“I used the last of what calmed him before he slept. I’ll head home and see if there ain’t a little left. The medicine the doctor left is decent, but we had a time of it, tryin’ to get Thor to take some, and I fear he’s on to us now.” Cora winked. She ate, sipping her own rich tea with closed eyes.
When she finished, she rose and beckoned to Aven with a lean, work-worn hand. “I gonna fetch them herbs.” She pushed back from the table and righted her homespun skirts. “Walk with me, child. It’ll spare those floorboards you be pacin’.”
On outside study, Cora’s cabin was pint-sized, but within were so many nooks and crannies it would take a day to fully discover. Aven stood at one of those nooks as she reached up for a tin on the highest shelf. Dozens of other containers sat in neat rows—the name of seed or herb marking each.
“This here, perhaps?” Aven sniffed the contents and, thinking it right, held it over for inspection.
Cora shifted her finger through the tiny dried pods. “Ah, the fennel. Thatta girl. Now you be lookin’ for St. John’s Wort. I’ll find the milk thistle.”
Running her thumb along small glass jars, Aven read more labels. “What is the benefit of these herbs?”
“It a blend to treat anxiousness. Should help settle Thor some. I’ve a good, strong tincture made up but it’s stewed in whiskey. And while it’s bitter and don’t taste near the same, whiskey be whiskey and I fear offerin’ it to Thor just now.” Looking like a pair of spectacles would be of help, Cora squinted at the writing on an old tin. “So we’ll steep the herbs and hope he might take some.” She pulled down a pouch and peeked inside.
Aven unearthed the last herb and carried it over as well. Her skirt brushed against a small bed covered with a quilt of brown and white patches. The bed bowed in the middle, looking near to collapsing, but a little spool doll lay slumped over against the pillow. Georgie’s spot.
Earlier Cora had mentioned that her girls were staying with a family from their church. A shelter for them as Cora and Al aided the Norgaards. Aven righted the doll, grateful to Cora for the time she was giving. All with a smile and spark, no less.
“He kept down some of what I brewed for him near noon.” Cora fetched a basket and filled it with odds and ends, last of all the pouch. “But only a few sips. It was enough yet, as he rested. Let’s see that he get a good strong cup for the night.” She led Aven out, then closed and latched the door.
Pots of herbs grew on the stone stoop, and a hanging basket with flowering ivy spilled shade along with a heady fragrance. ’Twas honeysuckle, Cora declared, as she looped her arm through Aven’s. Some years younger than Ida, Cora’s hair was frosted with silver strands, but the wiry grip she maintained was as strong as her manner was kind.
Cora plucked a bloom and handed it to Aven. It bore a smell so gratifying, Aven committed the name to heart as she inhaled its fragrance. Over and over she did this until Cora laughed.
“Lawd, child, if you ain’t gonna smell the sweet right outta that flower. I’ll bring you all you can stand next I come.”
Aven smiled her thanks. She placed the white bloom in her palm as they walked, tipping the silken petals over to admire the underside. How often had she held these very blossoms as a girl? They used to bloom just outside her mother’s third-floor window where Aven had spent her youngest years. She would sit there in the little gable, watching bees bumble from flower to flower while her mother sewed delicate gowns for the lady of the manor.
In the lifetime since, Aven had forgotten its name. Years later, and alone in the workhouse, there was a vase of this same flower in the office where she met with one of the Sisters of Mercy—the nuns who came to the poor to bring aid. The very Sister who had matched her with Benn that spring day.
Never had Aven thought to ask the flower’s name. She was thankful to know it now.
Cora’s grip on her arm was steady. As the weariness of the last few days settled into her bones, Aven was grateful for Cora’s mellow pace. The woman had to feel as stretched thin, if not more so.
“How did you come to live here?” Aven asked as they walked.
With a flick of her hand, Cora waved off a pesky fly. “Worked on a farm in Louisiana. Me and Ida were the only daughters of our folks who weren’t sold off. We was too young, you see. Not much use to nobody ’cept to carry water pails or helpin’ our mammy with the missus. When we got older, we decided to run. Scarcely had a feather to fly with, but we got by.” She lowered the basket to her side so it swayed among her skirts.
“May I ask what happened?”
“We was runnin’ toward freedom, long before the start of the war. We took off before our owner had a chance to sell Ida away. He had plans for her, ya see, as she was grown then. But Ida was wantin’ to marry a man who worked the fields. Woulda been only a slave weddin’—not legal to the state—but true in God’s eyes, and that be all that mattered.”
Aven gently freed Cora of the basket when the woman slowed.
“We got all the way to the south of Virginia when dogs caught up with us and the gang of folk we were travelin’ with. It may seem that Ida took the worst of it, but her beau was injured near as bad, then sold off and never seen again. Her heart was more battered than her leg ever was.
“I was smaller so the memories be fragile, but I recall how she bore it well. She learned to let the good Lord mend her, and mend her He has. She ain’t bitter none, which is more able than me. Than most. ’Specially with the Sorrels and their kind around. And with their dander still up, no less. Ida be gracious, but it don’t mean her heart don’t want still. Don’t yearn for what was lost.”
“I’m terribly sorry.”
Cora drew in a slow breath and tilted her face to the breeze. It lifted the tiny hairs that feathered free of her knotted head wrap. “A few years past that, we was sold to the Sorrels, and that’s how I was on hand to tend Mrs. Norgaard whenever it was her time. I delivered all three of the boys and eight Sorrel babies. All grown up now. When the war ended and Ida and me was free, we took work from the Norgaards. They paid right good.
“I married my Albert then. Spent some happy years with him before he passed. This place be home. ’S a cryin’ shame to think of those boys losin’ it. But they know what they be about and they know what they made of. We all know it too, and in that there be hope.”
A few weeks ago such words would have been fodder to ponder, but now they provided a sureness beyond measure.
Aven glanced around at the beauty of evening. The sky was the color of a peach, the glow of the sun much like the place where it was ripest. Birds called to one another from the treetops, and two deer walked slow and lithe atop a distant crest. How vast had Haakon declared the farm? A few hundred acres. A responsibility she couldn’t begin to fathom.
“If they’re to keep this farm . . . Thor will be needing to make liquor nonetheless, would you think?”
“It a question I been wrestlin’ with the good Lord over ’til I realized that the notion be between Him and Thor. In the meanwhile we got our place to pray.”
Aven nodded. Pray she would. For that man’s heart and their beloved land.
The acreage spread out around them now like patches of blue and green and gray . . . all coming together to make up a quilt—a tapestry—of home. Rich in the air was the scent of ripening apples. On the hillside, dried grasses swayed in a wave so vast and gentle, it reminded her of the open seas she’d come across. ’Twas a thing of beauty, and the souls who lived here more so.
Aye, pray she would, and as she did, she would think of a way to help bear the burden. If it would ease Thor’s fight—help Ida and Cora and these men keep the only home they’d known—she would give all she could.