We named our second son Benjamin. Every time I knew another birthing was before me, I wondered if this time I should breathe my last. It serves no woman to look upon her life with much expectation. Women as well as men may be felled by accident or by disease, but no woman asks a man to risk his life and the lives of his children just to bear them. Men believe that their strength is in their sinews, mastery of trade or horsemanship, and skill with a sword or pistol. Some would say their brawn is displayed in witty reasoning and conversation, while women know, be she queen or fishwife, that her greatest strength is in her heart. She lays down her life to bring forth a child, and then rises up and does it again. My brother congratulated me on the effort which elicited the screams he had heard, along with my surviving what he, with complete aplomb, called torture worthy of any rack.
By the light of the first spring moon, August worked side by side with Cullah and Jacob, planting corn and other vegetables, flax, barley, and oats. At the end of the northern field, the men worked with shovels around some object buried in the ground. Something round and heavy, that clanged when struck by the spade. It was a bell. Buried deep, it was not large, probably from a ship. The clapper was rusted away. In the mound left at the mouth of the bell lay a rotted leather pouch. Cullah laid it in my hands. I coaxed the bag to open, but it was so hard stuck it would not give to gentle prodding. I pulled it to find inside a little piece of leather, on it, two Xs, below them, a smear of brown.
“Is that blood?” I asked, with the babe suckling under a shawl.
Jacob looked at it this way and that. “I think it is. Two people signed their X and made a blood oath, and laid this bell atop it. It meant something to them but you’d have to find someone who knew the Carnegie family to explain it, if there are any left.”
August made a face and said, “There’s a body buried somewhere about, I’d wager. Someone swore in blood to keep a secret, and that usually means a murder.”
“Ah, bury it back,” said Cullah.
“No,” I said. “Bury the oath, if it pleases you. I want the bell. Put it by the back door and I shall clean it.”
“What do you want with a rusted bell?”
“I can call you in for supper by use of a mallet and this bell.”
“Ah, woman. It will sound like you’re calling a church meeting. Besides, I am no farmer to be in a field all year. I go back to my craft soon as we get this planted.”
I winked at him and turned, going back to the house, sure that he would bring it for me. That evening he brought the bell, cleaned of all soil, and other things that he had found buried in the field. Five cannonballs, an iron hook with part of a key still on it, a metal ring about five inches in diameter, and a two-and-a-half-foot-long cannon without a frame or end. It was a piece that I knew came from a ship.
I laughed and asked, “Cullah? Where is the booty? No chest of gold?”
August froze in place. “Are you saying it is gone?”
Cullah said, “Your box is safely tucked under that beech tree at the bend in the stream. Your sister has a sense of humor.”
A few evenings later, when Cullah came in for supper, we had not sat long before we heard a stirring from our animals. Just like people, they like to settle in after dark. Geese make a good alarm, for no one enters a yard without their sounding off. The goats added their bleating to the noise, and soon the whole barnyard was awake and calling. Someone knocked on the front door. Jacob stood, pulling a small dagger from his boot, then sat again, with it hidden by his arm. August and Cullah stepped into the shadows of the pantry and pulled swords from the lintel, waiting. Jacob nodded. I opened the door.
A man in a tricorn hat with a long black cloak nodded at me as he removed the hat. His face was as dark as an African but his features were sharp and chiseled rather than rounded. His long, straight hair was pulled back into a tail and tied with a fresh ribbon. “Evening, madam. The Guinea sent me here.”
I knew that was a code connected to my brother’s business. I did not like that he worked in secrecy and darkness, but I had grown used to it. “Come in, sir. Will you have supper?” I asked.
The messenger looked at Jacob and asked, “Is there a man about? Another man, I mean?”
August stepped into the candlelight. He did not try to hide the sword in his hand. “There is another, sir. You look fresh from the sea. How goes the wind, sir?” he asked.
“Fair and steady. East by northeast; freshening.”
August put forth his left hand, the right still ready with a sword. “Who sent you?”
“The Guinea, sir,” he said, clasping August’s left hand in his own left hand.
“And his name?”
The man grinned, showing a full set of very white teeth. “They that know him call him ‘Guinea.’ He said you would know him by another name. I am to hear it from you before we finish here.”
“Would it be Tig the Fiddler?”
“Aye, it could. Captain Talbot would know the more of it.”
“Signed his papers as Carlo Delfini.”
“Aye.” The man handed him a folded paper. As August flipped it open and read it, the messenger pulled forth another paper. “You’ll be wanting this, Captain Talbot.”
August read with concentration. His commission as a privateer had been reinstated. The dark man handed him a pouch, too. August upended it and poured a stack of gold coin into his palm. He selected two of the largest coins and gave them to the messenger, saying, “Wait for me outside.”