Just when it seemed that the sea was to be my life, that nothing changed nor would it ever change, that dirty men and piteous women were to be my life’s companions and cold starvation my lot, the ship changed course and heeled the sails leeward. We began to move with the sun and toward its setting. I watched men furling sails and fitting out the canoe with its small sail and oars and three lanterns. When the sun went down, four men climbed into the boat and began to row for shore. The night closed around them just as I climbed down the ladder. I felt the ship moving in the night, yet, rather than the usual rhythm of calls and chatter above, we sailed in ghostly quiet. Before morning broke the ship had calmed in a way that I knew we had moored in a bay. Nary a lantern gleamed above. No moon cast a shadow, nor did stars prick the heavens. Save for the glow of sea foam, it was black as pitch when they led us to the ladders.
Against the coldest wind I had ever known, the English lined the women up and made us climb down the rigging again. This time they ferried us ten or so at a time, still under guard, to an empty beach of dull buff and stone. As I awaited my turn, I looked hastily for August. I spotted him below in the boat holding an oar, once I had both feet over the side and was about to take a step downward. “Brother!” I called out.
“Get on wi’ ye,” one of the sailors barked at me. I was afraid he would give me a shove over the side, so I scrambled down the ropes.
“Ho!” August called, and helped me settle my feet into the boat. He reached up for Patience and settled us in. I took a seat beside him. He took up his oar as the other men did, and one called out the strokes.
I asked him, “You will come with us, will you not?”
“Quiet. I am a sailor now, Resolute.”
“But August, we’ll be alone. You cannot stay. Oh, tell me you shall not stay with—these”—I looked about to see if anyone paid me heed—“men!”
“I must. I signed papers. I will only go around, though, Ressie, and then I will come for you. I promise.” An unsteady glow filled the sky, as if the sun hid behind a blanket of dense clouds.
At long last I asked, “How far around? How long will it take?”
“I do not know. But I will come for you. I will.”
When we made the land, they put us off into what I found was a circle of Englishmen holding captives at sword’s point. The sailors with all haste started to make for the canoe again. I held August’s sleeve and looked into his eyes, trying to see what he might feel for us, his sisters, cast ashore on some strange land. There was something there, I vow, though what it was I could not say. Not a tear marked his countenance. Perhaps he had learned to cry on the inside as I had. Or perhaps he was keeping a stern face for those who might watch him. He whispered to me, “I will make my fortune and I will come for you both.”
I called out, “I will watch for you, August. Do not forget us, your sisters. Do not forget we are deserted here.” There was no time to hear his answer if he gave one, for he had turned his face to the sea.
On the beach we waited and shivered, sitting upon the sand. Cora and I sat on either side of Patience, who said nothing, staring at her feet. I felt an urge to lean to one side or the other, to make up for the swaying of the land. I knew the ground was not moving, yet my constant rolling with the ship had become such a habit that it continued here. I felt ill, so much did the ground seem to swell and sway.
Cora asked, “Feels like you still on the boat, don’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. Though in truth it was worse, for the ship would come to rights, but this ground moved with some scheme other than an ocean, some devilment of my mind, so that I could not guard against it. I lay upon the sand and stared at the sky, all gray and heavy with clouds. Only then did the earth seem to lie still beneath me. “August is gone, Patey. Gone with the rovers.”
“I know,” she said.
What a land this was. What a sea. Cold. Bleak. Black. Not a hint of a shimmering blue-green coral reef. Not a leaf hung on any tree. Dead trees stood like gray skeletons forked against a drab sky. I needed no further proof that we were indeed nearing the top edge of the world than the closeness of the sky, for the gray clouds caught and snagged on the tops of the trees. How much farther the edge was, God knew, but I feared we should find it and plummet into the abyss. I whispered to myself, to the sky, repeated it louder, “I hate my brother August. I shall always, always hate him.” As I said it, I squinted at the clouds, willing them in my imagination to part, for the sun to appear, for the sand to warm, and the voice of Ma to call me home for dinner. I would eat all my vegetables, this time. I said, “He will come back for us.”
