When they arose from their knees, now man and wife, both appeared happy. I gave her a gift of my first yard of linen smooth enough it was allowed to remain and not be torn out for scrap. I had stretched it upon a framework of light wood. The yard of linen itself was made from a tiny bit of silver tow mixed with gold, for they would not let me have more of the finer thread from the fields until my work deserved the best stuff. Upon it, I had embroidered a man and a woman on either side of a house. An embroidered tree grew up one side and shaded the house, and in its branches tiny birds nested. That was a sign of good luck. Down the other side was a ribbon of honeysuckle with three yellow flowers, a sign of sweet happiness. Donatienne seemed pleased as she waved farewell.
That night as I lay next to Donatienne’s empty cot, I wondered if Julien had already pressed his desires upon her. Brushing the thought from my mind, I recited the pattern for the tweed-style woolen the nuns produced to sell. Blanc-gris-gris, marron-marron, I chanted until my eyes closed.
When next I found paper and ink provided I would tell Ma to find me before they marry me to some townsman, too. I was thankful at least that Lukas had continued his ploy and brought me papers, still terrified I would let others of his community in on his religious change of heart.
The first flax harvest that summer was a large one. Four weeks we spent pulling and stacking, strewing and bundling for the marsh-retting. It was barely finished before the second harvest began. During this time all helped, even the cooks, so Patience was in the field at my side often. I asked her if the man who would rescue us had given her any new signs. No, she said. We must wait. He would come.
“Why wait?” I asked. “Were we not expecting to sell what we carry for passage home? We need no man to do those things.”
“You know so little of the world. You will need a man to do much in your life. They hold the keys to all our doors.”
“I belong to no one but myself.”
Patience shrugged. “You do as well to complain about the color of the sky.”
Perhaps the heavy work made everyone too tired to be watchful. No matter the reason, four of the company of slaves disappeared that week, three men and one woman. The next week, five more men went. One of the men was Lukas. When I saw Patey, we talked of their leaving, and I said, “It is time. We should press our luck and go, full moon or no. There is another week of flaxing I want to miss.”
“They are posting watches at night now.”
“They are watching the men.”
“Word will be sent to our captors, the Indians. They will either find the missing people or bring more. I want to be here when they come. I have a plan.”
“What plan?” I feared she had no plan other than to live in a state of expectation for the rest of our lives. Had she gone mad? “I shall go by myself,” I declared.
“You will not live a week,” she returned.
“I will go home.”
Patience bent to pull the stalks in her hand from the ground, and said, “Where is home, Ressie? What have we but this place? I had hoped Lukas would take us with him. He promised to do it.”
“Ah,” I said. “Lukas promised.” I felt disdain for Patience then, worse than any anger or puzzlement I had felt before. She had allowed him to use her for the price of escape. I knew what that made her in the eyes of God and the world. “Perhaps you sold yourself too cheaply, sister.” She turned to me with venom in her eyes. It was the first time I knew my own heart as I knew my own hands. Her eyes met mine on the same level for I had grown to her height. I said, “If you slap me, ever again, I shall return you blow for blow. I will not be beaten by you or anyone for speaking the truth. You have no right to use me so ill.” Patience straightened her back, dumped the armload of flax at my feet, and struck out through the tall plants, parting the flax, running from me. She took up a place between some other workers. I laid out the flax she dropped without shedding a tear, righteous indignation fueling my work as it did for the next several days.
* * *
Days turned into weeks and winter came again. My mind felt numbed to time and the rhythms of it I measured by seasons rather than days. I turned fourteen, and felt fully a woman, at last allowed to don the gray gown of our order. Before the summer flax harvest that year, we received word that Donatienne had died of consumption. I was not allowed to attend her funeral or burial.
On my fifteenth birthday, in the year 1734, Sister Joseph called me to her. I presumed that it might be something to do with my life there, my possibilities of a future placement in marriage. What she gave to me was a bundle of papers tied in woolen yarn.
“This day is usually reserved to assign you as a compagne, or to speak to you of coming prospects. Taking vows, marriage, or placement as a lady’s maid. You have gone to great lengths to deceive your purposes here, Marie,” she said. “These letters from you have been placed in our post box for the past three years. While I do not read English well, it does not take a scholar to discover the content of them.”
“I only wrote to my mother.”
“You procured costly paper available only to the Brothers. How did you come by these sheets?”
“I asked for them. From Lukas Newham.”
“What did you give to him in return?”
“My word.”
“That is all? He is gone, now. Will you tell me his secret?”
“Since he will not fulfill it, I will. He intended to become a priest. He said he knew of secrets that the pope alone should hear. He swore me to secrecy for the paper.”
“We believe he dealt shamefully with young women in our care. Did he lay hands upon you? Did he beg you for favors, or take them?”
I could not stop the color on my face. “No, Sister. I am not to be had so easily.”
“Why the wine upon your cheek, then? May I not assume that you are sullied or saddened by the efforts of that young man?”
“Not I, Sister.” The image of Patey with him made my face burn. “I hated him.”
Sister Joseph cocked her head and watched my heart play upon my face. She said, “Do you know of others whom he did sully? Tell me the truth.”
