“At your service, sir.” The man placed the coins into the lining of his hat, put it on his head, and without so much as a nod to the rest of us, closed the door behind himself.
August disappeared almost as quickly, and reappeared from the hidden alcove in the stairway wearing his own clothing, short breeches and stockings, a flared coat I had cleaned and patched, and a new linen blouse replacing the rough woolen farmer’s garb. He looked every bit the sea captain. He laid his broad cockaded hat on a stool and put the rest of the coins back into the pouch. That, he presented to Cullah. “For your help and house, friend.”
“I’ll not be paid for doing a good for my family. Or for anyone.”
“’Tis not payment. You’ve done as you could for me. I do as I can for you. Please.” August shook the sack toward him. It struck me then, the difference in the two. August was tall and lean, dashing and dark, sleek and swift as an adder. Cullah was wide shouldered, broad chested, formidable in a fight, like a bull enraged. When they had dressed alike, my heart had told me they were alike. I knew that judgment was flawed.
Cullah took the gold and then August was gone into the night. I watched him ride away with the same mix of longing and anger I felt every time he left me. I felt cross. It seemed to me that what I wanted most in the world was having everyone always to abide with me. “Cullah, you must be careful with that.”
“I will. Here. Put it where you hide the other money. And count it first.”
I opened the bag. Without pouring it out I saw at least a dozen gold crowns and more than that of doubloons. “It is at least twenty pounds. You told me you needed a new blade for your saw.”
“Two men in town owe me for cabinetwork. I will wait until they pay. This will go toward our sons’ schooling if we leave it be.”
As we readied for bed, Cullah lay in the darkness, his face searching the ceiling. I crawled in next to him, but his arms did not reach for me. “Good night, my love,” I whispered, and rolled to face the wall. I was exhausted. I would have had him if he had reached for me, but if he would not, I would sleep hard.
“Resolute?”
“Yes?”
“Write it, then. The letters that make my name. I watched him read that paper. It is important. I have no time for schooling. Never have. But you write it on something I can carry to the shop. I will learn it.”
In a few days, Cullah came home, puffed himself up, and said, “I signed an order for seasoned hickory today.”
As the meaning of that dawned in my heart, I swelled with pride for him. “Fine. Very fine, husband.”
Cullah added a room for my brother’s use alone, should he ever have need again of a safe harbor this far inland. By the time Benjamin was six months of age, our house had eight rooms including a kitchen under the same roof, not counting the lower stony level where the loom sat.
*
In the summer of 1739, I lay thrashing and sweating in our bed on a mercilessly hot night. Some, I have heard, plead for death, preferring its quiet knell to even one more hour of childbed. By dawn, when the world had a gentler coolness and a light breeze came in the windows, the babe was born. A woman child, at last, I thought, with great swelling of my heart.
Cullah was beside himself with her wee presence. He stared at the little mite as if he had never imagined himself the father of anything but an army of brawn and bone. Jacob marveled at the fineness of her fingers, long and straight, as they explored his face and clutched his hair. He wanted to name her Mary Barbara, after his mother, but that made me cry. So, in a spell of quiet when all the children slept and the three men in my life sat upon the foot of my childbed, I told them stories of my captivity, and how Birgitta had called me “Mary” by her own whim. I could not allow my first daughter to bear the name Mary.
For almost a week we bantered about names, though we had worked on that through my expectation, too. At last I said, “Eugenia Gwyneth is my choice.”