Free The Mapmaker's Children by Sarah McCoy Page B

she couldn’t remember anything about it except the declarative statement. What else had they done? It was lost to her, like the roses. Yet here, in her hand, were blooms plucked, pressed, and remembered.
    Sarah moved a finger through the petals so that they crackled like burning kindling, their fragrance made heady by the stoking.
    â€œHyacinth and wisteria. Welcome,” said Alice.
    The others entered the parlor, and Alice dispensed from her basket similar handfuls to Mary and Annie.
    Annie examined the flowers closely. “Is that purple or blue hyacinth?”
    Alice smile even widened. “ ’Tis purple. Do you know the fairy language of flowers?”
    Annie winked. “Your message is well delivered. Thank you, Alice.”
    Alice stayed close to Annie’s elbow until she seemed to burst with a question: “Will you sit by me at dinner?”
    â€œYes, how rude of us,” said Priscilla. “You’ve been traveling all dayand straight to Captain Brown. You must be exhausted. Please, let’s eat, then let you rest.”
    They followed the Hills into the dining room. When Priscilla sat, everyone else did, too. George at the head of the table with Freddy at the foot, Sarah to Freddy’s right. His boot was so close to her own that she dared not twitch an ankle.
    It’d been a long time since they’d eaten at a formal dinner, even one as modest as this. There was an air of refinement: the tinkle of silver spoons against the bowls; the linen napkins pressed like Alice’s flowers; the hurricane lamps haloing each of them like a Duccio painting, all shimmering golds and dazzling reds. Sarah’s brother had brought home a miniature replica of
The Last Supper
from his European travels with their father. Sarah could see the painting in her mind’s eye, and it made her stomach growl.
    Since the raid, they’d skipped meals or eaten muddled bowls of vegetable porridge with eggs. While the guinea hens in the backyard were plentiful, the Brown women hadn’t had the energy or conviction to chase them down, then pluck, gut, and roast them. So they’d let the birds populate and run into the woods, eating only the diminutive eggs.
    With the men gone, they’d supped beside the potbelly, which smelled of browned butter and burning maple. They hadn’t had a cook or servant in Sarah’s life. Her father distrusted anyone behind the walls, and the job of a servant too closely mirrored the charges of slavery. The cooking, the mending, and the raising of children was the sanctified duty of John’s wives and daughters, his sons’ wives and daughters. He made that clear.
    They each had a God-given purpose, like the mechanisms of a pocket watch: the Brown Clock. A hammer or wheel couldn’t decide to pause its business or the hour and minute hands would fall behind and render the whole thing useless, he’d explained. Sarah was led to assume that the women were the wheels; her brothers, the hammers; and her father, the clock face with its marking hands. He fancied himself a great parable teller. The Brown Clock was one of her least favorites. Sarah didn’tlike the idea of being a wheel. Going round and round without getting anywhere.
    At the table, Annie prattled on about the eminent friends of her father’s mission, the Alcotts—
“…a university professor at Harvard Divinity…their daughter Louisa May published a delightful novel of fairy stories, a family of philosophers and thinkers they are…”
—who were kind enough to watch Ellen while they were away.
    Sarah winced, knowing that George was fully acquainted with her father’s friends, more so than Annie or anyone else—and what senseless prattle on such a night as this! George nodded along, graciously allowing them to stay away from the topic on the forefront of all their minds: tomorrow.
    From beyond the servant’s door came a voice: