“You little spider! You scared the marrow out o’ my bones!” Birgitta’s voice said. “Where did you get them stockings?”
“I want my ma,” I said, and lay upon the hard floor. I stared into the fire and soon I slept and soon Ma cradled me again in her arms.
“Mary! Get up and empty the pots!” Mistress called, jabbing my bottom with the broom. “Lazy lout. Up with you!” I kept my eyes closed and my body still. My head hurt. Every bone felt every deprivation and bruise, and I wore my agony like a cloak. Indeed, some type of blanket covered me yet I shivered, too, with cold. “I am sick, Mistress.”
“What’s that? You lazy thing. Up from there!”
Birgitta said, “Best leave her for a time. It could be contagion.”
“Well, then,” Mistress said. “Then you will empty the pots.”
“As you say, Mistress,” Birgitta said. With my eyes still closed I heard her mutter, “Yes, sister. You old spider.”
CHAPTER 7
December 19, 1729
It was a fortnight, rather than three days, before I could arise from the pallet. When at last a bit of strength returned, I woke to discover that someone had shaved my head, and sank down again, this time to weep in self-pity and self-loathing. Every few moments my hand crept under a wrap to my head, feeling the strange bristling under the kerchief. Shuddering, I cried again. “My hair. Oh, my hair.” I slept.
Birgitta’s voice awoke me. “There you are, girl. Here, Mary. Have broth.”
“What happened to my hair?”
“Hair holds fever. Had to come off. It’ll grow.”
Tears rained upon my face. “My lovely hair.”
“Now, there. It’s a known cure for dry-ache fever. You’re alive. Think on that.”
I took the bowl and spoon from her. “I can feed myself, thank you.”
“Well. That’s improvement. The misses is all sick, too. Master has a cough and Mistress has misdelivered another babe before its time. Parson Johansen had been at the Mayweather house and they was all afevered, so likely he brought the fevered air here. It took right quick, coming on us all.” She looked on me and smiled. “Had a heavy snow, day before yestidy. The goats’ll be the death of me. That’s why it was such a great help to teach you. You get well now, then you can get back to work.”
I adjusted the wrapping on my head as it began to fall. “What is this smell?”
“Comfrey, borage, and yarrow, wrapped in honey balm, on your head. And hill wort. Other things. Guards against blindness with a fever.”
I sank onto the pallet before the fire, weaker than I had known since the smallpox, and rustled betwixt the blankets. As I lay staring into the pulsing red coals, I thought, not one time had Birgitta threatened me with a stick. She was naught but tender kindness. What had changed? As hideous as it was to cut off my hair, I knew of that done for sickness, especially yellow fever. I felt puzzled at Birgitta’s caring to have done it, for all I might have expected was that they’d throw me out in the snow to die. I watched her stir the copper pot and lapsed into dreamy sleep.
At length I awoke wrapped in a blanket in Birgitta’s lap! Her head was leaned back at a sharp angle and she snored through an open mouth. I dared not move. I looked into her mouth and pondered the teeth, some of them still good, but a few looked black and there was a smell of old sourness coming from her. I felt embarrassed that I had peered at someone I barely knew and without her knowledge.
“Birgitta?” I whispered.
She mumbled. “What? What, Mary?”
This was the oddest predicament I had yet encountered, odder than being called “Mary” or milking goats. “I thought you hated me.”
“Hated you, Mary? Why would you think that?”
I raised my face to hers again, and said, “You beat me all the time.”
Her face bore confusion. “Bible says to spare not the rod of correction. You was given me to raise and train and care for. Beating is good for children. And gentler than my dada rolling me in a sack and kicking me across the floor. You’re too big to sack.”
“Sack?” I asked. I had never heard of anything so wretched. “I am not as foolish as a goat. I am clever. You could teach me without beating me.” Care for? Train? I doubt that I hid my own confusion. “If I tried very hard to do what you wish, might you just explain it, rather than hit me with a stick?”
