Shadows of Lancaster County (45 page)

Maybe it was my afternoon for epiphanies, but suddenly I had another realization, and this one seemed almost too incredible to be true. I put down the book, called to Haley that I’d be back in a minute, and ran full speed out to the phone shanty. There, I dialed the number for Remy Villefranche and excitedly told him that I may have a lead on the Beauharnais Rubies at last.

“Do you remember the quilt I told you about? The handmade one that my family donated to the Folk Art Museum?”

“Yes.”

“Remy, it’s just a hunch, but I think the quilt might lead us to the rubies. Are you still in town? Are you free right now?”

“Yes, I’m still in town. And as to whether or not I’m free, do you even have to ask?”

With so much going on, I didn’t want to leave the farm and take time to meet him at the museum, but I asked Remy if he could run over there by himself with a camera, snap some pictures of the quilt, and then come here. I thought we could study the images together and see if they didn’t give us some sort of lead—if not to where the rubies were now, at least to where they had been once upon a time. Without hesitation, Remy agreed to hit the road right away. After hanging up, I ran back toward the house and past the clothesline, ducking under a big sheet that was flapping noisily in the wind. Rebecca and Isaac were nearby, and as I passed them I grabbed their hands and spun them around.

I didn’t know why I was so happy. I didn’t know why I suddenly felt as though weights were lifting off of me. All I knew was that my brother had been found, I had a lead on the jewels, and most important of all, there was a very real chance that the truth I had believed about myself for the past eleven years had, in fact, been a lie.

September 7, 1812

To Your Highness, Duchess Stephanie de Beauharnais:

It is with warm greetings that my wife and I write this letter. Our answer is yes. We accept with great honor and humility the responsibility that is being bestowed upon us. As for details, perhaps the same method of conveyance for this letter could be employed to convey the “item” in question. It is our sincere prediction that after you give birth to your son, you will develop a deep craving for schnitz pie, and that you will insist on at least seven or eight pounds’ worth. I would be grateful to deliver that basket to you myself, as I would like to meet the new prince or princess in person and pay to him or her my deepest respects.

In Christ’s Name,
Samuel Jensen

There was still a little juice left in my laptop, so when Remy finally arrived an hour later, we uploaded his photos of the quilt. Both Haley and Grete had rejoined me in the kitchen by then, and though Grete busied herself with making dinner, Haley sat with Remy and me at the table. For a moment, I wondered if I was being disrespectful to my hosts by using a computer in their home, but I then decided that it was probably okay for the time being since it was running off of battery power.

When the pictures finished loading, we studied them on the screen, zooming in wherever necessary. Suddenly, the quilt that had seemed so unattractive and incompetent before took on an entirely different luster in this new light.

The first panel featured the Moses scene, including a river, a princess, a commoner, a baby in a basket, and even bullrushes. On the river bank to the right was embroidered a small, red fire. I still didn’t understand why there were brown rocks on top of the baby in the basket, but I had to assume that had something to do with how Stephanie de Beauharnais and the Jensen family had made the switch.

Without knowing the truth behind the picture, it really did look as though it had been designed to tell the story of Moses. Looking at it with new eyes, however, the babe in the basket clearly wasn’t Moses at all, but
the son of Stephanie de Beauharnais and her husband, Karl Friedrich, Grand Duke of Baden.

The second panel, which we had always thought was supposed to represent Noah’s ark, was instead the scene of the two couples on a ship as they sailed across the ocean to America. This time, the red fire was shown burning on the bottom deck of the ship, inside a wooden box.

The third panel, which we had assumed represented David tending his sheep on a hillside in Bethlehem was probably the newly located Amish farmer, Karl Jensen, tending his sheep in Lancaster County. The red fire in that square burned just under the roof of the house, along a dotted line surely meant to represent the attic.

The fourth panel, which we had taken to be the story of the Prodigal Son leaving home was more than likely either a depiction of Peter Jensen leaving the Amish religion, or his son William Jensen heading off to sell some of the jewels. Either way, in that picture the man carried the red fire with him, burning brightly from a lantern he held in his hand as he waved goodbye.

The fifth panel looked to be an Amish barn raising, the bare skeleton of a house just going up. Under the house was a large gray square, and we had assumed that it represented Jesus’ admonition that a wise man builds his house upon a rock. In that panel, the fire burned under a nearby tree.

The sixth and final panel featured a man standing with his arms outstretched, surrounded on all sides by odd red columns. That had always been the hardest one to decipher, but by the positioning of the man’s arms, he seemed to represent Christ on the cross.

Instead, I realized now, the man was simply holding out his hands to emphasize what surrounded him: five fireplaces. In the center fireplace burned the red fire.

