My Name is Resolute (53 page)

I bridled inside at his words. His pride was hurt by such a simple thing. This was a mere trifle in the fabric of our lives, and I would not have him angry over it if I could. “Then I shall not if you do not wish it. You took dancing lessons to escort me to a country dance. A lesson in signing your name is about contracts and business. Far less important than dancing.”

“Leave it be, Resolute.”

“Well and aye, then.” I would not argue with him over our table, nor did I want to exchange more about it in front of my brother. I put the babe back in his bed, poured the men more cider, and me some ale. Afterward the men laughed and joked while I lit candles then cleaned the trenchers.

*   *   *

We named our second son Benjamin. Every time I knew another birthing was before me, I wondered if this time I should breathe my last. It serves no woman to look upon her life with much expectation. Women as well as men may be felled by accident or by disease, but no woman asks a man to risk his life and the lives of his children just to bear them. Men believe that their strength is in their sinews, mastery of trade or horsemanship, and skill with a sword or pistol. Some would say their brawn is displayed in witty reasoning and conversation, while women know, be she queen or fishwife, that her greatest strength is in her heart. She lays down her life to bring forth a child, and then rises up and does it again. My brother congratulated me on the effort which elicited the screams he had heard, along with my surviving what he, with complete aplomb, called torture worthy of any rack.

By the light of the first spring moon, August worked side by side with Cullah and Jacob, planting corn and other vegetables, flax, barley, and oats. At the end of the northern field, the men worked with shovels around some object buried in the ground. Something round and heavy, that clanged when struck by the spade. It was a bell. Buried deep, it was not large, probably from a ship. The clapper was rusted away. In the mound left at the mouth of the bell lay a rotted leather pouch. Cullah laid it in my hands. I coaxed the bag to open, but it was so hard stuck it would not give to gentle prodding. I pulled it to find inside a little piece of leather, on it, two
X
s, below them, a smear of brown.

“Is that blood?” I asked, with the babe suckling under a shawl.

Jacob looked at it this way and that. “I think it is. Two people signed their
X
and made a blood oath, and laid this bell atop it. It meant something to them but you’d have to find someone who knew the Carnegie family to explain it, if there are any left.”

August made a face and said, “There’s a body buried somewhere about, I’d wager. Someone swore in blood to keep a secret, and that usually means a murder.”

“Ah, bury it back,” said Cullah.

“No,” I said. “Bury the oath, if it pleases you. I want the bell. Put it by the back door and I shall clean it.”

“What do you want with a rusted bell?”

“I can call you in for supper by use of a mallet and this bell.”

“Ah, woman. It will sound like you’re calling a church meeting. Besides, I am no farmer to be in a field all year. I go back to my craft soon as we get this planted.”

I winked at him and turned, going back to the house, sure that he would bring it for me. That evening he brought the bell, cleaned of all soil, and other things that he had found buried in the field. Five cannonballs, an iron hook with part of a key still on it, a metal ring about five inches in diameter, and a two-and-a-half-foot-long cannon without a frame or end. It was a piece that I knew came from a ship.

I laughed and asked, “Cullah? Where is the booty? No chest of gold?”

August froze in place. “Are you saying it is gone?”

Cullah said, “Your box is safely tucked under that beech tree at the bend in the stream. Your sister has a sense of humor.”

A few evenings later, when Cullah came in for supper, we had not sat long before we heard a stirring from our animals. Just like people, they like to settle in after dark. Geese make a good alarm, for no one enters a yard without their sounding off. The goats added their bleating to the noise, and soon the whole barnyard was awake and calling. Someone knocked on the front door. Jacob stood, pulling a small dagger from his boot, then sat again, with it hidden by his arm. August and Cullah stepped into the shadows of the pantry and pulled swords from the lintel, waiting. Jacob nodded. I opened the door.

A man in a tricorn hat with a long black cloak nodded at me as he removed the hat. His face was as dark as an African but his features were sharp and chiseled rather than rounded. His long, straight hair was pulled back into a tail and tied with a fresh ribbon. “Evening, madam. The Guinea sent me here.”

I knew that was a code connected to my brother’s business. I did not like that he worked in secrecy and darkness, but I had grown used to it. “Come in, sir. Will you have supper?” I asked.

