“I have never heard of such atrocity. The only people who ever beat me were the Haskens. I don’t think they were English.”
“It is said.”
“Patience, there are hideous things told about Indians, too.”
“They are not true.”
“Your son said they meant to leave behind the old and the babies to be slaughtered by the soldiers.”
“The ones who stay tend the young. That is the way of the people. It saves those who can run, who can fight, who can have children to replenish the people.”
“They would have left you to die.”
“Just to mind the children. It is the way.”
A great stabbing pain shot through me. “Were you ever sorry you left me?”
She looked at me, her eyes filling with tears. “You? Always I regretted leaving you. I missed you. But, I had a good life. I was loved. Really loved. Not just by a man, but by all the people. I would never have been loved by the English here. It was my greatest sacrifice, leaving you.”
“It has taken me a long time to feel I belong here. Often I still do not feel it. How could you belong to, to, such a life?”
“I was loved,” she said again.
* * *
Gwyneth spent six weeks swooning and crying, and every time anyone asked her what was amiss, she said, “John Hancock has never called upon me. That horrible Lord Spencer has ruined my life. Now I am not good enough. Not rich enough. Not pretty enough.” I knew she was distressed by what had occurred at the ball, but I told her it was, after all, something in the past. I assured her that the affront by Lord Spencer could never have diminished her in John Hancock’s eyes. He was young, perhaps too young to fall in love the way she dreamed it, and she herself young enough to fall in love again. I did not say aloud that I believed if Mr. Hancock would only tell her she was not in his heart and mind and never would be, as harsh as that was, at least her heart might break and then mend. But no, because he neither wrote nor called upon Gwenny, she was convinced that he would if he could, if his studies had not hampered him, or if he could find our house, or if he had not found someone prettier.
Patience smiled at her, even laughed sometimes, and chided her with, “There are too many pretty boys around for you to only look at one. You see this mark upon my face? This was given to me when I married. It is like the ring your mother wears. It signifies to everyone for all time that once a woman marries she is never the same. You must choose carefully, for you, too, will be marked for all time when you marry.”
“Did it hurt, Auntie?”
“No. I did it for love. There was pain, yes, but it was not the kind that hurts deep. I chose it. Your mother thinks it makes me ugly.” Patience wrinkled her lips at me.
“I never said that!” I protested. “It but makes you look like you belong more to some other life than here. It makes me feel foreign from you.” Finally, I said to Gwenny, “Daughter, if John Hancock had an eye for Gwyneth MacLammond, nothing on earth would keep him from our door.” She cried bitter tears and told me I knew nothing of the human heart.
* * *
Patience seemed to rally some strength, but then by the end of April did not leave her bed for four days. Against her wishes, I sent for a doctor from Boston. The man, Dr. Witherspoon, came with two other physicians, a Dr. Banbridge and Dr. Crawford. The second two were students, and they spent two hours examining and questioning her. At last, Dr. Witherspoon led his fellows to the door of the parlor and we all went outside. He said to me, “She has more than one disease, I’m afraid. Cankerous stones and parasites have infested her intestines, her gut. The infestation is so severe that to remove them would kill her. She’s weakened and malnourished, not for lack of your care but because the disease organisms digest her food and leave her starving. Does she cough?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t believe I have heard her cough. She is quiet.”
Dr. Crawford said, “No doubt due to abuse by the Indians who kept her.”
“She has not spoken of any abuse, sir. She claims to me that she was as well kept as any white woman.” I wanted neither to defend Massapoquot nor condemn him. I only asked, “What can be done for her?”
“Keep her clean and warm. Cleanliness is not only good for the soul, it prolongs the body. Beef broth. Warm compresses for pain. If she will drink a glass of vinegar every day, it may drive the parasites out. Very little else, actually,” Witherspoon said, shaking his head. “How did she come to be this way?”
I detected in him more compassion than the others so I addressed him, though I intended the others to listen. “Thank you for seeing my sister. We have traveled a great many miles, she and I, from whence we began our lives. She was born in England, you know, on an estate. We were both taken to Canada. They, the Indians, let me escape, though I know not why. Patience chose to go with them.”
