“Some’s call it that way, Miss. Properly pronounced Lexington.”
I put on my bravest smile and said, “Gentlefolk of Lexington, I wish to return to my mother and my home. I have no escort, and I would not stay in a public inn. If I may prevail upon some kindness in this company to see me to the seaport, my only intent is to find passage home.”
A man called from behind, saying, “Me and the missus be g’ang to Braintree on the morrow. Miss Talbot may ride with us to Boston.”
“What be your age, lass?” a man asked.
“I prefer to keep that,” I said. “It is a lady’s prerogative, is it not?”
“You will stay with Selectman Roberts,” one of the others said.
Mr. Roberts held up a hand. “We must think on this. Will you abide with us a night?”
Another chimed in, “That is the way it is done.”
“Have you wife or family?” I asked. “I would not stay alone with a man, sir.”
The men nodded and a few smiled. I had passed a test of my virtue. As selectman, it was Mr. Roberts’s duty to take me in, I was told, but he was bound by convention, not law, and if I displeased them, he might change his mind. Mr. Roberts said, “My wife will see you are kept company, and indeed, my daughters and two small sons shall bear witness.” He smiled at me and I could not help but return it.
“I shall be in your debt, sir,” I ventured, though I wondered whether that was the best response as soon as the words came. “Then may we speak of a journey to the coast?”
“In good time, my dear. In good time. Autumn has near set in and ocean travel will be treacherous. It may be best for you to pass the time with us until spring.”
I felt so free. The very air seemed to have light in it. Still, though I had no wish at all to wait longer, to convince these people to help me was my only hope. “I am sure you know more than I about ocean travel, sir, but I wish to go as soon as a ship is ready.”
He seemed to pay little attention to that statement, and the whole lot of them accompanied me to the door of the Roberts home. It was a short walk. The house was large and made with an overhanging second floor, so that it looked like a cake sitting upside down. In the middle of the bottom floor, a carriageway led to a stable at the back. Mr. Roberts’s family filled the house to overflowing, but unlike the Haskens’ mean and cramped conditions, this place was lighted with windows by day and candles aplenty by evening, and there was not the smell of a goat anywhere near the place. The Robertses’ daughters, aged from seven to seventeen, made much of dressing and ribbons and nosegays and lace. From eldest to youngest, they were Serenity, Betsy—whose given name was Elspeth, Tipsie—whose given name was Portia, and the smallest and most beautiful, America. The sons were Herbert and Henry. By supper that evening I had learned that the girls had been raised gentlefolk, though the two young boys, spoiled into naughtiness, teased their sisters, threw crying fits when denied their ways, and caused all manner of havoc at mealtimes. Still, they were not mean children, just untamed.
Alone in the washing room, I went to throw Patience’s lopsided apron on the pile for the ragmonger. As I pulled it off and let it fall to the floor, it landed on the stones and made a clinking sound. I picked it up and pressed my fingers here and there and only then remembered that it had merely been a hiding place for her old petticoat, worn to shreds. I cut the apron open. Her treasures were still intact! Ma’s silver casket had been fixed there by a patch of madder and black plaid. Ma’s pearl necklace was there under a piece of crudest linen. The whole of it inside bore stains and grit and brought distasteful shadows and a feeling of fluttering darkness upon my senses. Finding this gift from Patey gave me hope for my future tinged with hurt at her leaving me. In an hour I had everything sewn into my gray skirt in pockets and duckets, just as Ma had made. It did not have to last long, as I meant to use the gold to buy my way home.
By week’s end, we had discussed my traveling to Jamaica at least nine times, and seeing I was determined, nothing would do but that Mr. Roberts and his wife would accompany me to Boston to find a ship. I had to hide my disappointment when Mr. Roberts answered that he could not leave for at least five more days, yet the weather was increasingly bitter and I feared he had been correct about not sailing until spring.
