My Name is Resolute (85 page)

“Doctors coming and going,” Margaret said. “Only doctors. It would not seem amiss for his sister to arrive. Or to stay a bit.”

Dr. Warren added, “Captain Talbot asked that I should come to tell you.”

We left Alice to cook for Cullah and Bertie, and mind the house, which, I was glad to think, at last left both of them feeling quite safe with one another.

After we stopped under the grand porte cochere and left Margaret across the street, Dr. Warren took me to August’s house. I learned that my brother was still pretending to be sick, though since I had last been there, he had dismissed his entire staff but for Rupert. When August left at night, he left Rupert, a man about his same size and hair color, to wear his dressing gown and walk before the upper windows so the spies would think it was he. After greeting the doctor and me, he pushed a leather sack of coins into my hand and said, “Tomorrow, I will be leaving for a week. If you need anything, any more money, contact Rupert. If you can get word to your son Benjamin, tell him it is a matter of a horse, and I will know to come to your aid at once.”

August led me to his library, where, though lack of a regular cook should have made things meager, Rupert had laid a nice supper of mutton stew with barley and potatoes. He poured us Madeira wine, and served us at a small table before a nice fire.

“Ressie? I have something to ask of you. I know you tried to volunteer to carry messages, but there are plenty of men to do that. We have a net of spies and committees that can do what we need to do but this is something few could do, and no one could execute it the way you could.” He opened the battered trunk, the one Cullah had once criticized as not belonging in the room with the other fine furnishings, and lifted up a rolled blue cloth which he unfurled to reveal a coat. “This came from France, and a few of us have ordered scores of them. We don’t have them yet, of course, because no one can pay for a quarter of what they want delivered, plus we want the Continental uniform somewhat different. Wider here, narrower there. Less of a collar. We want our men to see. The British soldier is not meant to see or think, and his foolish collar will not allow him to turn his head. So, less of this thing.” He pointed to the undercollar. “To do this, you will have to take it home unseen. You cannot leave this house with it, because everyone who goes in and out is searched. They even stop the doctors, search their satchels and verify their credentials to make sure they are real doctors, as if a doctor cannot be a Patriot. The blighted Tories actually did me a favor, doing that. Found one of the kitchen wenches helping herself to the silver and pewter like a thieving tinker.”

I examined the coat, inside and out, adding, “Where will I get these buttons and braid?”

“I have a few. There is a bag here somewhere. Oh, yes.” He took the lid off a Chinese vase and pulled out a ratty linen sack. “Benjamin will get you more. Revere is procuring them as we speak. Benjamin will visit his mother more than he has in the past, and each time he will bring you something. Here is the thing, sister. I need to get this coat out of this house and into yours. I’ll go with you to protect you. As many uniforms as you can make, take them to Hancock’s house in Lexington as soon as you can. I will send blue wool and dye but don’t wait for it; use what you can. Two weeks, I’d like a half dozen or so. It’s not far for you to go, is it, to Hancock’s? Some of their woolens are being shipped from France. If you can use wool you already have, and dye it, so much the better. Tell me if you can do this. I had to have you here to show you. Can you make this coat?”

“I think this might be a shade of indigo mixed with crimson or rouge. I will have to experiment. If you can get your hands on it, send me vinegar. I will need gallons of it, but send all you can. What about trousers? Will you need linen trousers with each coat?”

“Yes, make pants. Wool and linen. Different sizes. Plenty of our men are wearing rags. Two men showed up naked. You never saw the like. Determined as a Trojan but with not a stitch of clothing. Some cut up saddle blankets and sewed themselves some short pants. For that matter, while I’d like to have uniforms, if you have aught to make pants of any sort, rough and homespun, as long as they have buttons I’ll take them. We’ve got Indians, too, but you can’t tell me any man doesn’t get cold in the winter. Summer is coming, but I don’t think, as some of the fools say, that this will be over in a month. We’ll be having this same conversation next year at this time.

“We will leave tonight under cover and take it to your house, return, and you will be able to rest tomorrow. You then leave whenever you feel it is proper. I would not take you but for the woman at your house who might fear me. You have to accompany me. Will you join us, then?”

