At Home on Ladybug Farm (39 page)

“You’re not going to quit are you?”

“Has there been bad news?”

Ida Mae rocked, and sipped. And in a moment she said, “I’ve got a story to tell. It’s about you, young fella, and where you came from. It’s about your folks.”

Noah looked uncomfortable. “I don’t need to hear nothing from you about my folks. My pa was a no-account drunk who burned hisself up and that’s all there is to it.” He looked as though he might get up again, but she stopped him with a look.

“Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. I don’t know about your pa and don’t give a rat’s big fat behind. What I’ve got to tell you is about your mama, and her folks, and a story that goes all the way back to the Old Country.”

Everyone stared at her.

“What do you know about my mama?” Noah said, a little curiously, a lot cautiously.

Ida Mae rocked, and sipped. A contented, reminiscent look spread over her face. “Your great-grandma and me, we stayed together, right here in this house. That was during the war, and I was just a slip of a thing. We all worked at the mill down the road, and prayed for our boys to come home. They used to call me Penny back then, on account of my hair, as bright as a copper penny, just like that girl-child there. And the mill, it closed down in fifty-three. But I remember your great-grandma. She was like a sister to me. And your great-grandpa, why, he was a hero in the war. He saved twelve men on that transport before it went down, and they gave him some kind of medal, I don’t remember what it’s called, after he was dead.”

“
My
great-grandpa?” Noah said, astonished. “Mine?”

She nodded firmly. “That’s a fact. Wasn’t I standing right there at the top of the stairs when the telegram came? And I’ll tell you something else. Your granny, you probably don’t remember her, but she was a painter, too, just like you. Matter of fact . . .” Ida Mae sipped the sherry, smacked her lips again, and slid a sly look around to the three women. “She’s the one that painted those pictures in the alcoves in yonder.”

Lori clapped her hands in delight, but Bridget gave Ida Mae a frown of gentle reprimand. “Ida Mae, you said you didn’t know anything about those paintings.”

“I told you I didn’t know everything,” Ida Mae corrected smugly, “and I don’t. And what I do know, I got a right to keep to myself. But I figure a young’un ought to know where he came from. So I’m here to tell the story.”

Cici regarded her skeptically. “This wouldn’t be the same kind of story as the one about the Yankee coming through the window, would it?”

Lori said excitedly, “What Yankee?”

And Noah’s eyes lit up. “The same ones that hid the ammunition in the caves?”

Now Bridget, Cici, and Lindsay looked thoroughly confused, and Ida Mae rocked back, enjoying herself. “Well now, there’s stories, and there’s stories. The one about the Yankee getting shot in the parlor . . . well, I guess that’s what you might call a little on the exaggerated side. Kind of gives the house some color, you know? But now this other story, the one I’m about to tell you about your folks, it has Yankees, and it has Indians, and it has sailing ships, and every word of it is true, just like it was told to me by your granny’s mama.”

Already Noah’s shoulders were straighter, his head held taller. He said, “I remember my granny, kind of. She used to bake apple cookies. And she had this blanket with a horse on it that I always liked to sleep under.”

Ida Mae said, “That was a quilt. And that’s the story I’m going to tell you about. There’s all kinds of ways to make pictures, you know, and back in the olden times, women did it with their needle and threads. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that’s how you come by your way with drawing things.”

Lindsay’s fingers went to her lips. “Quilt?” she whispered. The other two women simply stared at Ida Mae as the connection was made.

Ida Mae went on complacently. “The fact is, your folks were some of the first settlers in these parts. It was your great-great-great-great grandpappy, and he was what you call an emissary of the king, who the king himself sent over here to Virginia on a sailing ship to civilize the land.”

“The king?” Lori repeated, her eyes big. “He knew the king?”

Noah hushed her with an impatient gesture and leaned in close.

“So I hear tell. Now he brought his young bride with him, because everybody knows you can’t civilize anything without a wife, and before they could do much more than fling up a log cabin, the wild Indians attacked his homestead, and burned him out, and he had a newborn baby . . .”

The ladies stopped rocking, and lost interest in their wine. Noah barely took a breath, so intently was he listening, and Lori changed her position, to better see Ida Mae’s face.

Cici grasped Lindsay’s hand and squeezed. Bridget leaned forward in her rocker. The day turned slowly to dusk as the ghosts of those who had gone before them marched proudly across the landscape of their imaginations and Ida Mae spun out the story. Ladybug Farm came alive with the retelling, and a boy called Noah, who once had been lost, finally found his way home.

EPILOGUE

In Another Time

The mother who sewed the cloak, embroidering it with the finest of silk threads imported from India and twice wound, did not know that it was destined to endure three centuries. But it did.

The son, the husband, and the father who wore the cloak did not know that his tale would be legend, passed down from mother to daughter, daughter to son, son to daughter for generations uncounted. But it was.

He stayed beside his young wife throughout the night as the smoke of battle grew ever closer and she labored to bring forth their child. And when at last he could linger no longer, when the enemy must be faced for the sake of all he held dear, he gave his wife and his newborn child to the care of his faithful servant, and charged him with taking them to safety.

He wrapped the infant in his cloak to protect it from the chill dawn, and he spent a long time looking into his baby’s eyes before returning her, with the greatest of tenderness, to her mother. He drew his sword. He did not know if he would return. And so at the last moment, he turned back, and knelt beside the woman he loved, and the child he did not know.

“Remember,” he whispered to the tiny, sleeping creature who, at that moment, held all the future in its small curled hands. “Remember me. Remember who you are.”

And so she did.