In between working at his trade, he worked on our house, ever building, planning, talking about this and that. I learned from him as if a school of woodcraft opened on our supper board each evening. I knew the differences between a raised panel and a cove molding, an ogee and a wooden Dutchman, and I knew to never, never set a plane upon anything not made of wood. He had a head for money and business and could estimate down to a farthing the cost of a paneled room, a barn, or a cradle, multiply a goodly sum for profit, reduce a percentage to slight his competition to win the project, and still make us a fine living.
For my own weaving I thought only in terms of cost against materials. A penny for a farthing, and waste was my mortal enemy. A needle that went dull I sharpened until it was too small to hold. When Cullah said I was not making enough profit for the hours I spent in embroidery, he told me how to account for each figure upon the yard, and how to price the fabric. Johanna was furious when first I raised my price, and threatened to buy from someone else, making me fear for our future. I wept bitter tears, thinking my husband had been too demanding, not understanding the nature of women’s business and that it was different from men’s businesses. The following day she sent a boy to my house with a message begging forgiveness, assuring me that my price would be met. Cullah seemed to me a simple craftsman, but perhaps I had judged too soon. Perhaps he knew people far better than I.
That night, I tucked our babe in his cradle and stoked up the fire while Cullah put the horse in the barn. He came up the stairs with icy hands, and when he formed himself next to me like two zigzags woven into the bed itself, our places so known that the ticking seemed to shape to us, his knees felt like blocks of ice against the backs of my legs. I sighed, listening to the rhythms of these two asleep, the babe’s soft snore promising to become more resonant with age.
I had left a candle to burn to the wick and to be cleaned out for a fresh taper in the morning, so there was still light near the bed and the reassuring smell of bayberry wax closeted my little family. I laid my hand upon my husband’s arm, knowing, as if my hand lay upon some wild animal, the fibers of him, the bone and tendon, the sun-roughened skin and thick hair on his forearm.
I had been lost. Adrift. Captive. Abandoned. Without cunning or force, Cullah MacLammond had claimed me and captured me. Contrary to his words, I was the one fairy-fettered by him. I was part of this place now. Irrevocably, unchanging, I had become part of a land of cold and snow and thatched houses just as those of which Ma and Pa had once told me of old England. This New England had claimed me. I had only to wait to see what we should be to each other.
CHAPTER 24
May 7, 1738
“The king is mad,” my brother said under his breath. “First he hires me to do a thing and then tries to hang me for doing it. Resolute, don’t embroider the bloody thing, just sew it up. And hurry.”
My hands trembled and my throat clenched. Much as plying my needles and thread were to my life, I had never sewn human flesh, swollen and running red upon my kitchen table. “They will not find you. Cullah built many a hiding place in this house.”
“Where is he?”
“Coming.”
“Did he see?”
“He saw.”
“Will he give me over to them?”
“My husband is a good man, August Talbot. He would never betray you. Be still. There, now the baby is crying. I cannot get the knot to stay.”
“Leave a tail on it and tie a square knot. Nothing fancy. I’m not a pillow slip.”
“Your skin is tanned and tough as a hide and the blood is so slick.”
“I hear horses.” He stood so quickly the three-legged stool tipped over and he pulled the needle from my fingers. It swung from his arm like a tassel.
I said, “Follow me,” and across the kitchen to the stairs to our basement we went, where, halfway down, I pushed aside a square panel in the wall. “Step up here. Watch your arm.”
“If it comes open I’ll hire another seamstress.”
I pushed the panel in place and got back to the kitchen, took the haunch of goat from its hook in the fireplace and flopped it onto the puddle of blood on my table. I had just set the stool aright as the door flew open. Three men dressed as yeomen charged into the room, short-swords drawn and ready. One of them said, “We’re looking for a ruffian, Mistress. A pirate who goes by the name Talbot.”
