I straightened my back and blurted out, “I am not a slave, sir, and my name is not Mary. I am Resolute Catherine Eugenia Talbot, second daughter of Allan Talbot of Two Crowns Plantation, Meager Bay, Jamaica. I was not born to be a slave, sir. Not until my brother and sister and I were spirited away and brought to this cold shore to be sold like cattle, sir. My mother was an educated gentlewoman and my father the son of an earl. Their children were meant to be gentle and knowledgeable and fine.” I bowed my head, wary of what that might bring me in the way of punishment.
Reverend Johansen straightened. “I see.” He rubbed his chin with his hand and I could hear the rough beard in the silence of the room. He pulled off his indoor cap, revealing a nearly bald head with a slight tangle of long, thin gray hair. “I once was red-haired, redder than you, though now I am old and gray. My child was a little angel of rosy hue, as are you. Fair of face. Most fair. A father’s vain wish fulfilled.” He stood and went to the doorway, staring at the men raising yet another log in place at the garrison wall. His fingers tapped at the fat logs by his side and drew sap, which pulled him from his reverie so that he sucked on the sap at his fingertip and turned toward me.
I prepared to see anger on his face but instead could not read what was writ there. I said the words I had rehearsed. “When God’s word speaks of deceit and thievery by falsehood, does it apply to all? Young or old? Masters or slaves?”
“Yes!” The word jumped from him without hesitation.
I remained silent and nodded. As I did so I marveled that I had learned such care in the company of pirates and brigands and Haskens. Nothing was more important than well-thought words.
He asked, “Have you plotted aught against another? Deceived someone?”
“No, sir.”
He followed his path again to the doorway, avoiding the sap-dripping log. “Someone has deceived you, then?”
“An object has been stolen from me.”
Rachael’s voice came over the meadow, calling, “Do you need me, husband?”
“No, wife. Continue with your work, if you please. I am in prayer.” He resumed his seat at the table. He closed the Bible and thrust it toward me. “Give me your hand.” Did he mean to beat my hands with the book? I felt caught and resigned to take the beating I would receive. I held out my hands and closed my eyes. “Place your hand upon God’s holy word, child.” I laid my hand atop the book. The ragged leather of it, the faintest smell of ink and glue, the worn texture of the edges, awakened memories of the books at home, of Ma telling me how to divide numbers. “I ask you, with your hand upon God’s word with fear of eternal fire in your heart, this question. Will you tell me the truth?”
“Yes, Reverend. When last I saw my mother she gave to me a pocket, and in it she hid a wooden casket with gold—gold-colored,” I added, lest he count the value of it, too, “corners. Inside she placed two silver doubloons, stamped in the old Spanish way as pieces of eight, for me to keep against my freedom someday.” I questioned blaming Rachael for this to her new husband. He might have affectionate feelings for her now they were married. So I said, “Mistress Hasken took my coins and my casket from the pocket and gave them to Mistress Johansen for a dowry, claiming that I had stolen them.”
He peered into my eyes as if searching out some defiance or lie. At great length he asked, “Do you swear this before Almighty God?”
“I do, sir.”
“You have been in this house before. Always in the company of others who watched you?”
“No. When your roof fell in, I was here often alone. Sweeping.”
“And you saw the box and made this story to fit your wants? Or did you not think to steal the box again, to take it for yourself?”
“I did think it. Often. But ’twould not be righteous.” My hand trembled upon the book.
“Can you produce that pocket?”
“I can.”
“Bring it here,” he said, motioning toward the door with his head.
I darted home. Burrowing into my nest of blanket and bearskin, I pulled up my wrinkled pocket. As I turned to make for the door again, Birgitta stepped in front of me.
“What’s that you’re doing, Mary?”
I smiled, knowing full well that a guilty flush covered my face. “Reverend Johansen has need of my pocket, Birgitta. He sent me to fetch it to him.”
“What need has he of a child’s pocket?”
“I don’t know, madam,” I said, and dashed around her. The girl-whipping stick swished through the air behind my head as I went. I walked in and placed the pocket in Reverend Johansen’s hands with hopeful uncertainty. “This is it, sir,” I said, as if it needed explaining.
He turned it this way and that, then poked his fingers in and turned it inside outside. “What happened to this? There was lining here. How does the inside of a pocket wear away?”
“It did not wear away, sir. I ate it. Some of us starved to death in the hold of a Saracen ship. I patched it with bits of my gown of blue silk. I—I also took some of Mistress’s white thread to patch it there, which is one of the sins I have been repenting.”