My Name is Resolute (33 page)

On a howling evening in late March, when the wind beat at the barren trees as if it would uproot them and gusts tormented the house so that the leaded windows bowed inward, I lit a candle in my room and said a prayer for my birthday. I knew not an exact date, only that between Michaelmas and Easter I was a year older. Seventeen thirty-six. I turned seventeen. Though they knew not my age, I knew that at sixteen a girl could enter betrothal. I was not betrothed to Wallace Spencer, I reminded myself.

I wrote a letter to Rachael Johansen. A few weeks later a letter came from her. She said as a sanctified person she was allowed correspondence. Then she told me news of everyone I had known. Her sister Christine had made her way in Montréal as a
prostituée
until she had been found raving and was locked in stocks. When she was released, she tried to stab a doctor conversing in the street with a priest, but managed only to damage his horse. Her father had tried to intervene and take her but she stabbed him, too. He was arrested for disturbing the peace but freed later, to disappear. She was hanged within a week. Reverend Johansen had died of a fever from an infected tooth, and Rachael had felt it was God’s hand, and so had taken the vows of a sanctified woman, not a nun, never to leave the convent walls again. She planned to remain at St. Ursula to raise James and be mother to the infants left there by misused and desperate girls. I laid her letter on my bed table. I thought of girls like Patience, and their desperation.

My heart made a noise and sudden warmth shot through me. Would Wallace require of me that naked coiling as I had witnessed Patey and Lukas doing? Staring into the flame of my candle, I vowed that I would do what Wallace asked, even that, and give him children, as many as we would have. I let a vision drift before me of the one sugar plantation I knew, now removed to a place called Virginia, peopled with my children, my husband. And slaves.

I spoke aloud. “Allsy was a slave.” I had never believed that Old Poe was anything other than a trusted friend, a second mother, a dear aunt. The fact that she had “cost” Pa by her death had no meaning to me other than the grief that death cost me. Allsy was as close as any sister. Shared apples and great pox, separated by smallpox, Allsy was African and had been my slave and I never knew. How would a plantation be run without slavery? Yet, if Wallace was to be my husband, he must be told about my feelings. We would own no slaves. We would have to employ workers who had a choice and were paid for their labor and never, never beaten. That settled, I rose from my knees and lifted the candle as I turned toward the bed.

A chilling scream pierced the air. I exhaled so that I blew the candle out, and dropped it. I was engulfed in darkness before the next scream followed it, continuing on with a long wailing, a moan that seemed to come out of the storm itself. I felt my way toward the door, hearing the rush of wind but feeling as if I were in the darkened stairwell with Patience, water crashing about us, making our way to the arms of the Saracen pirates. I reached through the doorway and touched the warm softness of another human. I gave out with my own scream of purest terror, just as that person did, also.

“Miss Talbot!” Portia’s voice called. “I thought you would have a candle!”

I shuddered with relief and said, “Tipsie, thank heavens it is you. It went out. I was coming downstairs to fetch another.” The voice in the storm screamed again, screeching agony and longing all at once. “What is that horrid noise?” I asked.

“It is Goody Carnegie. Gone mad again. Sometimes when the wind blows she runs about in the night. It’s enough to scare a witch to heaven.”

A light appeared before us, a double candle held by Betsy. “Tips, what a rude expression. With whom have you been associating who would speak in such a way?”

I asked, “That screaming is Goody Carnegie? But she’s kind and dear.”

Betsy said, “She calls through the woods, looking for someone who harmed her, they say. ’Tis also said she’s running from witches from whom she’s stolen secret poisons and potions. Or that she’s a witch herself trying to catch a fairy.”

Portia said, “I believe she’s fey, and captured herself. Not a witch. That would be evil and she does not seem evil.”

“As if you would recognize evil in anyone,” Betsy chastised. “You are too kind to see the sin in others. You think everyone is as sweet and good as yourself, sister.”

My hands shook with such trembling as if they were not part of me. While this conversation was softening my fear, I wanted light and much of it. “If you please, bring your candlestick in and light mine.” The two girls followed me. I recovered the dropped taper, found two others, and lit them all. “Why does someone not help her? Is there no medicine for her? No person to keep her? Why, she will take fever in this cold.”

“No one can help a madwoman,” Betsy said. “Though if people truly believed she was a witch they would have drowned her long ago.”

