While the thought crossed my heart that I should spend some of my money to own a pistol, I offered them breakfast such as I had, of pears, bread, and small beer. Jacob MacLammond surprised me, taking a bar of tea from his pack, and though he apologized for the saltiness of it, I made a hearty brew of what he shared.
The young one, Cullah, kept quiet as we ate. I had many chances then, by sidelong glance, to weigh his appearance against his father’s. Had not age and some accident misformed the father, they might have been brothers separated by but a few years. I tried to keep my eyes averted as his father ate with gusto, but faced his son as the younger MacLammond had been trained in table manners. At least I surmised so, until he turned to me upon finishing the small portion I had provided, and asked, “How do you come to live alone, young Mistress? Are you widowed? Why are you not indentured or a ward to some benefactor who will watch over you? What is your means, here?”
“Boy!” his father shouted. “Lady Spencer sent us!”
He said, “I want no part of work with a scald or a gypsy. Nor a seductress.”
“I will answer,” I said. “I understand. I am alone because I was abandoned by those who helped me escape from the Canadas. I was a prisoner of the pope.”
“Who helped you escape from the papists?”
I paused and looked the man in his one eye for a moment, because he did not say the word with the affect of nearly spitting it as if it fouled the tongue, as most Protestants did. “I will tell you truly, sir, if you will bind me a promise that you tell no one.”
Cullah asked, “Is it some shame?”
“No. Well, it is. Will you both promise?”
“By my good eye, I will, then,” Jacob said.
“My sister and I escaped the convent with the help of two Indians. She married one of them and left me at the field behind the Boynes’s house.”
Cullah smiled and said, “Oh. Well and aye, then. I feared you were going to say she married some English cod.” Both men laughed. “Do you have wood stock with which to fix this?”
“No, sir. Goody Carnegie—”
“Ah! That one’s gone afey,” said Jacob. “She’s known far and wide.”
“You know her, then?” I asked. “Well, when she is in her mind, she is not daft at all. She has offered me this house as long as I intend to stay. She is not fey.”
Cullah closed his lids slowly, as if sleep had come upon him as I spoke; when he opened them, he said, “So you answer one question with a reply to another.”
“I meant no falseness by it,” I said. “I was beginning to answer but taking a long way around it. My only means is her generosity and the weaving I plan to do.”
Jacob said, “We’ve rightly got better manners than has been shown, Miss Talbot. We have been already well paid. We’ll work the fair amount of it for you as whatever suits your fancy, and improves this house. The boy here is not much good at felling so it goes to me to bring down the trees for your work, but he turns a fine table leg.”
“Really, sir, I need no work.”
Jacob raised himself from the table and, using one finger, flicked crumbs of wood from the very beam on which I had stacked my coins. From his bag he pulled an iron hammer. With a mighty swing he sank the head of it into the beam. “Rotten to the core,” he said. “Been thatched, aye? But the wight that thatched it did nothing to replace the rotted beams. Let me look a bit. Aye. Aye. Well, there won’t be a tower for fifty pound, but we’ll do what we can for you. Replace the rot. Make ’er sound.”
Jacob seemed to be measuring with his hands, his lips moving soundlessly. After great length, he said, “It will take a month. That’s without fixtures or furnishings, you understand, but we’ll fit what we can for cupboard and larder.”
Perhaps this was something I could do in return for Goody having allowed me this house. If Lady Spencer had paid these men to work on it, I could return it to Goody better than I found it. “All right, then. Can this be done without disturbing the loom?”
Jacob studied it. “We build a roof under the beams, at the top posts there. When we take down the thatching, there will be a mess like a haystack turned up, but I can save your work. Then we will put it right, and take down the false roof. It can be done.”
“When will you begin?”
Cullah rose and moved behind his father. He wrenched out the hammer embedded in the beam. Shreds of wood that came with it fell as dust. While I knew little of wood and its crafting, I knew a beam was not supposed to powder. “We just began,” he said.
