My heart began to beat loudly and I found that my mouth had become dry.
“I want you to make a promise to me too. I want you to marry Matthew when I’m gone.”...
She said it simply and in a low tone that told me of its pain at another having him, combined with the agony of knowing him alone. Her hands moved slowly over her stomach and I knew that there was also no other that she would rather mother her child.
I sat there speechless— in torment myself. I had never refused Evaleah anything.
The rain began and I took my shawl from my shoulders and covered my head as I continued to hurry toward Evaleah’s cottage. I knew that the miller’s wife, old Mother Trask, would be keeping the baby until I arrived. I wondered where Matthew Craigg would be.
The rain had turned into a downpour as I ran the final stretch under the oaks surrounding the cottage and through its oval-topped door. A modest fire burned at the hearth and my dear friend’s husband lay back in a chair asleep in obvious exhaustion. His face bore none of the hard lines that it held in wakefulness. There were none of the sharp, black glances that his dark eyes could send, only a worn, grief-stunned weariness that pervaded his features as he slept.
He wore a clean, worn black suit and I could see that his normally unkempt hair had been washed and combed. The clock on the mantle said that there were two more hours until they would cover Evaleah in the village churchyard. I looked for Mother Trask, but heard no one else in the cottage. Looking around the parlor, I wondered where the baby might be.
Slipping past Matthew, I discovered the baby in the bedroom, surrounded by pillows on the large cast-iron bedstead. She slept, like her father, in the same troubled sleep, as if she knew that her mother had been taken from her.
Rain pelted the thick leaded windows and I sat by the baby and stroked her short golden curls. On her pillow I saw stitched Evalise— a combination of our names. Tears tumbled onto the carefully prepared baby’s coverlet and I grieved for the gentle spirit that had gone.
For the first time I looked up and saw the headboard that Evaleah’s husband had fashioned from his craft. My breath caught in my throat and I studied it in wonderment.
The sides curved up as if they were wandering vines that sent out small shoots and sprigs of buds. They curled in gently crisscrossing spirals and I stared in amazement realizing the artistry that made up their detail. The buds were smooth and glowed with the buffing that they had received. The leaves curled in different lengths, some as in soft new growth and some as if they were heavy-laden with dew in the early morning. They all curved and intertwined until they met in the center of the headboard in a perfectly formed wild rose.
This was a work that had been fashioned out of love and out of a devotion that made me hold my breath as I followed the molded iron petals with my fingertips. Evaleah had seen a heart that no one else had even imagined.
Evalise stirred and woke. Her velvet-blue eyes met mine and I pulled her from the covers to hold her close to my heart. I looked up and saw that Matthew watched me from the bedroom door.
“It’s time. Mrs. Trask is here to keep the child while we are gone.”
I stood up, wrapped the baby tightly into her blankets again and followed the tall figure in front of me to the open doorway of the cottage. I stood for a moment and looked up into those dark, fierce eyes.
Matthew held out his rough, worn hand and, without hesitating, I took it.
