Rema laid a hand on her shoulder. “A man like that, whopper-jawed jackass, good people see through in time.”
Kerry squeezed her hand but gazed out at the mountains. “Maybe you’ll turn out to be right, Rema.”
They stood in a line shielding their eyes against the dazzle of the early spring sun and the glimmer of all the new green.
Jursey stroked one of Malvolio’s ears. “So about all the last guests and their leaving . . .” Kerry’s brother had never excelled at subtlety. “That Cabot fellow that come to the funeral . . . Awful nice of him to come.”
“As did quite a number of other people,” Kerry pointed out.
“You reckon,” he persisted, “you’ll ever hear from Mr. Cabot again?”
Kerry made herself shrug. “It wouldn’t look likely. I imagine he already left.” Without saying goodbye. “Which is just as well as far as I’m concerned.” She pulled the twins to her. “We’ve got lots of plans to make. Whether the three of us will be building an inn. Or a shop. Or a farm just for us—with a farmhouse to sleep in, I’m thinking, instead of a barn.”
Tully’s arm reached up to encircle Malvolio’s head and bring it down closer to her. Absently, she stroked his muzzle, the mule tilting his head in a self-conscious new pose. “So if Cabot showed up somewhere out of the blue, you’d just up and ignore him straight out?”
Kerry followed where Tully was staring down the long slope of grass.
George Vanderbilt, smiling, had slowed his steps, as if happy enough only to witness this scene from a distance.
But John Cabot was closer, striding up the hill toward them. He held his top hat by its brim in his right hand, but as he raised the hand in greeting, a spring breeze blew it from his hand. Not seeming to notice, he walked steadily on as the hat somersaulted across the new grass. He arrived at the gazebo at the same time as the Bratchetts and Lings and Catalfamos, handshakes all around.
“I am glad,” Sal Catalfamo said, “for the chance to meet the most famous of teachers, Miss Hopson.”
Without speaking, John Cabot came to stand near Kerry. He met her gaze, and held it. Then stared out at the mountains with her, the wave after wave of blue. He brought the back of his hand to brush hers. Kerry uncurled her fingers to let the whole back of her hand press up against his. And something inside her—something anxious and resentful and bitter—began to uncurl, as well.
When he spoke at last, he kept his eyes on the rolling blue out ahead. “I can imagine no better fortune than to get to live out one’s days in these mountains.”
They all stood there in an uneven line and watched the sun play over the hollows and peaks. The early rhododendrons were in bud, nearly blooming, and the air smelled of clover and roses and violets and moss.
There would be hard work ahead, as soon as tomorrow. There would be struggle and laughter and passion and death. There would be ugliness in this world that spread like rot from men who traded in fear.
But right now, in this moment, these mountains made her feel small. Humbled. And awed. Reminded her she was connected to these people beside her—and to the people connected to them, in endless waves. Like the mountains themselves. On and on, far beyond where the eye could see.
And then farther still.
Historical Notes
Although Under a Gilded Moon is, of course, a work of fiction, many of its characters either represent or were inspired by historical figures, many of whom would now be considered obscure but who influenced the course of history—Madison Grant, for example. Below is a bit of background readers may find intriguing. The author will also be adding historical photos and background regularly to the Behind the Scenes section of her website, www.joyjordanlake.com.
George Washington Vanderbilt II was the first owner and, along with Richard Morris Hunt and Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the visionaries of Biltmore. The character Emily Vanderbilt Sloane is based on one of his nieces who, like her uncle, became an ardent philanthropist.
Though he’s little known now, Madison Grant was a prominent name in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century eugenics movement, as well as in land and wildlife conservation. While there’s no evidence that he ever visited Biltmore, he knew the Vanderbilt family, some of whom contributed to his Bronx Zoo project, and was close to George Vanderbilt’s age. They shared a common interest in the natural world, as well as prominent friends in New York, including Theodore Roosevelt. While Grant’s conservation efforts did, as the novel suggests, contribute to national parks and to saving the American bison, his other legacy was an incredibly toxic view of racial superiority that would later help fuel the Holocaust. During the years of this novel’s setting, 1895–96, Grant was apparently known at least in some circles for his carousing, while publicly he was praised for his nature preservation leadership. He was also just beginning to formulate the white supremacist ideology that he would later pour into his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, which was translated into German and became a kind of model for the race-hygiene arguments that would be embraced by the Third Reich. Prior to World War II, Adolf Hitler wrote Grant a fan letter referring to The Passing of the Great Race as “my bible.”
A number of the household staff characters are based on actual people. The head of stables in Biltmore’s early days was Italian, and while Salvatore Catalfamo and his contribution to Richard Morris Hunt’s architectural drawings are fictional, the surname comes from the author’s husband’s family. The violence against Italians in New Orleans in 1890–91 is, sadly, historical, although Maurice Barthélemy as the instigator of it is a product of the author’s imagination (fueled by the fact that some merchants did apparently benefit from the Italian community’s being blamed for the police chief’s death). As in this novel, the head chef at Biltmore was French, and other members of the staff included the forestry expert Carl Schenck and Vanderbilt’s manager, Charles McNamee. Biltmore’s first head housekeeper of note—and long tenure—was an Englishwoman named Emily King, but since Mrs. King didn’t arrive until 1897, the author invented a fictional Mrs. Smythe.
The character Lilli Barthélemy was inspired, as fans of Edith Wharton will no doubt have guessed, by the protagonist Lily Bart in Wharton’s The House of Mirth. Mentioned as Lilli’s aunt in this novel, Wharton was a close friend of George Vanderbilt and a visitor to Biltmore.
Sol Lipinsky, briefly mentioned, was an early Jewish resident of Asheville whose Patton Avenue department store, Bon Marché, was an elegant addition to the town, which began its boom with the arrival of the railroad and visitors arriving from the North.
Annie Lizzie Hopson is named after and loosely based on the author’s great-grandmother, who arrived in the Southern Appalachian Mountains as a young woman to teach in a one-room schoolhouse.
Ling Yong (listed also as Ling Gunn, which the author surmised was a mishearing of the Chinese name) is based on an actual man who lived in Asheville in 1895–96. Clippings referring to his existence and apparently brutal death after this novel’s time period were deep in the city archives.
Robert Bratchett is based on an African American man who lived in the region at the time. His life ended tragically at Biltmore Junction in 1897, the year after this story stops, in racial violence. He is also commemorated at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, founded by Bryan Stevenson.