while we're in England.”

“Is that definite?” Pat asked.

“Yep. The grant came through. We'll spend a couple of weeks with Rachel's folks before we go to Somerset. They're dying to meet me,” he added complacently.

“Have you prepared them for the shock?” Pat inquired of Rachel.

“They're dying to meet him,” Rachel said with a grin. “I told mother how much he admired the peignoir. She's decided he has excellent taste.”

Pat made the expected remark about purple socks, and then silence fell—a comfortable, friendly silence that anticipated without fearing what was to come. Dust motes danced in the sunlight that spilled across the floor; through the window Rachel could see the willows on the lawn, branches spread with the green haze of new buds.

Adam was the first to introduce the subject. “So they got Rocky?”

“He's been arraigned,” Pat answered. “Tony admits he isn't sure they can convince a jury. Most of the evidence is circumstantial.”

“It seems so obvious,” Rachel said. “I can't think why it didn't occur to us. No ordinary sneak thief would have known about the quilts or their value. It had to have been a friend of Rocky's.”

“It did occur to me,” Pat said. The others made disparaging noises, and he amended the statement. “It would have occurred to me if I'd given any thought to the problem. I mean, for God's sake, we had more pressing matters on our mind. As you say, it was obvious—certainly to the police. Eddy was on the basketball team with Rocky, one of his buddies. Of course Rocky denies ever having discussed the quilts with his friends. The only concrete evidence they have is the hair, and the defense will probably question the validity of the DNA process. There wasn't much, only a few hairs.”

Rachel shivered. Tom hadn't told her about the hairs caught under the old woman's broken nails. Miss Ora had fought back. The ugliest part of that image was the possibility that she had seen the face of her assailant and recognized him.

“Hair again,” Kara murmured. “Ironic, these coincidences…Including the fact that Mrs. Wilson's inheritance from Auntie will be spent on Rocky's defense.”

“Can she inherit?” Ruth asked. “I thought one wasn't allowed to profit from a crime.”

“She didn't commit it,” Pat answered. “And she probably believes, fiercely and wholeheartedly, that he is innocent.”

“The coincidence I can't buy is the cause of Eddy's death,” Kara said. “Snake bite? Snakes are dormant during the winter.”

Adam shrugged. “There were a couple of unseasonably warm days.”

“Yeah, sure,” Kara muttered.

“Nature is unpredictable,” Adam insisted. He looked uneasy, though, and his next question was not as much of a non sequitur as an outsider might have supposed. “Anything new on the cemetery?”

Pat shook his head. “Still a lot of squabbling going on.
It's unlikely it will ever be excavated. The question of how to deal with human remains is too sensitive, and these are fairly recent remains, in archaeological terms.”

“If they were my ancestors I wouldn't want them picked over by a bunch of nosy anthropologists,” Adam agreed. “At least we were able to stop the construction; that would have been real desecration. I suppose the builder offered to relocate the graves?”

“That was one suggestion, yes,” Pat said. “Several other groups are opposed to it. Whatever the final decision, nobody will ever get a look at what's inside those coffins. I can't fault that, but it's a pity we'll never know what happened to her.”

“What more could we learn from those poor broken bones?” Rachel demanded. “I don't want them disturbed, I want her left in peace. I know what happened. I can't give you the kind of proof Pat would consider convincing—”

“How do you know what I'd consider convincing?” Pat interrupted. “Give me a break, kid. I've swallowed a lot of unconventional theories in my time. I never asked you how many of her memories you received—”

“You hinted a lot, though,” Rachel said. “And you ignored the hints.”

“I had to get things straight in my own mind before I could talk about it,” Rachel said soberly. “The memories were fragmentary and out of sequence, and there were times when I wasn't sure whether the thoughts that passed through my head were mine or hers.

“The impressions that were the most difficult to interpret involved a big, burly man with a heavy beard. The man wasn't her lover—we may as well give her lover a name, he was unquestionably Mary Elizabeth's husband, Charles. The other man had hurt her, and she was terrified of him. I think he raped her when she was hardly more than a child, and continued to abuse her sexually until he
tired of her or died. According to Pat's genealogical research, Mary Elizabeth's father—Rachel's owner—died in I858. That would fit.

“Mary Elizabeth inherited everything he owned, including Rachel and the other slaves. As a wealthy heiress, she must have had a lot of ardent swains. She took her time about deciding; she was probably smart enough to realize that it was more fun being a sought-after belle than a wife.

