tried to make sense of this exchange between first cousins, as well as the shocking news she’d gathered—the fact that Matthew hadn’t mentioned Dacian. Why hadn’t Matthew just told them he had relatives in town?
Later that day, Matthew trailed after Verity and her family, heading toward the singing coming from a maple-and-oak grove on the Ransford plantation. Why had the Quaker insisted they attend three church services today? She’d only smiled when he’d asked her. He was tempted to stay behind, but he hadn’t wanted her going without him. And of course, he’d come face-to-face with Dace this morning. His emotions from that meeting continued to bubble up inside him. He crammed them down. Forget it. Forget all of it.
The singing drew them closer and he began to recognize many of the black faces as people from his childhood. He tightened his defenses against all this remembering. Yet he still searched for Samuel’s face. From him, he might get a genuine welcome.
Before emancipation, slaves had been required to attend church with their masters. Now they were holding their own service and singing a popular freedom song he’d heard in the streets of Richmond and Washington D.C.
,!
Mammy, don’t yo’ cook and sew no mo’.
Yo’ are free, yo’ are free.
Rooster, don’t you crow no mo’.
Yo’ are free, yo’ are free.
Old hen, don’t yo’ lay no mo’ eggs.
Yo’ are free, yo’ are free.
At sight of them, the whole congregation broke off in the middle of a note and fell silent. Abashed, the widow’s little girl hung back, hiding within the folds of her mother’s skirt. The boisterous wind that had come up this morning was now picking up more speed. The black ribbons of the Quaker’s bonnet flared in the wind. Verity smiled, looking untroubled and genuine. But was anyone that cool? What would stir this woman enough to pierce her outward calm? Or did it go straight through to her very core?
Matt had eaten the cold midday meal with them, but hadn’t offered any explanation about his past in Fiddlers Grove. Why couldn’t he just tell her why his family had left and why he’d come back? Somehow, explanations remained impossible.
He recognized Hannah in the shade of a twisted old oak and felt a pang. Samuel’s mother had survived. She hurried to him and hugged him. “Mr. Matt, welcome home.”
“Mr. Matt!” Hannah’s husband, Elijah, grasped both Matt’s hands. “I heard that you had come back to town. As I live and breathe, sir. As I live and breathe.”
“It’s good to see you, too, Elijah.” Matt swallowed down all the memories that were forcing their way up from deep inside him. He wanted so much to ask about Samuel, but he found he couldn’t say the name.
Elijah visibly pulled himself together. “Yes, welcome home, Mr. Matt.” The man’s genuine warmth had been so unexpected that Matt glanced skyward, hiding his reaction.
It struck him that Elijah wasn’t quite as tall as Matt remembered him. Perhaps because Matt had been a child the last time he’d seen Elijah. Elijah looked gaunt, and his closely cropped hair and bushy eyebrows were threaded with silver. He was dressed in a good-quality but worn suit and spoke with a cultured cadence. After all, he was the Ransfords’ butler.
Again Matt felt the urge to ask where Samuel was. But what if Samuel had died? He couldn’t bring himself to stir those waters.
“Y’all come just like you said you would.” Hannah approached Verity and offered her a work-worn hand. “I told everybody about how you wrote that letter for me.”
What letter? To whom? Matt’s heart started throbbing in his chest. What was the woman up to now?
Verity shook Hannah’s hand. “It was a pleasure to help thee. Hannah, thee remembers my daughter, Beth. And this is my father-in-law, Joseph Hardy.”
Hannah introduced Verity and her family to Elijah. “Sister Verity, we’re glad to have you and your family. Welcome,” he said.
“I ain’t glad,” declared a large woman wearing a patterned indigo kerchief over her hair. “Do the Ransfords know this Ritter boy back in town? And what a white woman and her folks doin’ comin’ here? I want to know if she with the Freedman’s Bureau. And when we going to get our land? That’s the only reason I stayed in this place—to get what’s due me.”
“I told you they was Quakers and abolitionists afore the war.” Hannah propped her hands on her ample hips. “And why shouldn’t the Ritter boy come home?”
Come home. Matt was undone. Blinking away tears, he stared up into the gray clouds flying in from the northeast.
The woman with the indigo kerchief demanded, “Are they are our side or master side?”
“We are on God’s side, I hope,” Verity said. “I wish thee will all go on with thy singing, Elijah.”
Matt glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Thank you. Hannah urged the widow and her family to take seats on the large downed log in the shade. Matt hung back, leaning against an elm. The brim of the widow’s bonnet flapped in the wind, giving him glimpses of her long, golden-brown lashes against her fair cheek.
Soon, the congregation was singing and clapping to “O Mary.”
,!
“O Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn
O Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn,
Pharaoh’s army got drowned.”
Matt wondered if, in their minds, Pharaoh’s army was the Army of the Confederacy. It had gone down in defeat like Pharaoh’s army. But it hadn’t been an easy defeat. Why was it that he could stand here in the sun listening to beautiful singing and yet still be on the battlefield, with cannons blasting him to deafness? Why wouldn’t his mind just let go of the war?
,!
“O Mary, don’t you weep
Some of these mornings bright and fair
Take my wings and cleave the air
Pharaoh’s army got drowned.
O Mary, don’t you weep.
When I get to heaven goin’ to sing and shout
Nobody there for to turn me out.”
The little girl was singing and clapping with the gathering. Her mother sat quiet and ladylike, her gloved hands folded in her lap. Her serenity soothed something in Matt. He tried not to stare, but drew his gaze away with difficulty.
He repeated the words of the song in his mind. Some of these mornings bright and fair, Take my wings and cleave the air.
Though his heavy burden of memories tried to drag him down, he fought to focus on the present. The work his parents had begun must be completed. The laws of the land must be the same for white and black. He must not lose sight of that.
The widow glanced over her shoulder at him. How long could he hold back from telling her the story of his family and Fiddlers Grove? The simple answer was that he could not ignore Dace—not just because Dace was his only cousin, but also because Dace had the power to sway others. The Ransfords had run this town for over a hundred years. Matt came to a decision. He’d have to talk to Dace. There was always an outside chance that Dace wouldn’t be hostile to the school, wasn’t there?
After the evening meal, Matt trudged through the wild wind into the white frame church with Verity and her family. The church sat at the end of the town’s main street. It was surrounded by oaks, elms and maples and was much larger than St. John’s. The wind tugged at Matt’s hat. A storm was certain. Matt looked forward to it, hoping for relief from the stifling, un-seasonal heat of the past few