He smiled a kindly smile. He leaned forward and whispered as if it were a secret between us, “You are ever loved, little Mary. Not a sparrow falls from the heavens but that it is noted. How much more are you than a sparrow? I am a humble man and can afford no servants, nor will I ever own any slaves for I think it is a pitiful thing.”
“Sir? Would you permit me paper and a quill to write to my ma?”
“I have none, child.”
“How shall I ever get home to my mother?”
Reverend Johansen’s face turned sad. “You will work off your indenture as others have done before. I did it myself. It is not forever. And you will pray that she is well and that you may find her when you have done your utmost in honest toil.”
I set the plate down and sighed. “Was your mother alive when you finished?”
“Mary, I’m glad you asked me for the Psalms. It is a book of both great comfort and great chastening, and none should shirk the hearing of it.” With that he left me.
It took the men four more weeks to finish the church house. While they did, Mistress and the girls worked at putting in a garden, and some days assigned me digging, or to keeping out birds and goats and pigs that came from one of the other houses. The air warmed. Rain fell, sometimes for days at a time, coming down in torrents much as it did in Jamaica. The trees budded and leafed out, and all the world was riotously green.
Only one goat gave milk by then, so Birgitta said it would be a lean summer until the does had their babies. The bear ruined other stores and tore through one home’s doorway, which was closed by a blanket pulled and fastened on both sides, ransacking and ripping through all their cloth goods. Wolves howled at night, and owls, and the Haskens’ house filled with bats. First one or two came in the morning to roost; before long there were thirty-one bats. I counted them every morning. Master was forced by his tender-voiced wife to collect scraps of any hewn wood from the church building and put a ceiling above our heads to keep the bats’ spoilage from falling on the supper table.
I tried as much as I dared to work near Patey. To my joy she was growing stronger and plumper, too, and seemed recovered from our passage in the ship’s hold, sometimes smiling. Once she laughed at Lukas, standing on his hands before her like a child showing off. As we carried buckets of water to the men chopping trees, she told me good tidings for the anniversary of my birth. I had turned eleven without knowing the day or date. “And when,” I asked, “was my birthday?”
“I remember it,” she said. “On a gusty, rainy day in March. Ma cried out five times. The sun broke through heavy clouds as if it pushed them aside and thrust itself upon the earth to shine upon your wee puffed and pinched face. You were ugly as a tortoise. Soon as it saw you it hid again.”
“La, Patey!” I felt shock though she smiled. “Am I still so ugly?” I shuddered. Did I seem as hideous as these Hasken daughters? It was said no duppy ever peered in a mirror for fear of death by ugliness. Their faces reflected in a pond turned it to poison. Perhaps I was numbered among them.
She laughed. “Name a star in heaven without beauty. And yet, the sun itself had to hide when you were born. Not a bad way to start a life. But”—she mimicked Ma’s voice—“’Twil be a burthen for ye, lassie.” Then she began to sing one of Ma’s favorite old songs, “O Waly, Waly.” I joined her and we sang together, refilling our buckets and returning to the men. The whole place bustled with the work of living.
“Mary! Stop squalling that heathen jig!” Master Hasken pointed toward me with the axe in his hand.
I nearly dropped the bucket, my eyes large as apples. “Yes, Master,” I said. “Beg your pardon, sir. It was just a song.”
“We’ll have no singing but for hymns and psalms as please the ear of God.”
“Yes, Master,” I said. I began humming the hymn of theirs I oft hummed to myself while milking, the one that fit the words “Damn your eyes, Mistress Hasken.”
He listened for a minute then said, “That’s better. Do you not know the words?”
“Only the tune, Master,” I lied.
CHAPTER 9
April 29, 1730
After three days of strong wind and heavy rain, Reverend and Rachael Johansen’s roof fell apart. The Haskens were first at their door to help, and they left Birgitta watching Lonnie so that I could be of better use. I took up a broom beside Christine who was well enough to sweep then, and helped Rachael sweep up fallen thatch.