“Charles was one of her suitors—a younger son, from a North Carolina family, as Pat discovered. While he was courting Mary Elizabeth, he saw Rachel. She couldn't reject him any more than she could have refused the old man, but he was young and handsome and at first he was kind to her. It's no wonder she came to care for him—and he, I think, cared for her. In his way…

“Mary Elizabeth had known about Charles and Rachel, and had turned a blind eye. Gentlemen had their needs. But once she decided to marry him, she wouldn't tolerate the continuation of an affair with one of her own slaves, in her own home. She didn't trust Charles—probably with good reason—so Rachel had to go.

“I'm prejudiced, of course, but Mary Elizabeth really was a monster. She told Rachel what was going to happen to her—and then sent her back to work. There was a lot of sewing to do before the wedding, and Rachel was the best seamstress in the county, perhaps in the state. They believed in long engagements then. For months, perhaps for a year, Rachel worked on that quilt and on the delicate garments of Mary Elizabeth's trousseau, and thought about her own dreadful future.

“Is it any wonder that the quilt radiated fear and helpless rage and hurt and despair? It must have relieved her feelings a little to invent ingenious ways of hiding threatening images in those pretty appliquéd pictures. Acquiring the hair and other bits of human detritus would have
required ingenuity too. They are, and were used as, ingredients of black magic, but I don't think they were as important as her hatred. It permeated every thread of that quilt.

“And it worked. Coincidence, we would say, that Mary Elizabeth died in childbirth and Charles during the war. But the magical significance of knots and tightly tied stitches in preventing childbirth is documented—and Charles also died young.

“According to the tombstone Adam found, Rachel died in I859. She didn't live long enough to see the curse fulfilled. But she knew it would be, she believed in the power of her magic, and that made her, by her own definition, a murderess. Having taken her revenge, she killed herself. I would have, given the alternative—to be sold to a stranger, a man who would have the right to use her as he pleased.”

“They were going to sell her?” Ruth said, horrified. “If she had been born and raised there—forced to leave her family, perhaps her parents—”

“I came across a case that has some interesting parallels,” Rachel said, opening the book she had brought with her. “This girl had been ‘brought up like a lady.' She could embroider, read and write, dance and play the piano—and all this she had learned from the family that owned her and treated her as if she were their own. But she had become proud and above herself; so, to humble her, they took her to be sold.”

“God.” Kara looked sick. “It's beyond comprehension. Bad enough to treat any human being like a piece of merchandise, but after raising her like their own child—”

“That girl's very success and talent destroyed the slave-owners' assumption of innate superiority,” Rachel said. “That was why they had to get rid of her, she would have been a constant reminder of a truth their narrow minds could not admit. Mary Elizabeth had an even stronger
motive for ‘humbling' Rachel. I think she was jealous. Charles was marrying her for her money, but he had cared for Rachel—as much as he was capable of caring for anyone. Not enough to risk losing a wealthy bride by defending Rachel, though. She appealed to him, and he denied her.

“Suicide was Rachel's only defense, her final gesture of defiance. She could cheat Mary Elizabeth of the pleasure of witnessing her humiliation, and claim the right to dispose of her own body.”

“It's psychologically valid,” Pat admitted. “And violent death does break patterns. Why couldn't it have been murder?”

“Mary Elizabeth would have preferred to see her live and suffer. I doubt any of them would have wantonly destroyed a valuable piece of property.” Rachel's lip curled. “A trained sewing woman could bring over a thousand dollars. And Rachel had…other qualifications.”

“Youth and beauty,” Adam said, tightening his grasp on Rachel.

“You're a hopeless sentimentalist,” Pat jeered. “We'll never know what she looked like. She was young, certainly. Poor little kid…” He stopped to clear his throat and glared at the others. “Frog in my throat.”

“Sure,” Kara said, with an affectionate smile.

“Enough of this sloppy stuff. Who wants coffee?” Pat rose stiffly to his feet. “Damned arthritis…There's no proof of any of this, you know. No proof, even, that the girl in that forgotten grave was the quilt maker.”

“Sure,” Kara said again.

“You haven't sold the other quilts yet, have you?” Ruth asked. “I'd like to buy one of them.”

“Ten percent off to you,” Kara said with a grin.

“What do you mean, ten?” On his way to the kitchen, Pat turned to scowl at her. “Dammit, we're kin. Twenty percent or no deal.”

“Oh, all right.” Kara scowled back at him. “But Rachel gets first choice. We're giving her one as a wedding present.”

“I want the patchwork,” Rachel said promptly. “The Carolina Rose.”

There was no proof. But she knew who had made those quilts, and when people admired hers and asked about the maker, she would tell them what she knew.

The sunlight strengthened, stretching long warm fingers through the room. Out in the garden purple and golden crocuses and the small blue flowers called “glory-of-the-snow” covered a certain spot like living patchwork.