My Name is Resolute (90 page)

I laid the clay trough into the hogshead, on top of the coats. I put the molasses trough upon it, but it was full; the lid would almost not shut. On the ground were two broken bricks, so I laid them atop the lid. If I had put in the seventh coat it would not have shut, and we would have been found out.

I saw Redcoats halfway across the street so I turned my back to the soldiers, pulled the string from the wrapping of the last coat, and as if it were my own garment laid it over my arm, pulling my cloak over it. As I strolled from the alley and turned to the left, one of the Redcoats pointed at me.

“Ho, there, granny!” a voice called behind me. I quickened my steps. “I say, stop there, old woman!” He had a decided lisp that was hard to understand.

I stopped before the road that led to the front of the hall. I turned. I searched their faces, and decided upon a tactic of indignity combined with innocence and silliness. “Were you addressing me, young man?”

“Yeth! You, granny. We ordered you to th-top.” It was the youngest. He not only had a lisp but had a vile accent, as far removed from nobility as could get. One of the many pressed into service with no other hope of employment, one of the many who just as well made up our rebel army here.

“It is a great thing I am not your grandmother, young man, for if I were I should box your ears. How despicably rude. Good day, gentlemen.” I wheeled around, keeping my cloak about my form with my hands, and stepped off the walking stones, moving around a large, fresh pile left by horses.

One of the older Redcoats quick-stepped in front of me and placed his musket across my path at an angle. “Where are you going, Goodwife? What have you got there? We have orders to question all passers-by.”

“I am not ‘Goodwife.’ I am ‘Widow.’ I have
naught
to do with
you
or your questions. Now be off with the three of you before I report you to General Howe. Yes, I see you know him. I have—” At that moment, the youngest man took my shoulder. I could control my face but not my body, and at his touch I wrested myself away from him with a turn that opened my cloak.

“Ho! Wha’ ’ave you there? Why, thith granny ith one of them
bath-tardth
!” he said. He reached into my cloak and tore the coat from my hands. “We’ve caught a rebel thpy, a traitor against Hith Thovereign Majeth-ty.”

“Give me that,” I said, reverting to a whining tone. “I
found
it fair and true. It is not yours and I can make many a good covering for my babes with it. Now let it go. You shall get it filthy before I have had a chance to sell the buttons. I found it.”

The third man, who until then had yet to speak, asked, “Where did you find it?”

“It was rolled up natty and squashed into the center of a bush, as if the man who wanted it was coming back but could not carry it into town. You would not want such a thing left there for the use of rebels, would you? No. I thought to myself, I thought, what others have lost is mine to gain, is it not? I am a poor old widow with seven mouths to feed, and I can sell these buttons and cut the rest to clouties for my grandbaby’s bottom.”

He watched my face as I spoke and I saw that he was a little too wise. Perhaps his quietude meant he had better judgment than the others, and he was not believing my tale. He said, “Let’s take her to the colonel. See what he says to do.”

I stood before his colonel in the parlor of Lady Spencer’s house where once I had danced a reel, where I had made Wallace a traitor with us, where I had helped August escape. The brigand did not so much as ask me to sit or offer tea. He did not recognize me from the day August escaped, either. He talked with the soldiers for a moment and then came toward me, adjusted his powdered wig, and leaned forward. “You know, do you not, what this coat is, Mistress?”

“I do, sir.” I leaned toward him and crooked my finger at him, then cupped my hand across my mouth as if to tell a secret to a child. “It is nearly new. I found it in a bush.”

He snarled. “Since you had to walk past breastworks and artillery to come here, I warrant you know that this color of coat, this blue, is the one chosen by the outlaw Washington and his men—soon to be hung, mind you—as a uniform of their treason against the King, His Royal Majesty Charles Third, do you not?”

I smiled and nodded. “I do know that, sir.”

“And here, in broad daylight, you are caught carrying just such a coat.”

“Yes, your lordship, that is true.”

“I am not a lord.”

“No, sir.”

“Have I met you before? You look familiar.”

I knew the colonel from his raid on August’s house. I smiled. “Perhaps it was last market day. Did you buy my hog foot stew?”

