Response to "Introduce Yourself" on my website, zoundsfern . wordpress . com. "Lady Blakeney Grows Up" is also a response.
ENGLAND: 1774
"Father, please don't go! Os gwelwch yn dda aros!" Andrew added, speaking the last words in Welsh, for they were in Wales, on the porch of a magnificent manor house whose foundations probably dated to the Crusades.
"Dear boy, can't you see it's just too much for me?" He stopped, realizing that the boy was just that, a boy, his five-year-old puppy eyes gazing up into his Father's face. The man sighed, bending down on one knee to speak with his son one last time. "I've told you, Andrew. I'm going to go fight the colonial rebels. When we win, I'll come back, and everything will be the same again."
"But what about Mama?"
A little gasp escaped the man, as if he had been struck by a bullet. "Andrew, Andrew, can't you see? That's why I'm leaving. Every flower, every angel curl on your sweet face- I can see her!"
Andrew looked up quizzically.
"But don't you want to see her?"
This time it was more than a gasp. It was something between a short sob and the cry of a dog when separated from his master. "Oh, God, Andrew! It hurts to see her! I loved her too much and God took her away."
"Never hurted when I see her. I sees her all da time. She is so beautiful, and she just tellsth me to be a good boy." Andrew said, nodding is head violently to the proving of the truths he expounded.
"Just be one, and I'll be back." Whispered his father, bending down once more to smell the painful scent of his son's hair. He straightened quickly, fearful lest he see the tear beginning to pool on the tip of his nose. "God bless you, Andrew."
And then he was gone, whisked around the corner by a set of horses Andrew never could stand the sight of again. Gone-
A few months later, a tall, blond rebel officer stood in a cramped room, watching a girl care for one of his soldiers. His face was grim, for if they lost this man- the prime of his unit- needless to say, they were losing soldiers like flies anyhow. The nurse, a sweet, pretty thing with dark hair and a quaint French accent, came to speak with him.
"I think he's doing just fine now." she murmured, careful not to awaken the sleeping soldier.
"Good. God knows we need him. And I have you to thank, Miss-"
"de Tournai. Maryse de Tournai. I did all I could. We must win."
"Aye, we must."
In no less than eight fortnights, the nurse and the officer were married in a little church in Massachussets. They moved to their cottage in the woods, or perhaps I should say the wife did, for war still ravaged the land and the officer was needed desperately. A daughter was born to them in 1776, Elizabeth Rhedyn Nechole Ffoulkes. When her father first saw her, by then a precocious two year old, he excaimed, "Why, Elizabeth's to hoity-toity for a fine little rebel like you! What shall I call you?"
"Maman callsth me Elsthie." She lisped with grave significance, smiling up at him, her hands gripping his knees.
"Lets see. What about your initials? Should I call you ERNF?" He asked, teasing.
"No! Bad name!"
"ERN?" she pouted, her bottom lip sticking out farther than her father thought possible. "Oh I know, we'll put your last name first! You can be Fern!" She giggled her assent. "Rhedyn means Fern, anyhow!" From then on, whenever Papa was home, the two were inseparable. They would go on expeditions in the woods, sometimes bringing her best friends along, two German boys from across the meadow. The pair would exasperate them, speaking the whole trip in Welsh, or perhaps French. The German boys got their revenge, though, or at least on the father, by talking to Fern only in German, which she understood. He would glare down with supposed anger on the three little rascals, then perhaps scoop the trio up in a bear hug and dump them in the river. When Fern came home sopping wet, her mother would chide her Father.
"What do you think you're doing with her?" She would say in her best stern voice, for it was hard to be angry when he was home. "Why, look at le fille. She looks a positive disaster!"
Her father would bend down and whisper, "She could never look a disaster when she's related to you!" The inevitable kiss would follow, and Fern, squealing and squirming, would make a bolt for the door.
She would sit with her father in the evenings, and watch as he wrote letters to a brother in England she had never met. She often wondered why writing made her father sad-