My Name is Resolute (81 page)

“A room. Just a room.”

“A hiding place.” He paused, searching for words. “Those are weapons. And there, rolls of cloth you have not paid tax for. It is lawless. God ordains all kings and you and your husband shun the laws of this land. Your brother, my uncle, is an outlaw and now your husband is as well.”

“My husband is dead. These rolls of cloth incur no tax sitting here, for I made them and intend to use them. Do you mean to make charges against us, James?” I felt fear and anger welling. I smelled the hatred in my soul, the brimstone of hell, for all that his father had done. I saw Rafe MacAlister in James’s face and the memory of Goody Carnegie’s book of herbs and stories exploded again before my eyes, as if Lucifer himself stood before me.

He thought again, far too long, so that I felt keenly uncomfortable. Then he said, “It is a Christian’s place to bow to the authority given him, but I am a French citizen first, and not a British one. Perhaps I should leave,
tante
.”

I could no longer bridle my anger. “For New Orleans? I’m sure there are no godless outlaws there. Perhaps you should have stayed in Montréal,” I snapped at him. I would be glad to see the heels of his shoes, I vowed. Then my heart lurched within me. “James, are you willing to join the British army to quell the people of this continent for their love of independence? Would you see us turned out, our farm taken, so King George could buy another cannon to shoot other Frenchmen?”

“No. Not that. It is not as simple a decision as that. I had come to find you to tell you I have been thinking for three days that the time has come for me now to head south, that I had decided to go. I appreciate all you have done for me, but I am really no farmer. I think I will make my way in some kind of trading on the river.”

“Then I am sorry for being angry with you just now. I thought you were condemning me. What will you trade?” Even as I spoke, I had to push away thoughts of Satan’s beguiling ways.

He smiled, a genuine, honest face, with no guile, I saw. Not Rafe MacAlister, but Patey’s abandoned and forgotten son. “I have learned much about the price of woolens.”

We laughed together. “I have some, but I will not sell them to you, because then we would have to pay taxes. I will give them to you, to start your trading business, but I will write you a bill that shows you own them. And, James, I wish you the best of fortune. Will you help me sort them? I can tell you much about how to keep moths away.”

James nodded and turned away just as someone rapped at the front door, making it rattle in its hinges. I climbed from the room and straightened the panel, then my cap. The gusty air of April seemed to press against the door as it opened.

Margaret Gage swooped at me. “I just heard, Ressie. Oh, poor dear. Oh, dear. Poor Cullah. And your sweet Dolly, I am so fond of her. She must be heartsick. Oh, dear, your heart must be broken. My husband said it was a terrible shame. It was not his doing, I swear it. Please say you will come to Boston for a few days? Please say you will. I so want to be near you at a time like this.”

My face went slack. Painful, bitter tears flowed yet again, and I let her clasp me as Patience once did, my arms round her waist. I looked about at my house, my Dorothy standing as still as an ice-covered tree. “That is so kind of you, Margaret, but I could not leave my house.” In truth, I cared not what Margaret wanted, for I was numb.

“I meant all of you. Alice, too. Please do come.”

Dolly spoke up. “Your horse is wandering, Mistress Gage. I’ll get him.”

I raised my brows at Margaret. “You rode horseback?”

“What else could I do? I had to come to you the moment I heard.”

I marveled at her to have jumped upon a horse to be with me. I smiled, though it felt weak and trembling, even to me, and said, “If you will have the three of us, I shall come, then, Margaret.”

“Oh, my sweet friend. You are so kind to me,” she said.

“Kind to you?”

“I feared that you somehow placed blame upon me.”

Without a knock or waiting for us to open, Gwyneth let herself in. “Ma?”

“Gwenny? You look afright.”

“I cannot find Sally. She wandered out the door while I was changing Peter’s clouties.”

“She cannot have gone far.”

“You know that one. She has feet like wings. And the sun is setting.”

“Where is Roland?”

“At a meeting in Concord. I sent Nathan to the Parkers’ and Dodsils’ to ask help.”

Margaret fastened her bonnet, too, and followed fast on my heels. We went first toward Gwyneth’s house, calling for my next-smallest grandchild. The babe, Peter, cried, so that Gwenny was forced to stop and feed him, but carried him with her, calling Sally.