He made a face of disgust. “Did you make that coat?”

“Why, everyone knows the rebels get these from France. See this weft? Only French mills make such. The color is—”

“Where were you taking it? And to whom? I suppose you would not confess to treason, but would rather some poor fool hang in your place? You tell me who was to receive the coat and who made it, and then I will let you go, grandmother.”

I winced at him calling me that. “I may be convicted of being foolish, your lordship, but as I see so much of it around me, I am sure it is not a hanging offense. I saw this bright color and found the coat in a bush, rolled up. I knew at once it was either hidden for someone’s return or placed as a trap by your men. I have mouths to feed and those buttons are sure to bring some beef tongue or a bit of hog back.”

“What is your name?”

“Widow MacLammond.” Those words felt like a firebrand upon my heart.

“Where do you live?”

“Me, sir? Why, down the main road and take the second path past where there was once a tree but it was taken down in a storm in seventeen and fifty-one. Then go as far as it takes to sing three verses of the Doxology and turn right on a path where there was a mill some years back but now it has become a grain house—”

“Enough. What do you do in this town, madam?”

I smiled when he interrupted me, as if I wished to appear helpful. “I do a little tatting and toting, you know. Selling odd bits I find. Cleaning shoes.”

“Let me see your hands.”

I held them forth. The tar-soaked hogshead had left my fingers blacked and the calluses were real. They trembled, but I exaggerated it to make it seem more of an old woman’s palsy than fearful trembling. My heart jumped and bucked like a spring colt.

“I think you are lying.”

“Lying? Sir, I am a woman of good repute. Honest as a
fairy.
Your accusation cuts me to the bone. I never,
ever,
lie.” I saw from the corner of my eye Bertram driving past, with Alice facing this way. I said, “Ask any soul in this town. Ask that woman there, or the boy driving. Everyone knows me, sir.”

The British colonel returned to the far side of Lady Spencer’s buffet he was using for his desk. He moved some papers and uncovered a pair of clippers. “Here,” he said, tossing them toward the edge of the table closest to me. “Cut it up for clouts.”

I put the thought of all those hours of work, the strain on my eyes, the tortured fingers, out of my head and as far from my face as the moon was from the land. “Are you going to let me keep the buttons?” I asked, as I began snipping them from the sleeves and coat front. My fingers trembled so violently the metal blades gave a little drum roll against the button’s metal shank.

“Cut it,” he said with a voice that sent a chill into the room.

I slashed into the sleeves, folding them out as I cut them from the jacket. I cut the front from the back and frowned to hide my lip quivering.

“Why do you stop?”

“If I cut it this way it will be too small, and if I cut it that way,” I said, turning the remainder as I spoke, creating havoc amongst the papers on the desk, “it is long and narrow. Look, it has padding inside. That will hold a wet bottom, will it not? Thank you, sir, for the use of your scissor. I would have had to take a knife to it on the kitchen table, and you know how clumsy that might be.” I shoved papers, strewing them to the floor. I stacked the scraps of blue wool, leaving shredded bits across his desk and whisking the papers about again; I reached for the buttons. He brushed them from my hand. I could not hide the dismay on my face. I said, “Those might be gold on top. I could feed my family with ’em, sir. Would you not give me a few?”

He poured them from one hand to the other, then into my outstretched hand, saving one last button. He took the last gold button and tossed it twice, catching it as he stared at my face. “I could have you searched, madam, to see if you are hiding blue coats elsewhere on your person.”

I stilled the rather silly smile I wore and stared. I unhooked the frog on my cloak and dropped it behind me. I unwrapped my shawl and let it fall before me, and took my apron by the strings, holding it loosely while never letting his eyes free of my stare, and made as if to drop it, too.

A harried soldier came in a far door. The colonel shifted his gaze. “All right. You are a simple old woman who found a rebel coat. Take your foul-smelling rags and be off with you, and for heaven’s sake wash yourself when you get home. All you rebels reek of rancid treacle.”

