“Your skin is tanned and tough as a hide and the blood is so slick.”
“I hear horses.” He stood so quickly the three-legged stool tipped over and he pulled the needle from my fingers. It swung from his arm like a tassel.
I said, “Follow me,” and across the kitchen to the stairs to our basement we went, where, halfway down, I pushed aside a square panel in the wall. “Step up here. Watch your arm.”
“If it comes open I’ll hire another seamstress.”
I pushed the panel in place and got back to the kitchen, took the haunch of goat from its hook in the fireplace and flopped it onto the puddle of blood on my table. I had just set the stool aright as the door flew open. Three men dressed as yeomen charged into the room, short-swords drawn and ready. One of them said, “We’re looking for a ruffian, Mistress. A pirate who goes by the name Talbot.”
I gestured with a large knife. “I am not he,” I said. I began cutting into the haunch, mingling the goat blood with my brother’s. “You let in flies. Close the door.”
The answer took them so aback, I believe, that they stammered and looked to each other for a moment before he went on. “Goodwife, did you hear a horse go past?”
“Not a sound but my babe crying. Search the house if you want.” Indeed the plaintive wailing stirred my heart, but I had to continue my ruse of urgent meat cutting.
At that moment a bang and several small thumps came from the back of the house. The men hurried across the room toward the side door just as Cullah came through it and greeted them with a shout. “What’s this? Who are you men? Robbed in my own house?” He pushed past them carrying a shovel coated with mud. I knew he had been in the low section, burying the sack of gold for which August had nearly died. “Will you look at this, wife? Talmadge borrows my only iron shovel and returns it like this! I swear he’ll have the use of it no more.”
I saw his gaze pause at the pool of blood and the goat shank on the table, and I said, “Will we have enough firewood to get this cooked by suppertime? And look you there, take care what you are dropping on my floor, husband. Brendan is creeping now. As to what these men want with us, it seems they are looking for a lost horse.” Actually our son was walking, too, but I was playing a part, and I knew even if he came down the stairs he would do it backward on all fours.
After a few threats and questions, Cullah convinced them that he had been doing nothing more sinister than fetching his shovel, ill-used by a neighbor. The men left after warning us again to beware of rovers and picaroons traveling the countryside.
August stayed in his nook while the baby played, ate his porridge, was washed and dressed and put to bed. When at last the house was quiet, Cullah made a birdcall. August came forth. I set a plate of meat stew and beans before him, poured him a flagon of ale, and took a fresh loaf of bread from the coals.
That evening, by the light of a single candle, Cullah, August, Jacob, and I talked of how we would see August to some safe harbor out of the reach of colonial constabulary until he could hear from the minister in England and get his commission again. I felt proud of them both, and a little afraid of the meeting, as if I were pouring grease into a fire. They were both dangerous men.
“Of course you can stay,” Cullah said. “But it would be best to wear a farmer’s clothes and work our fields, if it’s to be for a while. People in Boston know you.”
August smiled. In the light, his grin made an old scar on his face shine like a ribbon of satin. “A farmer? Yes, a farmer.”
“You will still have to explain to the town council who this man is living with us,” I said. “No stranger may stay here without supplying a witness to his character.”
“You’ll do that for me, won’t you, sister?”
I smiled. My brother’s character was not something I wished to know too well. I loved him. I would hide him. Help him. To vouch for him with a clear conscience was another matter, but that, too, I would do.
“It’s still hard frost,” Jacob said.