“Tragic,” he said.
“Doctor? Will my children have been exposed to some pestilence?”
“I do not believe so. Boil her bedding and shift, just to be sure. When she dies, burn everything.”
I paid them each two pounds and bade them farewell. Patience sat up after they had gone. She stared ahead, her eyes fixed on some thought, perhaps. “Ressie?”
“Yes.”
“Do not let them touch me again, those duppies.”
“Duppies? Patience, those men were doctors.”
“Duppies.”
“I will not let them touch you again.” I went to her and touched her head. She raised her arm and surrounded my hips with a caress. I sat upon her bed. She reached for me and put her face on my neck, weeping bitter tears, hard sobs stifled by her weakness and pain. I could do little else but hold her and weep, too. In those moments, time itself dissolved into liquid that was all at once both the present and long past. We held each other, our eyes closed against the light, caught on that terrifying staircase from which the only escape was plunging into darkness. I forgave her every ill-thought act of her youth, even as I grew amazed that I remembered them, and all the anger I had felt at her for the decades behind us melted into the honeyed light of time.
CHAPTER 30
June 6, 1756
Hard against my heart as May began to wane was one simple fact. The year of my husband’s and son’s impressment had passed. Brendan and Cullah should have been home but they were not. I would not think of them lying dead, I told myself. I patted Patience’s head, fed her some chicken soup, then went to help Dolly learn her letters. Benjamin came to me and asked if he could see Auntie Patey.
“Of course, son. There she lies. She’s quite ill today.”
“I wish she had not got so ill, Ma.”
“I do, too, son.”
“I love her.”
“I do, too. She is kind, my sister.” I saw him take the chair where I had been, watching over his aged aunt. She slept, her ravaged insides placated at least for a while with the soup. I wondered at this son of mine. Our older boy wanted to be a soldier from the time he was a lad, and would have brooked no patience for a sick old woman marked by a life so different from ours. Patience had been so lovely as a girl; she was haggard now. This boy, my Ben, had a different heart. “Perhaps,” I said, “you will be a doctor, or you will help people in some other way.”
Benjamin looked up at me. “Maybe. I thought I would build things with Pa. Is she going to die?”
“We all shall. Our hours are not measured for us to know.”
From then on, my life seemed full of the business of itself, though every stone of it was mortared with thoughts of Cullah and Brendan returning. I taught my children such schooling as I knew in English, which was little indeed. As I tried to explain things to them, at times I found it difficult to find other than French words. I cared for my sister, who seemed to regain some health in the following weeks. I called upon Amelia Spencer, finding in her the mother I had missed so often. I embroidered a linen for her table and presented it to her and I sewed slippers for her swollen and sore
feet, padding them well with carded wool with the oil left in, to soothe her gout. It seemed I had a mother and a sister again. And, much as I longed to be held and coddled and doted upon, they needed me to do for them. Thus did I find myself mother and sister to them.
Jacob had been able to find his way around the barn and do the milking by guiding his hand along the walls. I sent Gwyneth to milk now, and sometimes heard Jacob scolding her for it, which she bore with much grace. It was Gwenny who thought to take Jacob’s hand and lead him to the cows and goats. She who held their heads while he milked. She whom he came to lean upon. In my heart, every bird cry, every wolf howl, every bleat of lamb and sputter of hen called for Cullah. I who according to my daughter knew nothing of the human heart, felt it break many times each day.
Then came a day at the end of June when I heard another birdcall, familiar only to a family who had known the birds of Jamaica. I asked Jacob to go to the back door and hold up a bucket, the signal that all was well and August could come to the house. “Patey?” I called. “Wake up, Patience. Our brother is home.”
“Brother? Do you mean your husband?”
“August Talbot. Our brother. Let me help you to a chair.”
August came in looking sore of heart and soul. He took my hand and kissed it before he sat, placing his hat upon his knee. “Have you anything on the fire, Ressie? I am famished. Is your man about?”
