My Name is Resolute (76 page)

“Good, I meant to, for I am secretly quite rude.” She smiled again, winning, open. “I’ll wager you have more spirit in you than you like to admit. Quite a labor, keeping the horses in check, is it not?”

“The turban is breathtaking, and your hair, so bold.”

She leaned toward me as if we were young girls sharing gossip. “You are prevaricating, dear. Would you say it is ‘wenchy’?”

“Oh, not at all. Well. If I may say, it is rather savage.”

She laughed. “Good. My husband adores it, though in public he criticizes me roundly for it. All the while, see there, he looked again. All the while he complains, he is stoking up the fires for later.”

I blushed deeply.

“Oh, how attractive your color becomes when you are alarmed so. Please do call upon me. I could not bear it if you refuse.”

“I shall.”

“Send your man around to my house in the morning. May we say, Tuesday afternoon tea?”

At first, I reckoned she meant Cullah, then my face dropped as I realized she meant a servant should search out her house and then direct my coachman to it. Had I a coachman. Or a servant. “I will be there.”

“Bring your daughter if you’d like. She’s charming.”

*   *   *

Margaret Gage and I became friends within a couple of weeks. I called at her house, which was not as grand as I expected it to be, and she called upon me, as well. My home could be described as little more than a humble country house. More than a cottage, but nothing like those in Boston. She was gracious in every way, and accepted the cakes and ale or pasties and coffee I offered with aplomb. I guarded my words with her still, and I suspected she knew as much. She, on the other hand, guarded nothing from me. And one day she chided me that I did not have help in my kitchen, but did all myself. “Help in the country is harder to find. My daughters have helped.”

“You need a girl in.”

I promised her I would think about that, and later, when I was helping Gwyneth shell some pease, I mentioned it to her. Within a week, with no explanation other than “it seems the right thing to do,” Dorothy moved home. She put her things in Gwyneth’s old room at the front of the house. I was so happy I sang the day through, though neither she nor Gwenny would admit to their having talked about it. I did not like the idea that my daughters would speak around my knowledge, but at last I accepted it as their having grown so close during the last years.

After the sun set the next Sunday, a wind came up. We were preparing for bed when I heard a strange bird calling outside. It called again. A few minutes later there was a knock at the back of the house. Cullah went outside and around the house. In a few minutes, I heard cartwheels crushing gravel in the road, and the clomping step of a heavy horse. It went past the house and toward the barn. The sound drifted into the wind. I heard nothing for an hour, and then the parlor door swung open. Cullah held it wide. In stepped August and the man who had delivered the message to him before, their arms loaded with heavy crates.

Dolly came down the stairs. “Ma? What is wrong? Pa? Oh, uncle!”

“Get on your wrapper,” I called to her. “August Talbot, what have you? Come here by the fire. Will you have something to warm yourself? Brother, will you not introduce your friend? Come. You are welcomed also.” How joyful to see him alive!

August and Cullah exchanged looks, but finally the man said, “Call me ‘Nathaniel,’ Mistress.”

“Ressie? I have put quite a stock into your barn in that upper room. Have you a place in the house to hide a few crates? It’s going to Parker’s warehouse tomorrow night, but for now it would be better these were watched by other than geese and cows.”

“Of course.” I led him to the panel halfway down the stairs. Nathaniel crawled into the room and lit a lantern, then Cullah and August passed boxes to him.

August looked at me from the corner of his eye. “Powder cartridges and shot.”

I nodded. We gave them the remnants of our supper and filled their cups with cider. I had baked bread that day and there was plenty to fill in what the meat could not. We made up a bed for August in Benjamin’s old room, and one for Nathaniel on the pull-out stand there in the parlor. I had long ago burned the ticking upon which my Patey had slept, but we replaced it with a few blankets and he promised he would be comfortable.

While I watched them eat and presided over the laying out of blankets and bedding, I could not but feel atremble at what the two men wore. They had long black capes and each wore a beaten but black tricorn hat, just as the one in which our graveyard ghost appeared. Their shirts were black as well as their waistcoats, stockings, and trousers. Both also had wide black kerchiefs around their necks. August carried a leather pouch, rough sewn and oft patched, all stained black, too.

