He was named James and christened Talbot. Patience regained her health but she could not nurse her baby. The wet nurse brought from town spent most of every day and night with James’s care. He rarely cried. He was rather charming, I thought, but I was soon bored with looking at him, though the nurse told me he would learn to smile and play some months away, and might be more dear then.
I sat with Patience in the sick ward each evening before prayers. Rachael seemed always present, listening to us, watching us. Sometimes we included her in our conversations. She was not stubborn and hardened as her mother, and, I thought, not quite as daft. My loathing of her softened. She was not even so ugly as I had claimed, perhaps only plain and doomed to grow thick and stodgy when she aged. Rachael said to Patience once, when she thought I was out of hearing, “How dear you are together.”
I heard Patey say, “We are all we have left of family. She is my very life.” It warmed my heart.
Rachael said, “My sisters never loved me.”
I interrupted their talk with the robe I had been sent for. I said, “Here, Patey.” When she drew her arms into it, I kissed her cheek and sat at her side. Rachael turned her face from us and stared into the room. Tears slid down her cheeks.
*
It was mid-August, the flax still lying in the fields, when Master Hasken and Reverend Johansen ran through the gate one night with the help of MacPherson’s lantern. None of us had heard any rumors of their plan, not even Rachael. The escape was on everyone’s lips when we found moments to whisper to each other. For the next week, when I saw Rachael she was on her knees, pleading for her husband’s safety, and in English, for her own escape. The constables from town searched ten days to no avail before they gave up. I learned that because I spent time every day in the sickroom with Patey, and eavesdropped on the sisters’ whispering. They believed the men to be dead, for if not, surely Reverend Johansen would have returned by then for his expectant wife.
Once she had healed enough to work, Patience was sent to the weavers’ barn, too. She sat in the very chair I had used, learning to card wool as I had done. I sat in the circle of spinning wheels, turning out yard after yard of woolen thread, alongside girls all doing the same thing, our feet making a rippling sound, treadling the wheels. I felt the nearness of my sister but so isolated from her at the same time. Now and then Sister Joseph came by to check on my work and told me different things, such as, “Hold the thread closer to your lap, and your arms will be less tired.” Across the room, Patience carded wool in a circle of chairs, her back to me. She spoke not a word to anyone.
As the month of August drew to a close, Sister Joseph came to the dormitory and announced with anticipation in her manner, “The flax is to be gathered in.” She clapped her hands, adding, “Tomorrow everyone will work outside. It will be so festive!” My heart sank. I had barely healed from the last outdoor work in the flax. A noise started outdoors, so that when we had our meal at noon, I went to see what it was. Men worked to set up tables of planks and rows of baskets in preparation for the morrow.
That evening I found Patience sitting in the garden beside the wet nurse who held James. The sun stayed up late now, and the air was pleasant. I kissed the babe and the nurse, too, before kissing Patey. She touched my face. I saw something hollow in her eyes that made me close mine and look away, fixing them upon the flowers about us. “How is my nephew today?” I asked her.
“Fine and bonny,” she said. Her voice belied the emptiness in her eyes. “Come and take a turn about the garden with me, sister.” Patience grasped my arm so that it was as if she led me about rather than having a stroll together. I said nothing, awaiting her words.
“Ressie? Have you the strength to suppress a secret?”
“More than you would suppose. I care not whether I add a thousand more.”
“Look into the vegetable, there, as if we are discussing it.”
I did, and even managed to pantomime and point at certain things for a moment. I asked, “What is your secret?”
She smiled. “I would almost think you acted full grown, so stern you are, little sister, except that a woman of cunning would not be so forthright in asking.”
I replied, “In devices I am not lacking, sister. There is no bridge between us that must be carpeted for either a footman or a caravan.”
Patience turned to me and yet turned her head away as she spoke. “Not only are you taller. My sister has grown inside. Here is my mind, then. Since I lay in childbed, the thought has come often to me that there is a way of escape from this place. We must speak quickly. There must be signs between us. A password. One word that will mean ‘we must speak’ and one that means ‘it is time to act.’”
“What words?”
“Something the two of us know that will work into speech without halt, so that none know it for a sign. The signal to meet and talk shall be ‘candlestick.’ Collect anything you wish to take and keep your shoes ready. The other word is more secret and therefore more sinister. We will leave when you hear the word ‘gumboo.’ Meet that night by the graveyard’s west gate.”