Outside, they opened their boxes of tools, axes, and blades of all types. While they made a survey of the land for suitable trees, I collected my coins. I saw them looking at the enormous beech that overshadowed part of the yard, but I asked them to leave it. I went for Goody’s home, to tell her of this news. She returned with me, abeam with joy. She claimed that my coming had brought her more luck and then some. She pointed them toward the woods that stood on her land, and said they could use what they needed there.
In just a few hours, they had a shed built within the stone walls that roofed over my loom from anything above, and they began tearing down the thatched roof. The shed was hot as an oven inside, but I worked in it, thankful for it. Then after a time, I found the rhythm of the loom echoed with the rhythm of axes striking the trees. I lost myself in my work, and was startled when Jacob and Cullah came to the place, weary, sweating, and smelling badly, and asked me for some supper. Then both of them laughed and Cullah pulled forth a rabbit he had killed and cleaned.
“I have never cooked a rabbit,” I said.
Over the next weeks, Jacob and Cullah turned my tranquil life into havoc. Every day my work at the loom started with one blessing and I put the shuttles to rest with another. Every day the music of weaving was but a trill above the booming of hammer and peg. The granite walls of this house served now as a foundation, and another, larger house grew atop it like a mushroom. Stairs and another door opened to the world from atop the rise upon which the granite abutment had made a wall below.
Between building, Jacob and Cullah hunted. We ate more often with Goody Carnegie than not. I was glad of her presence. More than once I had come outside to do some little chore and found the both of them working without shirt or hat, clad only in breeches and heavy boots.
Cullah lost no chance to shed his coat as he worked, and after he had asked me to bring him water more than one time, he crafted a bucket to keep at his side. As wood dust and flecks covered him, he often took the dipper and washed himself. I had never seen so much of a man, his body, his skin, other than swimming with my brother and sister. Even then, August was a boy with spindle legs and a narrow build, a pointed chest like a bird. Cullah was of some age I could not guess and did not dare ask. What I knew was that his body rippled in the sun, dripping water. Dark hair made a diamond on his belly and coated his arms, catching the sawdust and wood chips so that he looked as if he wore a feathered armor. His long hair he bound carelessly with a leathern thong. Though he shaved his face almost every day, a dark beard as menacing as his father’s threatened his countenance by evening. He was altogether vulgar in appearance. A brute to be used as one would an ox. Across his back and one arm a band of white scar no wider than a good thread lay, testament to some old wound.
Jacob caught me observing it one time as I stood behind Cullah as he poured water over his sweating back while I held another cask of water. Jacob said, nodding at his son, “Fell from a tree, he did. As a lad. Means nothing.” Hundreds of scars, like those on his face, webbed Jacob’s back. He’d been mercilessly used.
Yet, as I crawled into my bed, just a blanket on the floor by the loom, I fingered the tiny scar I had on my left hand, remnants of the nail holding grapevines crucified under a full moon. I thought of no way a fall from a tree would produce a fine line that stretched across a man as if he’d been caught in a warp thread. Jacob’s scars were a different thing altogether. I wondered if he had suffered as did the man beaten to
death under August’s eyes. I thought of Foster, killed by a bear, and others I had seen with scars. I remembered Patience lovingly bathing the wounds of the Indian man.
That night and many that followed it, I fell asleep thinking of Cullah. What meaning his odd name might have, whence he had come before Lady Spencer knew him, what his age might be, and whether he were really the son of Jacob, who was nearly as brawny as Cullah. The third evening of thinking thus, I had a mysterious dream of home. Rather than Allsy running, holding my hand, the hand I took was rough and large, attached to an arm with a scar upon it that matched mine, yet the faceless person to whom it belonged was lost in some sort of mist.
The next morn, I hummed softly as I prepared our food and began my day’s work. To my surprise, Jacob heard me, and with Cullah both knew all the verses to “O Waly, Waly.” The two burst forth in song as if the need of it had been held, steaming, under a lid, waiting for release. For some reason, it made me feel so homesick to hear a man’s voice the way Pa’s would have done, carrying on with his work, a tune on his lips. Then Cullah sang another, all in some tongue I knew not, a melancholy melody that made the heart ache and tears rise. It fair took away the hours and my hands upon the bobbins worked as if by magic, disembodied, as I felt the tunes course through me.
