My Name is Resolute (30 page)

“Aye, Mistress. Have I far to travel?”

“Boston? I think they say it may be three days by coach, two on horseback, and one on foot.” She smiled. I supposed it was to be a riddle, but it was not clear. She continued. “Oh, don’t look so sad. There’s a town closer. Cambridge Farms, it was, in my father’s day. Now ’tis called Laxton. The Boston road is not a road to travel alone, Miss.”

Laxton? At her last word, the realization struck me that with Patience married in a way, I was now The Miss Talbot. “I am Miss Talbot, of Two Crowns Plantation.”

“Nary heard o’ that one.”

“In Jamaica.”

“How do you come here, then?”

“Captive.” I looked at her house. There was no cross or crucifix over the door, but another horseshoe bent into an oval. “Sold to a Catholic convent in the north, and escaped now. I hope to return home.”

A broad grin spread upon her face, lighting her eyes with warmth. “Are you hungry, Miss Talbot, as hungry as you are brave?”

“I am, good lady.”

She cocked her head and laughed, as embarrassed as a child being praised. “Oh, come inside, dearie. I am no fine ladyship but I have on some bread and fine cheese. We’ll make you a meal.”

I sighed and smiled. “How kind of you, Mistress.”

This time she giggled. “Come around to the door, then, with you.” She met me from the inside, then, and welcomed me into a dear cottage so tidy and well appointed, though the furnishings rough, that it seemed a dollhouse. It smelled of what we—the French—called the “breath of heaven,” fresh bread just from the oven. In the time it took the lady to bring bread and fresh butter to the table, memories of my time at St. Ursula rolled over me like a wave, and my hands trembled.

“Would you have cider?” she asked as she poured it into a gourd and handed it across the table.

“Well and aye,” I said, and blushed, embarrassed at my words, for Ma’s expression was so rarely on my tongue the whole of the years I had been away from English people. “The bread is delicious.”

“There, you can call me ‘Goody Carnegie.’ Here’s honey for you. Now,” she said, “when you have broken your fast, tell us how you came to be here.”

In as few sentences as I could manage, I did so, leaving out that Patience had left me and run away with the Indians. I told her I had come with strangers who had left me on the road to go to their homeland. Since it was another direction and I wished to get to the closest seaport, they had sent me on my way.

“And where was their home? Far from this town? For I would know everyone.”

I nearly spoke the words in French, and caught myself at the last second. “They were not given to talking of it, and our flight was hurried. West, I think.”

“Well, cheers that you got away! And would you not consider staying by here? There are those who might take you in. Laxton or Lexington, how e’er you call it, ’tis a nice town.”

“Oh, I could not impose, Mistress. I only wish to find a ship on which to go home.” I feared that by “taking me in” she meant as a servant or indenturing me against my will to pay for my upkeep. I pressed my hand under the table against my thigh where Ma’s casket lay. “I have a small sum laid by. I would stay at an inn, if such were available. Of course, I should rather secure a coach to the seaport.”

“Ach, a young lady alone at an inn? Heaven strike me dead this instant if I allowed such. No, no. If you must have a roof, you may share mine, but ’tis not a place for a proper young lady to reside. There are better, and there are those that would take you to the sea, child. Have you finished them vittles, then? Let us go a-calling.”

Goodwife Carnegie took my arm in hers and led me up the road. About a mile on, we rounded a small hillock and came to a bustling town street. Dogs barked, children called out, and women called back to them from windows and doorways of at least a dozen houses storied high enough for three floors each. Farther in were a church building and a public hall, a well, and a trade-goods barn with three sides. Fruits in baskets filled the front stalls and people crowded at them. “Halloo,” Goody called, and people in the square turned, staring at us, while children dashed by. “Halloo, see the young gentlewoman who has come to call upon me? Her name is Miss Talbot, and those of you who would meet her must be introduced by myself, first. She is
my
guest.” She squeezed my arm and leaned toward my ear. “That’ll straighten the curls in their wigs, dearie.”

Within a few minutes, it seemed the whole town had gathered around, and a cadre of men circled at one side. One of them said, “Now, Goody Carnegie, this Miss will have to answer to the council, just as any would. And you, lady-child, where is your escort, your husband or father?”

