The Ruby Queen

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The Ruby Queen - book excerpt

Chapter 1

They were coming for her. Mattie could hear the clanging of pots and pans as the congregation led by the Reverend Malcolm Harper marched up the lane. She had done the unthinkable. She and Walt Harper had run off with one another and spent the night alone on the road. They planned to go to St. Louis and start a life together, but Walt had changed his mind and had brought her back home to face this scandal and ridicule.

Now the Reverend and his clamoring horde were coming. Mattie shivered in her crisp cotton dress, but not because it had no sleeves and cut low across the breast. It was because she remembered another time the Reverend had led a group up their lane. Those men had not clangedcookware together, however. They had carried flaming torches.

The Reverend Harper had notpreached about deceit and fornication that night, but he’d raved about the blasphemous sins of witchcraft and heathenism. Mattie remembered that booming voice ranting on about the evils of vile heathens and the witchcraft her grandmother supposedly practiced. She remembered the screams of her grandparents as they burned in their little cabin behind the main house. She remembered that stinking smoke and the shadows cast by the flames. She remembered the screams of fear, pain, and anguish coming from her mother. She remembered the men laughing as they made her mother cry out over and over again. They might be the memories of a four-year-old child, who was now almost twenty, but they were extremely vivid and haunting memories.

Standing before the window now, Mattie’s mind venturedback to that horrible night, and tears of fear and rage stung her eyes. Now they were coming for her. How many nights over the years had she woken in a cold sweat? She had nightmares about those men, coming down the lane that terrible night, grabbing her and making her scream too.

They were here for hernow, but she would not be that shivering, frightened child, hiding in the dark today. She walked out onto the porch with her bright red head high and her back straight. It was not dark now. It was sunnymid-morning, and the group, with their clanging pots, numbered, not just men. It consisted of the Mayfield Baptist Church's entire congregation, including her parents and her younger sister. Walt, herded along at the head of the procession, just behind his father the Reverend and his brother Charles, trudged along looking weary and distraught in his good Sunday suit.

Charles Harper marchedalong, as the offended party in this matter,next to his father. Charles had paid her father, Robert Wallace, the Bride Price of two healthy plow mules complete with tack, for Mattie’s hand in marriage. When Reverend Harper announced their engagement in front of the entire congregation, nobody hadreacted with more surprise than she and Walt. Charles had grabbed her hand, yanking it into the air like a prize he’d just won at a turkey shoot with a smug, satisfied look that burned like an ember in her gut even now.

Mattie, infuriated, let her father know how angry she was when they arrived home from the church.

“I will not marry that self-centered fool, Poppa,” she yelled and knocked an enameled tin cup left from breakfast off the table. It hit the plank flooring and clattered to bounce off the stone hearth.

“Poppa, you know Walt, and I have been talking about marrying. We love each other.”

“Yet, Matilda Grace, it was his brother, Charles, who came to me with the offer of two fine plow mules as a Bride Price and not Walter,” her father said, as he picked up the cup from the floor.

“How could you do this behind my back? I hate that preening cock, and you know it,” Mattie wailed. “And for two silly plow mules with tack?Is that all I’m worth to you? You’d sell me to that lazy fool for two damned mules?”

Robert Wallace slapped his daughter’s face with the back of his hand. Mattie tumbled in a heap of tangled skirts and petticoats to the floor.

“I have arranged a good marriage for you with a young man who will inherit a thriving forty-acre farm and who will follow his father into the pulpit,” her father declared.

“You will be the wife of a minister, Matilda Grace Wallace, and you will begin conducting yourself as such. I will not hear foul language from your mouth again.”

“Furthermore, those two mules will save me a goodly bit of sweat. It is something I cannot afford to pass by. The Bride Price is paid to recover the loss of your backbone and sweat to this family.” He slammed the cup onto the table so hard it rattled the other items there. “Am I understood, young lady?”

“Yes, Poppa,” she said as she stormed out through the kitchen, massaging her stinging cheek and holding back tears of rage.

Poppa is going to make me marry that son-of-a-bitch.

She glared at her mother as she passed through the kitchen, where her sister Miriam floured the chicken to fry for Sunday Supper.

Momma knew about this. Mattie also knew, however, her mother would always defer to her husband’s wishes. It had ever been the way of things, but Mattie was sick to her stomach of it.

Poppa is more than willing to put his desire for two more mules and their tack before my happiness. I don’t care that the Yankees took our work animals, and this farm has struggled ever since. I wonder what he’s going to ask for from Jamie Spencer for Miriam’s hand: a new plow?

