My Name is Resolute (79 page)

During those first weeks, visits from Reverend Clarke kept me thinking there was yet hope, but when he left, and I closed the door, though I had tried to smile, as soon as the latch slipped into place, I wept anew. I woke up at night, hearing Goody Carnegie howling in the wind. I tried to cry out, but my muteness felt as if the cleaver Cullah had thrown had landed in my own throat. It hurt as if an egg-sized scar had formed, and I could make nary a whisper. I wept and sobbed so that my inhalations made cawing sounds like a child taken with throat distemper. It pained me so not to be able to hear his name from my own lips, that I cried the harder, and wept myself to sleep. I dreamed of my childhood. Of running across the widow’s walk to watch gulls diving in the air. Of Ma and Pa, and Allsy. And of jumping over a candle. I sat up in bed, crying out, “Eadan!” Had I doomed all I loved by that one candle?

*   *   *

October 26, 1767. Cold weather made chills in my feet and ankles as I walked to Boston to see Margaret Gage. I hoped to implore her to seek her husband out on my behalf, though I had not seen her since that terrible day. I had not been able to locate Brendan, who I hoped would help me appeal to some commander or other. Since Margaret’s husband was the general and the troops who had taken Cullah were his men they could as easily bring him home. I feared she might not receive me, though her butler showed me in just as always. I sat in her parlor, fidgeting with my bonnet ribbons. When she entered, I stood and cleared my throat, for I was still quite hoarse. I whispered, “Margaret, if you would rather I leave, please say so. We have too much honesty between us for you to act as if nothing were wrong between us.”

She lowered her chin and looked at me under her frown. “I would not rather you left, Ressie.”

“Let me speak frankly with your husband.”

“Thomas is not here to ask, dear friend. They are shipping thousands more soldiers of foot here this month and he is dashing everywhere at once.”

I sobbed, saying, “They have taken my Cullah. He will not live through this, Margaret. I know him. His anger will betray him like no accusation could.”

“Who has accused him?”

“Wallace Spencer.”

“Oh, no.”

I waited.

“Did he do the things of which he is accused?”

“Even if I knew, I could not claim it against my husband. I only know he is accused.”

“Spencer is making specious claims to torment you?”

I said, “I know he would do anything to hurt me. It has been his lifelong passion.”

“You hurt him so much?”

“I hurt him? He deserted me, at night, alone in a filthy wharf tavern. He disappointed his mother so much that she left her house to my brother August.”

“He resents your happiness, and longs for your love, or he would forget you rather than chase you. Perhaps,” she said, taking a long breath, “perhaps you should ask him to withdraw the charges.”

I stared at the rug. “I will. I will ask him that. I know not whether he still resides in Boston.”

“He does. He has already returned to their house. I am sure it is deliciously ghastly, the two of them alone there. Did you hear one of their sons took a sack and unloaded the silver service and ran off to New York with one of their yellow African slaves? Another one is a cripple for taking opium, and it is told one of their daughters does the same.”

“The thought of talking to him sickens me. I would have to find him without Serenity near, for when she is about everything becomes a mere aside to her jealousy. Would you come with me?”

“What would you say to him?”

“That I would do anything to save my Cullah.” Tears coursed down my cheeks.

Margaret hugged me, and I her. “Don’t tell him that. You know what he’d require. The man’s a he-goat and he’d use you under pretext and still not help you. Tell me when, and I will arrange an invitation for Serenity so you’ll have him alone.”

“Tomorrow?”

“As good as done.”

“Thank you so. This may do more to help him than all the lawyers in Boston.”

“I daresay. Now, would you have wine?”

At three in the afternoon the following day, I arrived at the Spencers’ home in our wagon. Roland drove it. Alice sat in it, waiting. I had dressed to appear, I hoped, appealing. I felt keenly aware of the fine lines under my eyes, and I had rubbed raw apple on them to tighten the skin. I walked up the steps and rapped the knocker. The butler raised his eyes and showed me to the parlor. A few minutes later, he returned and said, “Master Lord Spencer would see you in the study, Mistress. If you will follow me?”