Patey turned to me and let out a deep breath. “Yes. Keep watching for him. Watch for him always.”
CHAPTER 5
November 20, 1729
The men bade us stand. I watched money change hands, new voices and faces amongst the men who scrutinized us as if we were wild boars that might charge their drawn cutlasses at any moment. And then the walking began. Uncle Rafe came along at the rear of the line as we walked. He was the only one from the trip here that came; all the other pirates went somewhere else, back to the sea, I suspect. May they all drown. God send them the plague. The pox. A fire. A Gypsy ship loaded with Saracens, rats and plague, and blasting kegs and fire.
We walked any number of hours I could not fathom. I had no shoes. My feet ached but yet grew numb; I could not feel the ground I walked upon, yet every pebble made me wince. I began to imagine the drumming of each footfall as a pace in a dance. A chant came from some lost memory, and I began to sing something old that Ma sang when she walked upon the hills, mumming it with my lips.
Everyone stumbled. I began to believe Patience’s hand holding mine was the only feeling I had in the world. After a while we could go no other way but single file and so I had to let go of her hand. I got a stitching in my side and it spread to both sides. If I could have found time alone I would have eaten the rest of my pocket.
I stared at the ground in front of each step, wishing that Patience’s feet would stay long enough to warm it before I stepped there. I tried to step into her footprints, but of course, that was imaginary, for there was no print on the frozen ground. Her feet were as frozen as mine. I had never known such agony. The numbness and burning and bitter shivering never stopped.
With every step I thought of new ways to hate Rafe MacAlister, whose fault it was we were here. “Patience?” I whispered.
“Yes?”
“Do you think Uncle Rafe was a pirate always? Did he join them as August did?”
“I do not know. Be shushed, Ressie.”
“He was fighting the other pirates. I saw him do it. Right alongside Pa.”
“Nary the first man with duplicity of heart.”
I made her explain that as I stumbled onward another length of time, holding to my sides against the shooting pain that threatened to bend me. “I wish someone would steal us back and take us home again.”
“It will not happen.”
“August said we have to start over. I just want to go home, that’s what I want. Some bloody French pirates could kill Rafe MacAlister and take us on a big man-o’-war or a ship of the line, as they called that one they burned down with the rats and the plague, remember? And then they would take us back to Jamaica. And then we would find Ma and take up sewing. I figure since those Saracens fed us almost not at all, and the English fed us quite a bit better, well, the French do like their victuals, Ma always said, and they would have more food and sail around the other way and take us home if we asked them to and explained how we were stolen. Mostly should someone kill Rafe MacAlister, that’s the good start of it. French voyagers, I think—”
A hand jerked me from the line. “Who’s going to kill Rafe MacAlister for you, brat? I’m going to tie you to that tree there and leave you for the crows.” I looked up into Uncle Rafe’s grizzled face, aware that although I began with a whisper my voice had taken strength from my words and I had been talking loudly enough to echo
in the woods around us. He held my arm with a grip that felt like he would crush my bones. He pulled a dagger and held it against my lips, sliding it up and down so that I felt a stinging, as he said, “It would be worth the ten pounds I’ll get for you, to me, to cut your throat and watch you strangle on your own blood, you little cur. Maybe I will just cut your tongue out. How would you like that? Maybe I’ll cut out your briny tongue and give you a taste of what’s been keeping your sister company. Eh?”
My mind raced. My stomach gnawed and growled as he shook me. Had Patience been given extra food? The look in his eyes told me something more, as if I were to know something unknowable. Remembering Patey’s bruised and bloody face, I shrank from him and he let go my arm. Soon as we began to move again, I sang Ma’s old charm against evil to the rhythm of my steps, my voice meant for Patey’s ears. “Gum-boo cru-ah-he na clock. Gum-boo du-he-he na’n gaul, gum-boo loo-ah-he na lock.”
Patience turned and stared at me, not watching where she walked, and my heart was moved, for she smiled! She turned and took up my song, the first part which I had forgotten, and whispered the song under her voice to the rhythm of our feet. “Ulk-ah he-en mo-lock; gun gaven-galar gluk-glock.”
