My Name Is Resolute

  In the second week of September our first child tumbled into this world, nearly missing the sheets prepared for him. A boy. Eadan brought me beer-and-barley soup while I nursed. Jacob wanted us to name the babe after him. I had wanted him named after his father, but both men wore me down. Brendan Fergus Argyll Lamont, the third generation of Lamont clan on this shore, would be known to the world as Brendan MacLammond II. The four of us made a family. Well and aye.

  Mrs. Boyne, our closest neighbor, had given up on the thought that I was enchanted, and had instructed me in the finer points of motherhood such as binding the babe’s belly, healing my sore breasts with sheep fat and just-sheared wool, and drinking plenty of dark beer. Mr. Boyne kindly sheared one of his sheep himself, just for me to have the new wool.

  With the birth of my child, I felt a terrible guilt and longing for James, Patience’s child. I sewed him a little coat from the new wool. I made a second cap of warm wool. I packaged them and sent them to the Couvent Sainte-Ursule in Montréal. Every year, I promised myself, I would send a cap, a blanket, something I could make with my own hands, so that the boy would always know the touch of love from someone of his own blood. At Christmastide every year I would also send Rachael Johansen a letter and a scarf I had made.

  MACLAMMOND was printed on the shingle before my love’s shop in Lexington. Nothing more was needed. Jacob often spent some days at home, rather than the shop. Cullah complained sometimes about his father shirking his labor, but one evening when the light was just so from the window, I saw that Jacob’s eye had clouds in it. That night in bed, I told Cullah and asked him to stop harrying his pa for the work, that I could use him at the house. Warping the loom was painstaking and detailed, and Jacob could mind goats and repair fence while I worked.

  When he was not working in town, Cullah enlarged our home until it did indeed carry a third-floor tower. He told me that hearing the baby cry gave wings to his hammer, a feeling of urgency that the family would grow and need room. If someone ordered a fine maple or walnut chest, the scraps went into a bin. From them he built boxes and shelves, spoons and bowls. From his own stock, he created beds with posts to hold curtains, until our house resembled no less than the Roberts home had been. I was so proud of my house, of my husband and child, of my life. I attended meeting on Sunday when it pleased me. My husband worked hard and was known for honesty and generosity. I made the most beautiful linen in Massachusetts Colony, though Johanna continued to insist she purchased it from France. I had been trained by French weavers, so what was the difference?

  Brendan was a quiet baby, sleeping much of the day, so that in short time I felt healed and went back to my work, this time only spinning and weaving in two-hour bits. Still, it was possible to finish a couple of yards a day at the loom, and I had lately been concentrating on woolens, for, with the approaching cold, Johanna had told me there was more call now. She had asked me to try the variation called linsey-woolsey, but though I had provided her with twenty-five yards of it, it sold slowly, only four or five yards at a time. I also made rougher brown wool for men’s and boys’ coats. That sold better.

  I had had seventeen yards of black wool for capes on my loom when Brendan was born. Every morning I blessed the loom and touched the iron spider over the doorway, every evening I put it away with the second chant.

  My Cullah never left for his shop without touching the doorpost and blessing all who passed thereunder and he never came to bed without thanking God for another day of good hard work, a project finished or a new one begun, and a wife and home to keep him through the night.

  From the Boynes we learned also of their tradition; though they were Irish they could boast of three generations having been born on the land whereon they lived. Their beliefs in old ways were woven with the ways of Indians, the English, and some distant north folk. Mrs. Boyne could speak of them with great detail yet could never tell me whence they lived nor how long past her knowledge had come.

  Jacob believed she unwittingly carried Norse tales as some of the Irish do, indeed some Scots also, for the heat of Viking blood was strong, he said, and he believed he saw it powerfully in my strawberry-and-flax-colored hair. When he spoke of such things, he would raise his cup to Cullah and say, “Son, blessed will be your sons that carry her blood, and may your daughters all take after you, for that will be the strength of this family. A merry day, a merry day, I tell you, when you brought this lass to wife.”