“Indeed, I have none at present. Pray let me speak to you in private, good sir.”

Another man said, “Be she driven abroad by some other town? Be she a witch?”

And another, “Why else go to Goody Carnegie’s house first of all?”

“Take care,” said another, “let us have her questioned by the committee.”

Goody Carnegie said to them all, “If you will have a committee then I shall bring her. We will await you in the courthouse.”

I felt more than knew not to question her labeling the small building to which she led me as a courthouse. There she bade me sit upon the steps until seven men approached us, one last of them fastening his jacket and trying to right an old wig that did not seem to fit him well. The others were wigless but bore in their demeanor and long beards the feeling of being a council of law. One man spoke, saying, “The Lexington Town Council is now in order. I am Selectman Roberts, and Misters Falwell, Erskine, Considine, and Jones are witnesses, as are Yeomen Franklin and Spotsworth.”

Goody Carnegie grinned, showing yellowed and missing teeth. “They listen to me even though they don’t like it. I’ve got land, y’see. Land talks.”

A shortish man approached the courthouse and waved. “You there, come this way, if you please. We shall mount the steps there and you approach the bar this way.” He pointed to a hitching rail in front of the building. “We will know your purpose here, and your comings and your goings, young Miss, Miss—”

“Talbot,” I supplied. I told them all as well as I could, that my home in Jamaica had been ransacked by privateers, I had been captured, and, skipping the Haskens altogether, taken north into French colonies to an Ursuline convent. Several people gasped when they heard that last word. Then I said, “Another woman and I conspired with a team of rescuers to leave that place—”

“Wast it because you were taught an untrue religion? Because you were made to suffer papist rule?”

“Partly, sir, but most because I was not born a slave. I am a free person, the second daughter of Allan Talbot, Her Majesty’s loyal—”

“The queen is dead,” said another man. “These many years. King Charles reigns in her stead now.”

“How long a prisoner?” asked another.

“Five years altogether.”

“And what is your plan for this place, seeing your first visit with any soul here is to a professed madwoman?”

“Madwoman?” I asked. “Goodwife Carnegie? She has shown me kindness but I knew her not until this morning. ’Twas her house first on the road. Another before it was empty and the one before that, a man and woman pointed the way to Boston. Before that, nothing but trash and dead animals.”

A woman from the crowd behind me called, “Goody’s not in her mind, lassie.”

Goody Carnegie looked down from between two of the men’s shoulders upon me. She smiled and nodded. “It’s true what they say, my dearie. I have sometimes been troubled by a spirit of melancholy.” She tittered, hiding a laugh.

“Melancholy is not madness,” I said, then bowed my head when the men before me stiffened, but I continued, speaking my words clearly so I would not have to raise my voice. “I have known other people not so mad who treated me harshly. Goodwife Carnegie has been only kind. She has shown me here to beg your help.”

“She speaketh with some foreignness of tongue,” a man said.

“Imprisoned by Frenchmen five years!” said another. “Did you not hear her?”

“Do you speak French?”

“I do, sir.” Donatienne’s gentle face, her patient coaching came to mind. I said, “If I was to keep my wits I had to learn what was being said round about me. It was not torture, sir, but teaching as any of you would do.”

“Will you say something?” another asked.

“What would you have me say, sir?”

The first said, “Give us an example, so that we may know it.”

“L’Éternel est mon berger, je m’en veux pas. Il me fait coucher dans les verts pâturages.”

“What say you, Gilliam, is that the French tongue?”

An old man nodded and smiled. “It is, indeed. The Twenty-third Psalm. Fine choice, Miss.”

A chorus of murmurs surrounded me. I pointed my question to the closest fellow. “May I speak, sir?” When he nodded I continued. “Is this not the town of Laxton?”

“Some’s call it that way, Miss. Properly pronounced Lexington.”

I put on my bravest smile and said, “Gentlefolk of Lexington, I wish to return to my mother and my home. I have no escort, and I would not stay in a public inn. If I may prevail upon some kindness in this company to see me to the seaport, my only intent is to find passage home.”

A man called from behind, saying, “Me and the missus be g’ang to Braintree on the morrow. Miss Talbot may ride with us to Boston.”

“What be your age, lass?” a man asked.