I answered back with my part and she sang again, “Go-intay, go-intay, sailtay, sailtay, see-ock, see-ock, oo-ayr!” I thought of Rafe MacAlister, and chanted the ancient words under my breath until I laughed aloud. My laughter was not mirth but clinging faith in the words I said, a curse against all who might do us harm. I wished I had thought of the songs while still in the capture of the Saracens. Perhaps they would never have got us as far as the English sailors and Rafe, and we would be home already.
The path widened into a narrow road. Waist-high brambles lined both sides. If a cart had come along we would have had to stand in deep brush to let it pass. They stopped us by a well to rest. The well was below a small rock circle, under a roof so low that anyone taller than me would have to stoop to reach the cracked and useless bucket that had been left by it. We fixed our quilted petticoats as capes. “That is warmer,” I said. I thought Patey looked so haggard, so drawn, that I feared for her life.
“Why do you look at me so?” she asked.
“Something is so lost in your eyes. Your face is so terrible you make me afraid.”
“’Tis merely that you have not seen me in the light of day in so long.”
“We shall go home soon. Mayhap that old charm will work.”
“’Tis old foolishment. Ma was naught but a gentlewoman and she would never cast a spell or a charm. ’Twas a song she knew from her granny.” Patience brushed her hands along her arms under the petticoat-cape. “I doubt we shall ever see Jamaica again. I doubt I will live to see Christ’s Mass Day.”
I pressed her arms with my hands then, the same way she was doing, to give more comfort to her. “I am more afraid now than ever I was before. We must go home again. If the charm helps, it is good to remember it.”
Cora fiddled through the other women toward us. She said to me, “Little Miss Resolute, what is that shining on your sister’s back?”
I saw the shine just as she said it, too, and clasped my hands across my mouth. “Patience, turn quickly.” The cloth had worn through and showed a glint of metal with the too obvious shape of a coin printed into the linen. Our treasures!
Patience rolled it in her hand. “I shall turn it inside outside,” she said, and worked the cape over her head again.
Cora squinted and asked, “What’s you got sewn into that, Missy?”
Patience shrugged and said, “It is nary a thing,” but I heard how Cora’s voice had changed. Now on land, she had said “missy” the old slave way instead of Patey’s name.
I said, “It is nothing but Ma’s wee duppy charm. Back of every petticoat.”
“Maybe you need to give me a duppy charm,” she said. “Maybe you got more charms dan dat. Maybe I keep quiet about ’em shiny golden charms and you could keep de res’ if you shared but one. Duppies never harm no one dis far away.”
Patience raised her eyes to look at Cora’s face and said, “I shared our food when you were starving.”
“Share one t’ing more. You Massa’s daughter. You live on de backs of my mother and my gran. You ne’er eat a crumb dat someone else didn’t hand-make and bring to you. All I got to do is say it loud and mens take it all from you.”
Was Cora one of our slaves? I did not know her at all. She must have always worked in the fields or someplace away from the house. She had seemed so decent when we were in the cage together. Yet if she belonged to Pa, she belonged to us now. Patience glared at Cora. I did not dare let down my posture of defense. “How you change so from what you seemed on the ship. I thought you were our friend. Our companion.”
“You don’ share with a friend?” she asked. “Den you lets me wear dat and be warm for a whiles. I give it back to you in a whiles.” She laid her hand on Patey’s cape and I saw her fingers wrap themselves into it and hold tight.
“Cantok!” I said. Cora jerked her hand away from Patey’s clothing as if there had been a thorn in it.
A voice broke the air among the three of us. “You!” Uncle Rafe said, coming for us. I cringed and held Patey’s hand, ready for him to clutch at me again. Yet the arm he jerked was Cora’s. “You come this way.”
He pulled her down the path. As she went, Cora turned and looked toward us. She grimaced as if she might start to cry and Rafe gave her a shove. Two men, one old, one younger than my pa seemed, stood at a short fence with a horse and a small donkey by them. They gave Uncle Rafe coins that he counted, and when he was finished, he tooth-marked two of them.