On the day we were to leave, the girls burst into my room, chattering like a flock of chickens. Serenity, the eldest, looked upon my form for a moment, and then shook her head. “But you are so lithe! And that old gray wool! Too plain. You wouldn’t want to be taken for a Quaker, would you? Oh, to have a waist as small as yours. Come with us, Miss Talbot.” She pulled me by the hand and led me to her room, clucked and riffled through the gowns and petticoats hanging from the walls. “Try this. Take it with you, if it fits. It fit me two years past, but Betsy has already outgrown it, too, and by the time Tipsie can wear it, it will be out of fashion.”
Under my weak protest, they pulled the pale blue satin and silk over my head, laced up the back, adjusted the shoulders just off the curve so that it made a cunning frame for a modest décolletage. Serenity pushed me before the glass. “Look at yourself now, Miss Talbot. Oh, my. None did this gown justice until today.”
I saw myself in the mirror and stared longer than the nuns would have allowed, shivered with the sheer joy of wearing something lovely and light. It was the color Ma dressed me in for any nice dinner. I turned to Serenity. “You are kind. It is very fine.”
“Let us do something to your hair. Come here, Betsy, and bring us a comb.”
They fretted and fiddled, and finding my hair’s nature as dismaying as I found it, they managed to get a chignon on the crown and pull out some curls at the temples and sides. The curls would not line up and fall “like good little soldiers” as Betsy said, but dangled by their own device, all askew and frothy. I smiled at Betsy and told her, “The more I trouble my hair, the more unruly it becomes. Please let us say it is finished, for it only will get worse.” Once they were indeed finished, I admired my hair in the mirror and felt a swelling of what I may only look back on as vanity and selfish pride. At the doorway, I donned my black priest’s robe over the gown, tucked my bundled clothing under one arm, and bade them all farewell.
I called to the boys, Herbert and Henry, “I shall not be pleased at all if you kissed me good-bye. I hate being kissed by boys.” As I had expected, they both ran to kiss my cheeks and put their grimy hands about my neck for a caress. Herbert pressed a glossy, almost clear crystal stone into my palm, said it was a gift for my journey and not to lose it, as it contained magical powers. “Thank you kindly,” I said.
As we rode in the barouche, Mistress Roberts said, “We shall miss you, Miss Talbot, for you have been a dear guest. If your travels ever take you this way again, do make our acquaintance anew.”
“I shall, madam. You have been ever kind to me in my distress. I shall speak of your warmth and care to my mother and I am sure she will think you are splendid for it. Mr. Roberts, may I ask something of a business nature?” When he assented, I continued. “In preparation for some ill occurrence, my mother concealed some valuables which I have been provided in order to seek a way to return home. Is there a place in this Boston town to which we go, of a nature where I might sell or trade for coins for my passage?”
“You have them with you now?” he asked.
“I do, sir.”
“Let no one know of it by any gesture or query until we are within a safe institution. We will go to the Seaman’s Mercantile. Instead of going to the harbor at Mistick we shall ride up the Neck and into Boston proper.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Not at all. It gives me a chance to see to my investments without worrying about boring both my lovely female companions, eh, my dear?” He winked boldly at his wife, who blushed and waved her fan at him. “Of course, you will have to let me handle the exchange for you. I will do my utmost to secure the right price.”
“May I accompany you, sir? That way I could see how it is done
, and be the more educated by your guidance.” This played to his pride in a greater way than I had expected, and the man beamed as we rode the rest of the way.
I was not expecting Boston. First it seemed as if we had driven to the gates of hell itself, for the offal, dead beasts, garbage, and sewage at the edge of what Mr. Roberts had described as the “neck.” Past these huddled ramshackle buildings, far worse than the log ones the Haskens had taken me to in the woods, but farther on, actual houses, small and humble, perched amidst well-kept gardens. Then we rounded a brushy, tree-covered knoll and turned to see the full of it. A city set on a hill, almost as if described in the Bible, with open windows and doors, and the sounds of life everywhere. The air was raw and damp and a mist softened the edges of the buildings. I saw spread before us a city of brick and mortar, cobbled streets bustling with carriages, smart whiskies pulled by a single stallion, and old farm wagons, the whole presence of human life being lived in a freedom and abandon I only dared remember from long ago.
