Patience smiled, her eyes alive and twinkling. “Every few months, Massapoquot and men of his tribe travel to Montréal to bring slaves to the convent of St. Ursula. We were part of one group. When they came, Sister Marta had all of us in the kitchen stay up for two days, waiting upon and feeding the men who had worked so hard to save our souls from Presbyterian hell.” My mouth opened, appalled. She continued, “Every time I saw him, I felt something different. We began to talk. We knew each other. His name for me is Red Shield of Bear. When Massapoquot offered to come and take me I made him promise to get you, too. We have planned this for four years. That first rumor those two sisters would try to escape, that was you and I. But the weather was against us. Even the Indians do not go abroad when there is four feet of snow on the ground. I could not call you if there was no hope of making an escape.”
“And they will take us to Jamaica?”
“No. But they will get us near Boston. There are ships there aplenty for you.”
I huddled by the fire. “What about these other men? Do they speak French?”
“Yes, all of us,” Massapoquot said.
I looked him in the face. “Why may I not ride with Patience? Why do I have to sit in the other boat?”
The man laughed. “Why would I have to do all the work? Why, you would make them feel as if they weren’t useful.”
There was so much to think about, yet I was so cold I thought I would die of it, and I could not think. Patience had left her own child behind. She would have left me, too. She had convinced four strange men to take us to Boston and no one had mentioned coins or gold. I wondered how much it would cost, or if she had traded her virtue yet again for this journey. I could not imagine how her mind and heart were connected to my own, for all the workings of hers seemed too foreign to grasp. What was to keep these men from doing anything they wanted with us and dropping our dead bodies in the river? I said a prayer for James and begged forgiveness for leaving him behind. We rode in canoes, then walked overland, with the Indians carrying the canoes on their shoulders until we came to another river.
Eleven days we went down the river, the men paddling, Patience and I frozen to the bone. Twice they made us lie down and heaped things upon us as if we were a pile of trade goods, and one of those times, Massapoquot had to talk long and fast to some other Indian men so that we could pass unmolested. The twelfth day they banked the canoes and hid them in tall brushy plants that overhung the river. Massapoquot said, “From here, travel slow. This is English land. You speak some English; you might say them we are not here to kill you, but Englishmen bad. They will kill, no matter you have their hair and skin. They not listen. You,” he said to me, “choose you come with us. You choose. Not have to live with English. Think this.”
“Yes, we will think on it,” I said, trying not to appear as morose as I felt. I smiled at Patience, thinking that perhaps she had been right to trust him, or perhaps she had lied to them to get the Indians’ help in escape. I wondered for the first time whether our absence had caused a stir at the convent. “My sister and I long to see our mother,” I said. “I can smell the flowers of Jamaica, already.”
We lived off dried corn bread and berries for five more days. We did much resting and eating, and though it was cold, they seemed in no hurry. We stopped at a road where the air was filled with the fragrance of wood smoke and bread baking. Massapoquot pointed. “There. English town. This place one road goes two ways.”
Patience put her arms around me and hugged me. “Go to that house there, and tell them you prevail upon the selectman to provide you food and shelter until such as you desire to go on.”
“Is my face dirty?” I asked.
“No. You look fine.” She sighed. “Let me see you once again. Yes, you are fine. Almost a young woman. Another year, well and aye.”
“Then I am ready. Let us go side by side, Patey. Thank you, gentlemen, for the journey. God will bless you for what you have done for us.”
Patience said, “Go on, Ressie. I will watch you go, then, before we leave.”
“You are not coming with me?”
“Ask for the selectman’s house. Here, take this, too. I shall not need it.”
“Patey?” Deep, wrenching, inconsolable sobs shook my whole frame. She removed her apron and fastened it about my waist as I moaned, “What shall I do without you, Patience Talbot? We are meant to go together.”
She wept. The Indians wept, too, I remembered later. Patience said, “I am going with my husband, Massapoquot. We wanted to bring you to a safe place. There is a town not far from here. My old petticoat is sewn inside that apron. Everything Ma gave me is yours.”