“I prefer to keep that,” I said. “It is a lady’s prerogative, is it not?”

“You will stay with Selectman Roberts,” one of the others said.

Mr. Roberts held up a hand. “We must think on this. Will you abide with us a night?”

Another chimed in, “That is the way it is done.”

“Have you wife or family?” I asked. “I would not stay alone with a man, sir.”

The men nodded and a few smiled. I had passed a test of my virtue. As selectman, it was Mr. Roberts’s duty to take me in, I was told, but he was bound by convention, not law, and if I displeased them, he might change his mind. Mr. Roberts said, “My wife will see you are kept company, and indeed, my daughters and two small sons shall bear witness.” He smiled at me and I could not help but return it.

“I shall be in your debt, sir,” I ventured, though I wondered whether that was the best response as soon as the words came. “Then may we speak of a journey to the coast?”

“In good time, my dear. In good time. Autumn has near set in and ocean travel will be treacherous. It may be best for you to pass the time with us until spring.”

I felt so free. The very air seemed to have light in it. Still, though I had no wish at all to wait longer, to convince these people to help me was my only hope. “I am sure you know more than I about ocean travel, sir, but I wish to go as soon as a ship is ready.”

He seemed to pay little attention to that statement, and the whole lot of them accompanied me to the door of the Roberts home. It was a short walk. The house was large and made with an overhanging second floor, so that it looked like a cake sitting upside down. In the middle of the bottom floor, a carriageway led to a stable at the back. Mr. Roberts’s family filled the house to overflowing, but unlike the Haskens’ mean and cramped conditions, this place was lighted with windows by day and candles aplenty by evening, and there was not the smell of a goat anywhere near the place. The Robertses’ daughters, aged from seven to seventeen, made much of dressing and ribbons and nosegays and lace. From eldest to youngest, they were Serenity, Betsy—whose given name was Elspeth, Tipsie—whose given name was Portia, and the smallest and most beautiful, America. The sons were Herbert and Henry. By supper that evening I had learned that the girls had been raised gentlefolk, though the two young boys, spoiled into naughtiness, teased their sisters, threw crying fits when denied their ways, and caused all manner of havoc at mealtimes. Still, they were not mean children, just untamed.

Alone in the washing room, I went to throw Patience’s lopsided apron on the pile for the ragmonger. As I pulled it off and let it fall to the floor, it landed on the stones and made a clinking sound. I picked it up and pressed my fingers here and there and only then remembered that it had merely been a hiding place for her old petticoat, worn to shreds. I cut the apron open. Her treasures were still intact! Ma’s silver casket had been fixed there by a patch of madder and black plaid. Ma’s pearl necklace was there under a piece of crudest linen. The whole of it inside bore stains and grit and brought distasteful shadows and a feeling of fluttering darkness upon my senses. Finding this gift from Patey gave me hope for my future tinged with hurt at her leaving me. In an hour I had everything sewn into my gray skirt in pockets and duckets, just as Ma had made. It did not have to last long, as I meant to use the gold to buy my way home.

By week’s end, we had discussed my traveling to Jamaica at least nine times, and seeing I was determined, nothing would do but that Mr. Roberts and his wife would accompany me to Boston to find a ship. I had to hide my disappointment when Mr. Roberts answered that he could not leave for at least five more days, yet the weather was increasingly bitter and I feared he had been correct about not sailing until spring.

On the day we were to leave, the girls burst into my room, chattering like a flock of chickens. Serenity, the eldest, looked upon my form for a moment, and then shook her head. “But you are so lithe! And that old gray wool! Too plain. You wouldn’t want to be taken for a Quaker, would you? Oh, to have a waist as small as yours. Come with us, Miss Talbot.” She pulled me by the hand and led me to her room, clucked and riffled through the gowns and petticoats hanging from the walls. “Try this. Take it with you, if it fits. It fit me two years past, but Betsy has already outgrown it, too, and by the time Tipsie can wear it, it will be out of fashion.”

Under my weak protest, they pulled the pale blue satin and silk over my head, laced up the back, adjusted the shoulders just off the curve so that it made a cunning frame for a modest décolletage. Serenity pushed me before the glass. “Look at yourself now, Miss Talbot. Oh, my. None did this gown justice until today.”