“I will get you a plate. Cullah is not home, but there is one here you must see.”
He stood, his eyes flashing for a moment as if I had betrayed him. “Someone here?” Then his face softened. “Sorry. I am too easily startled. You have had another child?”
I laughed. It had been far too long since Cullah and Brendan left home. “No. Do you remember a promise you made long ago? You said you would ‘go around and return’ for us? For Patey and me.”
“It was not possible. You know that. A boy’s promise truly meant. Patience—”
“Is here.” I stepped aside. Patience raised her head.
August flew to her and knelt before her tiny, bent frame, leaning toward him as she tried to rise from her chair, though she sank back in it. For a moment, he cocked his head this way and that. She remained silent as he observed her. At last, convinced of whom he saw, he held out his hands. Patience laid her hands in his. Hers had grown softer in the months at my house, and paleness had replaced her swarthy and freckled arms. He dwarfed her in size. Scarred and browned, tall and rugged, a man capable of ruthless revenge, this hard man burst into tears, pressing her fingers to his eyes. “Oh, my sister. My sister,” he sobbed. “Forgive me, Patey. Please forgive me. Oh God, how I have paid for leaving you. Can you not scorn me? I deserted you. Can you let me care for you now? Patey, forgive me.”
Patience’s eyes filled with tears, too, and with one hand she motioned for me to join them. I sat upon the floor beside my brother. The three of us together after so many years. So many miles. So many tears. After a great deal of weeping, which started all the children and even dear old Jacob sobbing, too, Patey said, “August, you did what you had to do. I am the only one who must be forgiven. I left, too. I deserted Resolute, still barely a child, not a mile from this very spot, when I should have cared for her. Look around you at what she has done.” Patience lifted her head and looked about her.
They both turned their eyes to me as if I held some magic in my being. “I am not holy, nor always good,” I said. “I have sinned. I have buried babies. The wonder is that we have each other at last.”
“She is a gentle mother,” Patey said. “Strong and merciful.”
“Ressie has acted a mother to me for years,” August said. “Ah. A-hah.” He sputtered and wiped his face, as if he were surprised at his own weeping. “There’s a good man for you. Blubbering in your lap. I should be happy, not like this.”
Patey gave him a small and gentle smile, so like Ma’s had been, and said, “Your tears are a precious gift to me.” That started another round of sobs, until we laughed at each other, kissing each other’s lips and cheeks, mingling tears and joy.
At supper we shared all our stories of how Patience came to live here, and how August had fared on the high seas. He swore that he had now crushed Wallace Spencer, though I doubted it. I feared more that in taking Spencer’s goods, August had wounded an enormous bear, and made the man angrier than ever. He was adamant that it was less a worry. However, he intended to stay in his rooms at my house for several months, he said, and conduct some business from here. Then he proceeded to go back to the woods after dark with Jacob holding a lantern for him, so he could return with a heavy chest. That he put in his room in an armoire.
The following day, dressed in brocades, sporting gold buckles, August accompanied me to visit Lady Spencer. Patience refused to go, for she was so ill, but I feared she might not be received with that great black mark across her face. In her formal parlor, Amelia reclined on a couch and did not rise to greet us. “Come, my children,” she called. “I have been waiting to see you. The two of you together. It is a great treat.”
August bowed before her, then stayed upon one knee. “Your ladyship, I fear you will not say it when you hear what I have done.”
“No more about it. I know.” She waved her hand. “I have the papers ready. This house is yours, as long as I may live in it until I die.”
Just as Goody Carnegie had bequeathed to me her home, this woman was giving her house to my brother. “I do not deserve it,” he said.
“Deserve? I promised it in return for badgering some English trade. You, Resolute, must remain charming and wear silks. You must be received in society. Never forget, either of you, that there is always something greater than yourselves at work in the world. Look for it. Seek the whole truth, rather than letting the wind blow you as it will. Both of you are uniquely traveled, schooled in life in ways no scholar knows. Now, enough philosophy. Bring me some water, there, please, dear. With the lemon. Yes. This heat. I can no longer drink coffee but would you have some?”