I thought of Christine Hasken. Hanged for stabbing a horse. Goody Carnegie, serving me bread and excellent cheese. I said, “What if we pray for her? Could we not do that at least?”

Both the girls looked at me with startled faces. Goody Carnegie howled again, much removed this time, so the wind carried the moaning under the eaves of the house and it no longer sounded like a human voice. Finally, Betsy placed her candlestick on my dressing table, hugged me, and said, “You are so dear, Miss Talbot. Kindness even to a madwoman. I hope you will always be our friend, even if you get home to your island.”

The wind continued for several hours, and I slept little. I thought of poor Goody Carnegie. Christine Hasken knitting stockings. Lonnie, the wee dafty one. Birgitta and the goats. When I slept, I dreamed Ma cradled me in a hammock on the leeward porch of our house, and the smell of flowers lulled me to sleep. The smell grew stronger and more pungent. I awoke with a start. One of my candles had burned to the end, layering melted wax around itself, and Rachael’s letter, moving in a draft coming through the windows, had gone over the candle and the last ember of flame had touched the corner of it. It had just begun to smolder, putting off that fragrance that replaced the flowers in my dream. I pressed the burned part and took off the ash, then smoothed the missal. It might have been moments from setting the room on fire, even burning down the house, perhaps killing me in my sleep along with all the others.

The feeling that I had looked upon my own death filled my heart with terror, filled my eyes with tears. I went to the window and pressed my hand against the leaded diamonds where now a pinhole of breeze came through all the day, air rushing in, not letting any out. How could so much air come into a place, and yet it felt as if I could not draw a breath? “Ma,” I said aloud, “spring is beginning. I will come home this year. I will come to you.”

Mr. Roberts agreed to take me once again to the solicitor’s office, where, he said, he awaited word on urgent business. There might be a letter there for me, he said, as he had instructed any correspondence from my mother to be held there.

“But, sir, why did you instruct that? Am I not a free person to receive and profit from my own correspondence?”

Mr. Roberts frowned, but cheerily, although for a moment I saw that cold glimmer of steel, keen as the blade of a cutlass, cross his features. “Of course, Miss Talbot. Of course.”

As we approached Boston, Mistress Roberts said to the air before her, as if in casual conversation with no one in particular, “I hear the Spencers are expecting young Master Wallace soon. I heard it from Anne Prescott herself.”

“Indeed?” Mr. Roberts replied.

“Yes. And he will be calling within the week.”

“Wonderful,” he said.

She spoke again to the air. “It is of course known all about that he intends proposing to our Serenity. Her dowry is larger than anyone else’s one could name. Now that he is landed, too, there should be no impediments to that path, which has been laid for five years at least.”

“No, certainly. Of course,” he added.

“And, have I your permission, sir, to call upon the dressmaker regarding some silk for a wedding gown for our most precious daughter?”

“Of course. We shall make that our mission and purpose. First, Cole’s exchange for news of my trade investments, next the law office for some letters. Next, the harbormaster to see to Miss Talbot’s passage home, of course. Then, and most important, of course, the best dresser in Boston. None but the best for our daughter. Is that woman you went to before of good use? Does she make the best patterns? I insist you find out who among the trades creates the finest gowns, my dear.”

I knew something was afoot by all this foolish conversing over my head. They meant me to know that Wallace Spencer was taken. That they would stop at nothing for their daughter’s happiness and that the dresser they had taken me to was second-rate. One better must be found to supply Serenity’s gown. I stared out the window, and as I raised the curtain a bit more, the clouds overhead parted, sending a piercing ray of sunlight to my hand, reaching the depths of the ruby on my finger, giving me a warm rush with it. “I should think,” I began, “that your daughters are the luckiest young ladies in this colony or any other, with such tender parents as yourselves.” I turned to them and smiled, then returned to studying the landscape that traveled past us. Wallace had proclaimed his love for me. If he was true, if his heart was gold, their plans meant naught against his passion. My own love for him had blossomed these months of his absence—four now—into great longing that woke me at night with dreams of his visage before me.

The coach stopped before Peterson Cole’s storefront. His
SEAMAN’S MERCANTILE
shingle hung askew. A hasp and padlock closed the front doors, and the windows had been barred from the inside.

“What’s this?” Mr. Roberts exclaimed. He rattled at the door, shaking dust from its seams. “Open up, I say! Cole! Open these doors.”