I stared at Massapoquot while pointing with one hand toward the house up the road. “Husband? What if these people are Quakers? What if they hate Catholics?”
“You are not a Catholic.”
“I do not know what I am. I am lost.”
“Someone moves in the field,” one of the Indians said. “English. We go.”
I bit my lip. She was leaving with Massapoquot. I felt as sure as if I had heard a holy voice, whatever Patience chose to do I must do the opposite for the good of my everlasting soul. As they stepped toward the woods, I stood fast. The men took Patey’s arms and slipped into the cold shadows under dark red maple leaves.
The dappling of light and red as a screen before my sister, her red hair loose over one shoulder, painted an image as I could carry in my mind for a lifetime. She looked bewitched, fairylike, part of the forest itself, a face enchanted. Au revoir! I called. “Au revoir.” I stood alone in a field of cornstalks and chaff, my heart broken, my eyes red. “Patience!” I cried. A crow flew overhead. Higher above, a V of geese squawked at each other. After many minutes, I pulled in my tears and pressed the backs of my hands against my eyes, cooling them, turned away from the woods, and moved toward the house.
CHAPTER 14
September 29, 1735
I knocked at the first door, an unpainted thatch of boards tied in place over a hole in a low stone cottage. The top half swung out at me. A gnarled hand held tight to a knot of rope, ready to pull it fast. A couple crowded themselves into the open half-doorway. They appeared more ancient than the sagging beams and rusted iron circle above the door. When I inquired were we not in a town, they looked to each other and drew back from me. “Are ye a witch?” the old man asked. “Come ye out from the woods like that, with no one to guide ye, and no horse, and naught but your bundle?”
“Did you kill our laddie?” his wife added. “He was thrown in a well by a witch.”
“No, Goodman and Mistress. I was a captive, just escaped. I found my way here with the help of—of others. I am hungry.”
The man twisted his sparsely bearded chin, then angled his head to ask, “A brownie are you, then? If we feed ye will tha’ grant us a wish?”
“I am neither fairy nor brownie. I am but a girl in need of a roof and some soup.”
“How did you know ’twas soup on the hearth?” asked the goodwife. “She’s fey, I tell you.”
“It is always soup,” I said. “Oh, please, turn me not away. At least show me the direction of the town.” Were I them, a young woman coming alone from the forest, not in rags but clothed and fair, carrying a bundle such as I had, may have seemed such an odd apparition I could not blame their superstition.
“Eleven miles. That way,” the man said, pointing to a window on the back wall where the dull light of morning came through the only opening save the door.
“Is there a road, sir? I wish to get to Boston. I am told that it is a great seagoing harbor.”
“Of course there is a road. This is not the wildi-ness, ye know.”
“Will you gi’ us a blessing ere you go?” the woman beseeched.
“I know not one,” I said. I drew back.
“We’ve done ye no harm, little one. A blessing?” She came from the house then, with him on her heels, and bowed her head. I was at least a foot taller than either of them. The man l
ooked upon me with fear but the woman was willing to share her dread with hopes of magic.
I imagined if I said nothing, they would think that I cursed them instead. I spoke a phrase of the mass: “Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritus Sancto; sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum, amen.” I stopped myself making the sign of the cross, fearing that would give away the origin of the words.
The man waved his hand, one finger extended, toward the road. “Go on, now. Town’s that way. Eleven miles. Ye will find the Great Road. We done ye no harm, remember that. No elf ever suffered at our hands, tha’.”
The road wound through places almost too narrow for a horse-drawn rig, but it was not eleven miles to the town. Indeed, within half a mile I came upon a house and then another, their lands trimmed and perfect as the gardens at St. Ursula’s. A woman waved to me from behind a split-wood fence. I returned the salute, then she called to me, “Are you travelin’, then?”
“Yes, to Boston to find a ship,” I said.
“Alone?”
