My Name is Resolute (25 page)

“I am not afraid to wait alone,” I said. Donatienne’s face showed I had hurt her feelings once again. “What I meant to say, Donatienne, is that I did not want to trouble you. I very much wish you to stay.”

She smiled and said, “I will make us a bed here.” She put the pillows side by side. Laid the blankets next to each other. She lay upon them and reached for my hand.

I reached for Patey’s hand and with the other I took Donatienne’s while she talked about her father who was a tailor, and her mother, who bore seven children before Donatienne was eleven years old. All of them, father, mother, three sisters, and four brothers, perished in
La fiévre épidémique
. Their lives were gentle, she said. Not aristocratic, but pastoral. Earthy. Sleeping with the sun and moving with the seasons. When she finished I told her about playing on the beach and gathering shells. I told her about the taste of sugarcane. The food Lucy used to make us. I told her about Allsy. When I said that she died, Donatienne wept. That stunned me so that I wept, too.

A nun came in carrying a candle and held a mirror to Patey’s mouth and nose to see if her air moved. When they saw she yet breathed, they changed her dressings and I watched in shock at seeing so much blood. One time Patience groaned when they lifted her. I helped change the dressing, steeling myself against the horror I saw, trying to think that what my hands did would save my sister from death and that my hands must not carry their terror to my heart lest I die of it or faint and be useless to her.

The ceiling had been painted a vivid shade of blue such as no sky could ever be. It was hazed of candle smoke. My room at home had had a blue ceiling, too, but peaceful, cerulean, the color of the bay if a storm should approach at sundown and cast unusual lights into the water. The effect was supposed to be that one lying in bed had a sense of being under the sky, and therefore under the caring eye of their Maker. I saw spiderwebs an ell across, clotted with dust, smoked and greasy black. I patted Patience’s arm and ran my hand down it to hers. Everything about her was sticky and moist. I held her hand to my face and kissed it. In the dim candlelight, I saw my hand blackened with her blood, and I rubbed it against my apron. I spat upon it, too, and rubbed more, imagining my face smeared with blood. “I will
not
accept your death, too, sister,” I cried. “I
shall
not.”

Once I asked a nun how the babe fared. She shook her head. I did not ask if it had died, for I feared Patience’s words might have cursed the poor thing. I hummed to keep from letting in the thought that Patey had wished it evil and thereby caused its death just as she had brought a storm to the ship at sea. I rose and sat upon Patey’s bed, leaning to press my cheek against hers and put my lips to her ear. “We have to go home, Patience. Get well. We shall escape, you and I. Do not give up, sister. I have seen the wall. I have found the vineyard and the gate. There is a way out of here, a way home.” Patience’s chest rose and fell in terrifying cadence, and my soul felt cold as the darkest day of winter. I drifted off and woke with a start. She yet lived. A greening sky showed in high windows where only black had been before.

After she had lived two weeks, they allowed her to go in an invalid’s chair to the garden and I was sent back to the
grange
. To my surprise, other girls carded wool in my place. I knew not what I should do. I felt perturbed at them for having my chair.

Sister Joseph met me with a smile and crooked her finger, motioning me into another area. “This, Marie,” she said, “is a spinning wheel.”

CHAPTER 12

August 18, 1730

He was named James and christened Talbot. Patience regained her health but she could not nurse her baby. The wet nurse brought from town spent most of every day and night with James’s care. He rarely cried. He was rather charming, I thought, but I was soon bored with looking at him, though the nurse told me he would learn to smile and play some months away, and might be more dear then.

I sat with Patience in the sick ward each evening before prayers. Rachael seemed always present, listening to us, watching us. Sometimes we included her in our conversations. She was not stubborn and hardened as her mother, and, I thought, not quite as daft. My loathing of her softened. She was not even so ugly as I had claimed, perhaps only plain and doomed to grow thick and stodgy when she aged. Rachael said to Patience once, when she thought I was out of hearing, “How dear you are together.”

I heard Patey say, “We are all we have left of family. She is my very life.” It warmed my heart.

Rachael said, “My sisters never loved me.”

