My Name is Resolute by Nancy E. Turner Page A

in the capture of the Saracens. Perhaps they would never have got us as far as the English sailors and Rafe, and we would be home already.
    The path widened into a narrow road. Waist-high brambles lined both sides. If a cart had come along we would have had to stand in deep brush to let it pass. They stopped us by a well to rest. The well was below a small rock circle, under a roof so low that anyone taller than me would have to stoop to reach the cracked and useless bucket that had been left by it. We fixed our quilted petticoats as capes. “That is warmer,” I said. I thought Patey looked so haggard, so drawn, that I feared for her life.
    “Why do you look at me so?” she asked.
    “Something is so lost in your eyes. Your face is so terrible you make me afraid.”
    “’Tis merely that you have not seen me in the light of day in so long.”
    “We shall go home soon. Mayhap that old charm will work.”
    “’Tis old foolishment. Ma was naught but a gentlewoman and she would never cast a spell or a charm. ’Twas a song she knew from her granny.” Patience brushed her hands along her arms under the petticoat-cape. “I doubt we shall ever see Jamaica again. I doubt I will live to see Christ’s Mass Day.”
    I pressed her arms with my hands then, the same way she was doing, to give more comfort to her. “I am more afraid now than ever I was before. We must go home again. If the charm helps, it is good to remember it.”
    Cora fiddled through the other women toward us. She said to me, “Little Miss Resolute, what is that shining on your sister’s back?”
    I saw the shine just as she said it, too, and clasped my hands across my mouth. “Patience, turn quickly.” The cloth had worn through and showed a glint of metal with the too obvious shape of a coin printed into the linen. Our treasures!
    Patience rolled it in her hand. “I shall turn it inside outside,” she said, and worked the cape over her head again.
    Cora squinted and asked, “What’s you got sewn into that, Missy?”
    Patience shrugged and said, “It is nary a thing,” but I heard how Cora’s voice had changed. Now on land, she had said “missy” the old slave way instead of Patey’s name.
    I said, “It is nothing but Ma’s wee duppy charm. Back of every petticoat.”
    “Maybe you need to give me a duppy charm,” she said. “Maybe you got more charms dan dat. Maybe I keep quiet about ’em shiny golden charms and you could keep de res’ if you shared but one. Duppies never harm no one dis far away.”
    Patience raised her eyes to look at Cora’s face and said, “I shared our food when you were starving.”
    “Share one t’ing more. You Massa’s daughter. You live on de backs of my mother and my gran. You ne’er eat a crumb dat someone else didn’t hand-make and bring to you. All I got to do is say it loud and mens take it all from you.”
    Was Cora one of our slaves? I did not know her at all. She must have always worked in the fields or someplace away from the house. She had seemed so decent when we were in the cage together. Yet if she belonged to Pa, she belonged to us now. Patience glared at Cora. I did not dare let down my posture of defense. “How you change so from what you seemed on the ship. I thought you were our friend. Our companion.”
    “You don’ share with a friend?” she asked. “Den you lets me wear dat and be warm for a whiles. I give it back to you in a whiles.” She laid her hand on Patey’s cape and I saw her fingers wrap themselves into it and hold tight.
    “Cantok!” I said. Cora jerked her hand away from Patey’s clothing as if there had been a thorn in it.
    A voice broke the air among the three of us. “You!” Uncle Rafe said, coming for us. I cringed and held Patey’s hand, ready for him to clutch at me again. Yet the arm he jerked was Cora’s. “You come this way.”
    He pulled her down the path. As she went, Cora turned and looked toward us. She grimaced as if she might start to cry and