“I will. But Cullah is there. He would have let you in.”

“No he’s not. The Sons of Liberty have business in Braintree tonight, and I fear your Alice knows too well how to fire a pistol.” He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, then called, “Anne?”

“Oui?”
came a woman’s voice.

“Come in, please.”

A young woman, mahogany colored and strikingly beautiful, entered the room and glanced at me before turning her eyes to August. He said, “Anne, this is my sister, Resolute MacLammond. Ressie, Anne.” He held not the slightest hesitancy that I both knew and could overlook his introductions, for in it he left nothing to be imagined of their relationship in not adding either a last name, “miss,” or “mistress.” August looked me up and down as if he had not seen me before, made a face of near derision, and continued. “I much prefer you in satins, Ressie. I had not expected you in black but more’s the better. Anne, find anything you have as close to the shape of my sister’s gown. Just make it black, it matters not about the details. And fetch that black gauze. Resolute, take this,” he said, holding the filmy cloth to me. “Your hair is too fair and a white cap will shine like a beacon. It is my experience that one can see quite well through this stuff, and it hides the glow of skin. Wear it under your bonnet so it doesn’t blow off. Give Anne your cap. She will wear it, and keep your back to the windows at all times,” he said to her. “We will be back before daybreak. See that you both bar the doors at seven and retire by ten, since that is when I put out the lights.”

“August, it is nearly twelve miles to my house. Another twelve back here. I doubt I can walk that in a night.”

“We’ll take a boat across the river. A man I know keeps two horses always at the ready for me. Tonight I shall take them both.”

“I cannot ride a horse, brother. I have never done it. Can your horse take two?”

The sun lowered and the evening’s mist arose, adding gloom to my fears as I pulled the veil across my eyes. I felt some courage in that I could see quite well through it. How I wished I had stayed in bed and nestled next to Cullah, wished all of us were not part of this terrifying world around us. August and I crept through the lower window, dressed in blackest black, wearing gauze upon our faces.

August was adept at slipping through shadows and alleyways I would never have dared to breach had he not been there. At the river’s edge, we stepped into a shallow boat well hidden in the reeds. The boat was a leaky hull with a shallow draft and August’s oars had been wrapped in sacking and tarred so that they made little noise. At the center of the river, he believed he heard something and we bent low in the hull. I remembered my ride in such a craft, a much larger boat, remembered the haughty slave girl upon my knees, and I remembered my blue silk gown and how little I had valued such things, thinking only that it must be replaced. The boat rocked and I was ten years old for a moment. Then we were at the other shore, and I stepped into the water and mud, soaking myself to the knees.

In one hand, I carried the wrapped bundle of blue cloth. I held August’s hand with my other, holding it with all the strength I bore as I pulled my feet from the mud. “August, please stop a moment.”

“What’s the matter?”

I reached for his neck and hugged him. “I never said before now that I love you.”

His broad shoulders and strong arms held me for a moment, in a way Cullah could never have done. He held me without desire, but in a loving way that gave courage in his touch. “Let’s go.”

We reached the stable. He leaped onto the horse and pulled me up behind him, and we made it to Menotomy in less than an hour, and made my home before midnight. I pulled at the string that knocked a hammer against the jamb inside, then gave three taps followed by two, and Alice opened the door.

“Mistress? Sir?”

I said, “Alice, please hide this in the inglenook next to the fire. The nails in it are loose and all we must do is raise the lid.”

August and I ate some bread and had a small ale. Then we mounted and left Alice, heading for town. About halfway through the swamp, he stopped and reined his horse to one side so abruptly I nearly fell. “What—” I began.

“Quiet.”

Men ambled past us. They talked among themselves, we guessed about five of them. After a while, we followed them at a good distance for a time so that we would not overtake them. My heart bumped. I closed my eyes. From somewhere in the distance I believed I heard drumming and smelled smoke. It was so like hiding from the dangerous Indians when I was a child. I wondered what ghosts wandered these woods. The path narrowed in a few places. All felt familiar, yet terrifying. The deeper into the forest we went, the more fear gripped me. The horse shifted its weight and I nearly fell off again. August told me to “toe a line” and stop my foolishness.

