Our Featured Story
K.B. Inglee is the Second Place Award winner in the 2013 Bethlehem Writers Roundtable Short Story Award. She is an interpreter at two Mid-Atlantic living history museums where she grinds cornmeal at a water-powered mill and tends a flock of heritage sheep. She uses her work experience to write historical mystery short stories, set between 1620-1900. Among her works are the forthcoming stories "Netted" in Fish Nets from Wildside Press and "The Magic Bullet" in Death Knell V from Infinity Publishing.
Weaver's Trade
K.B. Inglee
(May, 2013)
The waves lapped against the shore, their edges turning to a lace of ice as the water touched the freezing rocks. It would be months before the morning sun warmed the shoreline enough to be able to slip a toe into the water. It would be months more before the air was hot enough to allow one to brave the chill water to drive the heat of labor from one's whole body.
Weaver Finche's mind wandered to the days of his youth when the heat of summer work and the dirt from a hard day in the fields was washed away in the ocean waves or the town brook. Finche had not worked the fields for many years. He plied his own trade at his loom under the eaves of his house.
Each morning Finche stood on the shore gazing toward what he still thought of as home, a thousand miles away across the ocean. Most of the people he had made the crossing with, now rested under carved slate headstones in the grassy meadow next to the meeting house. He was willing to admit he had reached old age. But this old age was not the one he had dreamt of as a child. He could not sit by his fire with his grandchildren gathered around him, and his daughter and her husband bringing him a treat, honey cake, berries in clotted cream, a tiny taste of chocolate. He could have none of that now. Even his daughter and her husband slept, cold and childless, in the meeting house field.
"Grandfather?" The tiny voice at his hip aroused him from his bitter reverie.
"I'm not…" he began, but gave up with a shrug. He had asked her before not to call him by the name he reserved for his imagined old age, and for his own flesh and blood. "Good morning, Patience. You shouldn't be here. The waterfront is dangerous in the winter." And in the summer as well, he added silently to himself. This vast ocean had stolen his loved ones and his bright future, and fetched him up here where few people paid him much attention once he was too old to work the fields.
"Mother says you must come in and break thy fast."
Finche and his son-in law had built a snug house on the land they had been allotted. Big enough for a whole family. When his own family left him bereft, he thought that he would take in a tenant when the next ship arrived. The Browens were good people. Industrious and filled with the hope he and his own family had felt when they arrived to tame this wild land.
"Papa says to remind you that this is the morning of Our Lord's birth. It is a special day. Mama wants to start prayers as soon as you are back."
"Surely your family can say prayers without me."
The look on Patience's face spoke of her surprise. "No, the whole family. Come." Finche allowed Patience to take his hand and lead him up the hill to his house. The rising sun made jewels of the diamond pane windows. The glass he had shipped from England at great expense. Once he had thought them beautiful.
Goodman Browen was ready to start the prayers as Patience lead Finche to his seat in the chimney corner of the vast kitchen. He and his son-in-law had planned this room with care to be the center of family activity. Each of the six rooms in the house had a single window save for this one which had two, one facing east for the morning sun, and one west for the sunset. He had imagined countless children running in and out of the room pestering their busy mother, his daughter, and running to help their father.
Now the room held a family of strangers gathered about the table waiting for him to take his place.
Goodman Browen turned to him once everyone was settled. "Father, would you lead us in a prayer of thanksgiving?"
Finche hid the hot flash of anger he felt at being addressed so. He didn't want to pray, especially a prayer of thanksgiving, but, lest he disappoint the Browens and lead them to believe he was not as pious as the others in the colony, he began.
"Heavenly Father…"
He said the words, but he did not feel them.
Then he opened the holy book and read, not as expected from one of the stories appropriate for the day, but from further back in the book. Abraham went out of Ur, leaving behind all the things that Finche himself had lost. How Abraham must have mourned for his lost home.
When prayers and breakfast were done, Finche went back to his domain at the top of the house. It was half bed chamber and half weaving loft. He had built this sturdy loom with his own hands. It had served him well over the years. He sat with the small window to his left. Light from the east-facing window fell on his work even on the dullest of days. When he and his son-in-law built the house, all the windows had been covered with oiled paper that let in barely enough light to see by. He didn't want to light a candle for fear the soot would besmirch his work. He had simply pulled out the paper window and let the cold air in with the light. Now it was fitted with glass.