The messenger looked at Jacob and asked, “Is there a man about? Another man, I mean?”

August stepped into the candlelight. He did not try to hide the sword in his hand. “There is another, sir. You look fresh from the sea. How goes the wind, sir?” he asked.

“Fair and steady. East by northeast; freshening.”

August put forth his left hand, the right still ready with a sword. “Who sent you?”

“The Guinea, sir,” he said, clasping August’s left hand in his own left hand.

“And his name?”

The man grinned, showing a full set of very white teeth. “They that know him call him ‘Guinea.’ He said you would know him by another name. I am to hear it from you before we finish here.”

“Would it be Tig the Fiddler?”

“Aye, it could. Captain Talbot would know the more of it.”

“Signed his papers as Carlo Delfini.”

“Aye.” The man handed him a folded paper. As August flipped it open and read it, the messenger pulled forth another paper. “You’ll be wanting this, Captain Talbot.”

August read with concentration. His commission as a privateer had been reinstated. The dark man handed him a pouch, too. August upended it and poured a stack of gold coin into his palm. He selected two of the largest coins and gave them to the messenger, saying, “Wait for me outside.”

“At your service, sir.” The man placed the coins into the lining of his hat, put it on his head, and without so much as a nod to the rest of us, closed the door behind himself.

August disappeared almost as quickly, and reappeared from the hidden alcove in the stairway wearing his own clothing, short breeches and stockings, a flared coat I had cleaned and patched, and a new linen blouse replacing the rough woolen farmer’s garb. He looked every bit the sea captain. He laid his broad cockaded hat on a stool and put the rest of the coins back into the pouch. That, he presented to Cullah. “For your help and house, friend.”

“I’ll not be paid for doing a good for my family. Or for anyone.”

“’Tis not payment. You’ve done as you could for me. I do as I can for you. Please.” August shook the sack toward him. It struck me then, the difference in the two. August was tall and lean, dashing and dark, sleek and swift as an adder. Cullah was wide shouldered, broad chested, formidable in a fight, like a bull enraged. When they had dressed alike, my heart had told me they were alike. I knew that judgment was flawed.

Cullah took the gold and then August was gone into the night. I watched him ride away with the same mix of longing and anger I felt every time he left me. I felt cross. It seemed to me that what I wanted most in the world was having everyone always to abide with me. “Cullah, you must be careful with that.”

“I will. Here. Put it where you hide the other money. And count it first.”

I opened the bag. Without pouring it out I saw at least a dozen gold crowns and more than that of doubloons. “It is at least twenty pounds. You told me you needed a new blade for your saw.”

“Two men in town owe me for cabinetwork. I will wait until they pay. This will go toward our sons’ schooling if we leave it be.”

As we readied for bed, Cullah lay in the darkness, his face searching the ceiling. I crawled in next to him, but his arms did not reach for me. “Good night, my love,” I whispered, and rolled to face the wall. I was exhausted. I would have had him if he had reached for me, but if he would not, I would sleep hard.

“Resolute?”

“Yes?”

“Write it, then. The letters that make my name. I watched him read that paper. It is important. I have no time for schooling. Never have. But you write it on something I can carry to the shop. I will learn it.”

In a few days, Cullah came home, puffed himself up, and said, “I signed an order for seasoned hickory today.”

As the meaning of that dawned in my heart, I swelled with pride for him. “Fine. Very fine, husband.”

Cullah added a room for my brother’s use alone, should he ever have need again of a safe harbor this far inland. By the time Benjamin was six months of age, our house had eight rooms including a kitchen under the same roof, not counting the lower stony level where the loom sat.

*   *   *

In the summer of 1739, I lay thrashing and sweating in our bed on a mercilessly hot night. Some, I have heard, plead for death, preferring its quiet knell to even one more hour of childbed. By dawn, when the world had a gentler coolness and a light breeze came in the windows, the babe was born. A woman child, at last, I thought, with great swelling of my heart.

