“He turned violent after we moved out here. Not so much on me, but on others. I hoped that Sarah’s birth would soften him. Didn’t.”
She stopped talking, listening as two coyotes howled a duet far off in the distance.
Staring out at the dark river running below, Emmy thought about those days. She was fifteen when Tern had come into town to raise money for a speculative enterprise, far from civilization, out in the far Northwest—one that would bring huge fortunes to the down-in-their-luck Boston Brownstone patrimony, most of whom believed in getting something for nothing.
Tern told of an enterprise involving San Francisco provisions in exchange for Northwest gold, furs, and lumber. He had painted a grand vision, and she had been swept away by the romance of living in a foreign, savage land.
He had fooled Emmy all the way, and yet she stayed with him, even as they became more estranged.
She thought about her mother’s advice—to marry someone much older, preferably a man who was beyond roaming eyes. She was twenty-five years younger than him.
In a short time, as Tern’s temper worsened, she experienced a growing, despairing loneliness much stronger than the frustrated solitude that had driven her into his arms in the first place.
By her pregnancy with his child, she had faintly hoped for a softening.
It did not come.
And then he was dead — taken by the whiplash of a falling tree on a very muggy morning when, as it turned out, all she could think about was how mistaken she had been to marry that man, and how much more foolish it was to be continuing in that relationship.
But she had felt no guilt. It just was Providence’s answer to unasked prayers.
“I don’t know why I married him,” she told Jojo.
Jojo waited, thinking about her response. He looked at the sturdy white woman, wondering why she married again if she had been so unhappy.
“Why did you marry Jacob’s father?
Emmy paused again, then continued, “Because I loved him. That is something I am trying to understand now that he is gone...why it doesn’t hurt more. But as we lived through our time together . . . .”
She looked up and saw that Sarah was now awake and listening.
Emmy shook her head. She had said enough of her private thoughts to this young man whom she believed would never understand.
In the pause, the fire crackled as the moist wood it burned steamed and popped.
Emmy turned the inquiry on Jojo.
“Tell me about Captain Pickett. And your sister.”
Jojo seemed to blush, Emmy noted as she watched him in the fire’s light.
“Morning Mist was beautiful. Like you and your daughter. She was fifteen, like you say you were when you moved away from the Boston-man land. Maybe she wanted to get away, see new things. Like you did.”
Emmy saw that Sarah was leaning forward now, as Jojo continued.
“She came home one time with him when she was with child.”
Jojo paused, looking out into the darkness. “I never saw her again.”
Sarah looked at Jojo, who was now quiet.
“What was she like?” she asked.
“We played when we were young. She knew how to do things, climb a big tree and catch a small bird on the perch, just for a moment, and let it fly again. She taught me to do that. I made her laugh, and she made me want to make her laugh because it was… such a pretty laugh. She loved Pickett George very much.”
“Did Pickett George love her?” Sarah asked.
Jojo glanced at Emmy and saw her leaning forward now.
“Yes.” He looked away, glancing again at Emmy as he did so.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
That night Emmy dreamed of riding on a horse next to George Pickett. They were going someplace important. Inspecting. He wore his field cape and sword and stayed at an even pace with her.
On the fifth night, she listened to Marano Levi talking to himself, walking through the snow in the darkness away from the campfire they shared for dinner.
He was chanting an obscure Catholic office in Latin. When he was out of earshot, Jojo repeated the entire vesper perfectly and then cackled in delight when he received a chastising look from Sarah. The laughter was so disarming that Sarah’s disapproval evaporated.
When Levi the chanter returned to camp a short while later, Jojo spoke to him in the exact same tenor, imitating with the perfect nuance of Levi’s ramblings in Latin.
Emmy saw a conspiratorial glance pass between Sarah and Jojo, but Levi did not seem to notice, or at least did not pay attention to Jojo’s teasing. Levi was likely used to it, she assumed. Then she saw Sarah turn to Levi and, after a brief pause, speak to him with some concern and a tinge of tender affection.
“You know, Marano, you will catch your death out there in this cold. Please have some of this porridge.”
Marano continued his chanting for a few more minutes, seeming to ignore the offer, but then closed his missal and quietly sat down next to Sarah.
She put a bowl of hot soup into his hands.
Jojo, now quiet, nodded at Sarah’s kindness to Levi.
There was no more talking in the camp that night.
On the ninth day, it began to rain again, melting away the snow and much of the ice. On the tenth, the sun came out and the sky stayed blue all day.
And the next.
So they prepared to strike camp. Emmy and Sarah moved with an anxious urgency. Too much time had been lost.
Chapter Thirty-One
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Marano Levi
Marano Levi was born Ignatio Hortensio Ramonez-Basillon into a family of clever, multitalented Castilian merchants. As a fifth son, however, he was penniless after the death of his father, so he knew at a young age that his opportunities were limited to serving at the beneficence of his oldest brother, an arrogant man who showed little kindness.
Although he had been baptized as Catholic, as had three previous generations before him, the young Ignatio learned by chance, while looking through
