I may have been ten years old but I knew Rafe was not my real uncle, and that Pa’s voice got thin and Ma’s hands trembled when he was in the house. I stood and stuck out my tongue just as Pa came into the dining room, buttoning his vest, with Patience and our brother, August, following him. He looked from Uncle Rafe to Ma and to the mess on Rafe’s pants and me standing there with hellfire in my eyes.
I am old, now, wizened, some might say. I will tell you how I came to this place from that potent evening so long ago and so far across the oceans. The day after I was born my parents named me Resolute. Pa said it gave me an aspect of solemnity and perseverance, which are pretty things for a child with a sanguine humor. It was a good name for a girl, Ma always added, and there was nothing wrong with a girl being confident and ruddy. A boy could grow to “make a name for himself,” but a girl needed a special one from birth.
I knew all about fire. I had been playing with Allsy when we were both but six years old and my family had been on the West Indies island of Jamaica for the same six years. Allsy and I had been hiding in the priest’s hole, up the steps behind the fireplace. I brought two cakes and an apple for us to share and she carried a burning candle, placing it on the floor. I jumped over it. As I did, my petticoats made the flame bob and nearly go out. The edge of my skirt got a brown place and we held it between us, curious, as the spot grew and grew. A yellow tongue of flame suddenly burst from it, licked at us and burned my fingers. Allsy slapped her hands upon it and crushed out the flame. She winced, but made no sound; putting her hands over her mouth, she made the sign of the cross as long black shadows of us spun around in the stair tower like ghosts dancing.
We held our breaths. We laughed. Hand in hand, we climbed up to the widow’s walk on the highest part of the house, where we could see far and wide across the ocean. In the distance, storms sometimes carried on all day, lightning dancing upon the water against a backdrop of gray roiling clouds like a silent mummer’s play, never a stray wind ruffling our hair. We watched, hoping for the rise of a mast that might mean cloth or shoes or more of Ma’s precious goblets made of real glass. After we got tired of mocking seagulls squealing at each other, we shared a cake and took turns eating the apple.
I had stepped over a candle and nothing had happened. I thought we were safe. But five days later, I took fever. The sixth day, Allsy did, too. The Shush-shush, Old Poe’s name for the devil or death or something that you must not say out loud, something bad and haunted, he came whilst I lay afevered. I retched and I itched, covered with smallpox. I cried and Ma brought cold rags for my head, and after two weeks I got up. Allsy must have been too close to me in that stairway. As I jumped over that lit candle, the old devil reached for me and caught Allsy. While I was too sick to know, Pa and Old Poe wrapped her in white gauze and laid my heart’s friend in a grave.
Old Poe caught it and died, too, after two days of sickness. Cost Pa ￡15 to replace her. That meant nothing to me. Talk of pounds and crowns and sixpence went on all the time in Pa’s office at the side of the good parlor. What mattered to me was that Old Poe knew how to make a lap for me to sit upon, knew more stories than I could ever remember—some of them including two fine wee girls just like Allsy and me—and knew how to wrap a sore finger with potash and brown paper and kisses.
I never told Ma or Pa that it was my fault Allsy died. I had escaped Old Scratch’s claws. Ma said it is because I have something special to do. What is a girl going to do? Embroidery and arithmetic, that’s what I get. I wondered someday if the devil might wake up and see he got the wrong girl, what will happen then?
All my days I had heard things about England where Pa was born. Even more about Scotland, Ma’s homeland, the two of them united into one country by that time. I knew about how my brother, August, used to wait with Pa until a dark night and watch the farmers light gorse when the village had a festival. How Patience, my only sister and ten years older than I, had loved the son of a lord, a lord who faithfully waited on Anne the Queen’s favor. Anne was a Stuart and a Tory through and through, and our father, being of both Tudor and Plantagenet lines with Radclyffe blood thrown in, made Patience a politically unsuitable bride for his son. So, on recommendation of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, Her Highness and His Lordship found that the Crown was in great need of Pa to mind a plantation in the Indies.