May 21, 1755
In the company of thirty of the king’s men, my husband and my oldest son left this house. I watched them go, the one steadfast and powerful, the other slender and jaunty in his new kilt, a musket over his shoulder as if it were a fishing pole. I knew that the army would have paid our way if I had chosen to go with him. I could have abandoned my children to America’s care and gone as a camp wife, but the thought of that was too pitiful to entertain for more than a moment. I had a two-year-old babe; I had Gwyneth and Benjamin, still too small to apprentice for at least five years. Would my man find another woman to wash for him? To do other things for him? To lie down for him? My heart sank. My prayers were not for his life, then, but for his heart. His life, I believed, was safe in hand. I went out to the road. I feared not that Brendan would forever remember his mother, for what child forgets her? I trembled. I would not stop trembling, I vowed, until they both rested before my fire again.
I held in my hand the snow-white cockade Cullah had taken from his good hat. He gave it me as he left. A spot of white was a signal, a sign of a Jacobite. I set it upon the mantel board over the hearth and leaned it against the clock August had sent to us for Hogmanay this year. I had never had a clock before, though I remembered one similar in my parents’ home. Now and then I stood watching the gears move, the links on the weighted chains rising and falling as it worked its way around the hours. I loved the ticking of it, like a heart. Alive. The white cockade seemed to watch me in return.
Wee Dorothy Ann called me back to her side with a plaintive wail that a child has for a short time. When I looked into her eyes I saw Patience staring back. As I pulled my bodice open, I felt guilty for I was glad that Jacob was now blind and I was free to nurse her before my own fire as if he were not there. Soon enough she must be weaned, I knew. I counted on America’s help at both the loom and for the care and schooling of the children, but nothing filled up the emptiness I felt. Nothing I did kept me from staring down the road. Terrifying dreams plagued me, until I resorted to asking Jacob about signs and portents from the old ways. On his advice I kept onions over the baby’s bed. I kept two knives crossed on the kitchen table while I worked and put horseshoes over every door. I crushed the shells of every egg I cracked, small enough that no witch could write our names upon the fragments. Still my dreams tortured me with images of Cullah and Brendan fallen in battle, their bloody faces looming toward me from behind trees. Sometimes in the dreams, I heard babies crying so that I got up to see what was amiss with Dorothy, only to find her deep in slumber.
I did not visit the graves of my babes in any weather other than bonny and sunny and bright. I did not visit them when even was setting or dawn just broken. I went there just in the bright of a clear midday, when all of nature seemed lit with God’s grace. As summer wore on, we were often surprised with quick rain showers, as if a single cloud came upon a place and began to weep, then, finished with its mourning, moved on. It was on such a day I had gone to the graves, leaving America watching over the sleeping Dorothy, who was at last weaned, and the other children who were at their books.
At the headstones of my dear ones, I said a prayer for each and I paused at Goody’s grave. I knew not what to think of the old woman who carried so much lunacy, and kindness, and guilt within her. I felt a darkness come over me, and paused, wondering if it were the presence of evil. It was simply a cloud hiding the sun, changing the angles of the light in a way I had not before seen in brightest noon. Prickling ran up the sides of my neck to my hair. I finished my prayer with my eyes open.
At the edge of the small clearing, where trees and brush met with a rise in the ground on one side and a granite outcropping on another, forming a V, I saw another stone. A headstone. Overgrown with ivy, it seemed to face the hillock, rather than the flat. I went toward it to see if aught were writ on the opposite side. The sky darkened yet more. A mist of rain sprinkled down upon me, speckling my gown.
I bent over the stone. Nothing was there. It was old indeed. A forgotten grave. I straightened. The rain had quit, and I turned to leave when I brushed against a man. A tricorn hat he wore upon his head. His ankle-length cape of black wool brushed against my skirt, my hand, my arm. I saw the cloth flutter. I opened my mouth to beg his pardon before I felt the shock of meeting someone in so isolated a place. But, there was no one there. It had been a specter. I looked toward the footpath I had traversed to get there. The rain had dampened the ground, but I saw no treads upon the speckled soil other than my own. I remembered no face, nothing corporal at all, save the fact that he was walking quite resolvedly toward me and his cloak touching my own.