“Aye, Mistress. Have I far to travel?”
“Boston? I think they say it may be three days by coach, two on horseback, and one on foot.” She smiled. I supposed it was to be a riddle, but it was not clear. She continued. “Oh, don’t look so sad. There’s a town closer. Cambridge Farms, it was, in my father’s day. Now ’tis called Laxton. The Boston road is not a road to travel alone, Miss.”
Laxton? At her last word, the realization struck me that with Patience married in a way, I was now The Miss Talbot. “I am Miss Talbot, of Two Crowns Plantation.”
“Nary heard o’ that one.”
“In Jamaica.”
“How do you come here, then?”
“Captive.” I looked at her house. There was no cross or crucifix over the door, but another horseshoe bent into an oval. “Sold to a Catholic convent in the north, and escaped now. I hope to return home.”
A broad grin spread upon her face, lighting her eyes with warmth. “Are you hungry, Miss Talbot, as hungry as you are brave?”
“I am, good lady.”
She cocked her head and laughed, as embarrassed as a child being praised. “Oh, come inside, dearie. I am no fine ladyship but I have on some bread and fine cheese. We’ll make you a meal.”
I sighed and smiled. “How kind of you, Mistress.”
This time she giggled. “Come around to the door, then, with you.” She met me from the inside, then, and welcomed me into a dear cottage so tidy and well appointed, though the furnishings rough, that it seemed a dollhouse. It smelled of what we—the French—called the “breath of heaven,” fresh bread just from the oven. In the time it took the lady to bring bread and fresh butter to the table, memories of my time at St. Ursula rolled over me like a wave, and my hands trembled.
“Would you have cider?” she asked as she poured it into a gourd and handed it across the table.
“Well and aye,” I said, and blushed, embarrassed at my words, for Ma’s expression was so rarely on my tongue the whole of the years I had been away from English people. “The bread is delicious.”
“There, you can call me ‘Goody Carnegie.’ Here’s honey for you. Now,” she said, “when you have broken your fast, tell us how you came to be here.”
In as few sentences as I could manage, I did so, leaving out that Patience had left me and run away with the Indians. I told her I had come with strangers who had left me on the road to go to their homeland. Since it was another direction and I wished to get to the closest seaport, they had sent me on my way.
“And where was their home? Far from this town? For I would know everyone.”
I nearly spoke the words in French, and caught myself at the last second. “They were not given to talking of it, and our flight was hurried. West, I think.”
“Well, cheers that you got away! And would you not consider staying by here? There are those who might take you in. Laxton or Lexington, how e’er you call it, ’tis a nice town.”
“Oh, I could not impose, Mistress. I only wish to find a ship on which to go home.” I feared that by “taking me in” she meant as a servant or indenturing me against my will to pay for my upkeep. I pressed my hand under the table against my thigh where Ma’s casket lay. “I have a small sum laid by. I would stay at an inn, if such were available. Of course, I should rather secure a coach to the seaport.”
“Ach, a young lady alone at an inn? Heaven strike me dead this instant if I allowed such. No, no. If you must have a roof, you may share mine, but ’tis not a place for a proper young lady to reside. There are better, and there are those that would take you to the sea, child. Have you finished them vittles, then? Let us go a-calling.”
Goodwife Carnegie took my arm in hers and led me up the road. About a mile on, we rounded a small hillock and came to a bustling town street. Dogs barked, children called out, and women called back to them from windows and doorways of at least a dozen houses storied high enough for three floors each. Farther in were a church building and a public hall, a well, and a trade-goods barn with three sides. Fruits in baskets filled the front stalls and people crowded at them. “Halloo,” Goody called, and people in the square turned, staring at us, while children dashed by. “Halloo, see the young gentlewoman who has come to call upon me? Her name is Miss Talbot, and those of you who would meet her must be introduced by myself, first. She is my guest.” She squeezed my arm and leaned toward my ear. “That’ll straighten the curls in their wigs, dearie.”
