My Name is Resolute (69 page)

“The speckled hen hatched her clutch today. Twenty chicks.”

“Why are you talking of chickens when I am telling you the business is troubled?”

“Because your home is not troubled. We will overcome this, husband. We are so wealthy. You have provided all this and more, August has filled my shelves with goods to last our lives through, and your business will continue, too. Please sleep peacefully, husband. Please. Your war is over. You are home. I am here.” Even as I said that, I felt amazed at referring to myself as a stronghold for a weary soldier. I wanted him to protect me, not to need my hands for his safety.

Cullah blew upward against his hair. “I am worried.”

After a long time, when I could not think of any good answer, I said, “I love you.” I curled up next to him, and soon enough he was sleeping. I did not. I heard again and again his words “what would you die for?”

*   *   *

After Christmas 1758, ice hung from every tree limb, even from the poor cows’ noses as their breath froze within them. With snow a foot deep, one day I went to our larder and took stock of what we had left. Roland came to the door as I made a list, and asked me to come to their house for they still lived in Goody Carnegie’s place. Gwyneth was ill, he said, and wanted me to come.

When I arrived there, Gwyneth told me she had too soon dropped a babe. I wept with her, for it would have been my grandchild, yet it was so early, perhaps less than two months of life. Roland took a pickaxe to the graveyard, and though the ground was frozen solid, with setting a small fire for a couple of hours, he got a hole dug no bigger than a rabbit would use, but it was enough. It was buried in an unmarked grave. I would not let her watch while he did it, for Roland and I agreed it would be better were she not to even see the mark of his moving the ground. I did not know what other women did with such things, but it was done. He told me I might return to the house and make Gwenny some tea while he set the brush about and tossed some snow over the place so it would vanish into the rest.

Snow began anew, so it would not be difficult, I thought.

After a few minutes, Roland came to the house. He took off his hat and coat and sat by the fire, his face an image of despair. He said, “It is snowing more. Would you like us to walk you home, Mother?”

I smiled. Neither of us was comfortable with that title yet, I believed. “That is not necessary. Gwenny needs to rest a couple of days.”

“It would be better if she rests at your house.”

“Certainly you may come. What is the matter, Roland?
Ne mentez pas. Je vois que vous êtes inquiet.
Something is amiss,” I said.

“J’ai vu un homme dans un cape et un chapeau noir.”

“Roland,” Gwyneth said, “do not speak secretly to my mother.”

I stared into his eyes without looking at her. I believed he was trying to decide whether to tell her. If I knew my Gwenny, she would want information just as I would, and then could make up her own mind how to respond. But she was in a weakened condition and emotional with grief. I said, “He said there was a shadow by the graveyard. It frightened him but it was nothing.”

Roland repeated, “It was nothing.”

“Do you mean the man in the cape?” she asked. “The spirit of a man is there, looking for something or someone. When Barbara, First-Ben, and Grandan died, Brendan and I sometimes went down there. If you walk next to the rocks, a man passes by.”

I heard Roland sigh with relief. “You are not afraid?”

“No. His cloak brushes my side, and he does nothing but keep walking.”

I shared their nervous laughter.

*   *   *

The year’s first town meeting was held late in January of 1759. Benjamin had a sore throat so I stayed home. When Cullah returned I waited until the children slept and we were alone in bed before I asked, “What news of the meeting?”

“The king is mad,” he said.

“I meant something I had not heard before.”

“British ships have stopped five traders outside of Boston and commandeered both their goods and their crews. Captains who would not surrender were clapped in chains and their ships sunk. One was killed as he fought back.”

“Do you think August was among them?” I willed myself to dismiss the thought of him killed, though if there was one who would fight back, it would be my brother.

“I know no names of ships or men.”

“If we went to Boston, might we learn the names?”

“If I know your brother, though they have him in chains, it will not be for long. All the confiscated goods are sold at insane prices, and people are paying them. I cannot imagine a woman so desperate for perfume as one in Virginia I have heard about this day. Six pounds and ten for a bottle no bigger than a finger.”