I hurried down the path. I prayed aloud, at first in English but then French, and then Latin, walking faster yet, for those were the prayers drummed into my head, I knew them by rhythm, by chant, even more than I knew Ma’s or Jacob’s old Gaelic charms. “Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio; contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli—” I broke into a run, gasping the rest, saying, “Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,” as I got to my house. The wee ones had gathered in the parlor, with Gwenny and America, and I stilled my face against the wooden door before I turned around and greeted them with a smile.
After that time, I could not visit the graves of my children. I remembered Cullah’s saying that oft, when he needed most to pray, all that would come out was a scream. When the memories of that brush against the black cloak came to me, the only prayer that came with it was a terrified scream that played against the ribs surrounding my heart. I decided to say the Rosary and to beseech Michael the Archangel every day for my husband and my son. I would also beseech the old charms against fairies and say the Protestant prayers, as well. Let someone tell me a woman may not think of her son and husband in battle with any prayer she can, and they will have a williwaw on their hands.
CHAPTER 27
October 2, 1755
Not long after that, I carried my flax wheel up the stairs to the parlor to work; America worked at embroidery, Gwyneth sat at the woolen wheel. Jacob snored before the fire in a settle. I saw my daughter as if for the first time since the babes had died. She was a child no longer, fully as old as I had been when I came to Lexington town, as old as America had been when she came here to apprentice. Her figure was slender as a willow branch but filling. “Gwenny?”
“Yes, Ma?”
“Have I ever told you the charm against evil from the old ways?”
“I do not say it for it is thought to be witchery to know those ways.”
“The old ways are merely old, not witchery. I learned it from my mother and she was no witch. Goodwife Boyne knows a hundred more.”
“She is quite odd.”
America chuckled. “She is at that.”
I said, “Gwenny, you are old enough to go out to a house.”
She brought her wheel to a stop and looked up. “Would you send me away?”
“It is thought best for young people, to see how others may keep a house. To learn and make up their minds for their own way. You do not have to if you do not wish it.”
“I do not wish it. With Pa gone, and Brendan, too, you and America would have too much to do. It is hardly kept together now. What would you do, bring in a boy as apprentice gardener? Grandpa cannot teach him. A boy would be worthless.”
I smiled and straightened my back then dampened my fingers yet again as the thread sought each drop of water and stretched itself as if it were a living thing onto the spindle. “The women in this house have a way of speaking their minds that may not be thought well of by society.”
“I care not a whit about society.”
“Perhaps you have not met the right society. I wondered if you thought of going out.”
“What could I learn there that you have not taught me here? Was I not also attending you at the birth of Dorothy Ann? What more is there to learn?”
I took a deep breath. “There are secrets of this family, of this place.”
“I told my f
riend Elijah that I knew a story about a castle in Jamaica and he said it was foolishness.”
“Then you need more intelligent friends, Gwyneth.” I talked to her about trust. About hiding things, about knowing things that others may not know or might even ridicule her about. She seemed to take it all in with little expression.
Gwyneth said, “Ma? Why are you saying these things? It is true what Pa said? Will the Indians come here and try to kill us? I know about the cupboard in the kitchen.”
I let my wheel stop. After a while I said, “There are many reasons why you may want to hide. Some traveler demanding entrance. Soldiers demanding billeting.”
America said, “If your mother had not hidden me, I would be dead by now.”
“Why?” Gwenny asked.
“Because the soldiers here wanted to abuse me. I would have killed myself.”
“Those fellows? Why, I thought they were so merry. They made me a swing on the big tree out front. One of them carved me a wee dog from a block of wood. He was one that died, though.”
