The Gazebo Journals

The soft, warm breeze of oncoming twilight brushed across her cheek, sweeping the few tendrils of hair off her forehead that had escaped the braid tossed casually over her shoulder. The long skirts tumbling over her legs where she lay swayed in the wind as well, like the warm hands of a caress. Rebecca stirred from her dream, slowly awaking to the scents and sounds of early evening in her beloved garden.

She took a moment to breathe it all in before opening her eyes- her other senses heightened without the aid of sight yet. The pure, romantic smell of her prized roses blooming behind her, the heavy perfume of the magnolia tree in full glory, wisps of honeysuckle sweeping their heavy branches over the sweet-smelling spring grass, the apple tree in adolescent flower.

The birds that flocked to this realm of peace and beauty - land, her land - were giving their final songs of the day, calling out to one another and singing with the pure joy of freedom that these mountains they called home provided.

Rebecca smiled and slowly opened her eyes before shifting to a sitting position on the swing. She took in a deep lung-full of the clean fresh air breathing around her and stretched. The leather-bound book where she penned her most intimate thoughts, observations and prayers, shifted in her lap with the movement. Still open to the page she had been writing before slumber had over-taken her, it slid to the ground with a soft thud before her relaxed muscles could make a grab for it.

She rubbed her eyes and bent to retrieve it with a soft laugh. No harm done - since she had started writing in it two years ago, the book had been through far worse than falling to the cushioned ground after another impromptu nap in her garden hammock.

She collected the journal and quill, the ink bottle thankfully still on the table instead of spilling its contents upon her grass, and stood before turning to the house. The lamps were lit, light spilling out of the windows to splay across the backyard as twilight moved in.

A coarse, impatient honk came across the yard, interrupting the bird's final chorus.
Another smile touched Rebecca's lips; amusement flickered in her emerald-green eyes.
"Yes, yes, I hear you Duck. Your dinner will laid before you in a minute." She tucked the journal, quill and capped ink into the voluminous pockets of her skirts and headed toward the coop to feed the incessant bird his nightly rations.

Duck greeted her at the gate, pecking at the ground when she entered to show her how he had been starved the whole of the day.

In truth, he was the best-fed goose of the county, a county which otherwise would have had him spitted and stuffed on the table for meal instead of the other way around. A goose - toque-in-cheek named Duck, who had found his way into Rebecca's life a year ago and had promptly made the home his own. He had found her, at her weeding last spring. Simply waddling into the yard, he had approached her out of nowhere, plopped himself into the grass at her feet, and gone to sleep.

So ridiculous was the sight of wild foul napping amongst her petunia beds, Rebecca had made the mistake - of the fortune, either way - of throwing him a handful of dried corn that evening when she spied him still lounging in the backyard.

Duck had stayed that night, and the next, and the next... until he appointed himself as master of the abode.

Now, as master of the house, not only would a toss of corn grain not do, but Master Duck - the omnipresent Goose- expected his two meals a day of oats, bread, and yes, fresh apples off the tree to be served at precisely 6am and twilight, and he never let his mistress off schedule.

Rebecca didn't mind the routine, nor the surly attitude of her goose. If a woman was to be ordered around by a male, then better it be by a Duck than her goose cooked by a demanding man trying to change her way of life here - on her own land.

Duck chortled in appreciation after she served his feast before he settled into it. Rebecca reached down and stroked his elegant neck in return before straightening and heading to the house where her own meal awaited her.

"Fell asleep again writing them words in your book out there then, aye?"
The surly housekeeper's voice greeted her first thing as Rebecca entered the kitchen.

"You and your words, always words, writing in your book, day after day, and what good it does, I ask you? No good a' tall. Just wiling away the day and your time whilst I work me fingers to the bone here at hearth and helm." Wilhelmina grumbled under her breath as she ladled out the beef-barley and potato stew she had prepared for her mistress' evening meal.

"Tis no good, I say, no good a' tall. Why you feel thee need to fill your head with such foolishness as writin' tis beyond me, when so much t'would be needin' done around this place. Foolishness, plain foolishness. A grown woman on her own, and in prime marryin' age, no less, and all she wants is to write all day in that journal of hers, when you could be out getting y'rself a husband and a proper way t'life." Wilhelmina grumbled while she placed the sliced bread and cheese in front of Rebecca.

Rebecca pretended to listen to the same tirade she heard almost daily, letting her housekeeper say her fill until Rebecca quietly admonished with her own say.
When Wilhelmina paused for further steam, Rebecca cut her off.
"Tis my own life, and the way I choose to live it, Willie. If you don't like it you are free to go at any time, as you well know."
Wilhelmina puffed up like an indignant parrot, all color and no substance. She did know such. She could end her days with this - in her mind - flighty Miss Evanston whom she had been tied to years ago. But she was also knowledgeable of what went on in the Restoration days happening outside of their hamlet after the great war between the states - knew that she would find naught lodging, meal and warm bed outside the likes her mistress and the dowry which put food in both their mouths.

Restoration South was not a place for Wilhelmina, who had been the only white woman of power within the Evanston household before the master returned home in the fine box of cherry-wood that 'twas to be his lasting resting place.

A paid servant, yes, not an owned slave as a white woman. But still, bound to this family, to this chit of a girl who thought herself to be a woman, by decree of Lady Rebecca's own deceased father.

Aye, she could walk off - she was free to do so, but what then? Their futures, the two of them - were bound together for the unforeseeable time.
Whether they liked it or not.