I bowed. “Yes.”
“Why did you not tell me?”
“’Twould have broken my word to two people to do that. I was trapped for the want of a sheet of vellum.”
“Several sheets, I see.”
“Yes, Sister, though I did not steal them. He stole them.”
“But you are wrong, Marie. There are other forms of theft, especially of the light you hold in your heart. It is dimmed by deception no matter how small. You have hidden one lie within another.”
“Sister, what of my letters? To let my mother know I am alive?”
“No contact with the outside world is allowed for anyone. The paper will be soaked and the ink washed, though it will leave stains, as lies leave stains upon your soul, daughter. Leave here and go to confession now.” As I passed the threshold, she said, “I thought you were above this sort of thing, Marie.”
My work was doubled for thirty days, every moment of it spent fuming in anger, scheming to escape. I found every possible opportunity to pass Patience in the kitchen or at meals and inquire whether there had been a candlestick on a certain table or if one needed polish. I did it before listening ears. Sister Joseph thought I was feeling repentant, seeking out even more work to penalize my wicked heart.
* * *
When in 1735 I was sixteen, after the flax harvest I was almost glad to return to the peace of the great loom. The huge apparatus filled one end of the building, had rhythm and harmony in its beams. As I dusted the bench, I realized that the baskets and bolts that seemed tossed here and there made sense to me. If something tumbled against another stack, it was easy to see where it ought to have been. Everything had a place.
Winter came early that year and cold, wet winds blew as soon as September, bringing frost in the mornings. At breakfast on a stormy morning, I found in the bottom of my plate, under thin gr
avy, a piece of bread. Cut into the bread was a word that had grown so stale in my mind I nearly cried out at the sight of it. “Gumboo.”
Patience cleared plates without a look in my direction. I might have thought it some accident in the baking, save when I handed her the platter, her eyes turned away but her fingers gripped mine under the plate and squeezed. “Thank you,” I said.
“Not at all. What God provides, we will cherish.”
My mind raced. I made mistakes in my weaving, causing three inches to have to be taken out. I dropped a shuttle and made a splintered notch on the end, broke a warp thread; almost fell from the bench when someone behind me let the door slam in a stout breeze. I told Sister Beatrice that I felt ill and she sent me to bed.
I patched my cloak, a rough black handed down, stitched layers of fabric together to hide what I meant to take inside my skirt and petticoat, and kept my feet upon a stool so that they would be rested for the march before them. While my weaving suffered from anticipation, my sewing did not and I finished everything, including bundling it, in short order. I folded it so that the pile beneath my cot appeared nothing out of the ordinary but it would be available in the dark of night.
As supper finished and chapel commenced, I thought of all the times Patience had told me before to meet her, even to make ready. There had always been something that got in the way. I expected that something would again break our progress, yet because she said it, I believed that the Abenaki warriors, many of whom were the same men who brought me here, were on their way with more captured slaves. What made today different from those other days, I could not ask.
After evening prayers, rain fell anew. I made a dash between our door and the older girls’ dormitory. The nuns at the entrance were just putting wood in their stove, and told me Patience was working in the kitchen that night for our guests. Sister Évangélique said, “You know how travel is in this weather. They might not get here until tomorrow. She’ll sleep in the kitchen.”
“Merci, ma soeur,” I said, and made for the kitchen, fighting against the wind.
I found Patience standing upon a stool, reaching into a basket on a shelf high overhead. No one else was in the room. I whispered, lest others were just in the shadows. “Patience?”
“What!” she said, and toppled off the stool, thumping on the floor and overturning a basket of potatoes with her elbow as she fell. “Marie! You startled me so!”
“Did you not hear me come in?”
“I was deep in thought. Fetch that, would you? The potato under the chopping block.” She stood and rubbed her elbow. “Glad enough the bone is not broken,” she said.
I lowered my voice and asked, “Is this night gumboo?”
She whispered in English into my ear, her breath making a sound. “It is the night. There are always so many to feed, it will be noisy. In that basket up there I have hidden a monk’s cloak much as the one you wear. No one knows I have it, however, and so it will be my disguise. I have a man’s hat and a ruff. Are you wearing the petticoat Ma made?”
“Yes, though you would not know it for at least two layers of cloth cover it. I added a new waistband and hem, else it would not have fit.”
“We shall leave when they get here. You’d best stay with me.”
I said, “I have to fetch my parcel. And Sister Joseph will check my bed. Will you come for me?”
“You must be here. We have to run when the moment is propitious. Go get your things. I will hide you in the kitchen, in that alcove by the pantry.”
“Do not leave without me, Patey.” What I saw in her eyes made me cold deep inside. I felt as miserable and shaking as I had that night in the secret stairway behind Patience’s bedroom wall. “I will have to slip out a window after Sister Joseph turns in. Promise me you will wait for me if they come while I am gone. Promise, Patience.”
Patience narrowed her eyes and said, “If I go without you, know this. There was no choice. Now, run.”
