My Name is Resolute (89 page)

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By the end of summer, an epidemic of bloody dysentery hit Massachusetts and devastated the British army. There were by then more of them in the country than of us. I stayed away from the city but I heard Serenity Spencer died of it, as did Daniel Charlesworth. America Roberts Charlesworth moved to Pennsylvania to live with her sister Portia.

In September, as it began to rain, Reverend Clarke called upon his congregation, now almost all women, to mind how judgment could come upon the earth when her inhabitants displeased their Creator.

We did not get dysentery or suffer for food, though Dolly, Alice, and I worked long days at harvesting and drying. We had no salt for curing so we butchered nothing larger than a hen. I missed things like salt and sugar, spices and wheat flour. I sent and spent the gold August left with me for food for our army. When Alice and I managed to shear a sheep—poor animal looked as if it had been caught by some wool-eating animal, so rough was our job of it—I made a man’s coat and gave it to the first one who came to our door.

During the long rains of autumn, I filled my secret room above the loom with cloth, stockpiling it in the barn, too, searching twice a week for moths and weevils. I traded bolts of it for precious indigo and whiting. Once, on a street in Lexington in broad daylight, my skirt heavy with vials of indigo, my wheelbarrow light and empty, I glared at some young British conscript until he turned from my eyes.

I worried much about my sons, but not my brother, for I held great faith that because I heard nothing from him, August was somewhere doing what he could in the name of the Continental army. I moved some boxes and crates and came upon the first chests he had once hidden with me. Neither was locked.

I turned the latch of one and raised the lid. It held a few papers. They seemed to be letters, from August to a woman. Love letters. I smiled and held them to my bosom. I hoped he was happy at least for a while, as I had been. I set them down reverently. Under the letters sat a boxed set of dueling pistols and a box of shot and powder. I lifted them out. We might need them. Beneath that was a small casket, about the size of two loaves of bread. Its latch was closed and no key sat in the lock. I set it on the floor, and took out some clothes. They looked to be a boy’s clothes, with stains and holes. Ripped keepsakes of his past, I supposed. In the pocket of the waistcoat, I found a small key. It opened the casket. The casket held doubloons. Dozens of them. We would be able to eat, I thought, and buy more wool. I could make more coats. No American who crossed my path or my doorway would leave without a coat if he needed one.

The second chest was lighter than the first. It was loaded with ships’ maps. A captain’s logbook, and another. Four of them. A sextant. A long glass. At the bottom lay five cutlasses. One of them was battered, dented, its tip broken off. I feared to touch it, though I supposed if the thing were haunted with the blood, we would have seen the spirits by now. I closed the lid and held my hand against it, thinking of my brother’s hand having lain upon this very wood, and I wished him health and life.

In the mornings oak leaves captured the slanted sunlight, fooling the eye, as if they held the last golden rays of summer suspended for a few more days. The nights turned cold. One day, just before noon, a hand knocked at my door. A winter wind was howling. Before me stood a boy dressed in rags, thin as Roland’s poor frame had been so long ago. “M-m-mistress? Have you got a spare crust? Anything?”

“What are you doing abroad in this weather, young man?”

“Going to join the rebels, Mistress.”

“Where is your musket? Your cartridge bag?” He ducked his head in a clumsy bow and pulled his weapon, an ancient blunderbuss, from where it leaned against the wall. “Come in this house.” I fed him bread, such as I had, and meat, both of them meant for our noon.

He drank every drop of the broth in the pot. “Thank you so, Mistress. I hain’t et in two days.”

When he rose to leave, I pulled at his sleeve. “Wait,” I said. “Take this.” I draped my cloak across his shoulders. It was too small, for though he was all bones and angles, he was tall. “This will not do you. Wait, boy, would you please? I have something else.” I hurried up the stairs to my room. There behind the door hung a new cloak I had made for Cullah. I pulled it from the hook. I held it against my cheek.

When I put it across the boy’s shoulders, he took hold of it with reverence. “Oh, Mistress, this is so very fine. It must belong to the master of this house.”

