My Name is Resolute (26 page)

“If confession is made.”

“That is good. Yes,” I said, picturing Patience, “that is very good.”

*   *   *

Raking and seeding, combing and scutching, beating flax with wooden bars, this was our festive outdoor work. The whole compound joined in. Baskets of tow and boon joined in long lines that formed a work route. The most experienced men did the hackling, bringing the flax across the board of nails to comb it into a long horse’s tail they called “strick.” The flax that had been spread in the field left a fiber that was a light silvery color. The other that had retted in the marsh by the river’s edge was golden, and I saw what Sister Agathe meant about its value.

I counted every day, looking forward to the day when Patience and I would leave this place. As I imagined our journey home, my hands fumbled more; I dropped things. I mashed my finger in the scutching mangle when Patience walked past me carrying a large basket to the barn and whispered, “Father William has a new candlestick.” I snapped up the next basket of tow from a man loading people’s arms with baskets, and followed her. I had been there enough to see that there was order in the heaps and mounds of wool and flax, whether spun or woven or still in the hanks called “rovings.” I could not suppress a smile when handing our baskets to the men stacking the work. “He has a candlestick?”

She brushed her sleeves and shook off her apron, her eyes downcast. “It will not be lit tonight. Tomorrow night seems likely.” Her eyes moved to someone behind me and she said, “Nary you mind. Now, let us have those empty baskets to return to the field.”

My feet moved as if they did not touch the ground. We were going at last! That night at supper, I asked Sister Joseph if I might have an extra piece of bread, but to my surprise, everyone had two pieces instead of one. I pretended to eat mine, turning the second into my sleeve for our journey. I hoped it would not be long before we would be dining someplace on lovely food. When I folded my clothes for sleep that night, I left my shoes close by.

Donatienne watched me. At length she said, “There is a rumor that two girls are planning to leave the convent. The nuns asked us who are your
compagnes
to question and to beg of them not to go to a life of great peril.”

A chill swept over me as if winter had come into the room. “I know nothing of such a plan,” I said. “I am so tired. Please let us sleep.”

“Please don’t go, Marie.”

“The only place I am going is to bed,” I said. I was glad the candles had been put out so she could not see my face.

“Sister Agathe said she will be watching for someone to try to leave.”

“Did you tell her it was me?”

“No.”

“Well, she had better watch someone else. Good night.”

Though exhausted to my core, I lay awake for hours. At last, when sleep found me I dreamed of home, of running on the beach, but not with Allsy. I was running from nuns and priests and leering men like Rafe MacAlister who reached for me with clawlike hands. Their low voices called, “Doxy! Doxy!” as if it were my name.

In the morning, Donatienne said, “You cried out last night. You said, ‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone!’ in English.”

“I had dreams. How do you say ‘nightmares’?
Cauchemars.
Sometimes it happens.” I was aware that today was the day of our leaving. I must not show anything on my face. “Did they catch those girls?”

“We will find out when everyone is seated for breakfast and they call the roll.”

I pictured the roll call tomorrow. Patience and I would be gone. I smiled.

“Are you happy someone left? Don’t you know how terrible their lives will be?”

“No, I am smiling because I think it is not true. I think that someone made up the rumor to make trouble for the nuns so one of them will have to watch all night long.”

For the next three nights, I heard nothing from Patience, even when she had a chance to tell me it was time to leave. When I found her stacking roving and sorting it for color dyeing, I asked her, “Any candlesticks need polishing in here?”

“Yes,” she said. “Take that one over there by the wall.”

I was dismayed to find there was indeed a candlestick by the wall, much abused with soot from poorly made candles. One thing I had learned from living at the Haskens’ house was that a candle could be made less of a mess by careful wicking. “Very well, then,” I said. “You will tell me if there are any others?”

“Of course” she said. “Sometimes one moon is not as good as the next.” She nodded at me, and turned to her work. I knitted my brows. It was meant to be a message. We would wait another month.

Now that the flax was in, I was put to spinning all the day. I spun not wool but flax, which filled a different distaff and a different wheel, and had to be done with a cup of water at my side. I learned to guide the tow onto the spindle, often so frustrated I groaned, wanting to pull the stuff and throw the water cup. When the nuns let me get up from the spinning wheel, I went outside and ran through the fields until the anger and frustration subsided. At times I ran with my eyes closed, wishing I would fall into a duppy’s house and disappear from this place.

