When she left, I asked him to stroll in the field. The trees were lush with fruit, the grounds smelled of vegetation and yesterday’s rain. Swirls of mosquitoes boiled in the dappled sunlight. We held hands and walked the length of the line of apple trees. I asked, “Husband? Are you well, now?”
“More, I suppose. Do not make me eat another oatcake. I will turn into a horse the way you feed me those things.”
I smiled. “You need some meat on your bones.”
“So, did your friend have something to say to me? There must be some reason you called me here as soon as she left.”
“No. Nothing she said was about you. But everything she says reminds me of you in some way. No, she believes I am the lucky one, and I agree with her. I only wanted to tell you that I miss you. I miss the old way you were. I felt as if you were invisible the last three days.”
Cullah asked, “Are you ashamed of me?”
“Whatever for?”
“I am a broken man.”
“I think your heart is broken but your spirit is alive. My heart was broken for you. Then, when I was told you had died—”
“I am so sorry.”
“You need not fear Margaret. She is as true a friend as a person could have.”
“General Gage’s wife?”
“An American. A continental American. Cullah, you used to stare into the fire or into your memories, and say to me ‘war is coming,’ do you remember?”
“Well and aye.”
“Cullah, war is coming.”
*
And still more British soldiers came from across the sea. Margaret wrote me that by then the streets of Boston smelled of ordure. No woman was safe walking alone even in daylight, and except for her own, colonials’ houses and businesses were regularly searched and the latter closed for nonpayment of taxes.
Our men of the local militia from Massachusetts Colony began calling themselves Patriots, and meeting in fields, even my own, for drilling and instruction in musketry and swordplay. I remembered vivid images of Cullah swinging his axe and claymore, a man become a whirling, mighty fighting machine. He tried his best with them, but he had indeed lost vigor. I reminded him to learn the musket, too, very much afraid he would misjudge his strength against an enemy with cannon and musket, and like the Highlanders of old, charge against them with but a sword. I clucked my tongue, wondering how these lads and old men would stand against a regiment of soldiers from an army that controlled much of the world.
One afternoon Cullah met me in the barn as I milked the cow. He held a long-barreled fowling musket, and seemed startled when he saw me, as if he were guilty of something. “Where did you get that, husband?”
“Isaac Davis made it from parts. I carved the stock. He’s shot it. It’s a true aim.”
I stood. The thing was taller than I was. “You have never owned one before now. Have you decided to go fowling, then?”
“I may not have the strength to swing a sword like a young man, but this war will be fought with weapons such as this.”
“Yes, I am sure you are right,” I said and sighed, trying to hide my relief. He was coming back, then, fully, and did not need a wife to tell him how to fight. Did I want a war? I asked myself. Naturally, surely, I believed, things on this continent would eventually be settled by courts, and justice will be more free. But for my husband, something about preparing for a battle gave him life, gave him courage that simple farming did not. I believed he always anticipated war the way some people always look for bad weather, but the man who was prepared for bad weather always had a snug roof, too. “Do you have shot for it?”
“I do. I took money from our last chest.”
“How much is left in there?”
“Ten pounds and seventeen shillings. I’m off now. Isaac is drilling us in shooting, all day. Will you be all right?”
“I will, Cullah.” As I watched him saunter away, I thought, Ten pounds? That would not get us through a year. Those who owned farmland as we did at least did not have to fear starvation. A paper of pins that had cost six shillings the year before was twenty, and none to be found. Black pepper to season food was almost nonexistent. Someone put a rhyme in the newspaper about seasoning his eggs with gunpowder and serving them to the royal army. The cinnamon with which I had once enlivened our Christmas pudding was to be had no more. Tea was up three shillings an ounce and coffee could not be found, so that those who preferred it were attempting to create it from burned wood bark and causing themselves illness. Myself, I boiled water and made a toddy of apple cider, and sometimes I boiled pears, too.