“The rubies were hidden in a fireplace,” I said.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Remy replied, shaking his head. “Extreme fluctuations of heat can damage jewels. No one would ever use a fireplace to store such a valuable treasure.”

Remy clicked to the next picture. “This was the write-up on the wall plaque beside the quilt,” he said.

I skimmed the text that thanked our family for the acquisition, though I was surprised to read that the museum’s curators had determined that each panel had been sewn by a different person. As the various fabrics traced back to a wide range of dates, they had concluded that the quilt was assembled over several generations.

Perhaps each time the oldest Jensen son took a bride, she was given the opportunity and the responsibility to add her favorite Bible story to the montage,
the write-up said.

What it should have said was that each time the oldest Jensen son took a bride, she was given the news about the priceless set of rubies that were being passed down through the family, and it was her responsibility to identify the rubies’ hiding place by sewing it onto the quilt in the guise of a Bible story.

We all stared at that photo, trying to make sense of it. “Go back to the fireplace scene again,” I said.

Remy did as I asked, and again we stared at the image, trying to make sense of it. Even Grete finally joined us to take a peek.

“This is supposed to represent your grandparents’ old house? Because I do not know why there are five fireplaces in the picture when there were only four chimneys on the house.”

Stunned, Remy and I looked at each other and then at Grete.

“Are you sure?” Remy asked.

“
Yah.
I grew up in the bedroom at the top of the stairs here and looked out my window at the silhouette of that house every day of my life until they took it away.”

I stood and grabbed my coat, urging the others to do the same.

“Where are we going?” Haley asked.

“On a treasure hunt. Come on.”

Outside, the four of us stopped at the toolshed to gather a sledgehammer, a chisel, and a crowbar, and then I called out for Rebecca and Isaac to come with us. Our actions caught the attention of the press as well, and soon they were skirting around the edges of the property, trying to see where we were going in such a hurry. Nathaniel was working on his tractor out in the field, and when he saw us, he came along too.

We quickly marched as a group across the fields to the old homestead and down into the open-air basement. Just as in the picture, there were five fireplaces down there, remnants of the house’s old heating system. Only four of them were stained with soot.

Handing Remy the sledgehammer, I offered him the first whack. His gleeful blows didn’t do much to advance our cause, however, so eventually he handed the heavy tool over to Nathaniel, who attacked the chimney with gusto once Grete explained that an old family treasure might be hidden inside.

We all moved back and watched with rapt attention as the structure began to crumble brick by brick, each piece falling to the ground with a plink. Finally, when I was starting to give up hope, a different sound made a hollow thunk, and then suddenly a square wooden box dropped from inside the remaining structure. Hands shaking, I knelt down and grabbed the box, lifted it up, and dusted it off. Opening the lid revealed soft fabric inside. Carefully, I raised a corner of the fabric and gasped. Nestled among the folds was the most astonishing, sparkly, brilliant, glittery diamond-and-ruby necklace I had ever seen.

“There’s something else!” Remy whispered, pointing at a square of paper that poked up from the corner.

Breathlessly, and with as much care as possible, Remy rooted down through the box, proclaiming that under the jewels there looked to be some documents and letters. He slipped out the top one and gingerly unfolded it.

“It’s dated July 21, 1831, to ‘My Dearest Son’ and signed at the bottom, ‘Sincerely, Your mother, SdB’!” Remy looked at me, his eyes filled with the glow of our reward. The treasure hunter had persisted all the way to the prize.

“What does it say?” Haley asked.

“ ‘My Dearest Son, I have received your latest communication, and I find it as baffling as your previous missives. While I appreciate that you are a man of the land, a worker, and a husband, I also do not think you appreciate the extent to which I have sacrificed in order to keep you safe until this time. Worker or not, husband or not, whether you want to or not,
it is time to assume the throne!’ ” Remy paused in his reading, swallowed hard, and kept going. “Next paragraph says, ‘I truly thought that once you read my journal entries from all those years ago, you would understand and accept your duty in this matter. Leopold now has plans to marry a princess of Badenese descent, which will be the final step in making him eligible for the crown. His coronation will likely begin soon after that, the event that Luise has plotted and schemed over for many years. All it will take to stop it, my son, is for the truth of your birthright to be revealed. I do not understand your refusal in this matter! You speak of being content with the life you lead now. Need I remind you that a royal’s first obligation is not to his own contentment but to the service of his people?’ ”

Again, Remy stopped reading, almost as if to let his brain catch up with the words that spelled out the exact theory he had held about the fate of Karl and Stephanie’s firstborn male son since the beginning.