Mattie fumed at her situation; she was almost twenty-years-old and still following Poppa’s orders like the ten-year-old child being sent off to boarding school. She had not wanted to go, but Poppa had spent all his savings to send her and Miriam to The Marshfield Academy for Young Ladies in Nashville. In the end, she’d relented when her mother pointed out how she needed to be there for little Miriam. Mattie remembered her sister’s excitement at the opportunity to go to school. Momma had taught them to read and do some arithmetic, but at The Marshfield Academy, a real school, there would be other books than just the Bible to read.

Mattie liked to read, but music became her passion while at Marshfield. Her Grandfather Wallace played the old Celtic tunes from Scotland and Ireland on his fiddle, and Mattie had taught herself how to play them on the piano. Her instructor told her she possessed a natural ear for music, with the ability to reproduce a tune after hearing it played a few times. She’d spent many happy nights with her family playing those tunes on their old piano.

Miriam loved to read. She kept a journal of all the medicinal plants she and Momma collected and made into tinctures, poultices, and salves to treat different ailments. Momma was a healer. She’d learned the ways of the wild things from her Cherokee mother, Ivy, who had married a Scottish trapper. But they were dead now, murdered by the Reverend Harper and his gang of thugs.

Mattie passed the fenced spot where her grandparents’ cabin once stood. They, or what remained of them after the fire, were buried there.

Mattie walked directly to her special place:the big willow overhanging the creek. She and Walt spent hours together in the cool shade beneath those thin, wispy branches. They made love there the first time. She read to him from her favorite book, Ivanhoe, there. It became their special place. When she parted the long whip-like branches, Walt leaned against the smooth trunk with his head in his big calloused palms.

Mattie ran to him and buried her face in his sweaty brown curls. “I didn’t know, Walt,” she said, letting the tears flow finally. It pained her to see Walt so out of sorts. “I swear I didn’t know.”

“I know, Matt,” he soothed, wrapping her in his muscular arms. “Pa and Charles did this in secret. My ma didn’t even know.”

“I hate them both, Walt,” Mattie said, furious again. “I will not marry that lying bastard. Charles told Poppa he is going to inherit your entire farm. Can you believe that?” She asked and snuggled close into his chest. “I can’t believe Poppa would think the Reverend would completely cut you out. That farm is half yours.”

Walt pushed her back and looked into her eyes. “Charles really told your pa he is getting the whole farm?”

“Yes, Poppa just told me I am going to be marrying a man who is going to inherit a thriving forty-acre farm and be the wife of a minister,” she said incredulously. “Can you see Charles as a minister? He doesn’t have a godly bone in his whole damned body.”

Walt sat gazing past the rushing creek at the two-storied white farmhouse and barn across the field, and Mattie could see pain and frustration in his sad brown eyes. “I can believe it, Matt. That old man hates me,” he choked back tears of his own.

“I have done everything on that farm. I kept it up while Charles was off playing soldier, and since he got back with his supposed battle injury,” Walt scoffed. “He never left the Kentucky Confederate government group, hiding out in Tennessee. He got his battle injury falling down a flight of stairs, drunk, at a whorehouse.”

Mattie knew Walt was right. Charles worked at being lazy and had always beenindulged by his father, while Walt did all the work on the farm. Walt had been too young to join the Army when the War started, though they took younger recruits at the end. He stayed home and took care of his mother and the farm. Raiders from both sides,Union and Confederate, came through Mayfield, stripping farms of stock and provisions.

Poppa, a staunch Unionist, had been happy to give what he could, but the soldiers took everything, even Momma’s medicines. The Reverend, on the other hand, held fast to the Confederate cause. It had fueled contention between the two families, like many others in Kentucky, a State split fifty-fifty between Union and Confederate sympathies throughout the conflict.

Since the War, farms were slow to recover. Walt spent all he earned to rebuild the Harper farm and begin a breeding program for cattle and workhorses. He scraped together every penny to buy breeding stock, with no help from the Reverend or Charles.

“Walt, let’s just run away,” Mattie pled.“We don’t need this place. We can go to St. Louis, get married, and then go on to Kansas. I hear they have lots of good farmland there just for the taking,” she continued,optimistically. “You can start the herds you want and grow wheat and corn.”

“That would be nice, Mattie, if we had a stake to startwith.” Walt brushed a red curl from her cheek.“I just spent my last ten dollars on those two bulls, and you don’t have any money.”

“We canget jobs in St. Louis until we get something together.” She ran her hand through his thick hair and down his broad back. “I’m sure there are jobs in or around St. Louis. I can get a job in a dress shop, sewing, or a laundry doing mending.”

They sat under the willow, silent for a while, Mattie stroking his back and arms as he stared off at the buildings across the creek. They heard the Reverend bellowing something then watched Lola Harper, Walt’s mother, come off the back porch with a hoe and walk to the kitchen garden. The Reverend followed with a bucket of slop from the house, which he dumped over the fence penning their four hogs.

