My Name is Resolute (52 page)

So we were part of a new society. Making our way home at nearly midnight, my babe close in and warm under many blankets and a great rug, I watched our breaths mingle before us. The night was crisp and the cold hurt my cheeks.

After a long silence, Cullah said, “When they ask of us, we give. And if we ever have need, we have to but ask of them and they will give.”

I said, “Deborah Revere came from a very wealthy family. Easy for her to give.”

“He married well.”

“No one can say you married me for money.”

“I married you to have someone to cuff me about.”

“This society, these people, they have secrets.”

“Aye.”

“And you acted as if I were an outsider. As if you have secrets from me. I am on your side, Cullah MacLammond. Did you not know that?”

“You would not have agreed to what Pa and I did.”

“Of course not. You do not ask why, you just want blind obedience?”

“Certainly. That makes life easier.” He smiled then, and turned to me and winked.

I said, “You should have married a horse, then.”

“Hear that, Sam?” he called to the horse. “Sam says no, that he cannot make a hasty pudding to save his life. No. Had to marry you. Bewitched by a wee fairy.”

I made my voice stern as I could. “If ever something is amiss, if you need me to meet you in secret, or you need me to understand something, you must give me a word.”

“What word?”

“My sister used ‘
gumboo.
’”

“That’s likely enough.”

“She cut it into a piece of bread. That was when I knew we were leaving the convent. Before that, if we were to meet to talk, she said ‘candlestick.’”

“If I use the word ‘cross’ and it seems out of place, that will be a signal and you will meet me in our parlor, or our kitchen; that is better.”

“All right.”

“And if I use the word ‘sword’ you will immediately go to our bedroom.”

“Yes. And what then?”

Cullah looked at me and grinned, wrinkling his nose mischievously. “Prepare.”

I gasped. “I have married a heathen.”

“Aye. One who can wield a sword well.” Cullah nudged my side with his elbow.

I felt my frown start to break. He was laughing but I felt angry still. I did not want to let go of the anger and its hold on my heart. “Oh, leave me alone, Cullah.”

“I cannot do that. You’ve married a heathen and I’ll not
let
him leave you alone. I’d ask you to forgive me if I knew all I need forgiving for.” The horse snorted loudly.

I said, “There is a
list
.”

After a while he nodded and said, “Ah. Good thing I can’t read,” and nudged my side again.

*   *   *

Our days before Brendan’s arrival had rolled in and out, my heart full of this new life as wife. I learned much more about cooking for men, particularly making everything in greater quantities than I expected. I tended geese and goats and added chickens to my flocks. I found I liked hens and their dear sounds. To say we never disagreed would be a lie; of course we argued. But each day I found new things to admire about Cullah, things that in knowing made a great difference to me in how I felt about him, and had I not known, I would have been so much less in favor of my choice of him.

In between working at his trade, he worked on our house, ever building, planning, talking about this and that. I learned from him as if a school of woodcraft opened on our supper board each evening. I knew the differences between a raised panel and a cove molding, an ogee and a wooden Dutchman, and I knew to never, never set a plane upon anything not made of wood. He had a head for money and business and could estimate down to a farthing the cost of a paneled room, a barn, or a cradle, multiply a goodly sum for profit, reduce a percentage to slight his competition to win the project, and still make us a fine living.

For my own weaving I thought only in terms of cost against materials. A penny for a farthing, and waste was my mortal enemy. A needle that went dull I sharpened until it was too small to hold. When Cullah said I was not making enough profit for the hours I spent in embroidery, he told me how to account for each figure upon the yard, and how to price the fabric. Johanna was furious when first I raised my price, and threatened to buy from someone else, making me fear for our future. I wept bitter tears, thinking my husband had been too demanding, not understanding the nature of women’s business and that it was different from men’s businesses. The following day she sent a boy to my house with a message begging forgiveness, assuring me that my price would be met. Cullah seemed to me a simple craftsman, but perhaps I had judged too soon. Perhaps he knew people far better than I.