Another week passed and Rachael took to her childbed. She suffered a few hours and brought forth a son. It was only upon seeing the new baby, named Ezekiel, that I could tell the difference between Patience’s baby and Rachael’s. For all I had expected that Patience would produce a superior child, I saw that James was no bigger than Ezekiel, though he was some months older. Ezekiel ate and slept, fat and contented. James did not nurse without coaxing, and what went down him rarely stayed down. He was plagued with raw skin under his clouties, so that he was kept naked in a hamper placed in the sun. Patience was often not in the baby room when I went to visit her; she left James with the nurse.

The next full moon came and went. And the next. Between long days learning to spin, having my work torn apart and recarded to try again until I got the rhythm going with my feet and my hands, the farm harvest began. School receded to one hour, three hours of working in the fields, pulling turnips and carrots, bundling onions, a meal, three hours of picking apples, three hours of spinning before supper. Lugging pears and pumpkins, peeling apples, packing potatoes and parsnips in layers in the cellars, none of the work was easy. Yet, when I saw the girls and nuns in the kitchen, boiling applesauce, pear sauce, piling ever more wood in the stoves to keep the fires hot, though the day was stifling, I did not complain about my work.

On an afternoon during the last week of September, the sky changed. I could not say what it was, but I could feel it. There came a freshening of the air early in the day, and the wind came from the northeast. Why that should put me in bad humor, I knew not. I felt as if this new wind brought with it some unfortunate change.

I had in my grip a mounded basket of overripe pears, and the basket was losing its bottom so I was forced to wrap it up with my arms as you would carry a child. The pears gave off a perfume as rich as honeysuckle to the air about me. I made my way past the rectory, turned a corner, and stood face-to-face with Lukas Newham. “Oh,” I said, “Lukas Newham. Fancy seeing you after all this time.” I did not smile.

“Yes, Miss? Ah, the little serving girl. You have grown a foot taller, I’d wager.”

I raised myself up on my toes, doing my best to look down at him. I felt conscious of my breasts brushing against the camisole. “You have also been cast into servitude, but I from a higher degree than ever your father’s father had been.”

He sneered. “You were always above your station.” Then his demeanor changed. “How fares your sister?”

“Miss Talbot fares quite well, I am sure.” At that moment a small pear, rosy and firm, slipped between the basket’s cracked splines and rolled to his feet.

“Ah, an offering,” he said, and picked up the pear, taking a great bite. “A peace offering, I wonder? The work becomes you, you know. Your cheeks have become full roses and your whole face carries a dust of freckling, just like a ripe fruit.” He took another bite, juice running down his chin, his lips moist with it.

I liked the sound of that, yet I was not sure what my reply should be. Donatienne knew much about men and romantic overtures, and told me always to be cool toward them. “Your words are too impertinent. Now that you have taken a pear from my bundle, though, you may repay me a deed.”

“What shall it be, little Rosy?”

I felt my face flush. “I beg you not to call me other than my name, Master Newham, as I shall yours. I saw you coming from the priests’ door just now, and that means you have access to their quarters. I am told that in their quarters is the only place here to find paper and ink. Is that true?”

“It is. And you will not speak of where you have seen me.”

“It is not a secret meeting, is it?”

It was Lukas’s turn to blush, and he did, with great coloring. “You keep your tongue, if you know what’s good for you.”

“I do know all that is good for me, Master Lukas.” I cocked my head and tried a guess. “You have met with a priest? Have you been baptized against your father’s will? Have you consorted with papists?”

“You know nothing of which you speak.”

“I know it is easier to live here when you take on their mantle as your own. I, too, have been baptized. Let us speak in English.”

He did. “I have naught against my father. I believe there is more than what he sees in the Bible. There is much that is worthy here, and very old.”

I thought for a moment, not knowing how to reply to him, yet not wanting to leave his presence. I asked the one thing that might be of mutual interest. “Have they surrendered your sister to the priests for a doxy?”

“No!” He threw the pear against the building, smashed pieces flying. “None of these fellows would! If they hold aught in their hearts, it is well reined and, and—”

“And yet you do not want it known that you have become a Catholic? Others of your community would condemn you.”

