“Yes. And what then?”
Cullah looked at me and grinned, wrinkling his nose mischievously. “Prepare.”
I gasped. “I have married a heathen.”
“Aye. One who can wield a sword well.” Cullah nudged my side with his elbow.
I felt my frown start to break. He was laughing but I felt angry still. I did not want to let go of the anger and its hold on my heart. “Oh, leave me alone, Cullah.”
“I cannot do that. You’ve married a heathen and I’ll not let him leave you alone. I’d ask you to forgive me if I knew all I need forgiving for.” The horse snorted loudly.
I said, “There is a list.”
After a while he nodded and said, “Ah. Good thing I can’t read,” and nudged my side again.
*
Our days before Brendan’s arrival had rolled in and out, my heart full of this new life as wife. I learned much more about cooking for men, particularly making everything in greater quantities than I expected. I tended geese and goats and added chickens to my flocks. I found I liked hens and their dear sounds. To say we never disagreed would be a lie; of course we argued. But each day I found new things to admire about Cullah, things that in knowing made a great difference to me in how I felt about him, and had I not known, I would have been so much less in favor of my choice of him.
In between working at his trade, he worked on our house, ever building, planning, talking about this and that. I learned from him as if a school of woodcraft opened on our supper board each evening. I knew the differences between a raised panel and a cove molding, an ogee and a wooden Dutchman, and I knew to never, never set a plane upon anything not made of wood. He had a head for money and business and could estimate down to a farthing the cost of a paneled room, a barn, or a cradle, multiply a goodly sum for profit, reduce a percentage to slight his competition to win the project, and still make us a fine living.
For my own weaving I thought only in terms of cost against materials. A penny for a farthing, and waste was my mortal enemy. A needle that went dull I sharpened until it was too small to hold. When Cullah said I was not making enough profit for the hours I spent in embroidery, he told me how to account for each figure upon the yard, and how to price the fabric. Johanna was furious when first I raised my price, and threatened to buy from someone else, making me fear for our future. I wept bitter tears, thinking my husband had been too demanding, not understanding the nature of women’s business and that it was different from men’s businesses. The following day she sent a boy to my house with a message begging forgiveness, assuring me that my price would be met. Cullah seemed to me a simple craftsman, but perhaps I had judged too soon. Perhaps he knew people far better than I.
That night, I tucked our babe in his cradle and stoked up the fire while Cullah put the horse in the barn. He came up the stairs with icy hands, and when he formed himself next to me like two zigzags woven into the bed itself, our places so known that the ticking seemed to shape to us, his knees felt like blocks of ice against the backs of my legs. I sighed, listening to the rhythms of these two asleep, the babe’s soft snore promising to become more resonant with age.
I had left a candle to burn to the wick and to be cleaned out for a fresh taper in the morning, so there was still light near the bed and the reassuring smell of bayberry wax closeted my little family. I laid my hand upon my husband’s arm, knowing, as if my hand lay upon some wild animal, the fibers of him, the bone and tendon, the sun-roughened skin and thick hair on his forearm.
I had been lost. Adrift. Captive. Abandoned. Without cunning or force, Cullah MacLammond had claimed me and captured me. Contrary to his words, I was the one fairy-fettered by him. I was part of this place now. Irrevocably, unchanging, I had become part of a land of cold and snow and thatched houses just as those of which Ma and Pa had once told me of old England. This New England had claimed me. I had only to wait to see what we should be to each other.
CHAPTER 24
May 7, 1738
“The king is mad,” my brother said under his breath. “First he hires me to do a thing and then tries to hang me for doing it. Resolute, don’t embroider the bloody thing, just sew it up. And hurry.”
My hands trembled and my throat clenched. Much as plying my needles and thread were to my life, I had never sewn human flesh, swollen and running red upon my kitchen table. “They will not find you. Cullah built many a hiding place in this house.”
“Where is he?”
“Coming.”
“Did he see?”
“He saw.”
“Will he give me over to them?”
“My husband is a good man, August Talbot. He would never betray you. Be still. There, now the baby is crying. I cannot get the knot to stay.”
“Leave a tail on it and tie a square knot. Nothing fancy. I’m not a pillow slip.”