At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [115]
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
1720
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