Birgitta wept. After some time she said, “I never had no child of mine. I always wanted a little girl named Mary. All ’as I ever knew is how to run goats. I’m old and these misses are not mine to guide and care for. I’m not allowed to correct them at all. Mary, if you’d behave without a stick, well, why didn’t you say so? You was so mean and naughty. I wanted them to get me a nice girl, not a hard one.”
Mean? How could I be anything but angry at her treatment? Overcome with emotion, I patted Birgitta’s arm. “You were never a mother? Likewise, I was never a slave.” I pulled up my feet to hide the stockings.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, speaking toward the gloomy ceiling. “Too late, now. Too, too late to be a mother. You see them girls. Addled, every one. We was brother and sisters, Master and Mistress and me, Haskens all. With no others in our town, they married. But I was older and I would have another, though he would not have me, so my sister was allowed a husband of our faith. A brother and sister should not marry lest they beget some defect as you see here. A brother and sister marrying is a shame, but for me to marry him also would be a sin.” She stared at the shadows overhead.
I followed her eye’s direction and grimaced at the shreds of spiderwebs clotted with dust and grease, hanging like fringe from the beams. Real silk fringe used to hang on my bedroom windows to keep out bugs and let in the breeze. “You are their auntie.”
“Not the same. I am the old shoe they can’t throw down the well and must feed. So I mind the goats. They said I wast ever lazy so no man would marry me. I shall train you to be not lazy, to work as the righteous ought. That way you will not be an old auntie to a passel of misbegotten brats. You will marry and keep house.”
Was this training meant as good for my future? Birgitta fell asleep. Her face was pale, red dots of fever on each cheek, the skin had grown fiery. As she slept, I crept from her lap. My shoes lay by the fire and I pulled them on, thinking with curiosity at the change in my treatment. My hair had not magically regrown, but still, in my own heart things were different between Birgitta and me. I clenched my jaw, remembering that I was a gift, a toy for an old, childless spinster to play with, a game of false motherhood.
In the corner of the room, a bedstead where Birgitta usually slept was tossed and unkempt. I pulled the blankets back, curling my lips at the grimy bed, and I turned my gaze to the window. Like a plant under a rock, I felt I would die for want of the sun. A thin, gray light washed across the pillow. It was dirty in the center and worn through on the corners, stuffed with what looked like wads of goat hair. I pulled Birgitta’s hand. “Come, lie down,” I coaxed.
The old lady did as she was told, dragging her feet across the packed dirt floor as she said, “If you lie beside me it’d warm my bones—but my throat is raw as a burned leaf. I’d like a bit of warmed ale if it’s about. That’s a good girl, Mary,” she said as I pulled the coverlet upon her, scarf and all. I found the pewter cup that had been polished for Reverend Johansen, poured a bit of cider in it, and laid the boiling rod in it until it quit sizzling. “Here, Birgitta,” I said.
She drank it, lay back, and closed her eyes, in the heavy sleep of sickness. I built up the fire because she was cold. I smiled at the luxury of it as the flames claimed the new kindling. Master must have gone to town or he would be here by the fire, I thought. The rest of the family was upstairs, from the racket of them. I bundled up, wearing two of the girls’ cloaks, and went to the woodshed three times, intending to lay up a store so I would not soon have to go again. I made room for the wood beside the hearth and under the eating table. As the house warmed, the voices upstairs c
almed. Not a creature moved in the house. I felt proud of the warmth I had added without being told.
I decided I would do more work without a beating than I did with one. Patience had said, “Be clever,” and clever I was going to be. The Haskens all together did not have one whit of cleverness. With no one watching me, I surveyed the house, silent except for scuffling from the goats. I took Birgitta’s stick from her chair and opened the door to the goat room. With trembling hands, I milked four goats, which took care of all except for the one balky one. A kid, twice her size, nursed at the old doe and butted her, but to be milked she would not stand.
“Stupid,” I called her. What was that goat’s name? “Stupid!” I shouted. Stupid-the-goat kicked the bowl and sent it flying. When I fetched the bowl and began again, I whacked her leg as a warning. I saw with a new understanding what Birgitta had done to me. Was the old woman so stupid as to think a girl and a goat were one and the same? Still, waking up cradled in her lap had changed something within me, and I felt a strange mixture of longing and much-softened anger toward her.