That night, I tucked our babe in his cradle and stoked up the fire while Cullah put the horse in the barn. He came up the stairs with icy hands, and when he formed himself next to me like two zigzags woven into the bed itself, our places so known that the ticking seemed to shape to us, his knees felt like blocks of ice against the backs of my legs. I sighed, listening to the rhythms of these two asleep, the babe’s soft snore promising to become more resonant with age.

I had left a candle to burn to the wick and to be cleaned out for a fresh taper in the morning, so there was still light near the bed and the reassuring smell of bayberry wax closeted my little family. I laid my hand upon my husband’s arm, knowing, as if my hand lay upon some wild animal, the fibers of him, the bone and tendon, the sun-roughened skin and thick hair on his forearm.

I had been lost. Adrift. Captive. Abandoned. Without cunning or force, Cullah MacLammond had claimed me and captured me. Contrary to his words, I was the one fairy-fettered by him. I was part of this place now. Irrevocably, unchanging, I had become part of a land of cold and snow and thatched houses just as those of which Ma and Pa had once told me of old England. This New England had claimed me. I had only to wait to see what we should be to each other.

CHAPTER 24

May 7, 1738

“The king is mad,” my brother said under his breath. “First he hires me to do a thing and then tries to hang me for doing it. Resolute, don’t embroider the bloody thing, just sew it up. And hurry.”

My hands trembled and my throat clenched. Much as plying my needles and thread were to my life, I had never sewn human flesh, swollen and running red upon my kitchen table. “They will not find you. Cullah built many a hiding place in this house.”

“Where is he?”

“Coming.”

“Did he see?”

“He saw.”

“Will he give me over to them?”

“My husband is a good man, August Talbot. He would never betray you. Be still. There, now the baby is crying. I cannot get the knot to stay.”

“Leave a tail on it and tie a square knot. Nothing fancy. I’m not a pillow slip.”

“Your skin is tanned and tough as a hide and the blood is so slick.”

“I hear horses.” He stood so quickly the three-legged stool tipped over and he pulled the needle from my fingers. It swung from his arm like a tassel.

I said, “Follow me,” and across the kitchen to the stairs to our basement we went, where, halfway down, I pushed aside a square panel in the wall. “Step up here. Watch your arm.”

“If it comes open I’ll hire another seamstress.”

I pushed the panel in place and got back to the kitchen, took the haunch of goat from its hook in the fireplace and flopped it onto the puddle of blood on my table. I had just set the stool aright as the door flew open. Three men dressed as yeomen charged into the room, short-swords drawn and ready. One of them said, “We’re looking for a ruffian, Mistress. A pirate who goes by the name Talbot.”

I gestured with a large knife. “I am not he,” I said. I began cutting into the haunch, mingling the goat blood with my brother’s. “You let in flies. Close the door.”

The answer took them so aback, I believe, that they stammered and looked to each other for a moment before he went on. “Goodwife, did you hear a horse go past?”

“Not a sound but my babe crying. Search the house if you want.” Indeed the plaintive wailing stirred my heart, but I had to continue my ruse of urgent meat cutting.

At that moment a bang and several small thumps came from the back of the house. The men hurried across the room toward the side door just as Cullah came through it and greeted them with a shout. “What’s this? Who are you men? Robbed in my own house?” He pushed past them carrying a shovel coated with mud. I knew he had been in the low section, burying the sack of gold for which August had nearly died. “Will you look at this, wife? Talmadge borrows my only iron shovel and returns it like this! I swear he’ll have the use of it no more.”

I saw his gaze pause at the pool of blood and the goat shank on the table, and I said, “Will we have enough firewood to get this cooked by suppertime? And look you there, take care what you are dropping on my floor, husband. Brendan is creeping now. As to what these men want with us, it seems they are looking for a lost horse.” Actually our son was walking, too, but I was playing a part, and I knew even if he came down the stairs he would do it backward on all fours.

After a few threats and questions, Cullah convinced them that he had been doing nothing more sinister than fetching his shovel, ill-used by a neighbor. The men left after warning us again to beware of rovers and picaroons traveling the countryside.