I expected the men would ride the horse and put Cora on the donkey. Instead, they tied her hands with coarse rope and bound the other end to the saddle of the horse. The young man got on the horse. The old one swung himself onto the donkey, his feet dragging the ground. Cora walked alongside, her face toward the road. Under her skirt, rotted and torn off at the hem so it was shorter than was decent, I spied Patience’s shoes moving along on Cora’s feet. She never looked up as they passed us.
I wanted to call out “Farewell!” but I did not. I had known her kindness longer than I had known her greed, and the part of Cora that I would miss was indeed the good part. At least, thank heaven, she did not say anything to give away our secret. The rest I did not try to understand just then, for we were compelled to get into two lines and walk the road.
We walked until the air darkened, for no sun set. Staying off sharp stones, thorns, rough clay, and horse droppings occupied my mind fully. I could sing no more. All my strength went to putting one foot ahead of the last. We stopped at a place that was more of a cave than an inn. After they barred the door they gave us potatoes boiled with milk and herbs. For me it tasted wonderful, but Patience could not keep it down and as we had sat where we stood before, she leaned over on the floor to be sick.
They bade us lie side by side on damp ground, and for coverings against the cold, tossed a few old flea-bitten skins upon the lot. With some tugging and grunting, the skins moved about and covered perhaps half the women. A few of them set up a squabble and exchanged blows for the rights to a filthy old hide. I lay low, ducking the fists swinging over my head, and tried to lie as close to Patey as I could. The men prisoners were across the room. A man from the inn stood to guard us with a musket. One of the older women asked him the name of this place. “It has no name,” he said. “It is just a place.”
Then one of the men asked him where we had landed, and the man said that we came ashore around the heel of Casco Bay. And where we were now was outside of Harraseeket. A woman on my left side said, “Ain’t that jus’ like ’em? Won’t tell a woman nothing but has all the time in the world for a bloke.”
I wondered if more houses stood over the next hill and if there might be someone to whom I could explain our lives and how we had been kidnapped. I would make them understand that Patience and I did not belong to this group. I meant to rememb
er these places. “Casco and Harraseeket, Casco and Harraseeket,” I chanted under my breath. I would write a letter to Ma. I would tell her how to find us. I decided I would not tell Ma about Cora being greedy, and perhaps we would find her and buy her from those men and keep Cora with us. I would see she got a whipping for the shoes, though. Things like that cannot go unnoticed with slaves. I thought about telling Patience, or asking if she had seen them, too. At length, however, I decided again to keep the thoughts with me.
In the morning we were fed the same stew of potatoes. It was so cold in the cave my breath formed a cloud such as I had never seen before. After those days aboard ship, the potatoes were quite comforting to me, and Patience did tolerably better with it today, too. Rafe MacAlister blustered into the room and whistled as if we were a pack of dogs. “Get in line. Get in line,” he called. “End of the road for most of ye.”
A woman from the inn pushed and shoved at us with a heavy stick the way you might work a hesitant sow into a corner. She growled and muttered, threatening us with the stick but none dared affront her. She produced a bucket of water and walked before the women. “Wash yer faces, ye hoors. Get tha’ glin off yer. Get to it, now. Ye’s’l ne’er be her lady’s dresser wi’ them foul troll’s faces. Any you ’as bleedin’ get back and leef t’ others first.”
“Why, Patey!” I whispered. “How rude.”
Patey cautioned me with a raised finger. “Put your petticoat back under your skirt.” She snatched it from my shoulders, and with the same brusque motions Ma had used, tied it to my waist.
“But I am cold. And I do not want to be some woman’s dresser.”
“Check later for holes and patch them. Sew a piece of your gown to it.”
“Where shall I get thread? You will have to help me.”
“Scrub your face, Ressie,” she said, falsely cheerful as the bucket came past us. We dipped in our hands and took water. Cold drizzles of it ran down my arms to my skirt. “Take a thread from someplace that cannot use it anymore. You shall always, from this moment on, have to be clever and make use. Do you hear me?”