I gestured with a large knife. “I am not he,” I said. I began cutting into the haunch, mingling the goat blood with my brother’s. “You let in flies. Close the door.”
The answer took them so aback, I believe, that they stammered and looked to each other for a moment before he went on. “Goodwife, did you hear a horse go past?”
“Not a sound but my babe crying. Search the house if you want.” Indeed the plaintive wailing stirred my heart, but I had to continue my ruse of urgent meat cutting.
At that moment a bang and several small thumps came from the back of the house. The men hurried across the room toward the side door just as Cullah came through it and greeted them with a shout. “What’s this? Who are you men? Robbed in my own house?” He pushed past them carrying a shovel coated with mud. I knew he had been in the low section, burying the sack of gold for which August had nearly died. “Will you look at this, wife? Talmadge borrows my only iron shovel and returns it like this! I swear he’ll have the use of it no more.”
I saw his gaze pause at the pool of blood and the goat shank on the table, and I said, “Will we have enough firewood to get this cooked by suppertime? And look you there, take care what you are dropping on my floor, husband. Brendan is creeping now. As to what these men want with us, it seems they are looking for a lost horse.” Actually our son was walking, too, but I was playing a part, and I knew even if he came down the stairs he would do it backward on all fours.
After a few threats and questions, Cullah convinced them that he had been doing nothing more sinister than fetching his shovel, ill-used by a neighbor. The men left after warning us again to beware of rovers and picaroons traveling the countryside.
August stayed in his nook while the baby played, ate his porridge, was washed and dressed and put to bed. When at last the house was quiet, Cullah made a birdcall. August came forth. I set a plate of meat stew and beans before him, poured him a flagon of ale, and took a fresh loaf of bread from the coals.
That evening, by the light of a single candle, Cullah, August, Jacob, and I talked of how we would see August to some safe harbor out of the reach of colonial constabulary until he could hear from the minister in England and get his commission again. I felt proud of them both, and a little afraid of the meeting, as if I were pouring grease into a fire. They were both dangerous men.
“Of course you can stay,” Cullah said. “But it would be best to wear a farmer’s clothes and work our fields, if it’s to be for a while. People in Boston know you.”
August smiled. In the light, his grin made an old scar on his face shine like a ribbon of satin. “A farmer? Yes, a farmer.”
“You will still have to explain to the town council who this man is living with us,” I said. “No stranger may stay here without supplying a witness to his character.”
“You’ll do that for me, won’t you, sister?”
I smiled. My brother’s character was not something I wished to know too well. I loved him. I would hide him. Help him. To vouch for him with a clear conscience was another matter, but that, too, I would do.
“It’s still hard frost,” Jacob said.
Cullah said, “The ground will break soon. It’s the only other occupation that will explain the swarthiness of your face. Ressie, how many days until a full moon?”
It was not lost on me that I sat surrounded by villains of a sort, and full of child and nursing another by one of them. Only a handful of people living knew of Cullah’s identity as Eadan Lamont. I was not drawn to him for that. No, I loved Cullah for everything else he was, tender, courageous, a savior in times of terror, a willing be
arer of the scars upon my heart. We fit each other like butter in a mold, pressed together; where one lacked the other excelled. My life was filled with learning to be a woodsman’s wife, owner of a farm, watching the moon for times to plant, to break ground, to harvest. I kept goats and geese, chickens and sheep. I raised flax and fruit trees. Most of all, I spent any moment I could at my wheels or my loom, spinning and weaving. The work had left its peculiar scars and calluses upon my hands. “Another five days,” I said.
That evening at our fireside, after Cullah left us to put the horse in the barn, August said, “I still find myself surprised at your house and home, Ressie. Cullah is a good man. I wish I knew what became of Patience.”
“I told you what became of her.”
“I meant I wished I knew whether she was happy. If she is not mistreated, I should be happy for her also.”
“As the wife of an Indian? I think mistreatment is her only lot. She chose it.”