I swept much the same as I had cleaned brass on the ship, moving with every stroke closer to the far corner of the house until at last I stood beside a trunk. Upon it was Ma’s gold-cornered casket. When the sisters were outside I lifted the lid. I drew in a deep breath. My coins were no more than a finger’s width from my reach. I no longer wore my pocket, for there was nothing to put within it. I picked up the coins, knowing I could slip out with them and hide them better this time, so they might never be found. This was no harder than stealing stockings, and these coins belonged to me. Would they know it was I took them? I put them back in the casket, intending to take it, too. A new thought stopped my hand. What if rather than stealing them I could get them to give it all back? What if I could prevail upon the reverend to do it?
I heard voices. I dropped the money, shut the lid, and pushed the box back into place so that it looked as if I had not touched it. If Reverend Johansen would give me my coins, all the better. If not, I would steal them another time. I pinched my lips together, and swept straw from the corner behind the trunk. The sisters returned to the house and I moved toward the doorway, pushing a foot-high pile of thatch and straw with my broom, passing them.
“Mary, mind you,” Rachael said. “You’re sweeping too fast and making dust.”
“Yes, Mistress,” I said. I felt her eyes on my back as I worked.
The next Sunday Reverend Johansen opened his battered book and said, “Psalm Forty-two. As the deer panteth for the water-brooks…” Thus began a talk about how like a lost deer our lives can be. I knew the words well, but it was grand the way he explained it. That day women brought food to the church house, for the roof was on and all was dry inside. When all sat, eating, I went to the well and brought up a fresh bucket of cold water, carrying it straight to Reverend Johansen.
“I shall cool your cup, Reverend,” I said, “with a fresh pull of water.”
He smiled and said, “Mary, you thought of my wish before I said it.”
I poured water from the dipper into his cup and waited for him to speak.
“Very well, Mary. Was there something more?” He eyed my face.
“No, Reverend. I meant only to be of good service.”
Three days later, Mistress Hasken sent me with a pail of milk for Rachael to use in her cooking. Rachael was in the garden and Reverend Johansen sat at their table, poring over his Bible. I waited at the open door for him to notice me. When a length of time passed and he did not, I tapped on the side of the pail, being sure to stare upward as if my attention had been caught by some sound or fluttering bird. Reverend Johansen looked in my direction, and upon seeing me his face softened. “Mary. It’s you. Come in, child.”
“I beg your pardon, sir. Mistress sends you this milk.”
“Well, put it, ah”—he glanced over the room and its spare furnishings, without even a pail of their own—“set it on that chest. That will keep it off the ground at least.”
I put the bucket next to my casket. “Here, sir?”
“That will do. Come sit by me, child. Let me rest my eyes from reading.”
I did as he asked, sitting on the stool that I supposed was Rachael’s place at table. I bowed my head, practicing both the humility I felt from his sermons and the forced broken spirit that becomes a slave in the presence of others.
“Raise your face, child. Ah. You look like, someone. Your face is dirty but your eyes are keen as a dagger’s edge and I suppose your mind yet more sharp.”
I had thought the same of his eyes. I faced him as I would my own pa. “I sho
uld like to ask you a question, sir.” I felt my face assume an air of contrition yet I had come with a mission and I was not to be deterred. I was, however, going to be careful how I proceeded.
“There,” he said. “Now you look even more like my child. I had a wife and family once. And a daughter about your size. Fever took them all. Put your lip back in and be pleasant. A petulant child is no honor to her parents. How do you come to know the Psalms, little one?”
“My mother taught me. We learned of everything in our study on the top floor of the plantation.”
“Knowing it is wrong for slaves to be instructed to read and write?”
I straightened my back and blurted out, “I am not a slave, sir, and my name is not Mary. I am Resolute Catherine Eugenia Talbot, second daughter of Allan Talbot of Two Crowns Plantation, Meager Bay, Jamaica. I was not born to be a slave, sir. Not until my brother and sister and I were spirited away and brought to this cold shore to be sold like cattle, sir. My mother was an educated gentlewoman and my father the son of an earl. Their children were meant to be gentle and knowledgeable and fine.” I bowed my head, wary of what that might bring me in the way of punishment.