The study was a man’s lair. A room of darkened wood and books, two suits of armor on stands, the walls hung about with stuffed creatures such as I had never seen. Wallace stood and bowed with politeness that would have pleased a king. “Mistress MacLammond, I am flattered by your visit. How lovely you look. Time has been good to you, Ressie. One would think you had some witchcraft to keep so beautiful.”

Until he had said the last, I had absorbed his statements with good humor, but witchcraft? That was Wallace as I knew him. Poison at the core like the seeds of an apple. I smiled and said, “You are too kind, Lord Spencer. I am humbled by your attention.”

“Will you have claret?”

“Thank you.” I must save Cullah, spoke my heart. Think of Eadan. Think of him.

He poured two small cut-crystal stemmed glasses, the same type that I had once claimed to have broken. “I am so relieved that you have seen fit to forgive my wife for that unfortunate scene when last you called. I’m sure she was just having a spell. She does now and then. Unfortunately, she is out just now.”

“Lord Spencer, oh Wallace, I knew she was out. I wished to speak to you alone.”

“Oh? Well, well, Ressie. I am flattered indeed.” He sat before me and pulled the chair closer so that his knees touched my own. “How, dear lady, may I serve you?”

I took several deep breaths, remembering everything I meant to say as I had rehearsed it. At last, I looked into his eyes, putting in my heart the feelings I had not for Wallace but for Eadan, so that I could speak with my love upon my face. I knew that he would see it and mistake its meaning. “Wallace? I have ever remembered our earliest friendship with great fondness, and considered the enmity between us as a natural product of jealousy between silly women. I know you are not jealous, but we foolish women, myself especially, I was always—troubled—by Serenity and your love for her.” I watched as a flush rose under his collar. Perfect. “I believe, no, I hope, that you do not hold that against me.” He smiled. Much, I thought, like the lipless grin of a snake. He leaned toward me and sipped the claret. I continued. “You have heard, have you not, that my husband has been arrested?”

“I have.” He stiffened and sat more upright in his chair.

“I know it is too forward of me, Wallace, too assuming upon our past friendship, but I hoped I could prevail upon you to ask his release. He is a very ordinary man, you see. Without your complexities of aristocracy. I was young, and without you, and without you I was heartbroken. He seemed good at heart and honest, and hardworking enough to give me security. Security is important to a woman, for we have no honest means of making it ourselves.” Then I made my boldest move yet. With the same movement that I had seen Margaret use to unmask many a farce and loosen many a tongue, I raised my right hand and artlessly let it fall upon Wallace’s wrist as if we were long in the habit of touching each other. As I did, I opened my mouth to continue my speech.

Wallace’s eyes closed lazily and he cocked his head. “Save your wiles, Resolute MacLammond, for you are not good at it. You think you have come here to seduce me into letting a criminal go? Do you think you are that desirable any longer?”

I pulled my hand back as if I had been stung, but Cullah was at stake. I was determined to continue the flattery until he threw me out. “I meant only friendship, not seduction. Perhaps I misread what I thought was compassion in your eyes.”

Wallace lunged at me, tossing aside his glass as he did, and taking my head in both his hands, he kissed me, pressing my lips apart with his so that I felt assaulted by him. When he stopped, he asked, “What would you do, Resolute, to have your man back at your hearth and in your bed?”

I felt the hoarseness overtake me and struggled to speak. “I ask only for your help. Someone has charged him with treason. They’ve destroyed his shop and carted away his work. Thrown him in prison.”

He kissed me again, and clinging more closely, knelt before me, pushing one of his legs between my knees. He stopped, his own face reddened and his lips swollen as mine felt. “You can barely speak. Have I aroused you so? After all these years, tell me, what would you do for Eadan Lamont?” Wallace ran his hand up my back and under my bonnet, loosening it, pulling it down, rummaging with my hair so that it began to fall in wisps. “Eadan Lamont, who should have hung when he was eight years old? Who attacked the royal governor in his home and burned it down? Eadan Lamont, who assists your scourge of a pirate brother in taking down my ships and smuggling stolen cargo, so that I am forced to pay more for cannon to defend them than for the cinnamon and silk they carry? That Eadan Lamont? Pirates, you see, are not a noble lot. One of them recognized the sign the so-called Cullah MacLammond carved into the backs of all his work, crated on their ship, as a clan insignia. Lamonts are pathetically uninventive in passing out names. The only one the blighter could come up with was Eadan, and would you imagine it? There was an Eadan Lamont still wanted on the rolls of the royal sheriff, disappeared into the American colonies. Naturally, I had to do my duty as a citizen and turn in a criminal.” Wallace grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled it, jerking it just so that I knew he had me fast. “What would you do to save them both? For August Talbot’s rotted corpse will hang in chains at the crossroads before your own house by the end of this year. When the bones fall apart, I will personally wire them together so he will stare at you with his hollow eye sockets for the rest of your life.”