The sun set. Roland and James joined the search. Before long, everyone was hoarse from calling. We fetched lanterns, and the neighbors came with more lanterns, so that our woods was alive with moving lights. It seemed as if we had just begun when the sky turned such a strange color it seemed lit from some magic within the woods and hills. It was sunrise.

I told Gwenny I had to fetch water for my throat, so weakened since that terrible day that I had nearly lost my voice calling for Sally. I opened the door to the barn to go through it to the house simply to save a few steps. I felt such panic, such rushing of need, as if every step I wasted could cost the life of this wee girl.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of gray-green amongst the dry hay where a single needle of sunlight illuminated a bit of cloth. One of the cows, ripe with its own odor, lay there, chewing cud. At the cow’s back, a wee form. Whether she slept or had died there, crushed perhaps, or fallen from the loft overhead, I could not tell. Teeth clenched, I let myself in and the cow stood. To my horror, beside the child, half buried in straw, lay the form of a man. His clothing was tattered to shreds, his long hair and beard knotted and greasy, and his skin scaled. I pushed the cow and went to Sally. “Is this Grandma’s wee mite?” I crooned as I picked her up, expecting a stiff little corpse.

Sally’s eyes opened as if on springs. “I hided, Grandma. No one found me. I found Cap-aw.”

“Cap-aw?” I searched my memory. “You found Grandpa? No, child, every old man you see is not your grandpa.” I looked down at the man’s foul-smelling body, unmoving still, and began backing out of the stall with the child in my arms. “That’s not Grandpa, dearie. Oh, little Sally, did he hurt you?”

Sally reached toward the ragged stranger. “Cap-aw!” she cried.

The man moved! His arm swatted at the air as if he fought against awakening.

Sally called again and fought in my arms until I was forced to put her down. She ran to him. “Cap-aw, I keept you warm.” She petted his matted hair. I did not move, trying to think what I would do with this vagabond adopted by my grandchild.

He spoke one word. “Wife?”

“Cullah?” So haggard. So shrunken. I knelt in the dirty straw and held him to my bosom. “Cullah. Oh, my husband. They told me you were dead.” We wept, our tears washing his face. “My Eadan,” I moaned. Sally nestled herself between us and cried, too. I helped him rise and walk to the house. Soon as I gave him bread and fruit, and a cup of ale, I called Gwenny to come.

James was true to his word, and stayed until Cullah had been home a week. Then, with a cloak I had made him rolled around his other clothing, and a pushcart loaded with ten bolts of my best woolens, he walked away from our lives at sunup.

I loved them all, these people in my life, even he, Patience’s first child. We were all guilty in our own ways; all had been formed by our lot in life. Was I also the godless outlaw he saw in my husband? It must be, else I could not love Cullah, could not tolerate August. Was it unholy to love a person in spite of their actions? For the first time in years, I wished Ma sat by me.

Alice came to my side. “You sad Master James is gone?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t be, Mistress. He a man. You can’t mother a man fully grown. It isn’t natural. Best he leaves. Wasn’t good at farming. He t’ink everyt’ing in the world has to come on his terms. World isn’t like that. More natural that he find it out somewhere else, then he won’t judge you so harsh. That’s all I got to say.”

CHAPTER 36

May 23, 1769

Cullah’s strength grew. Every day I made him oatcakes and beef broth. I washed and cut and treated his hair and made him herb teas. He was so thin and reduced, so unlike the man of old, and his hair had gone straggly, grayed, and rough textured. Sometimes I studied his face, searching for the merry expressions I had known. He smiled wanly at me. He spent hours with his grandchildren upon his knees. He peeled vegetables while I baked bread. At night he clung to me as if I were all that kept him afloat in a stormy sea.

One night when he lay awake, he told me how he’d made his way here. They released prisoners one or two at a time. Another man had died along the way, and Cullah found the fellow by a swamp, lying frozen, wearing both a coat and cloak. He’d taken the fellow’s clothes and boots, even cut off the man’s pants and shirt and used them to wrap his feet and legs. Because none of the men had been allowed the luxury of bathing or shaving, there was about them all a uniformity, and sometimes only their height and the rags they wore marked their identities. He said, “I left rags there, what little was left of my coat, and when they found him, they probably thought it was I. I took all the clothes he had, poor devil.”

