My Name is Resolute (63 page)

One of the magistrates seemed to be staring, not at her but at August. I whispered to him, “Will I get to tell them the true incident?”

“Just wait,” he replied.

The first man spoke again. Now I saw he was the lawyer representing Serenity. He reiterated everything she said. I winced as the magistrates nodded as if it were the truest case they had ever heard. The second man rose again and made different remarks sounding more as if I had been wronged and acted on impulse. “Who is he?” I asked August.

“Your lawyer.”

“Did you hire him?”

He turned to me, cutting his eyes at an angle. “No,” he mouthed.

“Who, then?”

“Sh-sh.”

One of the magistrates crooked a finger at me. “Goodwife MacLammond, is it? Yes, Goodwife. Please come and sit in the witness chair.”

August led me to the seat, still warm from Serenity’s broad beam. “Yes, your lordship?” I said.

“We are not lords. You will address this assembly as ‘Your Honors’ or ‘Honorable Sirs.’ Now, please answer to this assembly. First, what church do you attend?”

“First Church, Your Honors.”

“And do you tithe?”

“When there is coin coming in, Your Honors, but sometimes my husband and I have been paid in sacks of grain or lambs. It is not always perfectly divisible; I cannot divide a single lamb, but make effort to account fairly, with some to the poor fund.”

“Have you ever attended a Quaker assembly? What about papist? This charge says you cast spells of a pagan nature and know all kinds of chants and are familiar with diverse concoctions of the Roman Catholic Church. That you had been known, when you abided with the Roberts family, to pray to candles. How do you answer?”

I touched Cullah’s white cockade at my throat for strength. I hoped I could answer tenderly enough that they would hear my words. “Honorable Sirs, some of you were present when first I came to Lexington. You know that I escaped with my life and nothing else from a French convent in the Canadas where I had been taken as a child by Indian captors. A child learns what she is taught, but I never prayed to candles, Your Honors. I prayed to the Lord God. I was taught to speak French and Latin. I learned prayers in Latin, sir. Latin is not a language of the Roman Church; it is taught in Harvard along with Greek. When my escape was made, I was introduced to First Church by Lady Spencer, here in this room. I have never willingly attended any other.”

“Did you throw apples at Mistress Spencer?”

“One apple, Your Honors.”

One of the magistrates sank his head into his hand and clutched at his mouth with his fingers as if deep in thought, or perhaps, I thought, trying to hide laughter as I had done as a child. He was next to ask, “And did you curse at her and cast spells or at any time threaten her with cunning words or charms?”

I thought of my loom blessing, such an ordinary part of each day. I decided to lie. “No, Your Honors. I know no cunning words or charms. Goody Spencer threatened me, sir, and gave insults though her pretense was to apologize for her husband’s having taken liberties with my daughter when we were guests in their home.”

“What insults? Pray let us have an accurate statement. The gentlemen of this court are not so immured to the evils of this world that they need fear what passes between goodwives in a squabble.”

I thought over their words. They were likely to be more offended by the Roman Church than they were by what I considered the greatest offense, accusing me of being fit only for slavery, so I chose my words. “If you please, Your Honors, after acknowledging her husband’s fondling of my child, Goodwife Spencer said it was good that I had been taken to a Romanish convent, beaten and deprived and forced to learn that catechism, being taught to weave so I could become a crafter and a slave rather than assume the titled position I was heir to. She said had I not been forced to weave in a French Catholic convent I would have been a slut.” Gasps and fluttering filled the room behind me. “She said God had sent me to the convent because I was not fit for gentle society though she knew and accepted me, the daughter of a plantation master, as her landed superior a few years ago. It was her mother who threw me from their house when I lost my fortune to the Crown. Goody Spencer insulted me most grievously, Honorable Sirs. I picked up the apple. I threw it and said, ‘If God sent me to the papist Catholics to be taught weaving because I was not equal to you in grace, then God sends you this apple for you are not equal to me in manners.’ Those precise words.”

One of the magistrates who until that point had seemed asleep, roused himself and leaned forward, saying, “What about the despoiling of Mistress Spencer’s gown?”

