Jacob said, “Put it into the false wall.”
“I would have to get it up the stairs,” Cullah said. “What is your brother thinking? British soldiers could arrive tomorrow with no warning. It is a cannon and it is iron!”
“Perhaps we should have left it in the crate?” Roland asked.
Cullah grimaced. “We would have had to step around it until he comes for it. That could be weeks.”
“Or years,” Jacob added. “Is there still room beside the hearth for the inglenook you meant to build?”
“Aye, there is.”
“Roll it over next to the wall and build over the top of it.”
Cullah’s eyes widened and he smiled, even winked at me. “Ah, that’s my pa. Fine idea, there.” Cullah did not go to work in town the next morning. Instead he set about making a new settle built into the wall beside the fireplace. It had to be high enough to put the cannon under it and close the lid to make a seat.
“I know you know your work,” I said. “But the wood in this room has been here for years. The wood you are using is new. Look at the framing against the floor.” There the green wood looked almost cream colored against the aged hickory floor.
He cocked his head this way and that. “You’re a clever lass, my Ressie. I will pull off the old trim and use it against the floor. A little black paint on the rest of it will do to cover up the newness, and we’ll scuff it up a bit, too.”
Just as he said that, Benjamin came into the room and asked, “Pa? Why do we have a cannon? Who sent it to us? Are we going to shoot it?”
Cullah looked at me, stunned. “Well, he’s not a lad anymore, then. Get your sister and we will have a talk.”
“Oh, Cullah,” I whispered when the boy went for his sister. “What if they tell other children?”
“We must convince them both not to do that. I think there is no other way but honesty, at least as much as they can bear. And then, we shall appeal to them with our trust. Perhaps a bit of fear. If they are made of good fiber, they will have courage. If they are not, we can do nothing but hope the other children think they are lying.”
He sat them down and explained as well as any could that their uncle’s business was sometimes dangerous. That the high seas were full of pirates who meant to murder and steal, and that to be safe, all ships carried cannons. Uncle August had bought a cannon for his ship, and he was on his way to get it, but until he came, we could not speak of it.
“Why can we not speak of it?” asked Dorothy. “It is stirring to have it. I want it to pah-boom!” She clapped her hands.
I interjected, “Dolly, it is indeed stirring to have it. If you tell anyone we have it, though, the pirates might come to get it and steal you away, make you a slave and beat you, just as in the stories I told you.” I saw horror on my children’s faces, but I felt no guilt for causing it, for this was all our lives in the balance. Now knowing about the cannon, they had also to know how dangerous it would be for word to get out of this room about it.
“Even my friend Isbeth?” Dolly asked.
“Yes, even Isbeth. No one else must know. It is our secret. A desperate, stirring secret.” Even as I said that, I began to feel a mortal fear that she would not be convinced to refrain from the childish joy of telling a secret.
Benjamin said, “I shall never tell. You may count on me.”
Dolly nodded, adding, “Me, too.”
I forced myself to smile as if I had perfect confidence. “Excellent,” I said. “Now, both of you put on your hats and go collect eggs. I think I shall make some custard tonight. Do not come back until you have every egg in that henhouse.” As they headed for the door I called out, “Do not forget to take some to your sister!”
That evening, Benjamin said, “Ma? Pa? I have a plan.”
We looked at each other then faced our wee son.
He went on. “I know it is hard for little’uns to keep a secret and our Dolly is prone to tell things.”
Dolly made a face at him. “I never told about you getting on the barn roof.”
My mouth opened and Cullah said, “On the roof? Boy, you might have fallen. You’d be killed if you fell from it. Did you not think of that?”