“As would your sister.”

I shifted the weight of the basket. “Why do you care?” My own heart leaped at the potency of that thought. It might be that he would wish for me to be near him, to long for my kiss upon his cheek. If I held my breath he might see in me some true beauty I might become. Perhaps if he did not, I could convince him of it. “Reverend Johansen and Master Hasken escaped with their souls intact, I suppose.”

“I must go,” he said, adjusting his hat.

“If you come here, taking instruction, others might hear of it.”

“Not if you don’t tell them,” he said, but this time without a sneer, it was more a look of pleading.

“I carry a thousand secrets already. What is one more?” As I saw his face relax and his shoulders drop into their normal place, I added, “I have need of paper and ink. If you are engaged in study with priests, you might find paper and ink. And a post.”

“They send out a post every month. Some to Rome, some to Paris, some to the colonies in New France.”

“One more post is a small thing. I might keep your secret.”

“I will get you the things to write a letter. When you have it, place it in that black-painted wooden box, there. Put the ink vial under this bayberry next to the wall.”

“When?”

“You will have to trust me. I will get it to you.”

I half closed my eyes, saying, “You will have to trust me, too.”

He did not look happy as he strolled away. Myself, I had quite a grin. All I had to do was wait for the paper to appear. It was a change of the prevailing wind.

Lukas was true to his word. A small cloth-wrapped bundle appeared between the layers of my folded clothing—for now I had two sets kept in a neat stack under my cot that I could interchange or wear together when it turned cold—and I could tell by the sound without opening it that it held paper. I was pleased to find three small sheets, each about eight inches square, and a vial of ink for which I would have to find a stand before I could uncork it and use it. I would also have to find a large feather to make into a quill, but I had seen Pa do it often.

Donatienne watched me wrapping the papers back into the cloth.

I said, “It is a gift.”

“We are not allowed such gifts.” Donatienne turned to the window. “Marie? I feel you are lying to me.”

“If I had stolen it, why would I let you see it now? It was a gift, I tell you.”

“Then who gave it to you?”

“A man I know.”

She clasped her hands on her mouth. “A man?” She walked around in a small circle, almost as in a dance step. “What man? What did he ask in return? If anyone has done anything to you, Marie, you must tell me at once.”

“All he asked in return is that I tell no one of his plans.”

“Plans for what? Escape?”

I could not defend myself without breaking the promise. “I cannot say.”

“Did you know, Marie, that I am sixteen. Next year they will find someone for me to marry. If I am not in good favor, they may not look for a husband for me. They may think working my life away in a factory is good enough.”

“I promised I would not tell. If you guessed, I could say what it was not, and not break my word.”

“Was it a plan to escape?”

“No,” I said firmly.

“Did he want to kiss you?”

“No. He wants to, to, change to Catholic.”

“He made you promise not to tell that?”

“He was afraid I would tell his family. He wants to become a priest. He may go to divinity school in Paris. He told me.”

“Are you making this up, again?” When I shook my head, Donatienne smiled and smoothed her dress.

“I should not have told you. I am ashamed I did not keep my promise to him. Do you think if a man wants to be a priest, he cannot love a girl?”

“Oh, they cannot marry, but I think some of them may have loved a girl. Maybe they could not win her heart, and so committed themselves to God instead. It’s not unlike some women do, becoming
une bonne soeur
. Will you let me watch you write in English?”

“To Lady Talbot, Two Crowns Plantation, Island of Jamaica in Her Majesty’s West Indies.”
I pressed the sheets under my waistband and in the dark of night when I was sure everyone was asleep, I climbed out the window by Donatienne’s bed and headed straight for the rectory under a half-moon. I held my missal to the moon and whispered, “Get these to my mother, please, sir. I know God is not the man in the moon, but I hope you watch your servant here with that great eye, and take pity upon her.” I recited Salve Regina and Memorare under my breath. I stopped at the moonlit wall of the rectory. The black box awaited my letters. I kissed the paper before raising the lid and laying it inside. Other sheets of paper were in it, all folded and sealed. I stirred mine amongst them, making sure it was not on top. I tucked the vial of ink into the bayberry.