My Name is Resolute (74 page)

“Did she now?”

“Eadan,” I whispered, as we walked along, “that was a message, too.”

We stopped at a stall to look at straw baskets a woman had for sale. “Have we need of a basket, wife?” he asked me. He raised his voice. “How much is this one?”

I said, “It seems we have much to carry and I shall not know how to take it all.” I was sure by my tone that he knew I meant I could not take his subterfuge.

The woman at the stand put down her basketwork as if having customers annoyed her. She took the basket from Cullah’s hands, turned it about, and said, “Two shillings and sixpence.”

He answered, “That’s a fair price, I suppose. Have you any others at that rate?”

“Choose the one you want and I shall give you a price, sir.”

“Would you sell them all for twenty-one pounds?”

She carried on as if he had just haggled her out of the sixpence. “It’ll be three shillings, then. And that’s one got buttons on it. It’ll do nicely for your lady, there.” She smiled at me.

Buttons? What basket was made with buttons? I frowned in return and tried to force myself to retain composure if I could not smile, for here, suddenly, I knew it was some kind of code they spoke to each other.

“Three shillings, then,” Cullah replied. “That seems fair.” He reached into his pocket and put the coins in her rough hands. I cringed as his fingers touched her palm, so blackened with her work that her fingertips and chopped nails seemed to have chewed their way through filth to emerge rusty-pink from black gloves.

We walked on. “Three shillings for a two-shilling basket?” I asked. “Twenty-one pounds for the lot?”

Cullah took the basket from my hands and then said, “Hold this, dear wife,” and handed it back. Then he removed his kerchief from his neck and folded it, placing it in the basket. As he did so he leaned close to me. “The extra coin is payment for her services. The woman is a widow and sells only a few baskets a week. Eating is a good inducement to keeping loyal. Excellent company means that there will be British officers at the Reveres’ soiree. Twenty-one is the wharf where a ship laden with buttons will dock some night this week. Buttons are kegs of black powder. The basket seller will pass the word to a man in the committee named MacGregor, a Presbyterian from Enniskillen. Now you know all. Are you satisfied?” Cullah took the basket from my hands as if we had performed some ritual. “There,” he proclaimed a bit too loudly. “This will work wonderfully. Fine purchase, wife.”

Satisfied? I was struck dumb.

“Now, since we are on the subject,” he went on, his voice barely audible. “It is high time you and I had an understanding, wife. Though my pa and I came from supporting King James and the Jacobite cause, we, you and I, and our kin, are Protestants. You must know your own father was, never mind the rest back in Lincolnshire.”

“I know not what my father believed. I know not what I believe.”

“I need your promise that your belief includes something broader. In the Lexington Committee of Safety, there are Christian men, churchmen who are Romanish but hiding it, some who are Quakers and hiding it, two Lutherans, hiding also; some are, good God, Baptists, and some are drunkards. There is even one who claims himself to be a disciple of Charles Wesley, and was transported here for that. It matters not how they call upon their God. It matters that we trust each other.”

“Trust and watch,” I added.

He smiled at me but the look in his eyes was of guile, not of humor. “Do you know something I should know?”

“I know this, husband. When it was convenient, I was Catholic. You are paying that woman to keep quiet? That tells you nothing about her loyalty. Whoever comes with a larger purse will have it next. When it bought me another biscuit, I learned my Catholic prayers and said them cheerfully. If I had been held by Gypsies or Indians I would have done no less. If a child without real malice can do such a thing, a man or woman with a motive can do more.”

He squinted as if that were difficult to hear, then picked up the handles of the basket and we started down the road. He said no more. We walked slower. I began to hum to myself, the tune of “If I Wast a Blackbird.”

“Do not sing that song,” Cullah said, “unless you are in danger.”

“That is a sign, too? You men have some things to learn. The women I know have more subtle signs.”

“Well and aye.”

I was more than a little surprised to see Rupert, Lady Spencer’s butler, answer the door at what was now August’s house. He was liveried in quite a different style, and in colors that shot a pain through my heart. I recognized my father’s colors of the coat and our coat of arms in an embroidered crest upon his waistcoat. He did not recognize me at first, but when he did, he suppressed a smile. “The master of the house has asked me to tell all callers he is not at home, sir and madam. If you will please follow me, I will inquire for you.”