Charles was nowhere to be seen. Walt had told her that his back injury was much too painful for him to be expected to wield a hoe or carry a slop bucket.Charles laid up in his room most days, with his mother attending to his every whim. She climbed the stairs to his room to bring him his meals and even dumped his chamber pot. Walt fairly seethed when he related these things to Mattie.

Walt simply shook his head. “You’re right, Mattie. Let’s get the hell out of this town,” he said, taking her into his arms and kissing her soft lips. “I’ll meet you here at dusk with the mares. Pack a bag and a bedroll if you can. We may be on the road sleeping outside for a few nights.”

Mattie threw her arms around him and buried her face into the cotton flannel of his shirt. “I’ll be here, Walt. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mattie. I always have.” He brushed a single loose curl from her eyes and tucked it behind her ear.

She went back into the house without speaking to her mother or father and set the table for Sunday supper. Momma and Miriam did all the cooking, as usual. Kitchen chores were not Mattie’s favorites like they were her sister’s. Mattie enjoyed sewing and made most of the family’s clothing, andher embroidery always won prizes at the Fall Faire.

When supper ended,and the dishes washed and put up, she slipped into her bedroom and packed her travel bag with two good dresses, a petticoat, camisole, bloomers, and stockings. She looked around the small room she shared with her sister for anything else she might need and added her nightdress, some ribbons, her hairbrush, and tortoiseshell combs.

Mattie looked into the small mirror over their washstand at her unruly mass of red curls, wishing she could stuff her straw bonnet into the bag. She would just have to get by with ribbons and combs to keep the mess in place.

After packing the bag, she folded the quilt from her narrow cot and rolled it tightly. With some twine from the pantry, she tied the roll at the top and bottom, leaving enough loose between so she could carry it over her shoulder. She thought about adding her thin cotton blanket but decided against it.

Mattie begged off going to late Sunday service, blaming cramps from her monthly. When her family moved out of sight down the lane to town, she carried her things out the back to the willow by the creek. As promised, Walt was there with his two mares saddled and ready.

“How did you get out of Services?” she asked, as he helped her into the saddle of the brown mare. “I pled my monthly,” she giggled, giddy with excitement.

“Told the Rev I needed to bed down the stock first,” Walt replied with a boyish grin. “Told him I’d be along.”

Within minutes, they were out of the town, following the trail north toward the Ohio River, where the ferry crossed into Illinois.

“After we cross into Illinois,” Walt told her from his mare as they rode along. “We’ll follow the river road north until we get to the ferry crossing into St. Louis.”

“How long do you think that will take?” Mattie asked him, bracing herself tight in the saddle with her feet in the stirrups.

A young lady should ride side-saddle, but riding like a boy is much more practical and much more comfortable.

“If we ride steady,” Walt said, bringing his mare closer to hers and reaching out to touch her hand on the reins. “We should get there in three or four days.”

Darkness fell about an hour into their ride, but the well-worn road was easily followed, even in the dark.

“This is the same road we take to Uncle Paul’s, outside Paducah,” Mattie told him.

“He’s the one with the tobacco farm, isn’t he?” Walt asked.

“Yes,” Mattie replied. “I think Poppa has always been a little riled at him with that big farm and four big sons to help him run it.”

All they heard was the clopping of their horses’ hooves pounding the hardened track except for a few whippoorwills in the hedges and the occasional bullfrog croaking in a ditch. From time to time, they saw the lights from distant farmhouse windows, but for the most part, the only light shone was from the full moon overhead, the stars, and congregations of lightning bugs flashing over the spring fields.

In light of the full moon, Mattie saw Walt peering close to read his pocket watch's face.It neared midnight, and Mattie wasnodding off in her saddle. Walt called a halt to their travels for the night. They had moved steadily for almost seven hours and traveled several miles away from Mayfield. It would take them another good eight hours travel to get to the Ohio River, and they needed sleep.

“We’ll camp here tonight,” Walt said,leading them into a stand of hickories. The ground, flat and soft with the layers of leaves deposited over the years, would make for a good camp spot. The soothing, spicy scent of the trees filled Mattie with a feeling of warmth and comfort.

“I’ll unsaddle the mares,” Walt told her. “You can gather up some deadfall for a fire.”

Mattie strained her eyes in the darkness of the overhanging limbs but found a broken branch on the ground she could snap dry pieces. She carried them to Walt, who made a circle of stones for a fire. She laid each of their bedrolls in front of their saddles nearby. Mattie rolled out her quilt and his blankets atop the soft cushion of pungent leaves after using her hands to make certain there were no stones or sticks under the leaves to poke them in the night.

