“I will open it.” I raised the latch and let it swing open. The tall, imposing figure of Reverend Clarke filled the gray, misty day. He removed his hat upon seeing me. I said, “Please come in, sir. Are there others?”
“I came alone, Mistress MacLammond. Good day, ladies. Miss MacLammond. May I sit at your fire?” I sat on the settle where Cullah and I had shared so many, many chilly nights. Reverend Clarke took my hands in his and petted them the way you might stroke a piece of leather or cloth, to note the strength of it. He took a deep breath, and said, “Mistress MacLammond, your husband is dead. It came in word to me, a written letter, that is. One of our men carries the post and thought it best if I bring it and tell you, so that you are not informed as if it were nothing of consequence. I am deeply sorry. We knew Cullah to be a fine, upright man. If he did wrong, he did it in the name of the freedoms we all seek to maintain—”
I raised my hand to stop his deluge of words. The pastor was a kind and loving man, but he did like to talk. And talk was not what I wanted right then. Cullah answered every conflict with silence. I wanted silence. I stared at the hearth. It could not be true. Dorothy sobbed. Alice comforted her, patting her back. An ash popped just then and tumbled toward me. “Thank you,” I whispered. “For coming.”
“I am so sorry.”
“How? How did he die? Did they shoot him? Hang him?”
He pulled the letter from his coat. “No. He was sentenced to a year. He had already served it and was released.” He laid his hand upon mine again. “He was much reduced by then. Starved and beaten. They turned him out before Christmas and he began to walk south. The weather, as you know, was more bitter than here. The letter said he was found by a swamp, frozen to death, one of your letters in his pocket.”
“He had no cloak? I sent two.” I gulped and stared into the fire, saying, “He had not even a shirt, for they tore it from him. My husband frozen to death in a swamp? After all he risked, to die like a sick animal. It would have been kinder to put him in a noose.”
“They write that he was a cooperative and gentle prisoner. He was liked.”
How many times had I stopped what I was doing, listened to the air, waiting to hear Cullah whistling, merry, smelling of rosewater, and lifting me in his arms? “Liked? Liked not well enough to give the poor wight a shirt.”
His face bore deep sympathy. “I am sorry, Widow MacLammond. I have the church’s widow’s offering for you.” He placed a folded paper in my hand. It was heavy, wrapped within it, a few coins.
I looked down at the paper, afraid my tears would overcome me. I had probably donated the coins now come to me. “I would rather you gave them to someone else.”
“I know, but keep it. You might need it for something which you do not yet know.”
“I have been without him almost as long as I was when he was sent to war. I know how to be alone.”
“For your Dorothy, then.”
“For Dorothy.” I squeezed the coins to my bosom and bowed my head over them. Then I said, “Will you have food, Reverend? Will you have meat and hot cider?”
“Thank you.” He ate with us, sparingly, as befits someone conscious of the meager means of a widow, and then drove his sad curricle away from my door.
I held Dolly and cried. Finally, it grew late and we went to bed. I argued with the darkness. “It was not he. My Cullah is coming home. He will come back to me.” When I slept, it seemed the darkness clawed at my ankles while I clambered up a stair of a thousand steps. “Allsy, come with me!” I called. “Come to the widow’s walk.”
“It is too far to climb. The wind will take you away and dash you to your death.”
“Allsy, do not leave me alone! I cannot be here alone. I cannot stand it. I am so afraid. Open that door! Unlock it. Do not leave me here!” I ran from one end of the widow’s walk to the other, trapped. There was no way down once Allsy shut the door behind me and locked it, for the door itself vanished. I raised my hands to the sky, to one of the gulls laughing at me. “Take me with you, Cullah. I want to fly.”
I jumped toward the gull. I felt the roughness of its toes within my grasp but it darted away before I could close my fingers. I fell, not drifting like a feather on a breeze, but flat, a stone in dead drop to the beach. I tasted sand.
I opened my eyes. Someone held a candle above me and the glare of it hurt my eyes. “What are you doing, Dolly? How long have I been asleep?”
“Two days, Ma.”
I said, “I have to get up.” I dressed, stunned at how feeble I felt. Little by little that spring, my strength returned.