We followed him into what had been the grand parlor. Where Lady Spencer had done the place in muted colors, August had had colorful paintings, upholstered couches, and velvet drapes brought in. A huge rug made of two animal skins sewn head to head filled the center and the bold black and white stripes of the creature seemed to point in all directions to the four corners of the room. Animal tusks crossed over portraits of Spencer ancestors. A breastplate from a suit of armor with a pole-sized piercing in one side hung at the mantel flanked by Chinese vases and heavy silver candelabras. Garish war shields and crossed spears had been mounted over the doorway. Everything seemed exotic and luxurious, as one might expect of the home of a man who traveled to the farthest reaches of the world. At one end of the room, rolls of papers drifted back and forth upon a massive desk-table, moved by some unfelt draft.

I waited by the front window. Cullah was in a far corner, inspecting a cabinet. “This chest is fine,” he said, pointing to the piece before him. “That one over there, worthless. It should not even be in this room. Look at those tenons visible. Anyone should know to shave up the grain and lap it over. But this, this is a work of mastery. The finials are so small they might topple from it.”

“And they do, regularly,” came a voice. It was August. “The blasted maid seems to do her dusting with a scullery mop. I’ve had to scold her three times for breaking things. My dear sister and brother-in-law. I am glad to see you both. I do apologize for not being able to entertain you this evening.” The coat he wore, though it was embroidered silk, was a dressing gown, not meant to be seen in public.

“Oh, August,” I exclaimed. “Are you wounded? What has taken you?”

“Some tropical blight, I reckon. It will pass.”

“May we impose upon your hospitality to spend the night?” Cullah asked.

August closed his eyes and opened them with such weariness I felt we should walk home instead, though it was late. He said, “Of course. I am always at your disposal. I will have a room laid for you, and a table. Forgive me if I do not join you. I was having broth before the fire in the opposite room.”

I looked into his eyes, and at that second, I believed he was lying. “What illness has brought this?” I asked again. “You have been shot?”

“No, fair sister, I have not been shot.”

“Stabbed, then.” I shuddered. I looked up at the armor over the fireplace, the obvious hole that meant death to its wearer.

Cullah said, “Ressie, leave him be.”

“Men! Secrecy when it is not warranted. Such dim-witted arrogance they cannot speak what is most obvious. August, are you dying?”

“Perhaps,” he said. Then he winked. “We are all dying, you know. At the moment, I am suffering the effects of the best medical treatment money can buy. The fools tell me I have the French disease.”

“French? Why, what—” But I knew what he meant. French disease, Dutch plague, Prussian blight, the Spanish pox. The rotting scourge of men who consorted with low women, and of women consorting with the syphilitic vermin inhabiting the wharves. I remembered anew what Wallace had done, the villainy of leaving me alone at midnight on the waterfront. “August, no,” was all I could say. I sat abruptly upon a couch.

“Fear not. You cannot catch it from me by being here. In a few days, I am assured, I shall be presentable again. Thanks to this physician, I shall forever smell like brimstone from the netherworld, never taste anything again nor make water without agony, but I shall probably live a few more months at least. With any luck I shall be hung before I go mad.” August rubbed at his clean-shaven chin and said, “Oh, my dear. I have upset you. I apologize, sweet Resolute. Please do not trouble yourselves. Now, please excuse me. Rupert will attend your stay. Good night.” He left the room and entered the smaller parlor across the hall.

Cullah turned to me and I to him. I made toward the small parlor room across the hall, but Cullah caught my arm. “Leave him.”

“But Cullah, I wish to speak to that doctor. I heard voices. There is more than one other man in there.”

Cullah shook his head. “Let us admire the trophies in this room.”

After about an hour, Rupert returned to the parlor and escorted us to the same dining table where I had once enjoyed Lady Spencer’s hospitality. A cook brought us vegetables with tiny slivers of meat, and fresh, hot bread. It was somewhat spare, considering the elaborate gilt surroundings, but no doubt had had to be cobbled up out of whatever was left from noon. Rupert himself poured us Madeira, a wine of a sort I had never tasted, sweet and savory at once, dry upon the tongue enough to make a person wish for more.