“You were a child,” I said. “Thank heavens that they were not completely depraved and harmed you not.”
In the morning, I showed Gwenny the other stairs and the hiding places that I had showed America years before. This time, the room above the loom held nothing but spiderwebs and Cullah’s empty chest. When I saw it, I sighed. In the years since first showing it to America, Cullah had lined the room with fragrant cedar, and now it held shelves on which to store bolts of wool. I smiled. Better to be prepared.
Gwenny put her arm through mine and said, “Ma? Do not weep. Pa will return, I know it. Brendan will, too. We will be together again.”
* * *
Just before All Hallows, I received a letter from Rachael Johansen. James Talbot, Patience’s son, had reached an age and chose to leave the convent. I had long entertained a wish that he would seek me out, find the woman who had so often sent her heart to him, and her letter said she asked him to do just that.
While Cullah was gone, my visits with Lady Spencer took place as regularly as I could manage. Then the first week of November, I received a messenger with a note from her. It said she was ailing and begged me to call upon her. I wanted nothing more than to be with my old friend one more time if her days were numbered and few upon this earth.
Her old butler, Oswald, had been replaced with a new man, Rupert. Rupert had a clipped manner of speech, though he led me to Lady Spencer’s presence with more grace than Oswald had used. I found her seated before a window, a large rug covering her feet propped upon a cassock. “My dear!” she called. “How pleasant to see you. How is the new darling? I am sorry. I have forgotten. It is a boy?”
“A girl, Lady Spencer. Dorothy Ann.” She was two years old, but I said nothing.
“A fine English name, Dorothy. My favorite aunt was named that; my sisters and I called her ‘Dolly.’ I shall look forward to making her acquaintance. I want you to visit me again, Friday week, Resolute. I shall be having a dinner attended by important people to whom I want to introduce you, if you have not yet met them. My son and his wife will also be here. That means, of course, you will have to suffer the presence of fools, but we will negotiate those waters easily enough. It will be enough that you come. Now, that is Friday, and the following Saturday, then, the last Saturday before Advent, I shall have entertainments yet again but it will be held at Wallace, Lord Spencer’s home. Yes, you did not know my husband has died? Well, ours was a marriage of convenience. Convenient for him and profitable for me. Wallace is now Lord Spencer and I am throwing the ball in his honor. I wish you to be in attendance, and I hope you are able to accommodate me on this.
“We may as well speak now of the reason I asked you to call. I have invested in a shipping venture. It is risky, but what have I to lose? Only this house, which my son does not want anyway. I have put it up as collateral against a shipment of silks and spices from the East in India, fruits from the West Indies. They are running against the East India Company. Do you know what that means?”
“Only that everything in the colony depends upon East India Company.”
“The British are trying to throw the French out of every place they have a foothold, including this continent. The Indies. Bengal. They are bathing the provinces in India with blood. Lord Clive is gone back to London from his post in Bombay and so the place has gone to complete riot and the company is too busy shooting Frenchmen to hire privateers to ship their goods or to defend those who would. There are a few willing to risk their own necks and they demand bounty for it. That means the ones that are left are murderously foul and it is a dangerous ploy. I found a captain willing to make a run for it, and I am paying him double for a cargo, providing he brings it back dry. His name is Talbot. You know him?” She smiled at her tease.
“Well I do, madam.” I said it as much for the sake of listening servants as anything, for she knew my brother visited me whenever he was in port.
Her voice softened. “I have decided to do something meaningful with my last years and my last wealth. A woman may do few things that stand up over time if her children do not do her proud. I will tell you of my will and how I have it arranged. If our dear captain brings home this ship, this house and grounds become his.” She raised her hand at my expression. “Now, not a word. That is my choice. My son, of course, knows nothing of it yet, and if some calamity occurs to the ship, he never will, for the house will then go to him. We shall believe nothing bad will come of the voyage, and plan for the best. When the ship comes in, the cargo is yours though not without strings attached. While your man is in the north woods hunting Frogs, there is much work to be done here in Boston. Part of that work is for you to thrive, for only if you are received in the highest society will you be able to do the rest. There will be silks on that ship for you to sell but also to wear.