He was silent long enough to make me less sure that he agreed with me and only wished not to argue. “There are women who refuse to marry at all.”
“I considered that.”
“Yet you chose to become a wife.”
“I did. Cullah—I loved him at once—he was honest and bright and steady.”
August smiled. “He reminds me of Pa.”
Tears flooded my eyes. The babe within me wriggled as if awakened by a great noise. “I had planned to marry a planter with a cane field.”
“This is better,” he said. After a long silence he said, “I had planned to marry a duchess with a merry eye.”
“What became of her?”
“Other men caught her eye, too. For all her wealth and charms aplenty, I would not be a pitied cuckold.”
“I will introduce you to a noble, honest woman.”
“You would sentence one of your friends to marriage to a seaman? No. I prefer to find home here with you, leave the sea when I should and the land when I must. I will be the bonniest uncle any children could ever have, and their benefactor when I am dead.”
I gave him blankets to make a bed by our fire. While he was busy, I said, absentmindedly, “One thing I know, our son will learn to read and write, so he can do more than make an X for himself. I will teach him myself, as Ma taught us.”
Cullah had returned and heard it. “Will you have him outreason his father?”
I paused before answering, as I had seen Cullah do at times, when he wanted to be sure to be heard without raising someone’s ire. “His father is intelligent and knows how to calculate things beyond my schooling. That our son could go to school I can only dream. How can one man’s X differ from another’s, without a witness? But a signature, that is your own hand. I can teach you that, and him, more, as well.”
“I’ll not have you teach me it.”
I bridled inside at his words. His pride was hurt by such a simple thing. This was a mere trifle in the fabric of our lives, and I would not have him angry over it if I could. “Then I shall not if you do not wish it. You took dancing lessons to escort me to a country dance. A lesson in signing your name is about contracts and business. Far less important than dancing.”
“Leave it be, Resolute.”
“Well and aye, then.” I would not argue with him over our table, nor did I want to exchange more about it in front of my brother. I put the babe back in his bed, poured the men more cider, and me some ale. Afterward the men laughed and joked while I lit candles then cleaned the trenchers.
* * *
We named our second son Benjamin. Every time I knew another birthing was before me, I wondered if this time I should breathe my last. It serves no woman to look upon her life with much expectation. Women as well as men may be felled by accident or by disease, but no woman asks a man to risk his life and the lives of his children just to bear them. Men believe that their strength is in their sinews, mastery of trade or horsemanship, and skill with a sword or pistol. Some would say their brawn is displayed in witty reasoning and conversation, while women know, be she queen or fishwife, that her greatest strength is in her heart. She lays down her life to bring forth a child, and then rises up and does it again. My brother congratulated me on the effort which elicited the screams he had heard, along with my surviving what he, with complete aplomb, called torture worthy of any rack.
By the light of the first spring moon, August worked side by side with Cullah and Jacob, planting corn and other vegetables, flax, barley, and oats. At the end of the northern field, the men worked with shovels around some object buried in the ground. Something round and heavy, that clanged when struck by the spade. It was a bell. Buried deep, it was not large, probably from a ship. The clapper was rusted away. In the mound left at the mouth of the bell lay a rotted leather pouch. Cullah laid it in my hands. I coaxed the bag to open, but it was so hard stuck it would not give to gentle prodding. I pulled it to find inside a little piece of leather, on it, two Xs, below them, a smear of brown.
“Is that blood?” I asked, with the babe suckling under a shawl.
Jacob looked at it this way and that. “I think it is. Two people signed their X and made a blood oath, and laid this bell atop it. It meant something to them but you’d have to find someone who knew the Carnegie family to explain it, if there are any left.”
August made a face and said, “There’s a body buried somewhere about, I’d wager. Someone swore in blood to keep a secret, and that usually means a murder.”
“Ah, bury it back,” said Cullah.
“No,” I said. “Bury the oath, if it pleases you. I want the bell. Put it by the back door and I shall clean it.”
