I offered to mend or sew, but they would hear of me doing nothing more than artistic embroidery as befits a lady. Often as I plied my needle, I would catch a whiff of coffee or treacle cake and again I was a child, back in our parlor. I pictured Ma at my shoulder telling me to make the knots smaller, to thread the needle so, and to hold my work before the fire to see if ravels showed through the backing. Memories I had stored away seemed as real as yesterday, stitched in layers of suffering and loneliness. I thought of my own jewels, too, yet untouched, hoping I would know the right time to use them. I had Patience’s money in my pocket and a ring on my finger.
I blamed Rafe MacAlister most for my suffering. I knew he had to have been at the bottom of it all. Next I blamed Patience, though she had wrought none of our misery; in the end she had deserted me to become the common-law wife of an Indian and live in the woods. If I ever saw her again I would spit in her face. I was also furious that the weather prohibited my travel, and prayed for spring as ardently as I had used to pray for escape. There were days it took much effort to hold the raging storms within my heart at bay, especially now that there was no Sister Joseph to scold me, no rock floor on which to kneel for penance.
Our days were indeed drear, though each one tried to lighten them in every way. Reading aloud, singing, or telling of some activity in town, we whiled away the time. To be a lady amidst gentlefolk was such lightness combined with such constraint, it made me almost wish for the freedom to flex all my limbs and do the dance of the loom, perched upon the bench.
*
Weeks passed and Ma had not written. One night as I slept, I saw Ma and Pa, floating faceup in Meager Bay, their hands clasped as if they had fallen in together; their faces smiled peacefully, and their clothing was that of their wedding portraits which had hung in our great room. I sat up, shuddering, weeping but not weeping; a groan escaped my lips, a sound of pain that came as if from the depth of my soul.
I lit a taper on the dressing table and looked in the mirror. I felt someone in the room behind me. I turned, calling, “Hello?” When I looked back to the mirror for a moment I saw my mother’s face reflected before it became my face. The shadows of the room closed about me. I lit a second candle and walked the room with it, assuring myself that the shadows held naught other than darkness. When I returned to my dressing stool, the thought gripped me that if Ma did not write, or if she had not survived without me, I might indeed be orphaned. Who am I if I am not Allan Talbot’s second daughter?
I spoke to my reflection. I pulled the candle closer to my face and studied the image in the pitted glass. “How shall I make myself into a woman? As I made an apron, as I made my own thread and turned it to a plaited cloth, hid my scree within, and then was abandoned by my only kin?” I had known both tenderness and a master’s whip. I had seen God both served and flaunted and men scourged without mercy. I had seen mercy from these people, common colonists, not gentry, mayhap no different than my pa, working with his hands alongside his own slaves. I wondered for the first time whether he beat them, or caused others to beat them.
That afternoon I dressed in a morning frock; a light woolen shawl crossed my bosom, which now pushed roundly against the front of my chemise. I tucked my hair up into my day cap. The cap was made of delicate linen, starched and fringed with expensive lace from Belgium. I tied it slowly, watching the movement in the mirror. My eyes traveled from the face in the mirror to my own hands, and I held them around the candle flame, so that each finger was lined with deep shadow. I wondered how my hands would appear when I grew old, if I were to grow old, that was, and not die this winter of some plague or fever.
I drew in a breath, sat up, and said, “You shall be these things, Resolute Catherine Eugenia Talbot. You shall not bow your head to any. You shall live your life always with an eye to being of great age and having no regrets for things done or undone. You shall never give your conscience for a piece of silver or a place to lay your head.” Tears blurred the image. “You shall bind no one as slave. You shall give of your hands generously but your heart sparingly. You shall never lie again. You will be a woman Ma would love for a sister and friend. You are your own.” My chest swelled with emotion.
A call came from downstairs. “Miss Talbot? Would you have tea?”
Feeling the brush of Ma’s hand against my hair, I raised my hand to touch hers. “Miss Talbot, late of Two Crowns Plantation, shall attend tea this afternoon with the family of the Selectman of Lexington, in the King’s Colony of Massachusetts. She shall do her mother proud, and even more, she shall be proud of herself.” I turned to the door. “Yes, thank you, I shall.”
*