“I’ll go for her,” Jacob said.
“No,” I countered. “Leave her be. She had better run.” I felt ill, as if I could cast up my food, stating, “She put her child in fire.” Nothing I had ever known could compare. No Jamaican, African, or Guinean chant required such. Neither Protestant nor Catholic. I stared at the door, my brow furrowed, my chin taut with unspent tears. We watched the rain begin now, gentle for but a moment, then a torrent from on high engulfed the world before us. None of us could speak. At last the rain came aslant, and we shut the door. “Lock it not,” I said and turned to them. “She may return before daybreak if the storm stops.” I mopped my face upon my sleeve.
We made beds, honoring the blanket Goody had hung, though I slept in my clothes, awake long after the men’s snores rattled dust out of the thatching. I placed a knife from the worktable under my pallet. Whether I feared Cullah or his father, or Goody Carnegie more, I could not have said. I wished I had stayed in my own tiny place, tucked under the false roof over my loom.
My loom. My cloth. My home. Was this my home, this terrible place?
CHAPTER 19
October 3, 1736
Goody did not return the next morning. We left as soon as it was light to see if aught needed care at my place. Since it was still raining that evening, I fed her geese and chickens, and she did not come home then, either.
Jacob and Cullah slept at Goody’s house that night. I slept alone in mine. All those days and weeks before they had arrived, I had little noticed the lack of other human beings there. Then with the rain, I felt closed in, confined as if in the cattle hold on the ship. Jacob and Cullah so far away. There was nothing they could do in the rain, for certain, yet I missed them.
Rather than my usual singing, I wept as I worked. It was as if all the sadness, all the lost people of my life, came to my mind’s eye in somber dirge. I felt so alone. Still, my hands worked as if they belonged to the loom and I merely oversaw them. The rain did not stop for three days. The men returned every afternoon in the downpour, to report that Goody was still gone, to see that my temporary shelter was still holding, and as Jacob said, “To be sure that I was not carried off by salvages or beasts.”
The morning of the third day, a knock at my door stopped my hands. I had my hand on the latch to open it before I realized that it might not be Jacob or Cullah, for they had long passed the need to knock, and usually just opened it with a call to make sure I was not in a stage of undress. I was most surprised to find eight black-frocked men under spread cloaks. “Miss Talbot? We would have a word with thee.”
Eight more people had no room for foothold in this stone house, filled as it was with the loom and the false ceiling. Four came in, one squeezed himself out of the rain at the door, and three peered over his shoulders. They were the men from the town who had met me when I first came, missing, of course, Selectman Roberts, but adding one in his position, the newly made selectman, Mr. Jones. They had heard, and would tell me not from whom, that I was living alone in the woods with two men not my relatives, in the employ of the devil spinning gold out of flax. I could happily report their missing men were at the Carnegie house, and put on my cloak to take them there to show them.
At Goody’s house I was relieved to see her, ragged as a beggar but sitting between Jacob and Cullah, drinking tea from a cup by her fire. The men spoke to each other, satisfied that no illicit behavior had taken place here. I had to wonder what had caused this sudden interest in the condition of my integrity yet I was far too busy to tarry over it. As the men were finished with their inquisition, they bid us good day.
At the end of the path from Goody’s door to the road, one I remembered as Mr. Considine turned and said, “You understand, the committee cannot allow unrighteous action within the reaches of the town? ’Tis bad enough that Goodwife Carnegie has given you her property, but that she holds with old ways. Witchcraft and transport with the devil follow those who do. It was only, Miss, that some sea captain had been asking after your whereabouts. Wallace Spencer declared to us that you were of the highest virtue, and that it did not mean what we took it for. We had to be sure.”
“A sea captain? Who? When?” August had found me! My spirits soared but the man simply shrugged. “I have witnessed no devilment except her own sorrow affecting Goody Carnegie, but I assure you, sir, I hold no ill will toward you for your concern on my behalf.”
“Good day, then.”
“Do you know anything more of the sea captain?” I called toward his back.
“See that you attend church more regularly, Mistress,” was all he said.