“If you please, Amelia,” I said, “we should be glad to have the cool water also.”
* * *
Lady Amelia Spencer passed into eternity the first of July, 1756. The entire town of Lexington and half of Boston attended her funeral though no one had the effrontery to request that the townspeople pay for it. The conspicuous presence of August Talbot, and likewise conspicuous absence of Wallace and Serenity, made for much gossip, which enflamed even more when it was made known that August, a man of questionable character and loyalties, had been made heir to her property. A man approached the two of us after the burial and said, “What, sir? Are you so bold as to attend? I have a price on your head.”
August turned to him with a wry smile and said, “And you, sir, name the price and I shall pay it. Then you will leave my family alone.”
After Lady Spencer died, I began to have dreams from which I would awaken shaking and terrified. The dreams were so real, full of smells and textures, tastes and sensations, that during the dreaming, I thought the events were real, and was only soothed when I wakened, covered in sweat, often sitting up having knocked my arms against the wall. In one nightmare, I descended into dark woods where a cave opened before me and I slid down, down its muddy maw against knives, pitchforks, hay hooks, and daggers lining the walls. I never saw the bottom of it; I tumbled and slid, helpless, trying to avoid the cutting implements on the sides. There I saw Cullah, his face smeared with blood, running, frightened, dying perhaps, crashing through the woods as fast as a man could go, his claymore in his hands. Brendan was not with him. August and the rest of my family would come running, greatly disturbed by my cries.
At last America offered to sleep with me, and that next night when I awoke crying, she took my hand. “You were calling for Master Cullah,” she said.
It was then that I realized the nightmares which seemed to have begun when Lady Spencer died all felt as if I were to be trapped, lost, captured, and only Cullah could save me. Every night
from then on, I prayed for them the last thing before sleep. If ever I forgot, the cave and the blades were my home for the night.
* * *
It was a sad day for me when August moved into Lady Spencer’s grand mansion in Boston. He promised he would not leave the city without telling me, but I would not see him every day any longer. He came and went through all my life, I suppose. Sometimes there were years between times I saw him, sometimes just weeks. Yet, now, with him so close but not in the rooms built for him under my roof, I felt as if he were lost to me.
By September, Patey seemed to shrink into the bedclothes as her breath became more and more labored. Many afternoons I spent reading to her, brushing her hair, sponging her clean, not knowing whether she even knew of my presence. With Amelia gone, there was little reason to go to Boston, and I began to neglect attending Lexington church. Indeed, it seemed I did little but cook and clean and tend Patience, but how could I do other?
In September, also, America Roberts agreed to marry Daniel Charlesworth. I was taken by surprise, for all this time I had imagined a well-concealed romance had carried on between her and August. He said nothing to me about it, until at last in exasperation, I had asked him outright, “Why did you not propose marriage to her while you could? I know she loved you.”
“One of the reasons I wanted to move to Boston, Ressie, is that I have a woman.”
“When will I meet your wife?”
“Not my wife. She is my woman. She goes with me. She asks little and takes little in return. Miss Roberts is a fine lady, Ressie. And yes, I see it in your eyes. I loved her once. Love her still. Too much to marry her.”
“But why let this happen?”
“She deserves the life of a lady. That, I could not give her. I will go to the sea.”
“You were born a gentleman.”
“Do not ask me to unlearn what I have learned of life. It is who I am.”
His words had stunned me. I went to do the milking and all I could think about was that what he had learned of life was who he was? Was that who I was? I asked America later if she were not affrighted that their children would all have a shrunken arm like Daniel’s, for I remembered Lonnie Hasken’s lopsided body and I was sure it was that way from the womb. I was ready to press her with insistence that she make known any feelings she had for August, and to reveal what he had told me about his feelings for her. “No,” she said. “Daniel’s shoulder was caused by being stepped on by a horse when he was but three years old. He was not meant to survive, but eventually he learned how to do almost anything the other boys did. He graduated Harvard when but sixteen. I fear only that he is older than I and that I shall have him not long enough.”