Cullah’s strength grew. Every day I made him oatcakes and beef broth. I washed and cut and treated his hair and made him herb teas. He was so thin and reduced, so unlike the man of old, and his hair had gone straggly, grayed, and rough textured. Sometimes I studied his face, searching for the merry expressions I had known. He smiled wanly at me. He spent hours with his grandchildren upon his knees. He peeled vegetables while I baked bread. At night he clung to me as if I were all that kept him afloat in a stormy sea.
One night when he lay awake, he told me how he’d made his way here. They released prisoners one or two at a time. Another man had died along the way, and Cullah found the fellow by a swamp, lying frozen, wearing both a coat and cloak. He’d taken the fellow’s clothes and boots, even cut off the man’s pants and shirt and used them to wrap his feet and legs. Because none of the men had been allowed the luxury of bathing or shaving, there was about them all a uniformity, and sometimes only their height and the rags they wore marked their identities. He said, “I left rags there, what little was left of my coat, and when they found him, they probably thought it was I. I took all the clothes he had, poor devil.”
“But he was dead, and with them you survived.” I waited. It was not the same as Cora taking Patience’s shoes, the man had not needed them. “I am so very glad to have you home. Only that. I am thankful you are here and I will make you new clothes.”
After June turned to July, I felt secure in leaving him to call upon my friend. Margaret sat in a chair in her grand parlor with tears in her eyes. “Please stay,” she whispered, staring at the drapery at a window. “There is nothing but talk of war from every quarter. I am so tired of it. That night spent hunting for your grandbabe made me realize I have so little of what is real in this life. I have made a life of pretense and meddling. It is all for nothing. Everything that matters at all was in the eyes of your granddaughter, lost all night long, the face on that little girl when she saw her mother and father. The joy of finding your man. You have everything, Ressie. I am a hollow shell.” She burst into tears.
I sat by her, comforting her in my arms. “You slight yourself. If I thought of you thus, I would never have befriended you. Margaret, I believe you are afraid of war not because you think your husband is right, or because you are loyal to the Crown or sympathetic to the Patriots, but that you are so afraid you will be wearing widow’s black yourself the rest of your days, you cannot bear it.”
“Whatever shall I do?” Margaret cried.
“The general is not dead. And if something does happen, then you press forward. You find a purpose for your life.”
“But my purpose has always been effrontery. What else have I? I have no religion, and nor do I want that. I have no substance, Resolute. Nothing.”
“I think you do. I think you wish me to be here because your husband is gone and you are alone in the house. People are not visiting as before the occupation. You keep having parties because you do not wish to be alone and face yourself.”
Margaret looked up at me. “Resolute, you are so unkind.”
I said, “I am being honest with you, my dear friend. I will tell you what you will see when you do look. A lady. A real lady with courage and cunning and ideas in a mind so rich she should have been allowed to go to Harvard. Made to go. You must have some peace, Margaret, but you will have to find it yourself. I am not unkind. I am honest with the people I love.”
“Won’t you stay for my party? Dr. Warren will be happy to see you. The Hancocks are coming.”
“I will stay for your sake. Margaret, my dear friend, I will say this to you as if you were my child. Please find all the richness I see in you. It will not take you long, for it is not far from the surface. And though you may now be afraid to look at yourself, what you see there will fill you with joy and you will find that you think back and wonder why you were so afraid.”
*
Margaret came to visit me a month later in August, and stayed two days. While we spent our days chattering like ravens over a cornfield, we spent quiet evenings while I worked at my wheel and she read aloud. Cullah seemed to haunt the place, as if he feared her or hated her. He was polite, but claimed to be deeply tired, and would go up to bed soon as the food was done. It troubled me that he cared not for Margaret. I asked him if he preferred she not come, or whether he blamed General Gage for his sentencing, but he insisted he was simply, truly tired.