“What do you want with a rusted bell?”
“I can call you in for supper by use of a mallet and this bell.”
“Ah, woman. It will sound like you’re calling a church meeting. Besides, I am no farmer to be in a field all year. I go back to my craft soon as we get this planted.”
I winked at him and turned, going back to the house, sure that he would bring it for me. That evening he brought the bell, cleaned of all soil, and other things that he had found buried in the field. Five cannonballs, an iron hook with part of a key still on it, a metal ring about five inches in diameter, and a two-and-a-half-foot-long cannon without a frame or end. It was a piece that I knew came from a ship.
I laughed and asked, “Cullah? Where is the booty? No chest of gold?”
August froze in place. “Are you saying it is gone?”
Cullah said, “Your box is safely tucked under that beech tree at the bend in the stream. Your sister has a sense of humor.”
A few evenings later, when Cullah came in for supper, we had not sat long before we heard a stirring from our animals. Just like people, they like to settle in after dark. Geese make a good alarm, for no one enters a yard without their sounding off. The goats added their bleating to the noise, and soon the whole barnyard was awake and calling. Someone knocked on the front door. Jacob stood, pulling a small dagger from his boot, then sat again, with it hidden by his arm. August and Cullah stepped into the shadows of the pantry and pulled swords from the lintel, waiting. Jacob nodded. I opened the door.
A man in a tricorn hat with a long black cloak nodded at me as he removed the hat. His face was as dark as an African but his features were sharp and chiseled rather than rounded. His long, straight hair was pulled back into a tail and tied with a fresh ribbon. “Evening, madam. The Guinea sent me here.”
I knew that was a code connected to my brother’s business. I did not like that he worked in secrecy and darkness, but I had grown used to it. “Come in, sir. Will you have supper?” I asked.
The messenger looked at Jacob and asked, “Is there a man about? Another man, I mean?”
August stepped into the candlelight. He did not try to hide the sword in his hand. “There is another, sir. You look fresh from the sea. How goes the wind, sir?” he asked.
“Fair and steady. East by northeast; freshening.”
August put f
orth his left hand, the right still ready with a sword. “Who sent you?”
“The Guinea, sir,” he said, clasping August’s left hand in his own left hand.
“And his name?”
The man grinned, showing a full set of very white teeth. “They that know him call him ‘Guinea.’ He said you would know him by another name. I am to hear it from you before we finish here.”
“Would it be Tig the Fiddler?”
“Aye, it could. Captain Talbot would know the more of it.”
“Signed his papers as Carlo Delfini.”
“Aye.” The man handed him a folded paper. As August flipped it open and read it, the messenger pulled forth another paper. “You’ll be wanting this, Captain Talbot.”
August read with concentration. His commission as a privateer had been reinstated. The dark man handed him a pouch, too. August upended it and poured a stack of gold coin into his palm. He selected two of the largest coins and gave them to the messenger, saying, “Wait for me outside.”
“At your service, sir.” The man placed the coins into the lining of his hat, put it on his head, and without so much as a nod to the rest of us, closed the door behind himself.
August disappeared almost as quickly, and reappeared from the hidden alcove in the stairway wearing his own clothing, short breeches and stockings, a flared coat I had cleaned and patched, and a new linen blouse replacing the rough woolen farmer’s garb. He looked every bit the sea captain. He laid his broad cockaded hat on a stool and put the rest of the coins back into the pouch. That, he presented to Cullah. “For your help and house, friend.”
“I’ll not be paid for doing a good for my family. Or for anyone.”
“’Tis not payment. You’ve done as you could for me. I do as I can for you. Please.” August shook the sack toward him. It struck me then, the difference in the two. August was tall and lean, dashing and dark, sleek and swift as an adder. Cullah was wide shouldered, broad chested, formidable in a fight, like a bull enraged. When they had dressed alike, my heart had told me they were alike. I knew that judgment was flawed.