I splashed through runnels all the way to my dormitory. I knelt by my cot as was custom, crossed myself, prayed. As if she’d been waiting for me, Sister Joseph snuffed the candle on her table near the door the moment I arrived. I dressed in my night clothing, putting the gown over my petticoats and chemise so that later I could don the heavy skirt and short jacket. I changed my wet stockings for dry ones. I lay upon the cot, fighting the urge to sleep, curious at how I could close my eyes even in the midst of excitement. If Patey left without me, I would have only myself to depend upon. I would not wait, I vowed. After an escape they would watch for a while, but they would forget. They always did. Yet, perhaps I might do as well to stay and let the Sisters find me a husband. At least that would be a life. Two more years I shall be tied to the loom, two more years. What, I wondered, were the chances they would marry me to a man who would take me to Jamaica?
The midnight bell tolled. The room took on the quiet of resting souls and Sister Joseph snored peacefully. I dressed on my knees beside the cot, got on my shoes and tied my parcel of clothing. I looked toward Sister Joseph and bade her a silent farewell. I put up my hood, raised the wet blanket over my head, and pushed open the shutters at the farthest end of the building from her. It squeaked. I paused. The rain slowed. At last I stepped over the sill. Halfway to the kitchen, the sky opened and rain came as if it might never rain again.
I ran right into one of the yew trees; it was closer than I had imagined. I stopped to picture the place where the kitchen would be. I could just make out the shape of the other tree fifteen feet away. Not being able to see meant no one else could, either, safe in the cloak of rain. I neared the kitchen, raised the blanket, hoping for a familiar object. At once, a hand took my arm and fingers closed over my mouth, the blanket was held over my head and my whole person was quite lifted and moved. I fought mightily. I gave every effort to scream yet I was not able to make a sound.
In the midst of my struggling I heard a voice, a woman saying, “Resolute, be still. Keep quiet. Let her go, now. Not a sound, Ressie. It is I.”
“Patience! Who had me? That was not you. Why was I captured that way? I had almost reached the kitchen.”
“The others are eating. Plenty of people and food to keep everyone busy. We go.”
I turned at her last words and ran into a man. Tall and hard as an oak tree, he was the source of the leathery iron hands that had taken my mouth and held me just moments before. An Indian man. I let out a gasp and drew a breath to scream.
Patience shook my arm. “Ressie! Quiet. I told you, we are leaving.”
“Is he going to let us go? Is he here to capture us? Sell us again?”
“Run for the gate,” she said, took my hand and pulled. With her other hand she clasped the Indian man’s hand!
I stopped so suddenly I slipped from her grasp and the two of them nearly fell down in the mud. “Where is baby James?”
“He is better off here. Rachael will care for him. I cannot.”
“He is your baby.”
“You do not understand, I know, but he is better off here.”
“What if Rachael runs away and leaves him? Is there a foundling home?”
“Then he will be kept here. Come now, Resolute, or stay behind. I will not wait for you and have us all found out. It will go badly for everyone if Massapoquot is found to be helping us.”
This was not what I imagined. This was wrong. I had to turn back. I would let her go. If I went, I would never get home to Ma. I would marry some farmer I knew not, and bear children and grow old and die here in this frozen hell. “Baby James,” I said again. “We will go get him.”
“We cannot take a baby,” the Indian said, in perfect French. I was amazed for I expected the same halting words they used in English. “We travel hard and fast. You must come now or stay behind with the child. No other choice.”
“Ressie!” Patience shook my hand impatiently.
I could not see Patience for the downpour. “Are we going to Jamaica?” I asked.
“As close
to it as we may,” her voice answered out of the gray. She waited a few seconds, and when I could not answer, she took my shoulder and followed the length of my arm with her hands, grasping my fingers in hers. “Farewell, then, Ressie. I love you. I will always think of you. I have to go. God keep you, little sister.”
As if unbidden, my hand squeezed hers. “Take me with you,” I pleaded. With Patience on one side and a man I knew not on the other, they propelled me out the gate I had found long ago, into the hands of three other Indians. One led the way up the road, and turned into the woods where a narrow path cut this way and that. We marched through the dark night until the rain stopped just as the sky turned a lighter shade of gray. The air chilled so that our cloaks and coverings froze upon us, making tents of ice. I could not feel my fingers or my feet. We moved as shadows, on and on, until one of the men called a halt. I heard water. A river appeared out of the fog. Long bark canoes, two of them, waited at water’s edge. The Indians put Patience into one canoe and me into the other. My heart sank. Would they take me into the woods and press me with their desires and kill me?
I sat in the floor of the canoe while one man before me put a rough deerskin with the hair still on it over me; a man behind me took up oars and rowed. As the hours passed I slept. The sun broke through the heavy clouds from time to time, playing warm spots upon my face. Home, I thought. We are going home. I thanked God. Thanked the Indians, too. I asked the Virgin to guide our canoe, whispering, “Ma, I’m coming.” When the sun lowered, the Indians pulled their crafts to a bank and made a small camp. They lit a fire that seemed to give no warmth at all. Patience sat near the man who had caught me at the convent. I recognized him in the firelight. He was the one whose wounds she had tended with her hair. I whispered, “Patience, do you know these men?”