The sky threatened rain early in the afternoon. Goodwife Carnegie walked my path. Only when she called to me did I wonder at having it seem “my” path. Strife drew her face into a frown. “It comes. The rain,” she said.
“I know. Please, Goody, stay in my home and run not through the forest. I fear much for your life when you do that.”
“I cannot. I cannot.”
Jacob frowned and worked his chin with a grizzled hand. I offered him the water bucket, but before taking it he said, “There’s much to fear in the woods, lass, but sometimes there is more to fear in the mind.”
Goody looked upon him, trembling helplessly. “It is neither memories nor ghosts, the phantasms haunting me. They are real. They come for me when the wind blows.”
“I would keep them away, if you stay with me,” I said. “Whoever follows you through the storm will feel my wrath.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Cullah smile. “Aye. I’ve known it, lady. A firm redoubt it is.”
Goody said, “I came to see your progress, whether you can stay during the rain, but I see you have no shelter yet except over the loom. Come you all to my house. Follow quickly before it arrives.” Then she hurried in the direction she had come.
Cullah peered at the sky and sniffed deeply, then said, “It looks to be a killing storm, Pa.”
Jacob wiped his face. “We’ll see your loom is covered, and get the animals in.”
I went with him to chase the goats into the wee shed he had built for them. I had insisted I would not have goats in my house so they had their own cunning little shed and yard. Jacob chased down the billy and then went to collect their tools. He kept them oiled with bear grease when not used, and I saw him fetch the pouch of grease.
When I shut the goats’ door and he’d latched the bar across it, Cullah said to me, “I believe what you said. She’s not truly mad.”
“I know only that she is called mad by the townspeople yet they will listen to her with some respect. Other than when it storms, she seems to me given only to the madness caused by loneliness. I have stayed in this house simply because it made her happy. I need to earn my fare to Jamaica, but more and more the thought of deserting Goody Carnegie saddens me.”
He pulled on his kirtle and worked at lacing up the front. As he did, he cocked his head. “When do you go?”
“I know not. I must have a companion with whom to sail.”
“No honest captain would take you alone.”
“I have left word for my brother. It would be fitting if I could go with him. He went to sea. Years—ago.”
He must have seen the sorrow on my face as I said that. He smiled, saying, “He’ll try to find you, if you have left word. I’d never leave a sister such as you. He will come.”
I felt heat rush from my bosom to my forehead in the glimmer of time it took for his smile to form. I smiled in return. “That is kind of you, sir. Yet, the sea is a dangerous place. I lost my pa to it.”
“You have no fear of staying with the old woman, then?”
“No, but you and your father must come, too. If you sleep in the woods you will be all night in the storm.”
“Would not be the first time,” Jacob said. “Or, we have the goat shed.”
“Please. I cannot bear the smell you would wear. Goody bade us come,” I said.
“You have no fear of staying with us, then?”
My hand flew to my mouth to hide my shock. “Oh. It cannot be. Goody goes abroad during storms and we would be alone. I know not what to do.”
“Bundling board?” Cullah suggested, his eyes merry.
My face must have glowed like an ember, for his flushed dark, too. Cullah followed me to where Jacob waited uneasily at my doorway. He had stowed his tools inside and barred it. “I’ve made sure the loom will stay dry, Miss Talbot. She’s made off with your cooking spider and half the haunch you’d put in. If we’re to eat this night, we’d better follow the crone.”
Without thinking, I laid my hand upon his wrist, hard and muscled as a horse’s leg, saying, “Goody is naught but kind to me, as are you. Please do not disparage her.”
Jacob gave a wan smile, and patted my hand with his other one. “Maybe, as you say, the townspeople respect her because they fear her. Ah, well. Let us go to her.”
As we made our way, the rain held off though the clouds lowered and darkened. Goody fretted in her first room, tossing about blankets. I saw she’d been trying to arrange one to hang in the midst, as if to create a separate place for privacy. “Aha! You’re here. Woodsman, have you got a nail?” Jacob searched his pouch and came up with one. Goody said, “Don’t gape at me, man. Put this blanket here so’s our miss may have a place to sleep. You men will be there by the door and she will have this side.”