“It did. Now stand there while I bless it upon you,” I said. I chanted the old Gaelic words, circling the boy, my hand upon the wool of the cloak. It began,
“Nar a gonar fe-ahr an eididh. Nar a reubar e gue- brath,”
and the words settled oddly, going from asking protection for the man who wore the garment, to describing the leg bone of a deer piercing the tail of a salmon. I believed the meaning was long lost, for even Goody Boyne, who had taught it me, knew them not, but I imagined, too, since the words had survived all this time, that they had strength, and perhaps the leg shank referred to the sharpness of a spear tip, so that the wearer of my goods would be swift in battle and safe from all piercing. Perhaps I was wrong to say the words, but they were said, and I patted his shoulder.

“Wait,” he exclaimed, stepping back. “Do you cast a spell upon me for having asked food?”

I smiled. “It is not witchcraft. It is a prayer older than this time. We must not question what has stood since before King Richard’s day.”

“Oh. It’s a Christian prayer, then? What language?”

I almost said Scottish, but the tongue was outlawed in its own land and I dared not. “The tongue of angels. When you wear this cloak, you will embody courage and cunning skill in battle, clear thinking, and bravery. Yours will be the mind of a general at arms, a strategist. Keep it always with you, even on warm days when you cannot wear it. Never forget the power of it.”

“Mistress, your words give me fear.”

“Let them give you comfort instead.” I questioned him with my expression and changed my tone to be more motherly. “Would you rather not have the cloak? You may leave it here if you wish. It is not a spell, I promise you on the Holy Cross.” He took one look at the snow piling against the glass over the kitchen table, shook his head no. I said, “Then see that you wear it well and proudly. This belonged to a great man, a Patriot. A gentleman and an American Patriot.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

When I closed the door after him, I said, “Alice? Let us make another cloak. Another man will come along soon enough. They will all be hungry and cold.”

“Mistress, you give away Master Cullah’s cloak.”

Tears dripped from my chin, already rushing the moment his name crossed her lips. “Yes.”

“Why you do that?”

“The boy needed it. He will fight for freedom.”

“How you know that?”

“Well, I do not know it. He said it, and I believed him.”

“Not every man comes to the door going to tell the truth.”

“Alice, did you suspect him of something?”

“No, Mistress. He was honest enough. Just hungry enough to tell you what you want to hear. Any boy might be hungry. Can’t feed ’em all.”

I smiled. “Then I have done him no harm. If it keeps him alive, it is given gladly.”

Alice stared at the fire, then without turning her head, she glanced in my direction and asked, “Mistress, would you give me a cloak?”

“Is something amiss with your own?”

“I gave it to a slave woman I know.”

I held out my hand. Somewhat reluctantly, she reached out with her own. I held her hand in mine. We both welled up with tears, and her face darkened as did mine.

Alice asked, “I suppose we making another cloak?”

“Probably better make two.”

“Yes, Mistress. We have to sew all night or wear blankets to Meeting tomorrow.”

The next week two fellows came, cold and hungry. One of them was smaller, and so I gave one of Brendan’s old coats to him. I had nothing finished yet for the larger man, except Cullah’s old and tattered cloak. “I am sorry it is so poor,” I said.

“Mistress, it is marvelous warm. Thank you kindly.”

January 2, 1776

Christmas and Hogmanay we celebrated in Dolly’s kitchen. I made a pudding the size of her new babe’s head. His name was John Paul. By Epiphany, Roland returned home to tell us of a place called Valley Forge, and that our own Congress had left the men naked and starving after promising food and uniforms. Smallpox, he said, killed scores every day. Men deserted whose enlistments were up because to stay meant starvation. I had little money left. I rummaged through trunks and every hidey-hole in the house for coins or clothing to send. He offered to return to the field with anything I could find.

