I leaned over enough to see my reflection there. When had I stopped being Allan Talbot’s daughter? When had I stopped being fit to sit with duchesses and peers and become a colonist? An American. We were rabble from England’s crofts and gutters, Scotland’s Highlands, Dutch outcasts, Irish and African slaves, and though some came here given grants of land, in our way we were prisoners all.
A leaf touched the water. A butterfly wobbled down to look at it and flew away. There I was, a wee girl in a torn and bedraggled blue silk gown, sitting crouched in the bottom of a pirate’s snow, that longboat rowed by my brother and some strange men who would plant me here on this continent. When had I taken root? When had I become part of this cold, savage land and its people? When had I grown old? I was fifty-five, an age rare among women. If I did not see my faded hair in the reflection, however, I felt no more than twenty from the inside. I still yearned to wear a silken gown to a ball. I wanted to dance with Cullah wearing his beeswax-smelling boots. When had I gone from wearing embroidered silk to drab gray wool? The image that looked back at me looked more like an Ursuline soeur than a landed freewoman. I had not chosen the drab things that remained to me, I had come down to them as an earl might come down to being an innkeeper when his family lands were escheated by the Crown. My plain clothes now reflected not a smug choice, but our reduced circumstances.
In the house, I leaned over a basin of water to wash my face. The ravages of the constant searches of our home showed. Everywhere I looked, a scar of invasion caught my sight. My linen wheel was wearing out and did not work well, but my dear woodsman had no tools to fix it. I looked at that wheel, so much a part of my life, and thought that my heart was in the wheel, and that it, too, was wearing out. It did not work well. A tear left my chin and stirred the water.
Margaret, now the wife of the governor, moved from her gentle but nice home into the large mansion opposite August’s home, a house known to be the abode of a noted privateer and smuggler who had never so much as replaced the Spencer S above the portico with a T for Talbot. I sighed. It had brought me much pleasure to have a friend in Margaret Gage. I supposed I must resign myself to the change in her life now, and that she as wife of the governor must be more careful about her acquaintances, meaning I was no longer acceptable.
As if she had heard my lament, Margaret sent a handwritten invitation for me to take tea at her home the following week. All Massachusetts was in merry conduct, for we believed that Governor Gage would put an end to the burdens of our lives. I went to see Margaret in part hoping I would hear some gossip about what provisions he would enact soonest. Take the man-o’-war out of the harbor? Remove the four thousand soldiers from Boston town? Stop the searching of our homes, the stealing and rifling of property? My friends at First Church continued their secret messages as the Committee of Safety. Minutemen and militia drilled in my farm fields when there were no crops. “Please, Margaret, tell me some good news I may spread abroad?”
“My dear,” she said, “I trust Thomas to act wisely. He is a man of the king, but he is more sensible than Hutchinson. We are all thankful for the change of leadership.”
“That sounds too guarded for my friend of old. I know you may not feel we can be as close as before, but tell me it will be different.”
“Of course it will be different. His first priority, he told me, is to remedy the seditious talk of war.”
“Will he lift the embargo? Reduce the taxes? Return my cow?”
“He must quell the rebellious spirit of the colonies.”
I bristled. “That sounds ominous.” I sipped tea. “Margaret?”
“Do not ask me more, Ressie. I asked you here for a purpose. If you are my friend, if you have been my friend, please let us say farewell for a time.”
I set the teacup in its saucer and straightened my back. “For a time? What sort of time? Until you deign to speak to me again? Have I grown less entertaining? Are my clothes too drab to grace your parlor?”
“You know it isn’t that.”
“You are always welcome at my house,” I said, though I had a difficult time keeping my lips from turning down and weeping like a child. “I shall not trouble you any longer.” I stood.
“Ressie, please. My husband’s position makes your coming here suspect to your own people. Surely you can see that.”
“I think it makes you suspect to your people.”
“It does. Can I lie to you? No. Of all the people I know, you are the one for whom my lips cannot be forced to lie. Ressie. Everything is wrong now. Please let me explain.”