After the milking I took a long drink of the warm milk. I wiped my face and burped. It felt so good to be full. I downed fully half the bowl. Never mind, I thought. I poured water into the milk to bring up the level. Just like Cora stealing Patey’s shoes, I would make my every effort one to survive long enough to leave. The house had warmed as a spring day in Jamaica. I opened the front door, pulled in a kettle of snow, and put it on the hob to melt. I did not linger or stare into the distance longing for escape, for the cold was too harsh to even ponder it. As the day wore on I heard wolves, and pushed away any thought of escape. Summer would come. I would leave then, and be stronger. I got water and scrubbed my poor bare head, feeling chilled but good.
In a basket by Mistress’s chair lay three turned-wood spools of thread. I helped myself to the white thread. I pulled off my petticoat and found the needle. I mended every torn place, stitching upon the old stitches so much so that there remained more stitching than cloth. I tore loose parts of my old silk gown and made patches to mend places where my treasures had worn holes, trying to make them look as if naught but a patch were there. I worked on my pocket; I wished I could take it to Ma and have her exclaim over it.
I held an image of Ma in my mind and looked down at the petticoat. There I saw, as if for the first time, the stitches she had done, so tiny and perfect next to my clumsier ones. The lines she had made were clever, indeed, as if decoration were their sole purpose, yet much was held inside, hidden. “Oh, la,” I said, running my fingers over patterns of squares and circles, looped ovals with my clumsy patching blotting out the patterns. I sighed. Ma would be sad to see her work so battered. So dirty and ragged. How I had complained about this petticoat, even as the pirates broke through the walls! I searched among what remained of the silk. Finding a loose end of thread, I pulled it, and a piece as long as my arm came free. Part of it was still blue because it had been enclosed in a seam. I pushed the end of it through the needle with great care. Then, using a line I drew in my imagination, I followed the paths of Ma’s stitches where I had darned the cloth so heavily. I tied a knot and laid my fingertip against my stitches where they began to mimic what Ma had put there. Her hands had created beauty in such a simple thing.
Days moved with tedium that I wore like a cloak. I dared not ask about Christmas, for the Haskens shunned the keeping of it. In my real home, the day was celebrated with a small feast and gifts of a shilling for the household servants, and a little special gift for us children. A shawl, some ribbons or lacework, a music box, a few chocolates. My favorite holiday, which Ma called “Hogmanay,” Pa called “Shortest Night,” and these people called “New Year,” came and went before health at last returned to the Hasken household. I dared not hope for Hogmanay cakes or gifts from black-dressed, coal-carrying strangers.
As I milked the final goat that morning, I thought of last Hogmanay and Pa’s gift to me. It was a clockwork music box with a painting of a lady dancing upon its lid. No finery such as that lay in this forgotten place. That music box was in some pirate’s hold now, or sold across the sea. The Haskens’ finest possessions consisted of a single silver spoon, a pewter mug, and two well-used wooden chargers in a chest of unused linens. My hidden treasures could buy and sell this entire house, I thought as I drank a third of the morning’s milk, wiped my face, and carried it into the house covered with a rag.
Mistress was making bread and put it to rise under a dirty linen. She went up the stair. I watched her trudge away and wondered at how she tended her daughters as if they were helpless. While she was up there I added water to the milk to fill it up to the rim.
Birgitta stirred. “Mary, is the milking done?”
“Yes, Birgitta.”
“Would you warm some? My breath comes so hard.”
I made hot milk with tea and sugar. By the time it was ready the girls had come down. They had all suffered from the fever and appeared weakened, frail and thinner than before. Christine looked as if she had eaten nary a bite for three weeks. I poured Birgitta milk without offering to make more for the rest. No one spoke to me and I had learned at the cost of another stropping that I was never to address Mistress without being spoken to by her first. Answering. Never offering. A good slave.