Reverend Johansen straightened. “I see.” He rubbed his chin with his hand and I could hear the rough beard in the silence of the room. He pulled off his indoor cap, revealing a nearly bald head with a slight tangle of long, thin gray hair. “I once was red-haired, redder than you, though now I am old and gray. My child was a little angel of rosy hue, as are you. Fair of face. Most fair. A father’s vain wish fulfilled.” He stood and went to the doorway, staring at the men raising yet another log in place at the garrison wall. His fingers tapped at the fat logs by his side and drew sap, which pulled him from his reverie so that he sucked on the sap at his fingertip and turned toward me.
I prepared to see anger on his face but instead could not read what was writ there. I said the words I had rehearsed. “When God’s word speaks of deceit and thievery by falsehood, does it apply to all? Young or old? Masters or slaves?”
“Yes!” The word jumped from him without hesitation.
I remained silent and nodded. As I did so I marveled that I had learned such care in the company of pirates and brigands and Haskens. Nothing was more important than well-thought words.
He asked, “Have you plotted aught against another? Deceived someone?”
“No, sir.”
He followed his path again to the doorway, avoiding the sap-dripping log. “Someone has deceived you, then?”
“An object has been stolen from me.”
Rachael’s voice came over the meadow, calling, “Do you need me, husband?”
“No, wife. Continue with your work, if you please. I am in prayer.” He resumed his seat at the table. He closed the Bible and thrust it toward me. “Give me your hand.” Did he mean to beat my hands with the book? I felt caught and resigned to take the beating I would receive. I held out my hands and closed my eyes. “Place your hand upon God’s holy word, child.” I laid my hand atop the book. The ragged leather of it, the faintest smell of ink and glue, the worn texture of the edges, awakened memories of the books at home, of Ma telling me how to divide numbers. “I ask you, with your hand upon God’s word with fear of eternal fire in your heart, this question. Will you tell me the truth?”
“Yes, Reverend. When last I saw my mother she gave to me a pocket, and in it she hid a wooden casket with gold—gold-colored,” I added, lest he count the value of it, too, “corners. Inside she placed two silver doubloons, stamped in the old Spanish way as pieces of eight, for me to keep against my freedom someday.” I questioned blaming Rachael for this to her new husband. He might have affectionate feelings for her now they were married. So I said, “Mistress Hasken took my coins and my casket from the pocket and gave them to Mistress Johansen for a dowry, claiming that I had stolen them.”
He peered into my eyes as if searching out some defiance or lie. At great length he asked, “Do you swear this before Almighty God?”
“I do, sir.”
“You have been in this house before. Always in the company of others who watched you?”
“No. When your roof fell in, I was here often alone. Sweeping.”
“And you saw the box and made this story to fit your wants? Or did you not think to steal the box again, to take it for yourself?”
“I did think it. Often. But ’twould not be righteous.” My hand trembled upon the book.
“Can you produce that pocket?”
“I can.”
“Bring it here,” he said, motioning toward the door with his head.
I darted home. Burrowing into my nest of blanket and bearskin, I pulled up my wrinkled pocket. As I turned to make for the door again, Birgitta stepped in front of me.
“What’s that you’re doing, Mary?”
I smiled, knowing full well that a guilty flush covered my face. “Reverend Johansen has need of my pocket, Birgitta. He sent me to fetch it to him.”
“What need has he of a child’s pocket?”
“I don’t know, madam,” I said, and dashed around her. The girl-whipping stick swished through the air behind my head as I went. I walked in and placed the pocket in Reverend Johansen’s hands with hopeful uncertainty. “This is it, sir,” I said, as if it needed explaining.
He turned it this way and that, then poked his fingers in and turned it inside outside. “What happened to this? There was lining here. How does the inside of a pocket wear away?”
“It did not wear away, sir. I ate it. Some of us starved to death in the hold of a Saracen ship. I patched it with bits of my gown of blue silk. I—I also took some of Mistress’s white thread to patch it there, which is one of the sins I have been repenting.”
