The Lost Quilter Read Online Free PDF Page A

Joanna might never find him.
    The miles and hours passed in a blur of pain. Landmarks became more difficult to distinguish from the endless similarity of rocky road, forested glen, and burbling creek. When the sun lay low on the horizon, Peter allowed them to stop and set up camp where a stream crossed a clearing. Joanna drank her fill, but Isaac did not untie her hands and they gave her nothing to eat. Her milk had soaked through the front of her dress, all but indistinguishable from the sweat and filth of the road. She pictured her son’s sweet red mouth and felt her milk let down. She turned her back on the men and folded her arms across her chest, pressing hard against her nipples to staunch the flow. The slave catchers had not mentioned her son, not once, not to goad her about her loss, not even to speculate about the price he would fetch when the other two men sold him into slavery. Maybe they did not know about the baby she had left behind.
     
     
    Days passed. Sometimes the shorter man, Isaac, tied her hands and feet and made her ride flung over his horse; other days he bound only her hands and made her walk behind. It was Peter’s choice, and Joanna never knew what he would choose until he said it. As much as walking exhausted her, she bitterly hated riding, for the horse carried her more swiftly away from her son.
    One hazy morning as the sun beat down, raising spectral waves over the hard-packed dirt road, as the horse shook flies from its mane and Joanna rode with her cheek against its sweaty shoulder, half dozing, light-headed from the heat and from hunger, she was startled fully awake by the sound of gunfire.
    “Fireworks,” Peter remarked, jerking his head to the east and patting the horse’s neck to steady it. Joanna craned her neck and spied a yellow farmhouse in the middle of a wheat field, a puff of white smoke rising into the sky behind it.
    “Happy Independence Day, Peter,” said Isaac.
    “Same to you.”
    “Say, Peter,” Isaac said, “why don’t we stop in town and do a little celebrating? Chester don’t know we got his girl. He ain’t expecting us, so he won’t know if we bide our time.”
    “I’d rather get rid of her and get our pay.”
    “A few hours here or there won’t matter none. Come on, Peter, it’s unpatriotic not to pause and reflect on Independence Day. It’s been a long ride and I’m parched for a real drink.”
    Peter eyed him skeptically, but then allowed a slow smile. “Well, I daresay if you’re buying, I could use a drink myself.”
    “Let’s drink to our country and to the health of that pretty little thing who turned in this here wench,” said Isaac. “Suchsweet lips ripe for kissing, and best of all, she don’t speak a word of English.”
    As the two men laughed, Joanna went cold and numb. Anneke. They could mean no one else. Anneke had betrayed her.
    The road took them past a few more farms, and then they came to the town, a few rows of houses and stores tucked into the fork of a river. Joanna automatically added the town to her list of landmarks, but she had been able to observe very little of the landscape during the miles she had lain on her stomach across the horse, and there were great gaping silences in her song. In her darkest moments she despaired of filling them, but then she remembered the feel of her son’s curly head in the crook of her arm, remembered his sweet baby scent as she held him, and remembered how she had made her way north once without knowing the way. Landmarks would help guide her, but she did not have to rely on them alone.
    Peter and Isaac took the horses to a livery stable on the western edge of town and paid to have them watered and fed. They left Joanna lying bound hand and foot in the straw on the floor of Isaac’s horse’s stall and went off in search of a tavern. Fearful of the horse’s hooves, Joanna dug in her heels and pushed herself to the far corner, where she managed to sit up and take stock of her