My Name is Resolute (66 page)

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.”

“Are there—no—others whom you love?”

She sighed. “There was. Once. I think you know. Your brother does not love me. Please be happy for me. Daniel and I will make a good home. He is kind and intelligent. Goodness and caring, that is more important than, than passion.”

I could not speak for several minutes. At last, I talked to her about her linens and laces and about making a special mantua for her wedding. And then I went to my room alone, where those words “I shall have him not long enough,” and “more important than passion” made me weep as I had not done since Cullah left.

The Reverend Mr. Clarke performed the ceremony on the first of October 1756, followed by a small supper at our house with sweet cake in my parlor. He spoke to them of fidelity and honor, and prayed with their three pairs of hands clasped after Daniel placed a gold band upon her finger. August stayed nearly invisible in a corner of the room; his eyes like slits, he watched with the mien of a hungry wolf. I was relieved when Reverend Clark left us and the couple readied to leave, stacking two trunks in a coach. None of America’s family had attended. It saddened me so to see America and Daniel leave for Boston. America had been part daughter, part sister to me. “Visit!” I called. “And tell me when your child is coming and I shall attend your lying-in!” I knew not if they heard me over the horses’ hooves, for they smiled only upon each other.

Patience had stirred not at all the entire afternoon, though all the merriment took place around her. I feared she had died during the wedding, but when I touched her head, she raised her hand and gripped mine. “Are they gone, then?” she asked. “Noisy peahens woke me up. Is it evening?”

“Yes, they’re gone. It is warm out.”

“Help me up. I would see the stars.”

August and I raised her as gently as we could, though it still pained her. I said, “The sun is not yet fully down. The stars may not show for an hour or more.”

We made progress to the door so slowly it awakened in me the memories of teaching my children to walk their first steps. Here we were holding Patey for perhaps her final ones. She sat upon the bench by the doorway. I asked, “Would you have a cloak?”

“Yes. August, tell me of the stars.”

I returned with the cloak over one arm and a cup of hot tea with sugar in it to the cadence of August pointing to stars and telling how they guided him across the seas. Patience tilted her face to the sky and listened as if the words came from it, as I draped the cloak upon her thin frame.

She whispered again, “Bring me a cloak, Ressie. I am cold.” Her voice seemed unearthly, spectral, so very quiet and yet the words as penetrating as if she had shouted them in my ear. I fetched another, my warmest woolen cloak, and August and I dressed it about her shoulders. “Tell me which ones you would follow to the West Indies, little brother. What star leads to Jamaica?”

August began to explain, his eyes toward the sky. I put my hand upon his arm. “Brother,” I said. “She listens no longer. She is on her way there now.” Patience had slumped against the wall, and was near to falling off the bench. She was gone.

In a week, August sent word by way of the dark, chiseled-faced man, who had once brought him a message here, that he would be sailing on the next high tide under a full moon. That would be in only three days.

By October fifteenth, I began to weep and I could not stop. I had lost Lady Spencer and Patey to death’s dark cavern, America to marriage, and August to the sea, and still my men did not return. Jacob tried to reason with me but I would have none of it. I believed Cullah and Brendan had been lost in battle, or died of disease, or wounded, bleeding upon some rock. Why had I not left all and gone to them? Why had I not followed my men into war? Other wives did. I was bereft of my greatest love. I took no joy in anything, and though the sky was dark and gray, the mist heavy, I sat by a window and stared out into the mist for hour upon hour, hoping to make them appear. They did not.

This October seemed eternal. Daily snows and rains, first cold then thaw, icy storms and howling winds followed by false summers, ended with snows a foot deep. I had Jacob and Gwenny, Benjamin and Dolly, but my fears of losing Cullah and Brendan stretched beyond all reason. Gwyneth moped. She gave up on romantic notions about Mr. Hancock and she busied herself sewing and spinning, milking and leading Jacob about, giving him patient help when he could not fill his pipe or if he spilled food from the wide knife he used instead of a fork or spoon.

On All Hallows’ morn, we attended Meeting. Coming home the road was half thawed and muddy, treacherous for old Sam pulling. We did not get home until mid-afternoon. That day, I should have gone to the graves of my dear ones, dressed them with care for the following day, All Saints’. Patience’s stone was only just set there in place and had never been dressed for the holiday. I packed my basket with broom and hand rake, gloves and a jug of water, and several rags to clean the stones. But by the time we had changed our clothes, the sunlight was fading; there was little time. The children dawdled. Jacob seemed preoccupied with trying to get the door hinge to stop squeaking and of course the sun lowered every minute we hesitated. “Will you all hurry? I do not want to be so late there is not enough light! Children! I will give you a scolding you will not soon forget if you do not get your shoes on your feet and come to the door this instant! It will only take an hour or so. You can give that much to your loved ones.”

Jacob addressed me. “I will go with you but I tell you it is better to wait. Hear the wind? You have Miss Gwyneth and two small ones who need protecting. I am no use. Wait, I say.”

