Benjamin sighed hard and rolled his eyes. “I did, sir. And I did not fall off. There is a place to stand that is flat. I could see a thousand miles up there. About the secret. I have told Dolly that we have a pact about the thing and never to speak the word”—he whispered—“‘cannon.’ If ever she wants to say the—ahem, thing—in our inglenook, she is sworn to give me a high sign by touching her bonnet twice. I will return it if all is clear. If it is not clear, I give her a low sign, touching my elbow, and she will know that we both know a secret and are to keep still without speaking of it.”
Cullah said, “That is an excellent plan. Teach us the signs so we will know, too.” So, my children came up with a better way than we had, to foil the pirates with which I had frightened them, and to foil themselves against letting out our secret. “Now,” Cullah said, “show me how you got onto the barn roof. I feel, just as such a clever boy as you, I too might like to see a thousand miles.”
It took a week, but Dorothy tired of the game and quit giving us all high signs every few minutes.
Later that week a committee of officials appeared early at our door before Cullah had finished breakfast. By the time they left, we stood silent, becalmed of even the basest of courtesy. We had been handed a printed and smeared “Notice of Taxation” that levied a tax upon every acre we owned and gave us but thirty days to come up with five pounds to place in the hands of the provincial treasury. Cullah glared, and said, “I would like to know how they think a laboring man can give six weeks’ earnings every year and still feed a family. Have we that much in reserve?”
“Yes,” I said. “Though only in what August sent.”
He stuck his chin forward. “If you will, my dear wife, count it out in the smallest coin we have. Ha’pennies and tuppence. Copper. Better yet, printed notes. Let them have the worthless Massachusetts paper if we have aught of that. Here’s one in my pocket. Use it to start.”
Every week that went by it became harder to afford things we used to spill. Flour and salt, sugar and tea. We tried to sell our vegetables but people did not buy. Beer was so high we bought cider, and Cullah built a cider press so we could make our own, but we could not make enough in one harvest to last a year, and it would get hard so soon that at times the children went to bed drunk. The work of flaxing had been so difficult that we ended up with little to spin, and we did not plant it that year.
I had never made my own candles, but the price of them now made them so dear I sought to buy wicks instead. The wicks and molds cost what a six months’ supply of candles might, but I could get many times that, I thought, if I could but grow clever at making them. I soon discovered that I detested making candles. The smell of tallow was revolting and I spilled it so often my floors were slick. I moved the process to outside the barn. Though in appearance it could be said that I had indeed created a candle, the results were smoky, melting tapers that burned to the stub in an hour. I soon lamented buying the molds and wicks for I could have spent the money on real candles.
Gwenny and I worked together then, when she could. We went with the children hunting bayberries, and the poor ones worked their best, coming home scratched and sweating. When they complained I told them of my years picking flax, and warned them not to cry for a scratchy bayberry bush was nothing to a flax field. Getting the oil from the berries meant an extra day of boiling, but it made better candles, sweet smelling and twice as strong.
Everywhere I looked, I found ways to scrimp. Making do became almost a religion to me. I felt proud of the things we undertook, the things we all learned together. Proud, but meager.
The tax collector came while Cullah was gone to work. I counted out printed banknotes adding up to two pounds eight, then stacks of pennies and ha’pennies. He asked me for a drink. I pulled water from the well and gave it him. “Have you no ale?” he asked.
“Ale? All we have is in your hand, sir,” I answered. “We have had no ale in this house for a fortnight. We drink water. Consider it God’s ale. Quite calms the spirit with no chance for drunkenness.”
“Tea?”
I had tea, but I was too angry for courtesy. “Who can afford tea, sir?”