How had Cullah done this, and on foot? He, who was more afraid of a fairy than a soldier with a musket trained upon him? My brother, I believed, had no such goblins to fight. His whole person seemed to bristle with excitement at the notion of a confrontation. An owl wooed overhead and glided above me on silent, silver wings. Crickets sang. Night thrushes warbled, their spooky song part of the mystery of darkness that kept good people in their homes at night with the doors barred. In the distance, the howl of a wolf made the hair rise on the backs of my hands. I remembered Massapoquot and the other Indians leading us through the north woods, carrying us at times, ever moving, never afraid of the dark. The Indians had seemed one with the forest, to embrace it as a familiar place, a hearth side populated with its own furniture. I straightened my frame and took several deep breaths. My skirt was soaked with water over my knees, and the weight and cold of it made it seem as if I were pulling anchors on my feet when we finally left the horse and crossed the river. Slinking through the shadowed alleyways, I nearly fainted when a dog barked. A cat yowled and I heard voices overhead from a window left open.

The greening sky and the smoky heaviness of morning fires added urgency to my feet, though by then August had my hand in his again, and pulled me along. We reached the courtyard of his home and got through the window before the watchman called five.

We joined Anne at breakfast. I sat at table in August’s dressing coat. August said Anne would give me the clothes she had worn, but that he wished I would sleep and spend another night. “I will,” I said. “But I have much to do when I get home. How do you have horses always at the ready?”

He smiled. “It’s a web like that of a spider, Ressie. One must simply tug at the right connection, and things fall into place. I leave the boat where it was, too. No one has found it though it be used every night. Revere and Dawes run across the river at least once a week. Prescott had it yesterday. It’s all a silken, invisible web. You know the strength of a single strand of silk.”

“I do.”

When I arrived home the next noon in Margaret’s gilded chaise, Alice sat at the fire tatting lace, her feet upon a hassock.

“What are you making?” I asked.

“House cap for the lady of this house.”

“That looks beautiful. Most extravagant. It is lovely. Thank you.”

“I t’ink you wear this, and you t’ink of my affection with it.”

Warmth flowed up my face from my bosom. “How kind. I shall. Is Master Cullah home?”

“He is, Mistress. Sleeping upstairs from the sound of his snoring,” she said with a grin. She blushed.

I said, “Now, we have work to do, rather, I have work. I am going to mix dye and see if I can replicate that blue with indigo and whiting. I will not insist you help me. This is treason against the Crown. I alone will hang for it if I must.”

“I have already made a pattern of it for you. I took apart the sides real gentle, and pressed it, and laid it on muslin. Marked all the places of it. I didn’t cut any of it, so it can be put back together in no time.”

I straightened. “You did in so few hours?”

“I didn’t want to cut it, so I took some time holding it and pinning it. Missy Dolly helped. She going to have baby, you know? She and I cut the pattern. All we need is cloth.”

“I have cloth. All we need is the dye. A baby? La. Another grandchild. Wonderful!”

“Mistress? I have somet’ing to tell you.”

“Yes, Alice?” I busied myself with clearing off the table to begin work.

“Mistress, it was me dropped that crystal glass.”

“I have no crystal glass.”

“Long time ago, at Master Spencer’s ball. It was me.”

I searched my memories. “Why did you say it was not you?”

“Because I already owed you for too much. You buy me from Mistress Spencer, her throwing a fit. Then you say I am free. You saved me from a beating that night. I didn’t want to have you t’ink I owed you so I must stay, must do as you say, must be somebody’s slave. I wanted to see how it would be if you had not’ing more to hold me.”

“Why tell me now?”

“Just want you to know, I see you now.”

“I do not understand.”

“It took a long time to trust. Now I know.”

I nodded. “It does. That is good of you to tell me. I will love my new cap.”

Outside, I stirred and boiled and dried dye mixtures on differing weaves and thread. I could not get the blue of the coat exactly, but what I had was within five shades of it. I bleached whites and creams, and we pressed and shrunk, stretched and dyed yard after yard of cloth. Then we began to cut them. I worked until my fingers bled.