“Tomorrow is All Saints’ Day. It cannot wait. The day is the day and it comes whether we prepare or not.”

“I know it is.”

“I shall go by myself, then. I am not afraid.”

Jacob breathed slowly. “Feel the air? It is thick already with souls rising. The sun is lowering, too. It is dusk already. I can tell that much without an eye for the air changes its lilt. The souls walk the earth, Resolute, from now until midnight, drifting through the mist and fog here around the house. Why would you attend them at the grave? Better to bar the door and say some prayers. Open it to no one, no signal, even if they make themselves to sound like one of the children.”

“Will you not go with me, Jacob? I am determined.”

“Woman, I tell you, no.” The call of an owl, already hunting, flying low, came from the big tree by the house. “’Tis a spirit e’en now. You will be caught by them, taken to the dark world. How will I, a blind old man, ever get you back for my boy? It is almost never done, saving someone when they go down with the fairies. They’ll make you ride a flaming buck for all eternity. The Old Ones are about, I tell you. Stay. I am too old and blind to catch a horse or a hart with my bare hands and pull you from it. Stay, Resolute.”

“Meeting ran much too late. How will they know I prayed for them if there are no fresh signs of care on their graves?”

“They will know. We shall go in the morning. After it is light,” he cautioned. “Tonight, one whiff of darkness, one whirl of mist, any small fingers of ivy may twine about you and you will be theirs.”

I nodded and sighed, then turned to see to the children. Dorothy and Benjamin listened, eyes wide. Benjamin’s eyes held terror and suddenly filled with tears. I looked into Dorothy’s eyes for fear, but what I saw was my reflection in the stubborn confidence of one who accepted her grandpa’s fairies and brownies with the pursed lips of a skeptic. I smiled at Benjamin, two years older than his sister yet petrified with fear. I thought, it was true that men were weak. They are noisy, and big and strong. Perhaps all his noise about keeping the fairies at bay was Jacob’s own terror.

I clapped my hands, smiled, knelt before the children, and said, “We shall all stay inside and cook apples in the fire for our supper. A picnic on the hearth, how will that be? I have cinnamon and you may add all the sugar you wish. Now, no tears. No one is going to be caught by the mist and carried to the fairies. Hush, now, Ben. Jacob, you shall have them weeping all night long. It is just a story, wee ones. Well and aye. You may both sleep in my bed this night as we wait for the saints to arise at midnight.” I could not say that that plan was for their comfort any more than for my own.

The night fully closed in and darkness came. We ate apples, and Gwyneth told the wee ones stories. She mixed tales of fairies and ghosts with stories from the Bible, making all sound gentle and sweet for the children. She made the real terror of a changeling into a gentle story of a childless couple who adopted a fairy who kept them rich with stores of milk and butter—so different from real fairy pranks of stealing children and substituting some old demon fairy for a babe, or like Goody Carnegie, fairies capturing people and cutting their minds loose from their bodies. Queen Esther saving her people from doom. Duppies whose worst crime was stealing candy and hiding it in the trees. When I saw Dorothy sound asleep, I said, “It is time for all these lovely stories to go to sleep, too, along with the children hearing them. Off to bed.”

The wind wailed under the eaves. A puff of smoke exhaled into the room from the fireplace as a gust pushed at the chimney. Leaves swirled and brushed against the door and windows. “Mother!” a man’s voice cried from outside the door.

Gwenny gasped. I looked at her, clenching my teeth to keep from shaking.

Jacob stiffened where he sat, and said, “Answer not. It is a spirit.”

Cullah’s voice cried out, “Ma?” It was Cullah. He called again, with a sound as if he were just on the other side of the wooden door, his voice pleading. “Ma, are you about? Won’t you open the door?” It was Cullah! But Cullah’s mother was long dead. His mother had never been here. I bit my lower lip.

Benjamin had been ready to fall asleep, but he cried, “Pa?”

“Benjamin, for the love of everything, please make no noise,” I said. “We must not answer. It is All Hallows. The voice you hear is not your father, though it sounds like him. He would not be calling for his mother, son.”

A hand rapped at the wooden door. The bar rattled in its slot. Then fingers tapped on the glass window. Gwenny screamed soundlessly, her fist against her mouth. Dorothy slept on the settle in a heap of quilted blankets. Jacob’s face was wild with fear. He felt at the hearth and picked up an iron. “Open not that door, Resolute,” he whispered. “Don’t let it in.”

The rapping came again. Insistent. Loud. The voice called, “Mistress MacLammond? Open the door! Please. It is late and I am cold. Only let me in, Mother. Ma?” The bar shook so hard I rushed to it to stop it from falling loose and letting the thing enter the house. Cullah’s voice called, “Is this not the MacLammond house? I have hunted far and wide this night. I saw the candle from below in the dell. Mother?” Then the voice took on a cry of impatience, as from a child, mixed with sorrow and rejection. “Mother? Open the door. Oh, Ma, leave us not out here to die. Only let me in, I beg you. If this is not MacLammonds’ house, please leave us not here to freeze this dark night.”