“Johanna the dressmaker is retiring from her trade, and others have surpassed her in style at any rate. Have her apprentice, Constance Cousan, a Frenchwoman, create for you something with a pleasing and modern décolletage. You will hold a store of silk that can be sold for a great deal of money as well as used for your own betterment. If you sell it, do it before they raise the tariffs yet again. Better yet, do it secretly and pay no tax. Every day the Crown thinks up one new tax and another, and it will only get worse. They are fighting wars on every side, Russia, Saxony, even the Swedes and Austria again, and flint and black powder costs dearly. They will come to this colony, and all the others, to fill the coffers for this. I want to ask you to keep it out of the royal treasury any way you can. I believe in the liberties granted to all English citizens. Besides his being mad as a hatter, there is something quite rotten in the courts of good King George. Quite rotten indeed.”
“I will do my best, Lady Spencer.” I wondered why she did not trust Wallace, her only living son and heir, or some lawyer or friend. Was I being told that I was such a friend?
“I want you to call me by my given name. We have known each other long enough, do you not think? My name is Amelia.”
“That is lovely. Thank you for this courtesy, Amelia. And for your great faith in me. But this is so unusual. May I ask why?”
“Why would I offer you my given name? No, you mean why give away my house and goods. Well, my dear, I hope you never know. Let us simply say that my son and his lovely wife are back in town. We have had a discussion which left me little choice.”
The thought of the treachery Wallace could carry out made me feel dark inside, as if his name brought a shadow to the room. “Do you know when to expect the ship?”
“It was due in port five weeks ago. Now, be not frightened. This Captain Talbot is quite the seaman, I have heard. His men like him. He presses no one to join his crew. They line up for the privilege. He will arrive.” She smiled and nodded. Rupert poured more coffee.
I could say nothing. I knew not whether her words encouraged me as much as they stunned me, for this seemed out of place with her protected demeanor.
“I am sure he shall. He must.”
“Let us have the coffee, shall we? At least it is one thing that does not set fire to my gout.”
* * *
Four days later, a public coach pulled up to my door. The sky seemed to rest upon the chimney itself, and a leaden mist swirled on the ground. August stepped from the coach, thin and weary, with a slight cough, but otherwise well. He had bathed and shaved, sported new clothes and a warm smile as he hugged me and kissed the children. I had not seen him in two years, and while I knew his life was fraught with dangers as can only be seen upon the high sea, I had felt no concern until Lady Spencer had intrigued me with her recent confidence. The idea that he had been a privateer on the side of British law had always made me feel safe. Knowing he was now skirting that law, and could hang if caught, made him more of a rake and a pirate in my eyes. He bowed upon seeing America, and I watched his face, wondering what I saw there.
The following day a flat wagon appeared at my door, loaded with so much from August’s cargo that we had to move and restack everything in every room of the house. My home looked like a mercantile. We settled in that evening over stew and beans and bread with the children gathered round. He had much to tell, as did I, and he was displeased that Cullah and Brendan had been taken to war.
* * *
Friday, as I prepared to meet the coach to travel to Amelia Spencer’s supper, August suggested that he stay at home with America and the children, for he still felt as if he had caught a cold on coming into the north Atlantic. He laughed at himself, saying, “I have been shot at, punched, kicked, and stabbed, but what lays me down like a withered crone but a New England ague!” Dorothy had a sniffle, too. I hated to leave her, but my heart told me I must, sure as it told me we would probably all catch the cold and have a week or two of sore throats and running noses. I was thankful it was nothing more. Just a cold. All else I felt was uneasiness akin to Cullah’s constant fear of war, a mysterious note in Amelia Spencer’s words that left me no choice but to go.