Few members of the family ever came up here. The rhythm of the shuttle and the pedals kept him company. When he was in his weaving room all was right with the world, and he could wish for nothing more. How lucky was the man who loved his work so. He had spent the last year teaching Charity, the Browen's oldest daughter, to weave and she was an eager learner. Now and then she helped him warp the loom, cutting the two-day task to a single day. He had helped her process a whole fleece from skirting to coat. The garment she made was sturdy and serviceable, if not skillfully done. Her father had not seen her work but Finche knew he would like it for its quality as well as for his love for the hand that made it.
A month ago he had warped the loom with a fine, cream colored linen thread. Four hundred and twenty threads, each twenty yards long, twelve to the inch. The weft was a soft, sky blue wool. He had traveled some distance from the village to get it. He wanted this to be perfect. He snipped and tied off the warp threads, and removed the woven cloth from the loom. There was still more to do before he had a piece he could sell. There was time today for washing and beating. The teasing and napping he could do before Saturday and have it ready for market. It would bring a good price.
He was already planning his next project. The smells of a fine dinner wafted up the stairs as he tied off the last thread and folded the piece neatly. He stopped at the sound of voices from below. He had no desire to walk into an earnest conversation between mother and child.
"Mama, why doesn't Grandfather like us?" asked Patience.
"My dear girl, Weaver Finche built this house for his own family. When they died, he was left alone. Do you remember where we lived before we came here?"
Patience laughed. "We had chickens in the kitchen and the cow ate the pies you set on the windowsill to cool."
"Yes, and the house was barely big enough for our whole family. The land we lived on hardly provided enough food. When we came here, Grandfather welcomed us into his home, provided for us until we could provide for ourselves. He likes us well enough. He just misses his own family."
Patience picked up her mother's thoughts. "Here we have a huge pasture and common land for grazing our sheep and cows, and our farmland provides lots of food. When we moved in, we had a new grandfather almost as good as the old one."
Patience's mother was quiet for a long time. Finally she said, "It is hard to tell if he thinks of himself as part of our family. Perhaps he thinks of us only as people who rent a house from him."
There came a clattering of wooden dishes before she went on. "Don't you miss your own grandparents and the children who were your playmates?"
There was no answer from the child.
Finche had, in fact, thought of himself as their landlord and had barely tolerated Patience calling him "Grandfather." Surely she called him that because she didn't know what other name to use. Did she really think of him as a grandfather? Someone to replace the grandfather she had left behind?
He felt a small warm flutter in his chest. The warmth was not like the sudden sun in an achingly blue sky after a spring rain. It was more the warmth from the beams of light that fell on his hands as he worked at his loom. Could it be that these people were more than tenants? Were the titles they offered more than the formal and empty titles of a fictional family? Were they happy to bring him into their circle? The words of mother and daughter had begun to melt the ice in his heart. The change in him was just a crack in the façade of his misery. He would be cautious. Still, he knew what he wanted to do.
Patience's mother stood in the room at the bottom of the stairs. She seemed lost in thought. As she turned to face him, he handed her the carefully folded linsey-woolsey.
"Perhaps I chose the wrong passage this morning," he said. "I should have read the part where the wise men brought gifts. I hope you will accept my gift to you."
"I c-couldn't," she stammered. "It's beautiful. You can sell it for a good price. And I have nothing to give in return."
"I am an old and foolish man. I didn't see the gift you have given me since you came to live here. I was far too wrapped up in my own troubles to understand that you have given me a new family. Patience knew first and bestowed the title of Grandfather on me. I see now that it is you who have taken me in, not the other way around. I provide only the building; you provided the love and care that makes it a home."
The
Top Ten . . .
. . . Amazing Things I've Done
as an
Historical
Interpreter
by
K.B. Inglee
I started working as an historical interpreter about the time I started writing, so here is a list of the ten most exciting and satisfying things I have done.
1. Plowed a fielded with a team of horses
2. Ground cornmeal with a water powered mill
3. Drove a team of oxen
4. Wrote a movie script for the site were I worked
5. Shepherded a flock of heritage sheep
6. Learned to spin and weave (I already knew how to knit)
7. Fired a flintlock. (the owner wouldn’t let me load it)
8. Cooked in a wood fired oven
9. Hand stitched an 18th century farm wife outfit
10. Used all of it as background for my writing.