On a shelf in the attic, a little crate held some old clothes I had never meant to part with. I pulled out my quilted petticoat made by Ma. Almost nothing remained of the original, though I expected it still lay inside the other layers. In a sort of desperate hope that I had overlooked some odd ha’penny, I carried it downstairs. By the fireplace, I took up scissors and began to cut it apart, carefully opening every wide place where anything might be hidden. I found a lump that was not tow or lint. I cut into the place and pried it open. A length of gold chain fell out, and when I pulled it, it was a ruby necklace. Three large stones set in pure gold hung from the chain. I saw by the familiar design that they had been meant as a set with the ruby ring, the only thing of value I yet owned. Ma had given one of her daughters part of the set, one another, as sisters should be two parts of something that went together. I put it in my pocket and returned to Dolly and Roland’s house. A great lump stilled my voice, as I tried not to weep, and held it up so that the fire showed through the stones. “Roland,” I said, “take this. Take my wagon, too. We will use yours. Take everything we can spare, and use this to buy whatever it will buy.”

March 21, 1776

It was a blustery, muddy spring. With Bertie driving the wagon, Alice sat next to me as we made our way to Boston, for now women could trade a little there, and the soldiers did allow us to buy flour though it was costly. She seemed oblivious to the uniformed army all about us, busy at her tatting. I remarked to her that in a moving coach that was no small feat, for I could do aught but stare at the trees when I rode else I suffered motion sickness. I asked her to look about, just to appear more natural, but she said, “Mistress, you admire all the pretty gentlemen’s red clothes for me, as I have got a knot here I am trying to fix and I am vexed out of my eternal life over it.” Then she winked at me, slyly, and wrinkled her lips in disgust. Bertie was filled with a fervor that I reckon could be accounted for by his being so great a part of the events that had called us all to arms. It was all I could do to remind him not to thrash the horses into a run, and that decorum and a straight face would serve us both. We passed line after line of British soldiers, fusiliers, and marines, ranks of artillery and wagons full of ammunition pulled by mules.

Tied under my petticoat by their stocking straps and overlapping like great pleats hung four pairs of men’s buff breeches. Two more were rolled into each side of my small farthingale. Under our feet in the false bottom were seven blue coats of differing size, all cut to resemble General Washington’s fine habit. I had not attached braids of rank, for I knew not to whom the coats would go, but I had sewed on gold buttons, rows of them, and turned up the cuffs so elegantly. I had prayed the chant over every one of them, that the man wearing it would never be wounded, that blood would not touch the work of my loom and my needle.

We reached the woods beyond Menotomy, and Bertie began to sing “O Waly, Waly.” A man walking past wearing plain clothes and a flat parson’s hat looked up at us as we passed. He nodded, touching his hat brim. I smiled. In a few minutes, after crossing and heading up the road, toward the Neck, three plain-clothed minutemen appeared from the woods and walked ahead of our horse. One more came from behind, carrying a pack as if he were a craftsman on his way to sell his wares though I knew him from the Committee of Safety.

At the green in Boston, we turned right and made for the lower end of town, at last into the yard behind Boston’s First Church, traversed the gravel between the walls, and made for a shabby mercantile and warehouse district centered behind Faneuil Hall. Our aim was an old house, which had been converted into a storefront, though the door of it was battened and nailed shut. In the alley next to it sat a hogshead seeping with tar and treacle, printed with
MOLLASS
on the side.

Checking for eyes upon us, I stepped down from the wagon, opened the back where the concealed drawer lay, and pulled out my bundles, stacking them against the wall. By reaching into my skirt where a pocket might have hung, I could untie the first pant leg and all the others slithered to the ground. Alice took the two from the farthingale then got quickly back aboard the wagon. I pulled the lid from the molasses keg. It was so tall the top was even with my elbows. First came a four-inch trough filled with reeking, soured molasses. Under it was another trough, also marked molasses, but this one I knew was filled with clay and bore a top drilled full of holes to sop up any leaking of the real molasses. Under that, the opening was lined with tarred cloth and paper and I packed the buff breeches and blue coats with great care into it. As I laid in the sixth coat, pressing it down, Alice began to hum, “Gloomy Winter’s Now Awa’,” and as we had planned, Bertie flicked the reins and the wagon moved forward, carrying them away, leaving me behind. The committeemen vanished between buildings and into shadows. A boy driving a black-skinned nurse or maid on an errand seemed as normal a sight as any could be.

Peering around the corner of the building, I saw three armed Redcoats across the street, talking to each other. One of them looked to be no more than a boy, a lad like my Bertie. He pointed my direction with a finger, then looking at the other men, nodded.