August stayed in his nook while the baby played, ate his porridge, was washed and dressed and put to bed. When at last the house was quiet, Cullah made a birdcall. August came forth. I set a plate of meat stew and beans before him, poured him a flagon of ale, and took a fresh loaf of bread from the coals.

That evening, by the light of a single candle, Cullah, August, Jacob, and I talked of how we would see August to some safe harbor out of the reach of colonial constabulary until he could hear from the minister in England and get his commission again. I felt proud of them both, and a little afraid of the meeting, as if I were pouring grease into a fire. They were both dangerous men.

“Of course you can stay,” Cullah said. “But it would be best to wear a farmer’s clothes and work our fields, if it’s to be for a while. People in Boston know you.”

August smiled. In the light, his grin made an old scar on his face shine like a ribbon of satin. “A farmer? Yes, a farmer.”

“You will still have to explain to the town council who this man is living with us,” I said. “No stranger may stay here without supplying a witness to his character.”

“You’ll do that for me, won’t you, sister?”

I smiled. My brother’s character was not something I wished to know too well. I loved him. I would hide him. Help him. To vouch for him with a clear conscience was another matter, but that, too, I would do.

“It’s still hard frost,” Jacob said.

Cullah said, “The ground will break soon. It’s the only other occupation that will explain the swarthiness of your face. Ressie, how many days until a full moon?”

It was not lost on me that I sat surrounded by villains of a sort, and full of child and nursing another by one of them. Only a handful of people living knew of Cullah’s identity as Eadan Lamont. I was not drawn to him for that. No, I loved Cullah for everything else he was, tender, courageous, a savior in times of terror, a willing bearer of the scars upon my heart. We fit each other like butter in a mold, pressed together; where one lacked the other excelled. My life was filled with learning to be a woodsman’s wife, owner of a farm, watching the moon for times to plant, to break ground, to harvest. I kept goats and geese, chickens and sheep. I raised flax and fruit trees. Most of all, I spent any moment I could at my wheels or my loom, spinning and weaving. The work had left its peculiar scars and calluses upon my hands. “Another five days,” I said.

That evening at our fireside, after Cullah left us to put the horse in the barn, August said, “I still find myself surprised at your house and home, Ressie. Cullah is a good man. I wish I knew what became of Patience.”

“I told you what became of her.”

“I meant I wished I knew whether she was happy. If she is not mistreated, I should be happy for her also.”

“As the wife of an Indian? I think mistreatment is her only lot. She chose it.”

He was silent long enough to make me less sure that he agreed with me and only wished not to argue. “There are women who refuse to marry at all.”

“I considered that.”

“Yet you chose to become a wife.”

“I did. Cullah—I loved him at once—he was honest and bright and steady.”

August smiled. “He reminds me of Pa.”

Tears flooded my eyes. The babe within me wriggled as if awakened by a great noise. “I had planned to marry a planter with a cane field.”

“This is better,” he said. After a long silence he said, “I had planned to marry a duchess with a merry eye.”

“What became of her?”

“Other men caught her eye, too. For all her wealth and charms aplenty, I would not be a pitied cuckold.”

“I will introduce you to a noble, honest woman.”

“You would sentence one of your friends to marriage to a seaman? No. I prefer to find home here with you, leave the sea when I should and the land when I must. I will be the bonniest uncle any children could ever have, and their benefactor when I am dead.”

I gave him blankets to make a bed by our fire. While he was busy, I said, absentmindedly, “One thing I know, our son will learn to read and write, so he can do more than make an
X
for himself. I will teach him myself, as Ma taught us.”

Cullah had returned and heard it. “Will you have him outreason his father?”

I paused before answering, as I had seen Cullah do at times, when he wanted to be sure to be heard without raising someone’s ire. “His father is intelligent and knows how to calculate things beyond my schooling. That our son could go to school I can only dream. How can one man’s
X
differ from another’s, without a witness? But a signature, that is your own hand. I can teach you that, and him, more, as well.”

“I’ll not have you teach me it.”