* * *
On a gray heavy morning at the end of February, when the household was again well, Mistress ordered me to make posset. When I told her I had no idea how, she gasped and told me to learn how to create it. She warmed cider and put it in milk to settle in cups. We made bread, and bean stew, too. Company was coming.
When the sun made long shadows on the snow, Master arrived followed by five people wrapped in cloaks and blankets until they seemed like great beasts filling the room. He called out, “Mary! Come here!” A great unwrapping began with Mistress and Master helping them. Everyone called, “Mary! Come!” I scurried through them as heaps of cloaks and coats dropped onto my arms. I carried them to Birgitta’s empty cot. I took the giant shoes and placed them in a stack by the door. They were a webbing of skin over wood frames, and had caught pounds of snow with their walking.
These people were Master and Mistress Newham, their daughter, Thea, and their son, a boy as tall as his father, older than August. His name was Lukas. He had a gentle face and an easy smile and waving hair at his temples. When he looked at me, I felt suddenly clumsy, as if all my joints did not fit, a mismatched doll like Lonnie. I quite admired his temples, the cut of them, and his clean hair. I wore a kerchief and a house cap, but my hair, an inch long, felt as if it were announced before the world and he would see it and think I was hideous. I backed into the shadows. The last person with them was a woman but was not introduced. She sat by the door, a hood drawn. A servant, I thought.
“Mary?” Mistress called. “Fetch the cups.” For several minutes I passed and poured and mopped up spills. For I did spill the cider next to Lukas’s cup. He looked up at me just as I came to him and smiled at me. Mistress called, “Mary!” but that was no chide to me in the wake of Lukas’s stare.
Lukas’s gray eyes followed my movements and he had started to say, “Thank you,” but his father stopped him before the words were out, saying, “No need to thank a servant for serving, son. They know their place better when you keep yours.” Lukas then looked down his nose at me with almost a sneer when the cider dribbled down the cup, as if I were something less than he, as if I were not fit to pour his cider. I felt crushed in a way I would not have expected. I felt surprised, too, that I cared so much whether this impudent ruffian cared to have me pour his cup. Why, I had never spoken two words to the boy and he had naught to recommend him save a pair of gray, laughing eyes. What would I want with him or his favor? I turned my haughtiest stare to him, but whether he noted it I could not say.
I took the pitcher of cider to a side table and looked again upon the woman sitting by the door. At the moment I did, she raised her head and looked from under the hood. I stared into a pair of
my own eyes! Patience! “La,” I whispered. The Newhams had bought Patience. The Miss Talbot of Two Crowns Plantation sat by the door as a servant and not invited to table nor fed. Patey’s hand went to her lips and she motioned me to keep silent. Could I rush to my sister and not suffer for it? I could see her hands, as raw from work and washing as were mine, although they had provided her clothing new and whole.
Once supper was served, I was given a bowl and I took it to Patience, motioned for her to follow me, and we shoved clear a place betwixt the cloaks. On Birgitta’s bed we dipped our bread into the same sauce at last, leaning against each other in the only embrace we dared, shushed as mice. “Oh, Patey! I could climb into your lap.”
“Best they know nothing of us being sisters. They might not let us be together.”
“For a while I believed I had died and this was Purgatory. I have never been so cold. I am planning to run away when the wolves quit howling.”
She licked her fingers. “Summer will come. The Newhams and the Haskens are moving to the wilderness with some others. The minister of their church is taking families to pioneer, and once the roads are clear enough for that, you and I can leave.”
“Won’t they want to take us?” I asked.
“We will leave despite their wants.”
I smiled. My whole being felt warmed. “Do you have to milk goats?”
“No, Ressie. Do you keep geese? They bite my hands.”
“No. They gave me to the old one, Birgitta, like a poppet. She named me Mary.”
“The Newhams have talked of the Haskens’ troublesome serving girl, Mary.”
Mistress called, “Mary, the posset!” Lukas held his cup and I turned my head just enough to give the impression that I saw him not, and passed him with the pitcher. As I poured cider and served posset, I slipped three biscuits from the plate into the cuff of the pelisse.