Cullah watched me and finally told him, “Enough,” when he had poured my third glass. “Bring coffee, if you please.”

We retired after coffee to the bedroom which had been Lady Spencer’s room. Comforted, if not sauced by too much wine, I pulled off my gown, and we slid in our shifts and shirts into a downy bed tick. I did not remember my head touching the pillows when I awoke with a start deep in the night.

I lay in the bed trying to return to sleep, but I could not. I arose carefully, not to awaken Cullah. I felt as wide awake as if it had been midday. I knew I would not go back to sleep, but I knew not whether the worry over my brother’s illness, or his odd behavior, Cullah’s secret message to the filthy basket woman, any of these, were the culprits robbing me of a night’s rest.

I took up the extra blanket folded across the foot of the bed and wrapped it about my shoulders, then went to the window and looked out. The moon above the house behind this one was just rising, the tip almost invisible at first, being no more than a quarter full. I watched it rise, curling like a shaving of wood over the ridge of the house the way a chip came from Cullah’s plane, until the whole of it showed, adding feeble light to the garden below. I opened the window, careful not to waken Cullah, but wondering if the night were pleasant enough to leave it open. When I got the sash raised and found the air brisk but not bitter, I smiled, enjoying the coolness against my cheek. I leaned out. A candle blazed in the window below my room, and as soon as I saw it, it went out. August must have kept up half the night, ill, I thought. I heard a series of soft clicks, and I leaned farther out.

A form, a man, left through one of the tall windows on the bottom floor. He held a shaded lantern in his hand, tiny sparks of candlelight showing through its pierced sides. He wore a low-crowned, wide-brimmed hat, so it was impossible to see his features, yet, I felt, more than knew, that it was my brother. He made his way on a cobbled path toward the back of the yard where the stables were, but stopped abruptly. He turned and looked about himself, scanning the bushes and hedges for movement. I pulled myself inside the window frame, thankful that the moon held little light that might betray my presence. The man studied the house, his hat brim at last rising so that he could see as high as the window where I stood. He watched the window a long time. In the faintest moonlight, I believed I saw a sword tucked into his belt, not in a scabbard, but right under the sash.

My heart beat faster and harder. Had he seen me? Why would I fear that so? If that was my brother, and this his house, why would he slip from a window in the middle of the night? Why not go right out the front door? Could it be that August was asleep in his bed and someone had robbed him and was now escaping? The night watchman called out just then, “Twelve o’ the clock and all’s weh-hel!” The man below turned away and darted into shadows, and from there, I could see him no more. I stood at the window until my feet felt as if they had taken root into the wooden floor. I could not decide what to do. At last, I imagined that if August were asleep in his bed, I would know that it had been a stranger, and I would awaken him and Cullah. If I found August not in his bed, I would assume that he himself had crept out of his own house under cover of darkness.

I felt my way across the room and stepped into the hallway where a single taper burned on a stand. We were above the bottom floor and on a gallery from which several doors opened. I knew the last one, where I had lived when I worked for the old loom maker Barnabus, would be too small. Besides, if my brother were wont to keep late hours, he would not choose that sunny room.

Since August had provided us with the grandest room, I chose the next door. I tried the latch. It opened. I pushed. The hinges squeaked. I summoned my last bit of courage and held the candle high. An empty bed stood at the far end of the room. It was not even made up for use, but had blankets and pillows folded in a stack at the foot of it. I tried the next door. A bed was laid out in that room, but had not been slept within. Yet, as I looked about, I knew this was not a room well used, for no clothing hung on hooks, no belt or boots stood by the cold fireplace.

I peeked into the gallery before stepping out of the room. I tried the next door and found the latch had been locked from the inside. I felt at odds with myself now, foolish, and decided against going to the next two rooms. I turned and nearly bumped right into a man. I covered my mouth with one hand and stifled a scream. “Cullah!”

“Wife, what are you doing creeping through this house at this hour? The watchman just called one of the morning.”