My Name is Resolute (11 page)

I said, “It is nothing but Ma’s wee duppy charm. Back of every petticoat.”

“Maybe you need to give me a duppy charm,” she said. “Maybe you got more charms dan dat. Maybe I keep quiet about ’em shiny golden charms and you could keep de res’ if you shared but one. Duppies never harm no one dis far away.”

Patience raised her eyes to look at Cora’s face and said, “I shared our food when you were starving.”

“Share one t’ing more. You Massa’s daughter. You live on de backs of my mother and my gran. You ne’er eat a crumb dat someone else didn’t hand-make and bring to you. All I got to do is say it loud and mens take it all from you.”

Was Cora one of our slaves? I did not know her at all. She must have always worked in the fields or someplace away from the house. She had seemed so decent when we were in the cage together. Yet if she belonged to Pa, she belonged to us now. Patience glared at Cora. I did not dare let down my posture of defense. “How you change so from what you seemed on the ship. I thought you were our friend. Our companion.”

“You don’ share with a friend?” she asked. “Den you lets me wear dat and be warm for a whiles. I give it back to you in a whiles.” She laid her hand on Patey’s cape and I saw her fingers wrap themselves into it and hold tight.

“Cantok!” I said. Cora jerked her hand away from Patey’s clothing as if there had been a thorn in it.

A voice broke the air among the three of us. “You!” Uncle Rafe said, coming for us. I cringed and held Patey’s hand, ready for him to clutch at me again. Yet the arm he jerked was Cora’s. “You come this way.”

He pulled her down the path. As she went, Cora turned and looked toward us. She grimaced as if she might start to cry and Rafe gave her a shove. Two men, one old, one younger than my pa seemed, stood at a short fence with a horse and a small donkey by them. They gave Uncle Rafe coins that he counted, and when he was finished, he tooth-marked two of them.

I expected the men would ride the horse and put Cora on the donkey. Instead, they tied her hands with coarse rope and bound the other end to the saddle of the horse. The young man got on the horse. The old one swung himself onto the donkey, his feet dragging the ground. Cora walked alongside, her face toward the road. Under her skirt, rotted and torn off at the hem so it was shorter than was decent, I spied Patience’s shoes moving along on Cora’s feet. She never looked up as they passed us.

I wanted to call out “Farewell!” but I did not. I had known her kindness longer than I had known her greed, and the part of Cora that I would miss was indeed the good part. At least, thank heaven, she did not say anything to give away our secret. The rest I did not try to understand just then, for we were compelled to get into two lines and walk the road.

We walked until the air darkened, for no sun set. Staying off sharp stones, thorns, rough clay, and horse droppings occupied my mind fully. I could sing no more. All my strength went to putting one foot ahead of the last. We stopped at a place that was more of a cave than an inn. After they barred the door they gave us potatoes boiled with milk and herbs. For me it tasted wonderful, but Patience could not keep it down and as we had sat where we stood before, she leaned over on the floor to be sick.

They bade us lie side by side on damp ground, and for coverings against the cold, tossed a few old flea-bitten skins upon the lot. With some tugging and grunting, the skins moved about and covered perhaps half the women. A few of them set up a squabble and exchanged blows for the rights to a filthy old hide. I lay low, ducking the fists swinging over my head, and tried to lie as close to Patey as I could. The men prisoners were across the room. A man from the inn stood to guard us with a musket. One of the older women asked him the name of this place. “It has no name,” he said. “It is just a place.”

Then one of the men asked him where we had landed, and the man said that we came ashore around the heel of Casco Bay. And where we were now was outside of Harraseeket. A woman on my left side said, “Ain’t that jus’ like ’em? Won’t tell a woman nothing but has all the time in the world for a bloke.”

I wondered if more houses stood over the next hill and if there might be someone to whom I could explain our lives and how we had been kidnapped. I would make them understand that Patience and I did not belong to this group. I meant to remember these places. “Casco and Harraseeket, Casco and Harraseeket,” I chanted under my breath. I would write a letter to Ma. I would tell her how to find us. I decided I would not tell Ma about Cora being greedy, and perhaps we would find her and buy her from those men and keep Cora with us. I would see she got a whipping for the shoes, though. Things like that cannot go unnoticed with slaves. I thought about telling Patience, or asking if she had seen them, too. At length, however, I decided again to keep the thoughts with me.