“And, my dear sister,” said August after draining his cup. “I have brought you a gift.” He pulled from his pouch a smaller cloth sack and handed it to me. “Taken from the captain’s quarters of His Great Buffoonery Wallace Spencer’s
Long Ridge
out of Jamaica with a hundred barrels of sugar, and I fear, not a ha’penny of tax paid for any.” He and Nathaniel laughed conspiratorially.

I slipped the drawstrings and looked inside, then let out a long breath. “August. Cashews! Quick, Dolly, get me a skillet. But”—I stopped, my nose into the sack—“these are stolen?”

“I didn’t take them. Some outlaw pirate did. I came by them honestly. A gift from your brother in thanks for all you have done.”

“August. If we eat these we shall be guilty.”

He cocked his head at me. “I didn’t say I stole them. And don’t eye me like that, I did not give him a taste of my blade. I traded a sash for them.”

I roasted and salted two handfuls of the cashews, sizzling them in their own oil until the house filled with the buttery fragrance. Then I poured them into a trencher and we all sampled. I said, “I have not tasted these in thirty years. Oh, dear August.” Then I closed my eyes and my mouth for I could say no more. The taste and smell carried me home, long ago, far away. Warm breezes laden with flowers, sea-green lagoons, hot spices, and the murmur of voices from the kitchen as our women shelled and roasted cashews. Tears ran down my face. Cullah spoke to the men while I drifted on a sea of memories.

Before dawn, I made a large breakfast of meats and tomatoes, beans with onions, and Indian flour cakes dipped in treacle thinned with rum. I served also coffee and hot milk with nutmeg across it and lump sugar in the bottom of each cup. My brother and Nathaniel left while it was still dark in order to arrive at home before anyone saw their strange clothing. Cullah waited until they were gone down the road to pick up his leather apron and sack. He said, “Three men will come to take the shipment into Pennsylvania. They will give you the signal of a white feather in their hatbands. Feed them if you will. I trust them, but keep Dorothy in the house.”

“Who is it? Someone we know?” Dorothy asked.

“One of them is one of the Revere boys. The other is your brother Benjamin. The third is a rake and a scoundrel of passing fair. Son of one of the Prescott family. It’s better you don’t see them, and cannot say when last you did.”

Dorothy pursed her lips. “I like Samuel Prescott.”

“Aye. I thought you might. Good day, wee one. Help your mother.”

“Do you not trust me, Pa?”

He smiled with one side of his mouth. “With my life, yes. But with your pretty face before three strong lads on their way to a foreign land, one of them who might lay eyes on a greater prize than what’s in the barn? I’d have to hunt them down and kill one of them and then where would be your uncle’s plan?”

“I’m not a child, Pa.”

“That’s the trouble.”

I put my arm around Dolly as he left and I whispered, “Your presence at the Reveres’ dinner persuaded half the young bachelors of Boston to become Sons of Liberty.”

“As they should,” she said. “I would have no man who did not believe in my father’s cause.”

“I thought you were determined never to marry?”

“I was a child then.”

*   *   *

After Margaret’s insistent urging, I told her she might be amused to meet Serenity Spencer, who was now living again in Boston while Wallace conducted business. Why, I could not fathom, but though I told Margaret only about my past with Serenity and hinted that I had as a child been enamored of Wallace, her eyes sparkled like diamonds at the prospect, and so she made a date to call upon Serenity provided I would accompany her.

“Was he handsome?” she asked with a sly smirk.

“Very. He is still, I think.”

“The devil, they say, goes about in finery.”

“And if you believe Beelzebub is as cunning as he is attractive, then I think we have found him.”

“Delicious!” Margaret crowed, and clasped her hands to her bosom.

I drove my wagon to August’s house and he came with me to the Gages’ home. He looked the aristocrat in every way except for his darkened skin and the scar on his face, but it made him present as bold, rakish, and dashing to my lady friend. The air was alive with the fire of their attraction to each other. It grew to the point that I felt odd, as if I should excuse myself and let the lovers at it, until I reminded myself that Margaret was married. For her own sake, I stayed in the room to keep them from each other and we sipped Madeira as sweat flushed my face. Thankfully, August found reason to attend to some business or other on foot, and left us alone.