I laughed with derision. “Ha. When perhaps a bath might serve the purpose better,” I added, and rolled over onto my side. “It was probably our beloved Mistress Spencer.”

He formed himself to me, his head raised above mine on his hand so that he could whisper, and said, “There is other news. I brought home a pamphlet for you to read in the morning when there is light. I have to return it tomorrow so the next family may read it. There will be a new tax now, on every tree I cut. Not enough that I break my own back or hire a man for sixpence to cut it, but I must pay a tax as if the king owned the tree itself though it is on unclaimed or private land where I have paid for a right to cut lumber.”

“That is ridiculous.”

“There is more. The British army is landed. They say there is too much snubbing of our noses at the Crown. They have put an extra five hundred men in Boston.”

I felt myself begin to tremble, but I tried to sound as if I cared not at all. “Boston? Is it so dangerous a place?” I thought of August. How long would he be able to skirt Wallace Spencer’s reach?

“In Boston, newspapers and pamphlets come out every week with articles about the army trampling the common rights of every British citizen. Someone sent a letter of complaint to the House of Lords. Their reply was to send more troops, with promise of a thousand more by the end of the year. No doubt they will live with us again.”

“This is ludicrous.”

He shrugged and said again, “The king is mad.”

*   *   *

By the first of March, Gwyneth and Roland’s new cottage was nearly finished. All that lacked were furnishings, but Cullah worked on what they needed from his shop. In April we received a parcel from August. It took two men to lift it from the cart and set it inside my door. “Will ye have me cleave ’er open, Missus?” the driver asked.

Just knowing August was enough to make me wary of that. “No, thank you. My husband will take care of it when he comes home. Would you have food and cider?”

He smiled. “Thankee, kindly, Missus. ’Ow ’bout you, boy? Want to eat? ’E don’t talk much, now. Our Davey boy ’ere is good and honest, though ’e needs someone to ’old a steady ’and on ’is rudder. A bit loosened in the noggin, ’e is.” The man accepted a plate and took the bread, formed it into a roll around the meat, and passed to Davey. He made a similar roll for himself and they both drank heartily after wolfing down the food. As he finished, I took two pennies from my pocket and offered them to him. “No, thankee, kind lady. I been well paid afore-hand. ’Is lordship what asked me to deliver these goods ’as instructed me to not accept your money but with delicate thanks, as ’e ’as give me a week’s wages to do this ’ere.”

“He is a generous fellow, that,” I said.

“’E is, indeed, Missus.” The fellow and his helper went on their way.

Cullah returned home to find the crate sitting in the parlor doorway. I could not move it. “Have you ordered something?” he asked.

“My brother sends his regards, and apparently his worldly goods. It took two men to get it there. I do not know what it is, Cullah, but I trow you must open it right there and we shall unload it a piece at a time.”

“Do you think he smuggled himself to us?” Cullah took a wedging tool and worked at the nails until he got the top off the box. The first layer was a sealed paper flat upon a woven blanket. He handed me the letter. “Better read that,” he said.

Gentle R, I trust you have means to hold this until the blackbird calls. Keep it as clean as can be managed. There is something in the smaller casket for your house. I will come for it. Forever your humble and affectionate servant, —A.

Cullah raised the blanket. We looked in, then at each other without a word. Below the blanket was an artillery piece. A cannon, so new it shone. A small iron version of those I had seen on the ships, but new, unused, and cushioned in wood chips, wrapped with rope for lifting. He tugged on it. “I will have to get Roland.”

It took both of them with Jacob helping to get it from the crate and into the parlor by the fireplace where it sat like a monster with a single great eye, staring at us.

I asked, “Should it not be in the barn?”

Cullah said, “He said to keep it clean, which means the house. You wouldn’t want it to rust, after all. How about the basement?”

“You cannot expect me to trip over that thing daily.”

Jacob said, “Put it into the false wall.”

“I would have to get it up the stairs,” Cullah said. “What is your brother thinking? British soldiers could arrive tomorrow with no warning. It is a cannon and it is iron!”

“Perhaps we should have left it in the crate?” Roland asked.

Cullah grimaced. “We would have had to step around it until he comes for it. That could be weeks.”