  If Jacob’s only thought was to endear himself to me, he made good work of it.

  Every month I called upon Lady Spencer and showed her samples of my work so that she was always the first one to apply to Johanna for a gown of some cloth that appealed to her. And then one day, to my great surprise, Lady Spencer called upon me.

  It was a bitter and windy day in March, the roads still frozen solid enough that horses’ hooves sounded as if they traversed a pavement. I was in the midst of kneading bread when the coach appeared, and when I heard it I rushed to put a fresh apron over my waist and a clean lace cap over my hair.

  Lady Spencer admired Brendan, commented on the style of my home, particularly the curtained windows and woven damask-covered bedsteads, but other than that stayed but a moment. As she stood at the door, adjusting her gloves, she turned and said, “The town council has been meeting lately. I find that it is best to listen but do nothing.”

  “Their meetings concern me? My husband?”

  “Tell your husband I believe he is a loyal subject of the king.”

  “Yes, Madam, I shall.”

  After she left, simply waiting for Cullah to come home was beyond my strength. I had to do something. I put the bread to rise and changed and wrapped my babe, then walked to town. I found Cullah standing at the lathe, and I was careful not to make any sudden noise or movement that would distract him from the spinning form and the razor-sharp blade in his hands. I watched him. His shirt had come apart at the shoulder again. His apron wore into it, and as I observed I thought of how I might restitch the place so that it could withstand the wear. His work took him from one tool to another all day long. A frost of wood chips had caught on the back of his hair. When at last he let the machine spin to a stop, I stepped forward. “Husband?” I called. “I must speak to you.”

  He welcomed the two of us with a broad smile. When I told him of Lady Spencer’s strange visit, his face showed his concern, yet he said, “I am lost for a reason to it. Loyal subject of the king? Which king did she mean?”

  I drew in a breath. “I know not.”

  “Did you say anything to her?”

  “Nothing more than bidding her good day.”

  “If anyone comes to the house today, you must turn them away. Either arrange it so that you seem not to be there, or bar the door and tell all that they must come back later when your husband is home.”

  “Cullah, what is happening?”

  “Maybe nothing. I’ll come home by way of Pa’s house and we will talk.”

  Cullah did not come home that night. Though Brendan slept, I could not. There was no moon, either, and though I hated to waste it, I kept a candle going the night through and dozed in my chair by the fire. Finally, in the early dawn, just as he and Jacob had once arrived at this place, the two of them came a-clattering in. Brendan was hard at work on his breakfast, so I said nothing when the two men laid their belts at their chairs and drew them to the fireplace. Much as I wanted to cry out at them to explain how they could have kept me in worry the night through, I meant, first, to wait for them to speak and, second, to keep Brendan quiet, for he was finished nursing and nearly asleep.

  I laid the babe in his cradle and pulled the kettle from the hob. Then I poured hot water on the last of the tea leaves we owned. Market day I would have to get more.

  Cullah at last said, “I have spent the night with Apollos Rivoire. He is a Freemason in Boston. Do you know what that means?”

  “No.”

  Jacob blew on the tea I poured for him. He said, “It means we are try
ing once again to fight the Hanoverians for the right to be our own people, have our own laws, and rule our own land.”

  “War?” I said, too loudly. “Do you mean we shall have war with the British army?”

  “Not here,” Cullah said. “Scotland. The Highlanders are rising. Forming up the clans to drive the British from their land. The French are our allies, and have always been. I, I gave them money to send over, Resolute. I had to do this.”

  “And to do this you spent all night in Boston? Without thought of your wife and babe? How much money? Are we to be put out of our home for some pipe dream of your father’s? What of you, Jacob MacLammond? What part do you play in this? For Cullah would have no memories on which to draw. The dreams of free Scotland you have spoken about at our fire are your dreams, not his.”

  Jacob snarled. “It is not a dream. It is God’s will.”

  “How much money?” I demanded.

  “Forty pounds,” Cullah said.