We ate our supper as the storm brewed, sharing her good bread, so light it seemed meant for some royal personage. At first we all stayed quiet, the men intent on cleaning up every last drop in the pot. Then Goody laid out cheese and apples. Thunder rolled across the sky like a cannonball across a deck. Her hands trembled. At length she said, “That is all I can do for you. Sleep if you can. I must go. The wind. The wind comes. And the voices. The fairies will not let me stay.”
Jacob stood holding his arms forth, barring the door with his body. “Stay with us, lady. We will help you fight them. Banshees or fairies, the devil himself, whatever it is that comes for you. Then mayhap you will be freed from them.”
Her cry was terrible, rending my soul with memories of being on ship. “No! Did you bring them here to torment me?” she aimed at me. “Are these the ones, these men, be they changelings come in disguise?”
I stood, too. “La, no. Goody, these are the woodsmen come to fix my little house, the one you gave to me. We accepted your offer of safe harbor while the storm rages. Please stay with us.”
The old woman shrank inside her clothes, until she had none of the form or vitality we had just seen. I worried she was indeed the changeling she claimed she feared. At once a crack of thunder overhead affected her as if it bore grapeshot; the contortions of pain on her face grew so dire I feared her death.
Cullah stepped toward his father. “Let her go if she must, Pa. She is compelled.”
“’Tis only thunder, Goody,” coaxed Jacob. “’Tis the Lord throwing stones at bad angels. The wind is but His wrath, clearing ghosts from the trees.”
“They’ll come for me,” she whimpered. “If I am near a fire or hearth, they’ll come. Out of every nook and shadow.”
“Light candles,” I said. “Have you more candles? We shall stay with you all night. Light lamps, light candles, and we will block the hearth with charms and prayers.”
“There are not en
ough candles in all of Christendom. I have no fear of the road, only this hearth. Open the door to me in my own house, you brigand!” A gust blew against the house, shaking the shutters in their dogs. Lightning filled the room for a moment with blue, illuminating even the motes in the air; the cannon roar of thunder deafened me and something like an inhaled breath snuffed every flame, all but the fire in the grate. Goody picked up the long-handled fork she called a tormentor from the crane and held it at Jacob as if to run him through. Jacob moved not at all. Cullah slid his feet noiselessly toward me so that he was but a foot away, and leaned on the table with one arm as casually as if it meant nothing, but I read the intent in that strong arm stretched before me. He meant to keep her and her weapon from me. I said, “Dear Goody, please tell us what you fear. We may help you.”
She howled as if she were a wolf over a killed deer. The sound faded to a moan that wove itself into the wind as it howled through the eaves of the house. “Let me go! You cannot stop them. They know what I have done. They made a changeling of my babe, new as it was; in the midst of a storm they took her. I knew it was they. I only held her to the fire a little to chase them away, to make the fairies leave her and return her to me. She cried out in an unholy voice, so used was she by them. I don’t know, I don’t know!” Her voice trailed off and she covered her head with her arms. Then she drew in a strong breath with a shriek. “I don’t know why it happened. I dressed her in white. I offered them gold and rosemary. Gave the babe hairwort and periwinkle. Oh, but I could find no dog’s head! I called the chants and charms until I was hoarse but she would not stop her changes. Only a little more fire, a little more, I thought. They caused the dress to catch fire. Abigail! Abigail. The fairies took her breath away in the fire. Now they’re coming for me. In the winds and rain, they chase me, trying to get the one that leaped from the fire to my heart—”
With that, she knocked Jacob a strong whack on the knee with the tormentor and threw it wild across the room. As he bent to rub his knee, she thrust herself past him. The door swung on its hinges, banging into place. I rushed to it and opened it, Jacob and Cullah behind me. Leaves blew in as if borne on fairy wings, like the souls of hundreds of duppies intent upon populating the house. Lightning flashed about the yard and sky as one, as if the storm had sat upon the ground before us.