“Or years,” Jacob added. “Is there still room beside the hearth for the inglenook you meant to build?”

“Aye, there is.”

“Roll it over next to the wall and build over the top of it.”

Cullah’s eyes widened and he smiled, even winked at me. “Ah, that’s my pa. Fine idea, there.” Cullah did not go to work in town the next morning. Instead he set about making a new settle built into the wall beside the fireplace. It had to be high enough to put the cannon under it and close the lid to make a seat.

“I know you know your work,” I said. “But the wood in this room has been here for years. The wood you are using is new. Look at the framing against the floor.” There the green wood looked almost cream colored against the aged hickory floor.

He cocked his head this way and that. “You’re a clever lass, my Ressie. I will pull off the old trim and use it against the floor. A little black paint on the rest of it will do to cover up the newness, and we’ll scuff it up a bit, too.”

Just as he said that, Benjamin came into the room and asked, “Pa? Why do we have a cannon? Who sent it to us? Are we going to shoot it?”

Cullah looked at me, stunned. “Well, he’s not a lad anymore, then. Get your sister and we will have a talk.”

“Oh, Cullah,” I whispered when the boy went for his sister. “What if they tell other children?”

“We must convince them both not to do that. I think there is no other way but honesty, at least as much as they can bear. And then, we shall appeal to them with our trust. Perhaps a bit of fear. If they are made of good fiber, they will have courage. If they are not, we can do nothing but hope the other children think they are lying.”

He sat them down and explained as well as any could that their uncle’s business was sometimes dangerous. That the high seas were full of pirates who meant to murder and steal, and that to be safe, all ships carried cannons. Uncle August had bought a cannon for his ship, and he was on his way to get it, but until he came, we could not speak of it.

“Why can we not speak of it?” asked Dorothy. “It is stirring to have it. I want it to
pah-boom
!” She clapped her hands.

I interjected, “Dolly, it is indeed stirring to have it. If you tell anyone we have it, though, the pirates might come to get it and steal you away, make you a slave and beat you, just as in the stories I told you.” I saw horror on my children’s faces, but I felt no guilt for causing it, for this was all our lives in the balance. Now knowing about the cannon, they had also to know how dangerous it would be for word to get out of this room about it.

“Even my friend Isbeth?” Dolly asked.

“Yes, even Isbeth. No one else must know. It is our secret. A desperate, stirring secret.” Even as I said that, I began to feel a mortal fear that she would not be convinced to refrain from the childish joy of telling a secret.

Benjamin said, “I shall never tell. You may count on me.”

Dolly nodded, adding, “Me, too.”

I forced myself to smile as if I had perfect confidence. “Excellent,” I said. “Now, both of you put on your hats and go collect eggs. I think I shall make some custard tonight. Do not come back until you have every egg in that henhouse.” As they headed for the door I called out, “Do not forget to take some to your sister!”

That evening, Benjamin said, “Ma? Pa? I have a plan.”

We looked at each other then faced our wee son.

He went on. “I know it is hard for little’uns to keep a secret and our Dolly is prone to tell things.”

Dolly made a face at him. “I never told about you getting on the barn roof.”

My mouth opened and Cullah said, “On the roof? Boy, you might have fallen. You’d be killed if you fell from it. Did you not think of that?”

Benjamin sighed hard and rolled his eyes. “I did, sir. And I did not fall off. There is a place to stand that is flat. I could see a thousand miles up there. About the secret. I have told Dolly that we have a pact about the thing and never to speak the word”—he whispered—“‘cannon.’ If ever she wants to say the—ahem, thing—in our inglenook, she is sworn to give me a high sign by touching her bonnet twice. I will return it if all is clear. If it is not clear, I give her a low sign, touching my elbow, and she will know that we both know a secret and are to keep still without speaking of it.”

Cullah said, “That is an excellent plan. Teach us the signs so we will know, too.” So, my children came up with a better way than we had, to foil the pirates with which I had frightened them, and to foil themselves against letting out our secret. “Now,” Cullah said, “show me how you got onto the barn roof. I feel, just as such a clever boy as you, I too might like to see a thousand miles.”