Within a few minutes, it seemed the whole town had gathered around, and a cadre of men circled at one side. One of them said, “Now, Goody Carnegie, this Miss will have to answer to the council, just as any would. And you, lady-child, where is your escort, your husband or father?”
“Indeed, I have none at present. Pray let me speak to you in private, good sir.”
Another man said, “Be she driven abroad by some other town? Be she a witch?”
And another, “Why else go to Goody Carnegie’s house first of all?”
“Take care,” said another, “let us have her questioned by the committee.”
Goody Carnegie said to them all, “If you will have a committee then I shall bring her. We will await you in the courthouse.”
I felt more than knew not to question her labeling the small building to which she led me as a courthouse. There she bade me sit upon the steps until seven men approached us, one last of them fastening his jacket and trying to right an old wig that did not seem to fit him well. The others were wigless but bore in their demeanor and long beards the feeling of being a council of law. One man spoke, saying, “The Lexington Town Council is now in order. I am Selectman Roberts, and Misters Falwell, Erskine, Considine, and Jones are witnesses, as are Yeomen Franklin and Spotsworth.”
Goody Carnegie grinned, showing yellowed and missing teeth. “They listen to me even though they don’t like it. I’ve got land, y’see. Land talks.”
A shortish man approached the courthouse and waved. “You there, come this way, if you please. We shall mount the steps there and you approach the bar this way.” He pointed to a hitching rail in front of the building. “We will know your purpose here, and your comings and your goings, young Miss, Miss—”
“Talbot,” I supplied. I told them all as well as I could, that my home in Jamaica had been ransacked by privateers, I had been captured, and, skipping the Haskens altogether, taken north into French colonies to an Ursuline convent. Several people gasped when they heard that last word. Then I said, “Another woman and I conspired with a team of rescuers to leave that place—”
“Wast it because you were taught an untrue religion? Because you were made to suffer papist rule?”
“Partly, sir, but most because I was not born a slave. I am a free person, the second daughter of Allan Talbot, Her Majesty’s loyal—”
“The queen is dead,” said another man. “These many years. King Charles reigns in her stead now.”
“How long a prisoner?” aske
d another.
“Five years altogether.”
“And what is your plan for this place, seeing your first visit with any soul here is to a professed madwoman?”
“Madwoman?” I asked. “Goodwife Carnegie? She has shown me kindness but I knew her not until this morning. ’Twas her house first on the road. Another before it was empty and the one before that, a man and woman pointed the way to Boston. Before that, nothing but trash and dead animals.”
A woman from the crowd behind me called, “Goody’s not in her mind, lassie.”
Goody Carnegie looked down from between two of the men’s shoulders upon me. She smiled and nodded. “It’s true what they say, my dearie. I have sometimes been troubled by a spirit of melancholy.” She tittered, hiding a laugh.
“Melancholy is not madness,” I said, then bowed my head when the men before me stiffened, but I continued, speaking my words clearly so I would not have to raise my voice. “I have known other people not so mad who treated me harshly. Goodwife Carnegie has been only kind. She has shown me here to beg your help.”
“She speaketh with some foreignness of tongue,” a man said.
“Imprisoned by Frenchmen five years!” said another. “Did you not hear her?”
“Do you speak French?”
“I do, sir.” Donatienne’s gentle face, her patient coaching came to mind. I said, “If I was to keep my wits I had to learn what was being said round about me. It was not torture, sir, but teaching as any of you would do.”
“Will you say something?” another asked.
“What would you have me say, sir?”
The first said, “Give us an example, so that we may know it.”
“L’Éternel est mon berger, je m’en veux pas. Il me fait coucher dans les verts pâturages.”
“What say you, Gilliam, is that the French tongue?”
An old man nodded and smiled. “It is, indeed. The Twenty-third Psalm. Fine choice, Miss.”
A chorus of murmurs surrounded me. I pointed my question to the closest fellow. “May I speak, sir?” When he nodded I continued. “Is this not the town of Laxton?”