In the morning we were fed the same stew of potatoes. It was so cold in the cave my breath formed a cloud such as I had never seen before. After those days aboard ship, the potatoes were quite comforting to me, and Patience did tolerably better with it today, too. Rafe MacAlister blustered into the room and whistled as if we were a pack of dogs. “Get in line. Get in line,” he called. “End of the road for most of ye.”

A woman from the inn pushed and shoved at us with a heavy stick the way you might work a hesitant sow into a corner. She growled and muttered, threatening us with the stick but none dared affront her. She produced a bucket of water and walked before the women. “Wash yer faces, ye hoors. Get tha’ glin off yer. Get to it, now. Ye’s’l ne’er be her lady’s dresser wi’ them foul troll’s faces. Any you ’as bleedin’ get back and leef t’ others first.”

“Why, Patey!” I whispered. “How rude.”

Patey cautioned me with a raised finger. “Put your petticoat back under your skirt.” She snatched it from my shoulders, and with the same brusque motions Ma had used, tied it to my waist.

“But I am cold. And I do not want to be some woman’s dresser.”

“Check later for holes and patch them. Sew a piece of your gown to it.”

“Where shall I get thread? You will have to help me.”

“Scrub your face, Ressie,” she said, falsely cheerful as the bucket came past us. We dipped in our hands and took water. Cold drizzles of it ran down my arms to my skirt. “Take a thread from someplace that cannot use it anymore. You shall always, from this moment on, have to be clever and make use. Do you hear me?”

“Well, tell me what to do,” I said, as she threaded a needle from her petticoat.

“I told you. Be clever. Make everything count. Let me fix your pocket.” When she felt satisfied, she put her own back in place.

Rafe strutted about the room and stood upon a small chair. “Line!” he called. From under his coat, he produced a long black whip. He thrashed it over our heads as if in warning, snapping it on both sides of the line. Someone behind me cried out with pain. Once in line, we trudged up the frozen road. I had felt cold inside the cave but the chill outside was bitter. My feet felt as if every step were trod across hot coals, so great did the pain shoot up from the soles. My arms, my nose, everything became numb and yet pained at the same time. I could not speak. My lips froze in place with the cold.

A collection of small wooden shacks, no more than our slave quarters, sat beyond a small hill. In the midst of the little houses, a clearing held a wooden platform that wore a covering of white dust. All the women stepped upon the platform, and Rafe began that shrill whistle again, time after time, until people emerged from the houses. They collected about us, looking upon us as if we were sheep or horses.

I peered in awe at my feet and the pressing of my steps upon the white stuff. “Patey? What is this?” I asked.

“Frost. It got so cold in the night that the wood froze and the dew upon it became ground snow.”

“Ground snow?”

“The white thing you thought was feathers falling from the sky. Snow. This kind is on wood or the ground. The kind in the air falls to the earth. Sometimes in great amounts, sometimes mere—”

“Quiet!” Rafe hollered. He stepped upon the platform, too. In ones and twos, he along with our other captors sent the men aboard the platform. People crowded up. Some stayed silent, but many jeered and called out. Some of the buyers seemed stern and some appeared gentle. Pious men in black frocks. Lordly men stepped from carriages and rough men came on foot. Men were sold for coins, for pistols, and one was traded for a horse. Then they came for the women. Rafe took Patience’s arm and pulled her to him. “I’ll see what you’ll bring. If it ain’t enough, you be mine.”

I made fists with both my hands, but he left her and took up the arm of an African woman and called to the crowd. “Fresh and sturdy stock! Fresh and sturdy stock! Trained. Hardworking. Who’ll give me fifteen pound for this one here?”

“Let’s see ’er teeth!” a man called from the people gathered.

“Open yer mouth,” Rafe said. When the man was satisfied with the captive’s teeth, he nodded and she was led away. I thought about that Saracen beaten to death under Captain Hallcroft’s orders, and though he had seemed genteel, he had stood there, watching. And August, though he protested, he, too, watched. I shuddered. Why, any sort of man could buy any other man and be kindly or be the devil himself, and the sold person had no voice in his own fate! Black spots swirled before my eyes and I nestled closer to Patience’s skirt. Very soon, they came for her.