That very afternoon in the stone room below the house, where no sound penetrated outside, I sat upon the bench and put my feet on the pedals of the loom. Bertie lifted the strap over his shoulder and pulled his sticks from his back pocket. Back and forth on the pedals, click with the right foot, clock with the left, my hands pushed the shuttle loaded with blue across the warps of pure, good wool warping of rebel blue. I determined I would make five more in place of the one ruined coat. I had told a pack of lies to keep it yet no blood of any Son of Liberty had stained it. It was not ruined. It would become patching, buttonhole binding, facing, and pockets. It was the cost of war. I rubbed my sore hands with sheepskin. These hands are given, too, I thought. My soreness was nothing compared to what others suffered and gave.

I knew what I believed and I knew at last, not what I would die for, but for what I would live. I was caught up in this land, and its time. I no longer wished to go home, for this was home. And I believed in what I had heard all my years on these shores. First of all, the right of free people to live without tyranny.

Liberty.

The very word tattooed a cannonade across my soul as Bertie trotted the sticks on the drum to the rhythm of the loom. Faster and faster we went, Bertram’s eyes locked into mine, the drum and the loom beating out the words to a song. He added flourishes that would do any commander proud. We dared to raise our voices above the rattle and rhythm, singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

I watched closely this boy, whose skin was so like my own. His eyes had my color and spark, his hair more like Cullah’s than mine. He had come home yesterday for food and clothes and he would leave with the Massachusetts men in two days more. The battle was not done. The boy’s feet stepped with lively art, his dark hair, tied with a white ribbon, lifting against his back. I closed my eyes and felt my hands and feet moving quick-step, brandishing the only weapon of war I could use, my whole being doing the dance of freedom, as a man with a claymore and an axe once told me to fight, wielding my loom.

EPILOGUE

November 11, 1781

I am past sixty, now. The British have surrendered, and in just a few weeks, there were no Redcoats left on this shore, and if there are, they wear brown and mind their manners. I have not seen August since that night in July of ’75, when he showed up at my door with no less than General Washington himself. I like to think that somewhere, on some vast ocean, he and beautiful, exotic Anne are standing side by side, watching seagulls swirl above the mainmast as their ship crosses the waves. As Lady Spencer advised, I make believe all my dear ones are not gone, just out of my line of sight beyond some curtain or cluster of people, or tree. I tell no one, of course, though I am of an age when I might be allowed my oddities and still not be considered as frighteningly mad as Goody Carnegie had been. The ruse is most difficult on moonlit nights when I used to wake and behold the outline of Cullah’s profile next to me.

Benjamin and Brendan both came home and make their living together as brothers in trade goods. Roland came home after taking the food to Washington’s army, and though unwounded, he promptly died. We believe his heart gave way. Bertie married and I have given him and his fifteen-year-old wife a section of this land for their own farm. Dolly is a grandmother and that makes me a great-grandmother. Gwenny’s daughter Elizabeth died last year of milk sickness. Alice is still with me. She helps me carry on, though I have continued to encourage her to find a life of her own if she wishes.

Now, too, that my children’s children are grown and I become more useless by the day, I think sometimes of going to Jamaica. There is nothing to stop me. I have a little money. I have time. I have no one to care for who cannot fend for themselves. I think of the house on Meager Bay and when the wind freshens through the upper windows here sometimes I lean out, imagining myself on a ship cresting a wave, headed to the West Indies. My grandchildren cannot imagine that I came from a place with wide white buildings and warm breezes, a place never touched by ice and snow.

I know that I would never return from such a voyage. Whether death found me on the ship or on the shores I remember so well, it would find me, so I choose now to not go. My life is too interwoven here to survive pulling its strings asunder. While I spent my whole being longing, aching for freedom and a chance at leaving this place, I see that I am also free to stay. Free to choose my ties. I will not go because to stay and live here, to die here, will give my children what I never had. Certainty. A headstone to polish. A mother who stayed.

My fingers ache so that I often dream of carrying a heavy iron kettle through the woods, and I wake afraid of bears and Indians, and I rub mutton fat on the swollen knuckles. My hands no longer slide a shuttle as if it were a smooth stone, rippling the warp as if it were water; my back is bent and will not straighten. My fabric has irregularities for which I take full blame. For a long time, I thought that my days mattered little beyond the children I bore and the labors I accomplished, that invisibility was virtue.