Cullah was beside himself with her wee presence. He stared at the little mite as if he had never imagined himself the father of anything but an army of brawn and bone. Jacob marveled at the fineness of her fingers, long and straight, as they explored his face and clutched his hair. He wanted to name her Mary Barbara, after his mother, but that made me cry. So, in a spell of quiet when all the children slept and the three men in my life sat upon the foot of my childbed, I told them stories of my captivity, and how Birgitta had called me “Mary” by her own whim. I could not allow my first daughter to bear the name Mary.

For almost a week we bantered about names, though we had worked on that through my expectation, too. At last I said, “Eugenia Gwyneth is my choice.”

Cullah put his hand against his chin. At length he said, “It is a good name. A fine one.” He picked her up, as tiny in his hands as a loaf of bread. “Gwyneth? Eugenia? Gwenny, my love? Wee darling, Eugenia Gwyneth. Besides, she likes it. She smiled. And don’t tell me any prattle that it was just her tummy bubbling that made her do it. Yes, she’s our wee Gwenny. It suits her ladyship fine.”

“Eadan, you are smitten beyond all reason.” I adored him for the way he adored Gwyneth. Yet, fear clutched at the back of my neck as if it were a hand, or a strike from old Birgitta’s goat stick. Best never love a child too much. Best never think they are yours to keep. This one was not a week on this earth, and might be snatched away from us any moment. I knew so many women, now, who suffered the loss of so many, sometimes three or four children carried away in a single night by some scourge or other. As Cullah placed Gwyneth in my arms I snuggled her to me and kissed her perfect little bald head. Kissed her pinched-shut eyes. No, I will not love you, I promised myself. The women in my life whom I have loved, even those I have not, have all left me for death’s dark shadows. I whispered, “Gwyneth, leave me not.” The babe smiled again. “And be not so pretty a thing that your father’s heart breaks never to mend when you do.”

I studied her little form with apprehension that I had not felt at the births of my two sons, for though in the years of their births the chief source of our income had been the making of small coffins, we had been left unscathed. This year of Gwenny’s arrival was a year of no plagues, no fevers or distempers other than mild cases of quinsy or colds. That alone filled me with dread. This delicate woman-child had no reason to die, had been born with a shield, I thought. At least for now.

At least for now.

*   *   *

By May of 1746, when I was twenty-seven, we had five children. Brendan, Benjamin, Gwyneth, Barbara, and Grandan Stuart, a wee boy with his father’s dark hair already thick upon his head at birth. Our lives were peaceable though I was always tired. When I looked back at those days later, I wonder I ever made it through a day. My house was never clean. No furniture went without scratches. The winters were long indeed, with the children confined indoors. Yet, never did I feel as haggard and as filthy as I had living in the Haskens’ house. My children’s clouties were cleaned daily, and Cullah built a walk-through to get to the barn where we boiled and soaped daily.

We heard of Indian attacks, but they were always some distant place. New France had spread to the west, but none of that affected my family. We feared little, and life was pastoral, gentle, broken only by a squabble among the children.

My husband and I had rare cause to disagree, but then, we had rare time to speak to one another. Other than my consternation at Jacob adding some tale or other of ghosts or fairies to frighten the children into being good, I felt happy. I wove when I had time, simple cloth for children’s clothing, though I made myself notes of things I had seen or imagined and wished to try. A silken weft on threes. A line of indigo, heavy-twisted, on tens. I spun if the children were quiet or asleep, though sometimes I fell asleep at my wheel. I even learned to knit in my sleep, I believed, often surprised at what I had done though my mind felt no more lively than a turnip.

One summer’s day Cullah came in the door and said, “Wife, bring the children here to me.” I thought at the time it was an odd thing because every day, unless one of them was asleep, they came running to him when he returned from working. Grandan was nursing at the time, and I had long ago left off covering myself unless there were strangers in the house. The baby slupped at my breast and for a moment Cullah lost his grim expression and smiled, though it was but a moment. “From now on, your grandfather Jacob is coming to live in this house. He is getting old, and I want him to be here.”

“What is wrong?” I asked.

He turned away as if there were some answer in the stones of the fireplace. “I’m worried. He’s old. Some preacher walking the streets today spoke of doom. The Highlanders are gone. Not just defeated, butchered to the last. Culloden field. The British have killed us. My God. There is not a clan left, Ressie. Not a man left alive. Not a babe.”