Patience held her hands toward me in a gesture of pathos as they pulled us apart, more conjoined than if we had been two halves of a cloth rent asunder. I remembered for a long time, the feeling of her hands pulled away from me, the last touch of her upon my arms. She stood as two men bid for her, and a low and hard-looking one came up and offered seventeen pounds and nine. Rafe held out his hands to collect Patience’s earnings and dropped one of the coins, having to chase it around the planks before it quit spinning. I was incensed that he had dropped my sister’s price on the floor.

When they led her from the step, I followed on her heels. The man who bought my sister pushed me away. “Get back, ye!” he ordered, raising his hand to strike me.

“I am going, too,” I said. Without Patey I would die. I would surely die.

“I bought one. Won’t feed kin, neither; that’s trouble. Get back.” He kicked at me as if I were a dog snapping at his feet.

“Please!” I shouted. From behind me an arm wrapped around my middle and carried me like a peck of flour away from Patey’s side. I did not cry out again, or sob. I put away more feelings. Put them deep. I would give them no satisfaction with my tears.

Patience did not cry or say a word or even make a sound, but went into a wagon with a short top on it which was closed down the way you’d pack up an animal. They crowded two others in with her and drove it away. I watched her go and felt indignity, not longing or sorrow. How little I had known my own sister, my own skin, before our kidnappings, and how she had changed by the brutality and beatings she had suffered on the ship. The strange way she had of treating me, also, for I had not forgot that she had nearly unbrained me at one instance to keep me out of the hands of the Saracens. I had been orphaned indeed. That notion took hold of me while her cart made its rattly way down the path until my heart seemed as if it lay at the bottom of the sea. All was lost.

An hour later, in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and twenty-nine, on the twenty-first day of November, I was sold for the first time to a black-frocked farmer and his wife. Both of them wore high-peaked black beaver felt hats such as I had seen in drawings before. Both were so homely and sallow that under those great dreary hats I would never have known the sex of one or the other were it not for madam’s frilly mobcap. As they pulled me from the platform and pushed me into a cart, I called for Patience. She was long gone away. As were they all.

Rafe MacAlister walked off with his bags jingling, filled with the solid coin of our skins. I had brought him only five pounds.

I looked like trouble, they said.

CHAPTER 6

November 21, 1729

“Resolute Catherine Eugenia Talbot,” I said.

“You’ll be Mary.”

I stared, somewhat dumbfounded, and in a quite ill-mannered way, at the old woman. “I shall not.”

“And what talent have you?” The hag sorted me with her eyes as if I had been a bowl of seeds.

“Talent? I have learnt two songs on the harpsichord.”

“I’m talking about your work, you little heathen.”

“What do you mean?” Now that I was out of the ship’s hold and in a proper lodging, I wanted a bath and a rest, and to have someone get the knots out of my hair.

She poked my arm as if I were contagion itself. “What skills? Are you a laundress? Cook?”

“I have always
had
a laundress,” I said. “And there were three cooks. One for meats, one for sweets, one for everything else.” I said, “I can do embroidery.” I drew myself up, saying, “Quite fine embroidery,” though my work was barely passable.

“Well, Mary, you shall carry the chamber pots each morning and fill the scuttles.”

“I would never do that. It is filthy. Have one of your slaves do it.”

She continued as if she had not heard me. “Then there’s milking and washing and any other task Mistress requires of you. You shall be allowed one afternoon each week for school. Work not and you shall know the rod of correction. You are right pinched and meager, quite scunging in your appearance. Have you other raiment?”

“Raiment, madam?”

“Where be your other clothes?”

“Stolen away by the same villain who has taken me from the bosom of my family and delivered me into your hands. Ask Rafe MacAlister. Have someone bring me a bath and a fresh gown immediately.”

She stood, grunted, giving me a slight shove, and tromped about the room as if a better answer were hanging on a peg, for there were many pegs, all filled with different hanging fabrics on the walls of this small wooden room. “No, you’ll not have a cloak,” she repeated twice. Then, “Were you raised Papist?”