  “Fort—” I sat hard in my chair, the feet out from under me. A year’s income gone on some barmy dream of an old man and his memories. “Forty pounds,” I said. “You did not think to speak to me before you ventured everything, no? Who is Rivoire?”

  “The silversmith.”

  I gripped the edges of my seat. “Oh. Fine company, then. Maker of wealthy people’s trinkets. He can afford to support something in a country across an ocean which we will never cross, on a land we will never see. He can throw money at windstorms for all I care.”

  “I’ll hear no more about this, woman,” he said. “It is done.”

  “Why did it take you the night through to do this? Where have you been?”

  “We had to run from the soldiers and constables. We took swords he had made, pistols and muskets, clothing too, to a ship sailing for Mull. It left on the risen tide at midnight. The rest of the time we’ve spent coming home to you and now and then hiding, of course.”

  I put a hand above my eyes and pressed against the pain throbbing there. “Smuggling muskets? Hiding? Now and then? Of course. A ship bound for Mull. With forty pounds of hard-earned gold belonging to us upon it. Well. So the silversmith makes swords in his secret workshop. And you two have been smuggling arms to a foreign kingdom. Cullah, the Scots want to overthrow King George? That is treason! You could both hang! And, oh, Eadan, whatever shall we do without your money?”

  Jacob cleared his throat. “They are not after killing the king. George Second has nothing to fear. We want our own king of Scotland, James Stuart, returned to the throne. We want no English soil; we want our own land back. And this family shall do as we have already done without that money, for ’twas hid by me before we come here, lass.”

  I stared hard at him, unable to keep my lower lip from protruding as if I were five years old. “I do not believe you. Cullah just said he gave our money.”

  Jacob said, “Well and aye. I had put it away for Brendan’s school. But this—”

  I poured out tears that surprised even me. Brendan stirred at the noise as I wept with full heartbreak. My son’s schooling had been sacrificed for Scotland’s king? No doubt some knock-kneed dimwit of illegitimate inbreeding got on a pox-eaten slattern by that devil Cromwell or one of his minions. I wished the ship to sink. I wished James Stuart, whoever he was, to hang. I wished Cullah MacLammond to fall down the well.

  Cullah said, “The Rivoires are Huguenots,” in a reassuring tone.

  That meant nothing to me. I cried all the harder, making quite a racket.

  “We are invited to supper tomorrow. Some of the townspeople will be there. They are much eager to meet you, Ressie. You must.”

  I was so angry I could hardly speak. At last I said, “What is a Huguenot?”

  “A Frenchman.”

  “I have a child to nurse.”

  “It is a dinner for certain people. So that we are all in one accord. It is done.”

  “Even if I spend the entire evening in the kitchen with our baby in my lap and my breasts ogled by every butler and servant?”

  Cullah bristled. “I’ll kill ’em. Anyway, Brendan will not misbehave. He’s a bonny good laddie.”

  “He is neither good nor bad, he is six months old. There is throat distemper and influenza in Boston, and consumption and measles. Why did you do this to me?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “That’s a fine thing. What, are you too highborn for the likes of them? You are invited to dine with the best of society, decent people who would take you right in, and you think it is a sentence.”

  “It could well be. And I said it not because they are not worthy. I am nursing!”

  “I am going to work.” He stood up, and moving angrily, took his belt and slapped his hat on his head. It landed wrong and he straightened it.

  “That is a good thing, Cullah MacLammond,” I snapped.

  “Well and aye,” he said, and slammed the door.

  Jacob sat at the table and after a while he raised his one eye carefully to peer in my direction. I pointed to the door and said, “You had better go find some work, too, for this boy is going to school and if you just wagered Harvard—yes, I know about Harvard—if you just wagered Harvard on some daft, worm-eaten, bowlegged king-in-a-kilt, you had better get it back by the time the boy is old enough to need it.”

  “Woman, you’ve got a tongue on you like a fishwife.”

  “Well and aye. You knew that before you moved in. Go to work. Out with you.”

  He slammed the door, too, but called through the wooden barrier, “I have had no breakfast but the sharp end of your tongue!”