“She made as if to faint as she left my house, and sat in the mud. The four coachmen had some struggle lifting her into the coach. It was mud, and not blood, upon her gown. Have her produce the gown and it shall be proven.”

Serenity’s lawyer exclaimed outrage at my lies and deceit. My lawyer said nothing. The magistrate in the center of the table looked from me to others around the room. Then he said, “We will confer. There will be silence in this room.”

All the men at the table began writing on papers before them. They passed them up and down the row. Each read the others’ opinions. They wrote yet again, and the same thing occurred. Finally the chief magistrate said, “Goodwife MacLammond? Approach this table and stand before us. Turn and face this room, the members of whom represent your community, whose laws of peace, sobriety, and sanctity this body is charged and incorporated to protect. Goodwife MacLammond, by your own admission you are found guilty of bodily harm and insult to the person of Mistress Wallace Spencer.” Tears dripped down my face. The salt burned against my reddened cheeks as I stared at the floor before me. He went on, “However, this body finds that the words used against you to demean you and slander your character, though they were not heard by others, were of a nature to bring a person to their own defense.”

Serenity gasped and Wallace stood. “Your Honors,” he said, his voice forced into a guileless melody, “you cannot mean you disbelieve my wife’s account?”

Serenity’s lawyer stood and touched Wallace’s arm to quiet him. The lawyer said, “If the accused is guilty, it is necessary for you to pass a sentence.”

The magistrate glared at the lawyer from under great brushy brows. “If the plaintiff will remain silent, we shall do that.”

The lawyer representing me stood, too. He held a paper in his hand. “Your Honors, I believe there is more to this examination than has reached the ears of the magistrates here convened.”

“One moment, Mr. Charlesworth.” I looked up, startled. It was Daniel Charlesworth, the clerk with the withered arm at Foulke’s, a man I had known in Boston so many years ago. Now in full wig and robes, his face softer and heavier with age, it was he. I raised my head and stopped weeping. The magistrate said, “Goodwife MacLammond, for taking action against a woman of high standing with a piece of rotted fruit you are sentenced to one hour bound head and hands in the public pillory which stands hard by this building. This sentence will commence upon leaving this room. There you will consider your temper and your tongue and contemplate Proverbs, chapter fifteen, verse one, ‘A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger.’ And, in consideration of that very proverb, though your action was of violence that cannot be overlooked, this body of magistrates believes that your anger was kindled in such a manner that to any righteous woman must have been outrageous. Therefore, your sentence on record is one hour but the time to be served is reduced to ten minutes. The claim is so adjudged. Now, what is it, Mr. Charlesworth?”

“It should be known, Honorable Sirs, that the claimant’s spouse, Lord Wallace Spencer, has filed a deed of severalty on the property owned by Master and Mistress Cullah MacLammond. It would be to the Spencers’ great advantage to cause her such embarrassment that the family would leave, deserting the home and lands forfeit to an attachment such as this.” I turned to Wallace, my eyes wide. Would he stop at nothing?

“Let me see that,” the magistrate said. Mr. Charlesworth handed him the paper. “I see. Well, sir. This is ridiculous. Everyone knows Miss Talbot was willed that farm by Goodwife Carnegie, and then by marriage, she and Mr. MacLammond have owned the Carnegie farm nearly twenty years.” He tore the paper asunder and said, “Let us have no more of that. Mr. Spencer? I suggest you take your delicate wife and yourself back to Virginia, where you may be quite better received than in Lexington. Despite the respect and admiration we feel for your good and generous mother, this society prefers our own. This court is dismissed. Bondsman, take Mistress MacLammond to the stocks.”

I went willingly. America Roberts followed, turned her face, and would not speak to her sister. August and Daniel Charlesworth followed her. The bondsman took my arm and led me to the platform behind the building where stood the reeking pillory. I looked upon that instrument of shame as if it were to be my rack of torture. People did die in such things. Crowds might laugh or taunt, but I had known them to become churned up to throw stones, or eggs, rotted fruit, decaying dead animals, dung, even pumpkins if the pilloried person were hated enough. One time an idiot had been sentenced to serve twenty-four hours after being found in some carnal act—I know not what of a certainty, but it involved an animal—and as he stood in the stocks he was stoned to death.