“But he was dead, and with them you survived.” I waited. It was not the same as Cora taking Patience’s shoes, the man had not needed them. “I am so very glad to have you home. Only that. I am thankful you are here and I will make you new clothes.”

After June turned to July, I felt secure in leaving him to call upon my friend. Margaret sat in a chair in her grand parlor with tears in her eyes. “Please stay,” she whispered, staring at the drapery at a window. “There is nothing but talk of war from every quarter. I am so tired of it. That night spent hunting for your grandbabe made me realize I have so little of what is real in this life. I have made a life of pretense and meddling. It is all for nothing. Everything that matters at all was in the eyes of your granddaughter, lost all night long, the face on that little girl when she saw her mother and father. The joy of finding your man. You have everything, Ressie. I am a hollow shell.” She burst into tears.

I sat by her, comforting her in my arms. “You slight yourself. If I thought of you thus, I would never have befriended you. Margaret, I believe you are afraid of war not because you think your husband is right, or because you are loyal to the Crown or sympathetic to the Patriots, but that you are so afraid you will be wearing widow’s black yourself the rest of your days, you cannot bear it.”

“Whatever shall I do?” Margaret cried.

“The general is not dead. And if something does happen, then you press forward. You find a purpose for your life.”

“But my purpose has always been effrontery. What else have I? I have no religion, and nor do I want that. I have no substance, Resolute. Nothing.”

“I think you do. I think you wish me to be here because your husband is gone and you are alone in the house. People are not visiting as before the occupation. You keep having parties because you do not wish to be alone and face yourself.”

Margaret looked up at me. “Resolute, you are so unkind.”

I said, “I am being honest with you, my dear friend. I will tell you what you will see when you do look. A lady. A real lady with courage and cunning and ideas in a mind so rich she should have been allowed to go to Harvard. Made to go. You must have some peace, Margaret, but you will have to find it yourself. I am not unkind. I am honest with the people I love.”

“Won’t you stay for my party? Dr. Warren will be happy to see you. The Hancocks are coming.”

“I will stay for your sake. Margaret, my dear friend, I will say this to you as if you were my child. Please find all the richness I see in you. It will not take you long, for it is not far from the surface. And though you may now be afraid to look at yourself, what you see there will fill you with joy and you will find that you think back and wonder why you were so afraid.”

*   *   *

Margaret came to visit me a month later in August, and stayed two days. While we spent our days chattering like ravens over a cornfield, we spent quiet evenings while I worked at my wheel and she read aloud. Cullah seemed to haunt the place, as if he feared her or hated her. He was polite, but claimed to be deeply tired, and would go up to bed soon as the food was done. It troubled me that he cared not for Margaret. I asked him if he preferred she not come, or whether he blamed General Gage for his sentencing, but he insisted he was simply, truly tired.

When she left, I asked him to stroll in the field. The trees were lush with fruit, the grounds smelled of vegetation and yesterday’s rain. Swirls of mosquitoes boiled in the dappled sunlight. We held hands and walked the length of the line of apple trees. I asked, “Husband? Are you well, now?”

“More, I suppose. Do not make me eat another oatcake. I will turn into a horse the way you feed me those things.”

I smiled. “You need some meat on your bones.”

“So, did your friend have something to say to me? There must be some reason you called me here as soon as she left.”

“No. Nothing she said was about you. But everything she says reminds me of you in some way. No, she believes I am the lucky one, and I agree with her. I only wanted to tell you that I miss you. I miss the old way you were. I felt as if you were invisible the last three days.”

Cullah asked, “Are you ashamed of me?”

“Whatever for?”

“I am a broken man.”

“I think your heart is broken but your spirit is alive. My heart was broken for you. Then, when I was told you had died—”

“I am so sorry.”

“You need not fear Margaret. She is as true a friend as a person could have.”

“General Gage’s wife?”

“An American. A continental American. Cullah, you used to stare into the fire or into your memories, and say to me ‘war is coming,’ do you remember?”