Read Online Redfield Farm: A Novel of the Underground Railroad by Judith Redline Coopey - Free Book Online Page A

Hartley trudging through the snow like me, only he was dragging a fresh cut pine tree behind him. I wondered what Christmas would be like in that hardscrabble cabin by the creek. The moon was already rising when I stepped up on our back porch and stomped the snow off.
    When I opened the door, I found the whole family seated at the table. I took off my coat, hung it on a peg, tied on my apron, and helped Betsy serve the meal.
    “What’s new with Ben?” Jesse wanted to know.
    “Working on Christmas, same as us,” I replied. “Rebecca looks well but ready to pop. I guess they’d like a boy this time.”
    Papa cleared his throat. “Must needs.”
    “Any sign of Elias?” Jesse asked.
    I shook my head.
    “Ann would have told us in a second if there were,” Betsy laughed.
    My brothers smiled mischievously, while Papa ate in silence. He never mentioned Elias to me, preferring, I suppose, to wait for the fact.
    Christmas came. No Elias. Still, I struggled to contain my disappointment. There was Meeting and dinner and visits with family and friends. Mary and Noah Poole came from Osterburg on the sledge with their five children, and Ben and Rebecca came with their girls. The new parlor was full to bursting with talk and laughter, and I served our guests, struggling to keep my mind off Elias. It was the first time in years that almost the whole family was together. Only Rachel was missing. Living in Altoona, apparently, but no one had heard from her since she’d become Mrs. Jacob Schilling.
    Christmas was hard for Josiah, for though I carried platefuls of food to him, he was confined to the space under the eaves with only a candle and his slate to occupy him. We gave him his new geography book in the morning, and he tried manfully to read and study it all day. But I knew he was lonely, thinking of Lettie.
    He couldn’t write to her. Any letter would be intercepted by the mistress. Anyway, Lettie couldn’t read. On one of my trips up to check on him, Josiah asked me to write Lettie’s name on the slate, and he spent the afternoon under the eaves laboriously copying it over and over, along with his own name, Josiah.
    New Year’s day came and went. The weather was cold, the snow up three feet on the side of the barn. Folks traveled by sleigh, harness bells jingling merrily in the cold air. Still no sign of Elias. I expected his parents had surely heard from him by now, but Rebecca didn’t speak of it, so I took that to mean they hadn’t. Faced with this, I was careful to keep my feelings to myself, but I was distraught with fear and worry. Was he sick? Had something happened to him? Who could I ask? Where could I turn?
    Deep inside came a gnawing fear that he was somehow lost to me. That he wasn’t coming home at all. That he’d had a change of heart. ‘Change of heart?’ I asked myself. Who knew his heart? Surely, not I. There was really nothing between us but speculation. No understanding. No promise. Certainly no betrothal. It was all in my mind, fed by the idle talk of well-meaning outsiders. They’d nourished my hopes, and I’d assumed that something would come of walks in the woods, frequent visits, letters passed back and forth.
    Now I divided my anguish between fear for his safety and fear that I really had no claim to him at all. The latter was worse.
    Then, on the afternoon of the 8th of January, I heard harness bells, and, with a sinking feeling I could not explain, I knew Elias was home. Papa and Nathaniel had gone to Bedford on business; Betsy and Will McKitrick were off skating on the pond at Dunning’s Mill. Only Jesse and I were home.
    A pair of fine looking black horses pulled the sleigh into the dooryard. There sat Elias, up front, wrapped warm against the cold. At his side sat a young woman. She smiled shyly from under a new wool bonnet, stepping daintily from the sleigh with Elias’ help. At first I thought she must be a cousin up from Chambersburg to visit. But when I saw the look that passed