When we arrived at the Mercantile, I huddled in a corner with Mistress Roberts and produced the pocket. Since Patience had abandoned both her legacy and me with such aplomb, it would be her things I sold first. I took the rings. Four were gold, I was certain, one containing a ruby the size of my smallest fingernail. Three more rings were silver or a whitened metal that might have been pale gold, for I knew of such and these showed no sign of tarnish for their years smothered in moldering linen. They were ornamented and, I thought, costly, too. I kept the pocket in my hands so that I could return the coins I got to it and stitch it shut after taking out what I needed for passage.
We were shown into a small room behind another small room, which had been gotten to through a narrow stairway. The place was stale and had no need of curtains on the windows for no light had come through that glass either way for what looked like a century, so thick was the grime. Mr. Roberts appeared to know the wizened fellow before us, but his appearance was so evil it drew me back to think Roberts had dealings with a man who might have been the most scurrilous pirate I had yet encountered. His name was Peterson Cole, and that name was on the board out front, yet I had expected a gentleman of some bearing to be at this trade, not the weasely bind-staff before us. Still, the two talked and shared a drink of brandy, pouring sherry for Mistress and me. I had not tasted the stuff before, and was not fond of it. I did manage to take polite sips, wishing I did not have to touch the cup with my lips, for I doubted it had been any cleaner when it was poured than had the windowpanes.
His shipments accounted, Mr. Roberts took some payment in stacks of gold coin. He eyed each piece as if expecting one to be a fraud, but each bore a nick on the edge, proof of the softness of pure gold. Then he introduced me without history, telling the man I wished to sell some jewelry I had inherited. I laid the rings before him. Mr. Cole squinted at the rings, then at me. He looked at them one at a time, and held the ruby up to the dim light from his window. “I’ll give you seven shillings apiece, child. Take it. It’s a bargain since two of these are obviously fake.”
I straightened my shoulders and addressed Mr. Cole. “Sir, I am neither a fool nor a child. Any backstreet publican would do better than seven shillings. Good day.” I stood.
Both men stood in response. “Now, don’t be hasty,” Cole said. “Maybe the light is poor. A Massachusetts gold crown apiece for the gold ones. That makes two pounds and six. What say now, Miss?”
I was tempted to say, “I say you are a fraud and a scorpion,” but I kept my tongue.
Mr. Roberts’s face held some distant chill and a brooding in his eyes, and he turned to me, saying, “I doubt any other transaction house would offer so little. If my charge here will allow, we shall seek another opinion in another exchanger’s shop. I have to stop in Mistick this day, too, and the light is waning.” An uneasy silence grew like a stench in the air while the two men eyed each other.
“A businessman must make a profit,” Cole said. “Perhaps I’ll look at them again.”
The rings lay before me, all but vibrating with the lives lost in getting them to this place, glittering with the touch of my mother’s hands as they lay there on the man’s soiled writing-table leather. I said, “Five British gold guineas apiece for the gold rings, and four British gold sovereigns each for the two silver ones without the jewel. Ten British sovereigns or pounds—but they must be in the king’s gold not the colonies’—for the jeweled one, for that is a ruby and the metal is gold. They are not fake.”
Cole said, “I won’t do business with a woman. Not even a woman but a child.” He gave me a look that seemed to be bold rage and chilling avarice all at once.
Mr. Roberts’s mouth dropped open. He said, “Well, she learns quickly, eh, good fellow?” His face grew just as steely and his eyes never left Cole’s face.
At last Cole sneered, rolled his eyes, and capitulated. He turned to a cupboard at his back, opened a drawer, and pulled out three leathern bags. He counted out the coins I had asked for three of the rings. As I did not move, he turned to me and said, “Take it or leave it. The other is a fake and I won’t buy it for more than a shilling.”
I picked up the coins with one hand and the ruby ring with the other.
He let out a startled, “Hup!”
“I am quite happy with our bargain,” I said. I placed the ring upon the first finger of my right hand and a warm shiver went from it through me and all the way to my feet. At that moment, I remembered Ma wearing the ring at a ball when I had been too young to see much but her hands and her face. And here I had almost lost it, trading something so precious for mere money. Never again, I told myself, should I look upon the things hidden in my petticoat as mere things.