He moved his fingers upon it as if the feel of the fabric told him a story that his eyes could not. He turned it right again, took Ma’s casket and slipped it inside. It settled in the place it had always been, corners fitting worn places on the pocket as the cloth aligned for it and nothing else.
“Come with me.” Reverend Johansen slapped the cap upon his head, took hold of my hand with his, snatched up the casket and the pocket from the table, and marched the two of us to the common ground near the well. Where the common had been so trampled little grass yet grew. He held my hand up in the air. At that moment I felt the sap that connected our skins tug and loosen and stick fast again, and I enjoyed it. He cried out. “Hoi-ye, brothers and sisters!” Lonnie came with the first that heard his call. He turned to her and said, “Sister Livonah, fetch your mother to this place.” To the rest he called, “Where is my wife? Bid that lady come.” He led me to the step at the church house and we stood before the door.
Mistress hurried toward us, Birgitta rumbling and grumbling behind her. When Mistress saw me her face darkened. Reverend Johansen raised his voice as if he were preaching. “Fellow pilgrims, just as David, King of Israel, though he had dozens of wives, smote Uriah and took Uriah’s wife to himself out of greed and desire, we must never take, out of greed and desire, from those who cannot defend themselves. This child, Mary of the Haskens, came on her journey to us, in possession of one thing. This.” He held the pocket aloft, pulled Ma’s casket from it. “Wife? Come here.” He put the casket in her hands and at once I believed I would be hung. Waves of gray darkness washed before my eyes. He said, “Put that in the hands of your mother, Mistress Hasken, from whom you received it.” If not for the reverend’s strong hand holding mine I would have sat upon the steps, for my legs had not the strength to hold me.
Rachael whimpered and put her hand to her lips. She started to protest but she did not dare dispute her husband before the company. She carried the casket to her mother and held it out. Mistress stared at the box, glancing at me. Rachael said, “Take it, Mother. It is not mine.”
When Mistress had the casket in her hands, she searched the faces of people gathered about but got no understanding from them. “Mistress Hasken?” Reverend Johansen began. “We accept and forgive
the misplacing of a small article, even forgetting whence it came, but we know that our Lord commands, once the truth is found out, it must be returned to its owner. Did any in your family work, sell, or trade goods or money, ever, for the thing you now hold in your hand?”
“No, Reverend,” she said.
“Yet, though it fit into the pocket owned by this person known to us as Mary, and its story matched what she has told with her hand on the Word of God, you thought it not fit to return it to the person who could have been the only source of such an object, and claimed such, but keep and thus further your daughter’s material possessions?”
“Well, yes, Reverend.”
I felt almost sorry for her, for she was confused by the parson’s words, and had admitted her guilt without so much as a struggle of conscience. People made noise. Someone announced, “We need to build some stocks.”
She blurted out, “I didn’t know it was hers. She’d stole it and so ’twas my right as owner of her property. The husband and I paid good coin for her an’ all of her as come with.” By that time Master had come, and stood beside her.
Reverend Johansen said, “Brother and Sister Hasken, in indenturing this maid you paid for her strength and ability to work. You did not buy her possessions nor her virtue nor her soul.” He was red around the collar and put his hands behind his back where both hands clenched in fists. “This is a human being, not a goat. Your duty to her is to feed, clothe, and educate her. Mistress Hasken, return that casket to its owner.”
Mistress had no choice but to lay the casket in my hand. I closed my fingers upon it, feeling as if it held my ma’s heart and soul, not just two coins. “Thank you,” I said. Mistress bowed in submission, though not to me, but to some higher force found in the eyes of her fellow pilgrims. My eyes caught Birgitta’s. She glowered with rage. I might well rue this action, though I had my two pounds and my box.
The air split apart as if rent by two great hands with the sound of a piercing scream. The cry was so violent it took my breath out of my body. The scream came again, and unusual smoke rose beyond the roof of the Haskens’ house. The whole crowd ran toward it. Two men thought to carry buckets of water as the black smoke rose ever more ominously over the house.