I climbed the steps. A crowd assembled, growing moment by moment. I wondered if the smell coming from the place was emanating from the platform or the crowd. Did they carry rotted fruit and dead cats or did I smell the remnants of some past judgment, still oozing under the planks even in the cold? America moved ahead of me and put her shawl over the rough wood on the neck trough. I removed my bonnet but left my cap in place to cover my missing hair, and handed her the bonnet.

The bondsman took the shawl and gave it back to her, saying, “Not allowed.” He thrust my hands through the holes and shoved my head toward the groove meant for the neck. After he closed the wide yoke, pushed the tenon through its hole and bolted it, he pulled off my gloves!

I moaned aloud against my resolve to stay silent no matter what occurred. My blistered hands had bled and oozed as I wrung them in the hearing. The cloth stuck to them, forming a crust that he had torn open. They bled anew now, and it appeared to the people below that he had somehow injured me. Someone threw an egg at the man and it splattered the back of his coat with foul-smelling contents. That started a clamor, and my knees weakened, expecting that to be but the first of many such insults aimed at me.

I could see nothing but the gray boards on the platform. I heard boots upon the boards, felt the vibration of someone moving around. Was the bondsman preparing something else? Did he carry a whip? Would he remove my cap, too, revealing more shame? To be a woman without hair was to be an object of ridicule forever. No matter that the back of it was done in a roll of braids, the front was gone, blistered under the cap, making me look like an elderly man with a natural tonsure of receding hair. I panted, bracing myself. All of a sudden, the crowd quieted. Someone draped a coat or a cloak across my back. The garment had just been worn and removed by some person; it felt warm as an embrace. I waited. Silence grew until I heard my own heart beating.

Then I heard someone say, “Time is completed.”

There had been not one stone, not a potato, not a voice of derision. The bolt was opened, the tenon pulled, and the yoke raised. I lifted my head, my neck gone stiff and painful. Oh, la! I stared straight at the back of Lady Spencer herself, supported by a walking stick in one hand and Daniel Charlesworth by her other arm! She had stood on the platform in front of me so that no one dared throw a thing.

I turned around. August had kept guard of my backside. Rather than his more sober tricorn hat, he had donned his captain’s hat with its gold braid and plume, and thrown his bright red coat across my shoulders. He faced the crowd a moment more, then turned to me and smiled. Across his brocade waistcoat, two wide leather belts bristled with three pistols and a dagger. At his side hung a tasseled cutlass, partly unsheathed. His hand rested upon the hilt of it, and he cocked it, but he held the other hand out to me and I took it, marveling in the size and strength of it.

“All is well,” he said, loudly enough for the people to hear. “The people of Lexington, I find, are most congenial and quick to forgive small offenses.”

People in the crowd said, “Aye, aye,” and a few clapped. Then August held out his other arm to Lady Spencer, who took it, to the gasps of people below. Daniel Charlesworth took America Roberts’s arm, and the five of us left the place in Lady Spencer’s gig. I sat in silence, feeling stunned relief. August played the gallant with Lady Spencer with perfect deference and decorum, despite that he looked capable of rendering asunder any who stood in his way.

At Lady Spencer’s house, she called for wine to be served in the parlor, and though I sat with them, I felt separated and shattered still, as if I moved behind a gauze, as though everything were too polished and too loud, affronting my senses.

Daniel told us how he came to be a lawyer in full, now, and that Lady Spencer had sent for him to come from Boston, with little knowledge other than what August had given her on Saturday. By today, Monday, Daniel had come to my rescue. He had queried some friends and found out about the suit to take my land, as that was what had postponed Serenity’s charges as late as they were, else it would have happened in a trice.

“Why would Wallace do that?” I asked.

Daniel smiled with one corner of his mouth raised wryly. “He wants that land, as do many others who believe the old stories about it. The Carnegie place used to belong to someone named Goodman Smythe. A common enough name that it means nothing. The rumor was that the name was falsely used, that he had been a pirate and knew Edward Teach and was of the same caliber, and that Smythe had buried treasure on the place. All accounts, though, were that he worked diligently and as hard as any farmer to try to make good of it. He never lived higher than his farm allowed, which was quite modest.”