  “Forty pounds,” I shouted in reply, which woke up Brendan, who cried, and I sighed, changed his clouties, and rocked him again. I did not spin or weave the whole day through. I wandered the house, the yard, the small barn. I thought and thought about what had gone on. To what kind of man was I married? Was there a charm for a man who had lost his senses?

  The morrow came and I found with some dismay that I did not fit well into my lavender gown. I left the panniers on a hook and loosened the stomacher, and still no help. I wore a simpler gown, still well made, but not lavish, and I put a parcel of extra clouties for Brendan in our small wagon. Jacob stayed at the house. I barely spoke to Cullah all the way to Boston. To say I faced this evening with strangers and a nursing babe at my breast with dread would be too soft.

  What I discovered, however, was that Monsieur Rivoire was glad to have someone to whom to speak French, though his wife was English and they had long ago Anglicized their name to Revere. Their tiny lad was but two and was named Paul. Though they were stern Protestants, their loyalties lay not in their religion but in Masonic code. So this was what drew my Cullah and his father together with these odd fellows, I marveled. While their little Paul did his best to play peek-at-me with Brendan, who dutifully laughed at his new playmate, I talked with Deborah, Paul’s mother, and other women there.

  So we were part of a new society. Making our way home at nearly midnight, my babe close in and warm under many blankets and a great rug, I watched our breaths mingle before us. The night was crisp and the cold hurt my cheeks.

  After a long silence, Cullah said, “When they ask of us, we give. And if we ever have need, we have to but ask of them and they will give.”

  I said, “Deborah Revere came from a very wealthy family. Easy for her to give.”

  “He married well.”

  “No one can say you married me for money.”

  “I married you to have someone to cuff me about.”

  “This society, these people, they have secrets.”

  “Aye.”

  “And you acted as if I were an outsider. As if you have secrets from me. I am on your side, Cullah MacLammond. Did you not know that?”

  “You would not have agreed to what Pa and I did.”

  “Of course not. You do not ask why, you just want blind obedience?”

  “Certainly. That makes life easier.” He smiled then, and turned to me and winked.


  I said, “You should have married a horse, then.”

  “Hear that, Sam?” he called to the horse. “Sam says no, that he cannot make a hasty pudding to save his life. No. Had to marry you. Bewitched by a wee fairy.”

  I made my voice stern as I could. “If ever something is amiss, if you need me to meet you in secret, or you need me to understand something, you must give me a word.”

  “What word?”

  “My sister used ‘gumboo.’”

  “That’s likely enough.”

  “She cut it into a piece of bread. That was when I knew we were leaving the convent. Before that, if we were to meet to talk, she said ‘candlestick.’”

  “If I use the word ‘cross’ and it seems out of place, that will be a signal and you will meet me in our parlor, or our kitchen; that is better.”

  “All right.”

  “And if I use the word ‘sword’ you will immediately go to our bedroom.”

  “Yes. And what then?”

  Cullah looked at me and grinned, wrinkling his nose mischievously. “Prepare.”

  I gasped. “I have married a heathen.”

  “Aye. One who can wield a sword well.” Cullah nudged my side with his elbow.

  I felt my frown start to break. He was laughing but I felt angry still. I did not want to let go of the anger and its hold on my heart. “Oh, leave me alone, Cullah.”

  “I cannot do that. You’ve married a heathen and I’ll not let him leave you alone. I’d ask you to forgive me if I knew all I need forgiving for.” The horse snorted loudly.

  I said, “There is a list.”

  After a while he nodded and said, “Ah. Good thing I can’t read,” and nudged my side again.

  * * *

  Our days before Brendan’s arrival had rolled in and out, my heart full of this new life as wife. I learned much more about cooking for men, particularly making everything in greater quantities than I expected. I tended geese and goats and added chickens to my flocks. I found I liked hens and their dear sounds. To say we never disagreed would be a lie; of course we argued. But each day I found new things to admire about Cullah, things that in knowing made a great difference to me in how I felt about him, and had I not known, I would have been so much less in favor of my choice of him.