I interrupted their talk with the robe I had been sent for. I said, “Here, Patey.” When she drew her arms into it, I kissed her cheek and sat at her side. Rachael turned her face from us and stared into the room. Tears slid down her cheeks.

*   *   *

It was mid-August, the flax still lying in the fields, when Master Hasken and Reverend Johansen ran through the gate one night with the help of MacPherson’s lantern. None of us had heard any rumors of their plan, not even Rachael. The escape was on everyone’s lips when we found moments to whisper to each other. For the next week, when I saw Rachael she was on her knees, pleading for her husband’s safety, and in English, for her own escape. The constables from town searched ten days to no avail before they gave up. I learned that because I spent time every day in the sickroom with Patey, and eavesdropped on the sisters’ whispering. They believed the men to be dead, for if not, surely Reverend Johansen would have returned by then for his expectant wife.

Once she had healed enough to work, Patience was sent to the weavers’ barn, too. She sat in the very chair I had used, learning to card wool as I had done. I sat in the circle of spinning wheels, turning out yard after yard of woolen thread, alongside girls all doing the same thing, our feet making a rippling sound, treadling the wheels. I felt the nearness of my sister but so isolated from her at the same time. Now and then Sister Joseph came by to check on my work and told me different things, such as, “Hold the thread closer to your lap, and your arms will be less tired.” Across the room, Patience carded wool in a circle of chairs, her back to me. She spoke not a word to anyone.

As the month of August drew to a close, Sister Joseph came to the dormitory and announced with anticipation in her manner, “The flax is to be gathered in.” She clapped her hands, adding, “Tomorrow everyone will work outside. It will be so festive!” My heart sank. I had barely healed from the last outdoor work in the flax. A noise started outdoors, so that when we had our meal at noon, I went to see what it was. Men worked to set up tables of planks and rows of baskets in preparation for the morrow.

That evening I found Patience sitting in the garden beside the wet nurse who held James. The sun stayed up late now, and the air was pleasant. I kissed the babe and the nurse, too, before kissing Patey. She touched my face. I saw something hollow in her eyes that made me close mine and look away, fixing them upon the flowers about us. “How is my nephew today?” I asked her.

“Fine and bonny,” she said. Her voice belied the emptiness in her eyes. “Come and take a turn about the garden with me, sister.” Patience grasped my arm so that it was as if she led me about rather than having a stroll together. I said nothing, awaiting her words.

“Ressie? Have you the strength to suppress a secret?”

“More than you would suppose. I care not whether I add a thousand more.”

“Look into the vegetable, there, as if we are discussing it.”

I did, and even managed to pantomime and point at certain things for a moment. I asked, “What is your secret?”

She smiled. “I would almost think you acted full grown, so stern you are, little sister, except that a woman of cunning would not be so forthright in asking.”

I replied, “In devices I am not lacking, sister. There is no bridge between us that must be carpeted for either a footman or a caravan.”

Patience turned to me and yet turned her head away as she spoke. “Not only are you taller. My sister has grown inside. Here is my mind, then. Since I lay in childbed, the thought has come often to me that there is a way of escape from this place. We must speak quickly. There must be signs between us. A password. One word that will mean ‘we must speak’ and one that means ‘it is time to act.’”

“What words?”

“Something the two of us know that will work into speech without halt, so that none know it for a sign. The signal to meet and talk shall be ‘candlestick.’ Collect anything you wish to take and keep your shoes ready. The other word is more secret and therefore more sinister. We will leave when you hear the word
‘gumboo.’
Meet that night by the graveyard’s west gate.”

“The graveyard? Why must we meet there?”

“It is not a place they would expect us to choose. You saw that there were new girls in the barn with us? While I was allowed to rest and tend to James, I watched the selfsame Indians who brought us here deliver these new conscripts. The man whose wounds I tended with bear grease recognized me. If people may come in, people may go out. Rachael Johansen will deliver in a couple of months; the Indians return then, too.”

“Do you not think Reverend Johansen will return for her?”

“I know not. But she could not travel so soon. I plan only for you and me.”

