My Name is Resolute

“Yes,” she said. “Take that one over there by the wall.”

 

 

I was dismayed to find there was indeed a candlestick by the wall, much abused with soot from poorly made candles. One thing I had learned from living at the Haskens’ house was that a candle could be made less of a mess by careful wicking. “Very well, then,” I said. “You will tell me if there are any others?”

 

“Of course” she said. “Sometimes one moon is not as good as the next.” She nodded at me, and turned to her work. I knitted my brows. It was meant to be a message. We would wait another month.

 

Now that the flax was in, I was put to spinning all the day. I spun not wool but flax, which filled a different distaff and a different wheel, and had to be done with a cup of water at my side. I learned to guide the tow onto the spindle, often so frustrated I groaned, wanting to pull the stuff and throw the water cup. When the nuns let me get up from the spinning wheel, I went outside and ran through the fields until the anger and frustration subsided. At times I ran with my eyes closed, wishing I would fall into a duppy’s house and disappear from this place.

 

Another week passed and Rachael took to her childbed. She suffered a few hours and brought forth a son. It was only upon seeing the new baby, named Ezekiel, that I could tell the difference between Patience’s baby and Rachael’s. For all I had expected that Patience would produce a superior child, I saw that James was no bigger than Ezekiel, though he was some months older. Ezekiel ate and slept, fat and contented. James did not nurse without coaxing, and what went down him rarely stayed down. He was plagued with raw skin under his clouties, so that he was kept naked in a hamper placed in the sun. Patience was often not in the baby room when I went to visit her; she left James with the nurse.

 

The next full moon came and went. And the next. Between long days learning to spin, having my work torn apart and recarded to try again until I got the rhythm going with my feet and my hands, the farm harvest began. School receded to one hour, three hours of working in the fields, pulling turnips and carrots, bundling onions, a meal, three hours of picking apples, three hours of spinning before supper. Lugging pears and pumpkins, peeling apples, packing potatoes and parsnips in layers in the cellars, none of the work was easy. Yet, when I saw the girls and nuns in the kitchen, boiling applesauce, pear sauce, piling ever more wood in the stoves to keep the fires hot, though the day was stifling, I did not complain about my work.

 

On an afternoon during the last week of September, the sky changed. I could not say what it was, but I could feel it. There came a freshening of the air early in the day, and the wind came from the northeast. Why that should put me in bad humor, I knew not. I felt as if this new wind brought with it some unfortunate change.

 

I had in my grip a mounded basket of overripe pears, and the basket was losing its bottom so I was forced to wrap it up with my arms as you would carry a child. The pears gave off a perfume as rich as honeysuckle to the air about me. I made my way past the rectory, turned a corner, and stood face-to-face with Lukas Newham. “Oh,” I said, “Lukas Newham. Fancy seeing you after all this time.” I did not smile.

 

“Yes, Miss? Ah, the little serving girl. You have grown a foot taller, I’d wager.”

 

I raised myself up on my toes, doing my best to look down at him. I felt conscious of my breasts brushing against the camisole. “You have also been cast into servitude, but I from a higher degree than ever your father’s father had been.”

 

He sneered. “You were always above your station.” Then his demeanor changed. “How fares your sister?”

 

“Miss Talbot fares quite well, I am sure.” At that moment a small pear, rosy and firm, slipped between the basket’s cracked splines and rolled to his feet.

 

“Ah, an offering,” he said, and picked up the pear, taking a great bite. “A peace offering, I wonder? The work becomes you, you know. Your cheeks have become full roses and your whole face carries a dust of freckling, just like a ripe fruit.” He took another bite, juice running down his chin, his lips moist with it.

 

I liked the sound of that, yet I was not sure what my reply should be. Donatienne knew much about men and romantic overtures, and told me always to be cool toward them. “Your words are too impertinent. Now that you have taken a pear from my bundle, though, you may repay me a deed.”

 

“What shall it be, little Rosy?”

 

I felt my face flush. “I beg you not to call me other than my name, Master Newham, as I shall yours. I saw you coming from the priests’ door just now, and that means you have access to their quarters. I am told that in their quarters is the only place here to find paper and ink. Is that true?”

 

“It is. And you will not speak of where you have seen me.”