When the door closed behind him, Margaret turned to me with guilty eyes.

I said, “My brother thinks you quite the beauty.”

“Oh? I hadn’t noticed.” Her voice trembled.

“I think, dear friend, you are lying. The air in this room stifles me.”

“Resolute, you shock me.” Margaret blushed and went to a window where she appeared to be watching August walk down the road. “Any woman would be flattered by the attention of so vigorous, so dangerous a man.”

I stared into the bottom of my glass of wine, looking at my fingers through the glass below a filter of red where they appeared as if they were washed in blood. I wondered if anyone could see that I was closer to August in spirit than to any good church woman. Perhaps I was as dangerous as Margaret. I wished I were at home.

Margaret said, “Let us go immediately and call on the harridan of whom you spoke so highly. Imagine, consorting with Lucifer himself, and still whole? She must be unbelievable. If we arrive at two rather than three, we may find out all sorts of delicious things. I know it is just a few houses down, across the street, but I prefer to arrive in style.” As the coachman drove us around the block, I fanned myself and turned my thoughts to preparing to see Serenity. If Margaret longed to search out trouble, she would surely find it there.

Their butler admitted us and showed us to a well-laid sitting room. He scuttled off to find his mistress with a concern on his face that brought a flush to Margaret’s cheeks. She wandered about the room, pausing before large, life-sized portraits of Wallace and Serenity. “He’s quite smart. What say you, Ressie? Are these good likenesses?”

“Good? I would recognize both of them but the artist has been kind,” I said.

“Ah. I do so like a kind painter rather than an honest one. Are they recent?”

“I do not see that it is long past. Perhaps a handful of years.”

The butler arrived with a tea service. “The housekeeper wishes you to refresh yourselves. Madam is delayed a moment more.”

“Thank you,” Margaret said. “We shall pour; you needn’t wait.”

“Yes, madam,” he said, and left.

We drank the tea. We waited. We took a spin around the room, looking at the vases and portraits, the sculpted figurines, the furniture. A clock in a case taller than Cullah sat at one end of the room. It chimed three. Margaret studied it. “Do you think it is correct?” she mused. “Even if we had arrived on time, she has kept us waiting. I say, this one is more than a little trouble. Let’s see the house. Perhaps she is asleep in her ale somewhere.”

I was shocked to see Margaret open one door after another, surprising the cooks in the kitchen, a maid dusting books in a library. I could do naught but follow her, for I had rather be found with her than alone in the sitting room. At the end of the great hall, Margaret opened yet another door, her tiny, gloved fingers still upon the latch when we saw through that breach Serenity, a riding crop in her hand, standing above a young African woman in neat maid’s livery, cringing on the floor. Wallace stood beside Serenity, her arm caught in his hand, the riding crop still poised to come down upon the woman beneath them. Margaret stepped into the room, pulling my skirt so that I followed her, and we watched the scene before us as if it were acted on a stage.

Serenity said, “No more. I will not have it. I will not have her! Do you hear me? No more!”

“What is it to you?” he said, with a low growl in his voice that chilled me. “Mind your business, woman, and leave her to me.”

“After I catch you in the act? My God! In the very act in my private salon! Leave her to you? I would sooner burn her at the stake!”

In all of this, the African showed nothing on her face. Margaret elbowed me and arched her brows.

Serenity struggled against Wallace’s hand, and finding she could not free her arm, kicked the woman with her foot. “I have guests coming in a few minutes and I will have to entertain all the while knowing what you are about. You make my skin creep! Get her out of my house. Out of my house, now!”

Wallace said, “I paid for her. I’ll keep her.”

“Either get the slut out of this house or get yourself out! Sell her for nothing, the worthless sack!”

“I’ll buy her,” I said.

The two of them turned, red-faced, as Margaret gave a squeal of glee and clasped her hands upon her mouth. I said, “I will take her. How much is her price?”

“I paid twenty pounds,” Wallace said.

Serenity said, “Sixpence!”

I reached through the slot in my gown to the pocket and pulled out a sixpence. “Here,” I said, holding it forth.

Serenity looked from me to Margaret and back to me. “What are you doing here?”