He held my hair but of course, he did not hold my heart, and though he tore both out, I would flatter him no longer. “I have friends. Powerful friends.” I would ask Margaret’s husband to intercede, I thought desperately.

“Who, Revere? That Frenchman?”

Suddenly it occurred to me that Thomas Gage might not listen to his wife any more than Wallace would listen to Serenity. “I am asking you, Lord Spencer, Wallace, begging you for mercy, for lenience. But if you think I would sacrifice my body on the altar of your pride, you are mistaken. If you think I would betray my husband and my children because I am idiotic enough to believe you mean anything you say, you are mistaken. If you think you are worth having at all, you are mistaken.” With every word I said, he pulled my hair tighter and tighter. “I feel sorry for you, Wallace. Sorry that you will never know love. I would die for Cullah, and I will not lower myself to you for him.”

“I could break your neck, with one”—he tugged—“quick”—he tugged again—“twist.”

I stared into his eyes. “But you won’t,” I said. To my great surprise, there rose a rim of tear in each. I said nothing but kept looking at his eyes. He took his hand from my hair and stood. He walked to his credenza and poured himself another glass of wine, drank it, and poured another before he turned around. I said, “You know the charges could be dropped.”

“You know they are true.”

“What would you have me do? Beg you on my knees?”

“Good day, Mistress MacLammond. Or should I say Lamont?”

I stood and replaced my cap and bonnet, letting the hair hang as it fell. I walked to the doorway and turned.

He drained the wine again. “We shall see who wins this, Resolute. You came here to make a fool of me. Your brother is trying to destroy me. I would as soon watch you hang with him.”

I ran from the house, leaving the front door wide. Roland helped me into the wagon, snapping the reins over the round and patient rumps of our plow horses.

*   *   *

All Saints’ Day loomed. I had prepared ribbons and tied them around dried Indian corn in pretty clusters to decorate all the graves. A sudden snowfall melted rapidly and wind dried the ground. The weather warmed, but the golds and crimsons and oranges of the woods gave me no warmth, no joy. My clothes hung on me as if they had been outfitted on a scarecrow. I tried to weave and spin, but my work was not fit for rags.

On a day so warm I needed no shawl, I walked beyond the garden to clear new ground with the hoe while Alice swept the house. I was determined to plant bayberry so that I would not have to go so far into the woods hunting it. The seeds would lie in the ground over the winter and sprout in the spring. I imagined every chop of my hoe coming down upon Wallace Spencer. White stone came up with the dark brown. First two white stones, then a dozen. I bent low and picked up a couple of them. They were not stones. They were bones. I chewed my upper lip with my teeth. I went to find Roland. Gwenny’s children played outside in a puddle, merrily painting stripes upon their legs with mud, a few yards from where she had hung a freshly washed blanket to dry in the sun.

Roland and James came with shovels. Together we scraped away soil until we came to a human skull. If it had been a grave, I thought, it was a rude one, no more than a foot at the deepest, and less than six inches of soil covered it at the head. It was tall. The man had been wrapped in a black cloak and buried. In his still awkward English, Roland said, “He seems buried quickly. By someone lazy.” James crossed himself.

I added, “Or perhaps someone not strong enough to dig it.” I stared at this form, a reminder of what little fiber was a man, what little time our flesh had upon this earth.

Roland turned over another shovelful of soil by its head. The remains of a three-cornered hat came up on the end of the shovel. It was not a fine one of beaver fur, but a roguish felt well tarred, as they wore on the ships. As the hat came up, it tore itself in half by the weight of soil which had collected within its crown.

“Do you suppose he haunts the dell where he would rather lie in peace, next to his child? He is always there, by the little unwritten stone. Should we move him? Is it sacred to leave him here or put him where he would choose to lie?” I asked.