Mr. Roberts paced for several minutes before the doors, but no soul approached from inside or out to do his bidding. He pounded the door with his fist, causing Mistress Roberts and I to turn surprised expressions to each other. That was the way a common man might expect entrance, not a gentleman. The commotion he had created drew attention. Two men approached wearing high beaver hats, both dressed in somber but fine apparel. “May we assist you, sir?” one of them asked.

“Mr. Cole. My shipping investor. Where is he? Why is his office closed?”

“You have not heard?”

They drew him closer to the coach, unaware that but a curtain separated their voices from Mistress Roberts and me. She grasped my hand. I tried not to breathe so as to hear it all. “Cole had pushed risky investments—”

Mr. Roberts interrupted. “All investments are at risk.”

“The ship
Carapace
went down in a hurricane, in sight of the
Oswego Carrier
. All hands lost, cargo sent to Davey Jones. The
Oswego
was lost coming into port. Fired upon by brigands in sight of the tower. Cole took his losses and absconded during the night last month. I’ve lost quite a sum, I don’t mind telling you.”

“Lost? All hands? And what, sir, do you know of the
Moravia
? She was armed as for war. Nothing or no one could take her.”

The two men kept quiet for a moment. Then one ventured, “I’m sorry, sir, but I have never heard of that vessel.”

Mr. Roberts’s voice grew tight and rose. “But you are shipping men. I can tell by the cut of your coats. You know her. The
Moravia
. Think, man. It’s most important.”

“Unhand me, sir. I came to offer you friendly information.”

“Yes, yes. Sorry. And Cole? You knew him?”

“Sorry to say we did. Both of us robbed by that gypsy fiend. If he is ever found he’ll swing from a gallows if he’s not tarred and feathered, first.”

The other man added, “He’s ruined four others in my acquaintance, sir.”

Mr. Roberts entered the coach, ashen-faced and trembling. His mouth dribbled as he called to the driver to make haste to the solicitor’s office. He rushed in, forgetting all propriety in seeing his wife and me through the doors. We made our own way indoors, to be seated in the anteroom for two hours while Mr. Roberts examined the lawyer and his assistants at length regarding his standings, his obligations, and his situation.

Mistress Roberts whispered to the air before her as she had done in the coach. “It seems no reason we shouldn’t go ahead to the dresser’s shop. Our appointment will be lost and I shall not be a welcome client then. He can take care of this business another day. He knew we had a most important errand today.”

I said nothing. I sensed she knew little of his business dealings, nor could she read the disharmony upon his face. When at last Mr. Roberts emerged, he looked as if he had been beaten or had consumed ale all afternoon. He swayed upon his feet, grasping desks and railings for support. He said only, “Let’s be going,” without salutation or waiting for us to proceed ahead of him.

As I reached the door, the clerk, a young man in the office with a deformed shoulder, raised a finger, blackened with ink, toward me. “Are you the Miss Talbot residing with the Roberts family? I have letters for you.” He leafed through a cubbyhole on his great desk. “Actually, one appears to be for you and one addressed through your concern to Mr. Roberts. Would you be so kind?”

“Of course,” I said. The letters in my hands charged the air as if lightning had struck nearby. “Would you pardon my haste in reading them immediately, sir?”

He smiled at the use of “sir” and nodded, pointing with his good right arm to a small chair. I had barely sat when I tore loose the wax seal. The salutation concerned all the typical
“most gracious majesty’s servant,”
and I brushed through that with my eyes, looking for word of my mother. Then I had to go back and read it again, for nothing in the heart of the letter was from her or about her at all. This was from the king’s solicitor, now master of Two Crowns Plantation among six others in the West Indies, and concerned fighting off French and Dutch usurpers who would steal the land, and in the last phrase of the last sentence,
“due to the inconvenient loss of His Majesty Charles the II’s previous conservator, the Right Honorable Allan Talbot.”
Inconvenient? How the loss of my pa was inconvenient to the king troubled me not at all. Where was my mother? What of her escape? Had she found help among other plantation owners? Had he not looked or inquired of all the great houses in the parish? I slipped the seal of the other letter, and holding them side by side, at first they appeared identical, naught but the address was different. The one addressed to Mr. Roberts explained more than mine did, but it was significant, in that
“with all souls lost”
and
“the difficulty in defending the separate plantations from villainy, the plantation would escheat to the Crown. No compensation would be made to any claim on behalf of heirs.”