With flames crackling in the center of the stone ring, sending out a radiant heat, and a good bit of light, Mattie went back to the dead branch and broke off some larger pieces to feed the flames overnight. With the security of the fire, she walked farther out from the camp and relieved herself.The long ride, jarring her body in the saddle, had filled her bladder near to bursting.

She found Walt stretched out on his blanket when she made her way back. Sparks from the burning wood spit into the air as the sticks popped and crackled in the circle of stones.

The shadows caused by the glow of the dancing flames brought back an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, and Mattie hurried to her quilt laid out neatly next to Walt. He noticed her shivering and put a strong arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. He lifted her chin and brought his lips down to hers.

The strength of his arms around her and the warmth of his sweet, salty kiss sent those old fears and memories from her mind. She melted into him as he rolled her onto her back, and she did not object,though she was extremely tired when his hands began to roam over her body.

They had become lovers for the first time during the Fall Faire the past October. When they were sure no one was going to miss them, they’d walked off hand-in-hand to the shelter of their willow. The leaves were gone from the thin branches by then, but the darkness hid their naked bodies as they coupled that first time clumsily. Mattie was certain it was Walt’s first time. He knew what went where but was hesitant and fumbled through it.

Momma had explained how everything worked, but Mattie was still surprised at the way her body had reacted to his touches and kisses. The throbbing between her legs when he’d kissed her breasts amazed her. It felt as though they were connected somehow. It hurt some when he’d entered her that first time, taking her virginity, but she easily dismissed it with the thrill and excitement of being there naked with him under the willow in the dark.

Since that first time they’d come together, in the Biblical sense, they had coupled a dozen times, sneaking off to the barn or under the willow. They came to know each other’s bodies, learning how to get the most pleasure from one another.

It was the same there by the fire on their pallets under the hickories. They pleasured one another until Walt finally rolled over to throw another piece of wood onto the fire but began snoring softly before he ever reached the pile of tender.

Mattie smiled when she heard his first quiet snores and sat up, pushed her breasts back into her open camisole, and wiped him from between her legs with the hem of her petticoat. After buttoning her dress, she went to the fire and added several of the larger sticks. Before wrapping up in her quilt, she covered Walt with his blanket, relieved herself again, and braided her hair so it would not be in knots in the morning.

The smell of bacon frying woke her, and Mattie rolled over to find Walt hunched at the fire where a pot of coffee boiled and a pan of bacon sizzled.

“Did you raid Lola’s pantry before you left?” Mattie asked as she stretched and yawned. “I hope you brought some of her bread. She makes the best bread in Graves County.”

“Yep,” he replied as he poured her a cup of black coffee. “Ain’t got any cream or honey.” Hehanded her the hot cup.

“I like it black.” She took the cup from him, careful not to spill the steaming liquid. “That bacon smells wonderful, but your ma’s gonna be mad you raided the larder.”

“Not half as mad as Pa’s gonna be when he sees I raided the smokehouse, too, for this bacon and a ham,” he laughed. “Hell, I raised the damned hog and butchered it too. And I bought the flour for the bread.” Walt handed her a plate with three crispy strips of bacon and a thick slice of bread before sitting down next to her with the same.

“Don’t forget to take your seeds, Mattie. We don’t need any youngins yet,” Walt told her, referring to the wild carrot seeds she used to keep from getting with child. She, her mother, and sister had harvested them in the wild each fall. Mattie used them, a pinch every day. Luckily, Momma had not missed any from her stores.

“I will as soon as I eat. The little devils burn my stomach if I take them without food first,”Mattie replied with a smile. “Once we’re married, it won’t make any difference. But, let's wait for a child until we’re settled somewhere first,” she added.

Walt nodded as he took a bite of the bacon wrapped in his mother’s sweet crusty bread. They had never talked about children other than how to avoid having them. Mattie knew Walt wanted children. Every farmer wanted sons to help tend the farm. Mattie was not certain she did.

She and her sister regularly accompanied their mother, helping her as a midwife at births. Mattie witnessed women and girls younger than she suffer through hours of agonizing labor, only to deliver a feeble or malformed child that died hours after its birth. She even watched women die from exhaustion or blood loss after the babes were born.

Walt did not speak much after breakfast, watering the horses in a nearby stream, packing up their gear, and saddling the mares, while she washed up in the cool rushing water and filled their canteens. She made certain he saw her take out her little wooden box with the sliding lid where she carried her seeds and then chewing the pinch of small brown pods. She hoped it would make him relax some. He seemed edgy, and Mattie wondered if he harbored second thoughts about this whole adventure.

After two hours on the road, she got her answer when Walt stopped and turned his mount around.

“We have to go back, Mattie. I can’t leave Ma there alone with the Rev and Charles. They’ll have her doing all the work. I can’t do that to her.”