“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 we
eping 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.”
It was Cullah; I would know his voice on my dying day. He must have been slain and was even now walking the earth on this Hallows’ Even. I could not pray. I could barely breathe, but I choked out the words, “Go away. In the name of God go away, you.”
“Ma!” There was a rushing clump and a bang, as if the thing threw itself against the door. “Ma, let me in! I beg you. We have come such a long way.”
Jacob said, “They will tell you anything to get you to open the door. Let it not in, Resolute. It said it came up from the dell and that there is more than one. That is the graveyard. On your knees, children, and pray them away.”
Gwenny did as he said. Benjamin burst into loud sobbing as Jacob started saying Our Father. He panted a few times. “Our Father,” and after but a few words he slipped into Gaelic. “Arr uh nee-ehr, air nee-uv.”
“Ma,” called Cullah. “Please let me in. It’s been so long, Ma.” The voice began to weep! “Ma-ma?” I reached for the latch on the bar at the door. Its cries broke my heart.
“Stop!” screamed Jacob. “It’s a trick, Resolute. In the name of God, don’t open it. We will not open! Do you hear, spirit? Your tricks do not work here. Go and menace some other for by the name of God we shall not let you in.”
“I am not a spirit, sir!”
“At midnight,” I whispered to Jacob. “At midnight the hallows return and saints rise to heaven. Then if Cullah is still there—”
Jacob hissed at me, “It is not Cullah, woman.”
Then I thought to ask it questions. “Who are you?”
“Brendan MacLammond.”
I sank to my knees then. Was my son killed, too? “Whence came you?”
“From a river and a fort, north in the Canadas. My father follows me. My friend accompanies me. We will perish if you let us not in, for we are starved. Mother, please believe me.”
“It is All Hallows,” I called. “I cannot open the door.”
The voice was silent for a long time. “Mother? I didn’t know what day it was. Oh, how may I prove it is I? Gumboo! By the sword of Eadan Lamont and the cross of Holy God, I tell you the cross of gumboo binds me to you and him.”
I looked at Jacob. He raised his face to me as if he felt my stare and he whispered, “Ghosts would not call on the name of God. Nor fairies. It sounds like Cullah.” I threw the latch and lifted the bar. Behind me Jacob took a firebrand from the hearth and held it high, ready to fight off the minions of Satan if need be.
Into my house walked a man wearing a filthy plaid. He had a young man’s beard but his face was so dirty it matched his hair and I knew him not. He was tall and thin but broad of shoulder, as if not yet filled in. He wore English boots and a tattered leather shirt under the long plaid across his shoulder. He held the door ajar. “Ma!” he said with a great smile. “It is I, Brendan. Oh, but you had me so afrighted, thinking you would not open to me. Hold a moment. I have brought a man with me. He’s been wounded but holding up. Rolan? Can you make it here?”
“Brendan?” I feared touching him, but if he were my son, I should want to hold him as any mother would. Was this my son or a fairy? Did I dare believe it?
At that moment a gaunt fellow appeared dressed in ragged summer linens that had once been tan. His beard, too, was one of youth, but longer and fairer. He shivered as if the bones of him could rattle together. I would not have thought it possible, but he was thinner than the first. Nothing but bones and filth. He had an oozing wound on his neck wrapped around with what looked to be a man’s old stocking, for the toe of the sock stood out at an angle like a flag and still bore imprints of dirty toes. He tried to bow but could not move his head. He said, “Plaisir de vous rencontrer, mademoiselle.”
“Not ‘mademoiselle.’ She is my mother. Ma, this is my friend Rolan. We’ve come from the fighting. We’ve done with it. I tried to turn him in but they told me to kill him, and I nearly did. But he did not die. My time was up, you see, and he was my prisoner but we got separated and we were both afraid of the Indians. We had to get away from the Indians for the army left us abandoned in the woods. We had such a long way to go and got to be friends on the way home. Since I am not a soldier anymore, I’m my own master again and I chose to call him friend. Well and aye.”
The blond man said also, “Well and aye, madame.”
“You are French? Français? Vous êtes français?” I asked. “Brendan?” I asked the first man. “But your voice, it was Cullah MacLammond calling me. Or, I thought, calling his mother. You frightened me to my death. It is you, Brendan my son?” I raised my arms to embrace him.
“Ma, better not touch me until I have a chance to scrape a few layers of dirt. I’ve been itching. Oh, so great to see you all.” He turned to Jacob. “Grandpa Jacob? You believe I am myself, don’t you? Have I changed that much? Gwyneth, you? Ben, don’t cry. Be a good wee man, there. It’s I, your brother. Where’s little Dorothy-dolly? None of you know me?”
I said, “My son went away a boy. You have a man’s voice and a man’s body. I did not expect that a ye
ar and a quarter of fighting and foraging would put height on you. To appear on All Hallows, we could not be sure it was not some spirit. Or that your father had not died and his ghost came to torment us. If you are not Cullah, where is he? And close the door. We do not have wood to heat all of Lexington from our hearth.”
The man laughed. “My mother would always be practical.” He smiled and closed his eyes, tears emerging from them, coursing through dirt and making clean stripes on his face. “I am home.” He dropped to his knees. “Thank God I am home.”
Jacob went to him then, put his hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “My bonny wee Brendan?”
Brendan stood, a good foot taller than his grandfather, and smiled. “It is,” he said. “Have you aught to eat?”
I shuddered. It was told in these parts to never, never feed a fairy. You will never get it out of your house if you do. I closed my eyes. “What time is it?” I asked no one and everyone.
“Well past midnight,” Gwyneth said. “Surely the hallows have gone back to the grave now. Ma? Grampa Jacob has nailed iron rings over every door. No fairy will go under iron. He couldn’t have come in, had he not skin as ours.”
“Would you at least feed my friend?” he asked.
I said, “We had apples with cinnamon for supper. Push up the fire and I will get some long forks for you.”
My Name Is Resolute Page 52