“We should take some food. I do not want to go on a ship in a cage. I want to go as ladies. Fed ladies.”

“I would sell my gold rings for our passage home. I have asked to attend Rachael. I will be free to come and go in carrying out my duties for her. You do not need to do anything but wait for my word. I shall watch the moon after her babe is come. We will travel by bright moonlight. Do nothing unless you hear
gumboo.
”

“And we could slip away?”

A voice behind us said, “Shall you slip away? Where to?”

I turned to see Christine Hasken there, and said, “To the privy, for we both have soured stomachs from the food we had to eat.” I squeezed Patience’s arm.

Christine said, “Leaving? Why, I thought you were a good little pope’s child, Mary.” She clucked her tongue. “What would Sister Joseph do if she knew? She delivered Thea Newham to one of the priests to be used as a doxy. Perhaps that would suit you?”

Patey shuddered against my side. “I don’t believe that. None of us have been treated so.”

I remembered Lukas’s sister. “Thea Newham was a tart when she came here.” I knew not if it were true; I meant to scald her. She bristled, but she did not try to slap me.

Christine said, “I care not whether you believe it. You are both stupid slaves.”

I added, “Your sister Rachael’s husband has run away and left her heavy with child. Fine minister of God, he is. You suppose he will come back for her?”

“He left with my father,” she said. “The two of them will come back. They will take us away.”

Sister Agathe approached.

“I am sure,” said Patience, “that you mean yourself and your sister? You do not mean we three standing here?”

Christine closed her mouth and glared at Sister Agathe. I smiled at the nun, and said, “Good evening, Sister.”

“Return to your rooms now, children,” Sister said, and continued on her way.

Christine hissed, “There is nothing more savage than a Roman Catholic.” She whirled around so that her skirt brushed ours, and left.

“How, Ressie, do you come to know what a tart or a doxy is?” Patience whispered.

“What is it?”

“Better you forget those words. The less you know of that the better.” She pinched my cheek, but did not smile.

From my cot I whispered to Donatienne, “I heard the Indians came back with more children recently.”

“Did they have feathers and make whooping sounds?”

“No.”

“Then they were not Indians.”

I did not want to argue with her. “I heard two men escaped from here.”

She lay on her back. I could see the profile of her face in reflected light coming in a window. “Men sometimes find a way to leave.”

“Would you leave, if you got the chance?”

“Where would I go? This place is my home.”

“But if you had a home somewhere, would you not go?”

“We are not prisoners, Marie. This is an orphanage. We have no place to go to, and no one else who will feed an orphaned girl. Why, if they held the doors wide open I would not go through.”

I wanted to say, “I was sold like an animal in a room by the outer wall. I still remember the old man, Brother Christophe, who wrote down my name and paid the Indians money,” but all I said was, “Oh.”

Donatienne was silent. I heard her sigh. She said, “Girls who leave here, the ones without castles and coaches, come to a bad end, you know?”

“What end? Do they starve? I would not want to starve.”

“You know what I mean.” Someone across the room snored. Two girls coughed.

“No, I do not.”

“Lean close to me.” She whispered, “They go to a bawdy house and take money to let men press desires upon them.”

“What does that mean?”

“I am not sure.”

“Oh. What is a doxy?”

She clasped her hand over her mouth with an audible gasp. “An English word. That is what they call those girls. Sometimes ‘tart’ or ‘whore’ or
‘prostituée.
’”

“Christine Hasken told me that her friend Thea was given to the priests for a doxy.” I lay on the cot when I said it. I was still uncertain of the meaning but I knew it was terrible. Something in the image reminded me of being on the ship, and that brought Patience’s and Cora’s nightly disappearances up the ladder to mind. Cake was their payment. I put my hand to my mouth and bit my thumb. Patey had said James was Rafe MacAlister’s baby. “Does it make you have a baby? Having men’s desires, I mean?”

“Yes!”

From across the room a girl’s voice said, “Be quiet over there, you two.”

I lowered my voice. “Christine is lying. Thea is not with child.” Tears formed at the corners of my eyes, thinking Patience was a doxy. “Must they go to hell? Would God forgive a doxy?”