That was to be my single triumph of the day, for at Mr. Roberts’s insistence I waited with Mistress inside the coach while he inquired first with the harbormaster, then in a successively poorer line of taverns for captains or crew of any ships heading south to the Caribbean Sea. He returned to the coach and reported, then moved us forward another street or two. Not for six or eight weeks would anyone chance hurricane season sailing against the trade winds toward Jamaica. Not until spring. Not until May. Not without a load of trade goods and who knew when that would be ready? I felt near exhaustion as he returned the fifth time. I tucked my hand with the ring on it under my arm and held it close. The mist turned to rain.
“Now, take that sad countenance away, Miss Talbot. While you have passage fare, you must write your mother—we’ll send it on the first packet south—and ask her to send you traveling money and a chaperone, and perhaps a guard. While you await her answer, you may stay with us this winter.”
“Mr. Roberts, I owe you so much already. All this time I thought only miles and coin could keep me from my mother. Now the very weather conspires against me.”
Mistress Roberts said, “Waiting is ever the hardest when one is young. But look, we will have visits and balls this winter to drive away the gloomy day. Young men with whom to dance. Would that not fill your days until a ship can be got? Write your mother immediately.”
Mr. Roberts leaned out to the coachman and said, “I say, would you know of a scrivener about?”
“Aye, sir. Up by the Tri Mount.”
“Take us there, man. There’s an extra shilling in it for you.”
The coachman whistled to his team and we jostled away from the wharves and the smell of old fish and seaweed. Through narrow streets up a hilly area, past modest two-story houses and into a street where neat shingles hung at the street level, the coach finally stopped in front of FOULKE AND HARRISON, ESQUIRES. We entered the building by a low front door which opened into a step-down. A man with black sleeve cuffs greeted us with a nod. Within three quarters of an hour, a formal letter was written to Ma and made ready to post on the next ship. Mr. Roberts paid for the attorney-at-law to dictate it and his scribe to write. The whole was an entreaty to Ma to send me plenty of passage money and a chaperone, or to come herself, how to find us on the roa
d between Boston and Concord, and how the Robertses were happy to be in complete service to me as we awaited her reply. My heart all but stopped and I wanted to skip and dance about the room.
Mistress Roberts insisted that they purchase for me a wardrobe befitting a ward of theirs, a planter’s heiress, and one who would grace their home for the next four months. “But I cannot pay for these things, madam,” I said.
“Your mother will return it later. I am sure she will want you well treated.”
We went to a haberdashery, a milliner, a dressmaker’s, and a shoe shop, where a lady used paper and drew around my feet and Mr. Roberts himself ordered two pairs of shoes and one pair of white kid slippers to be delivered to his address every month for me.
CHAPTER 15
October 16, 1735
This was most like my true home of any place I had been in so long. My heart strained against my clothing, willing myself not to weep from homesickness that had all but disappeared in the years at St. Ursula’s. Before the Roberts family, I kept my face under scrupulous control, but alone, in my room or if they happened to be otherwise occupied—for the house had fourteen rooms and anyone might be in any of the three drawing rooms at any time—I oft gave way to my emotions. There was one thing I had learned about hard work and much of it. It kept the mind busy and the thoughts on the tasks at hand. Now that I had time to sew, or read, look out a window, or walk through their garden and pet the stable horses, I found my thoughts recaptured all I had lived through, oft with violent emotion attached.
I offered to mend or sew, but they would hear of me doing nothing more than artistic embroidery as befits a lady. Often as I plied my needle, I would catch a whiff of coffee or treacle cake and again I was a child, back in our parlor. I pictured Ma at my shoulder telling me to make the knots smaller, to thread the needle so, and to hold my work before the fire to see if ravels showed through the backing. Memories I had stored away seemed as real as yesterday, stitched in layers of suffering and loneliness. I thought of my own jewels, too, yet untouched, hoping I would know the right time to use them. I had Patience’s money in my pocket and a ring on my finger.