In Goody’s house, as we baked and ate, we chatted about the silliness of that visit. She called me Abigail twice. As we spoke, two men, not the ones before me, kept coming into my thoughts to interrupt my speech. Wallace had defended my honor? Yet, he had left me because he thought I had none. And then, the sea captain. Who could it be but August? August, come for me at last. My heart swelled. Laughter came easily. Birds sang and my spirits rose on their melodies until I felt as if I enveloped all before me.
I looked upon Cullah, speaking with his father and Goody. What a bonny young man he was. His eyes sparkled when he laughed, as eagerly as they flashed like flint when he was angered. His hair was as unmanageable as mine and his father laughingly said something about his last having cut it with a broadaxe. I could barely hope my spindly brother had grown to such a good height and broad shoulder. When August came, I would make him a fine linen shirt just to fit him.
When at last the rain stopped and the world outside was a pit of tarlike mud, there was no work to be done with the wood wet and swollen, Jacob declared. He told me they would make a trip to Boston town for hinges and iron-worked handles for the doors. I asked if we could go together.
I took my cloth from the loom, forty yards of fine gold-white linen. I had thirty-three yards of good wool and fifty yards of fine wool. I wrapped my linen carefully in layers of wool, and folded the woolens within sacks of tow. We left in the early morning mist, a fog so thick and cool that the air swam before us as we moved through lowlands by the marsh on the road to Boston.
To ready for the trip I had folded my skirt up and held it with small ties of yarn, hidden in pleats and folds, covering my petticoats with an outer skirt made of roughest sacking that, when in town, could be folded up and tied. The sky was clear, but as we trudged through a world of mud as I could never have imagined, the road so cut with the travelers and wagons and slow going for all, the travel was too much labor to talk or sing as before. I pined for the seacoast and home. Nearing the coast I could sense the difference in the air; albeit grimed with the presence of so many people, it still held the smells of the shore.
Stopping at a pathway between houses, I folded up the mud-splattered sackcloth, let out the yarn, and dropped my better skirt over the sacking. I was proud of this linen, finely woven by my own hand and stitched in good style. Plain in design, but not without ornament. I had taken care, though I had done it with so little color available to me, the frills and embroidery in natural colors but intricate patterns made a statement I thought elegant simplicity. No Quaker garb, this.
At Barnabus’s shop I sold my woolen for silk thread. I sold my linen for an alabaster vial of indigo, dyes of black and crimson, plus twice as much fine linen tow. I put my coin, nearly ten pounds in value, in my stockings. When I required Jacob to go to the wharves to see if any had left word from my brother August, he was not pleased to do it, but we did walk there. Now little was left of my notes, the ink faded almost away. One was missing. Could I dare hope someone had found it and knew the writing, knew August Talbot and showed him? Might we meet him on the road?
Jacob shadowed me as if my safekeeping were his sole charge. I asked him if we could call at Lady Spencer’s home. I meant to renew myself to Lady Spencer, to ask her to speak to her acquaintances about August, and failing that, whether she knew of someone traveling to the Indies to whom I could apply as companion.
> Jacob insisted upon the tradesmen’s entrance at the back. I left him and Cullah at the path and went straight for the front. Oswald opened, wearing his usual stony expression, his nose almost too high as he looked over my clothing. I said, “Please tell Lady Spencer that Miss Talbot of Two Crowns Plantation is calling.”
He bowed without a word, leaving me in the foyer. I supposed Jacob and Cullah went to the back of the house. I checked for mud on my hem. Oswald took me to the better parlor this time. On seeing her my spirits lifted until I discovered Lady Spencer was not alone. Wallace stood near the fireplace not far from Serenity Roberts. Mistress Roberts, America, and Portia sat together on a sofa. I bowed to each in turn. Oh, my heart. I came near to making some whimper at seeing handsome Wallace so elegantly turned out, so finely dressed in satins. His chiseled mouth smiled at me with warmth and surprise, and I was filled with the memory of his lips upon mine. I felt my face coloring and turned away from him.
“What a lovely surprise, Miss Talbot,” Lady Spencer said, her tone cool.
“Thank you for receiving me, Lady Spencer, but I cannot stay. I called only to ask after your health and that of your company. I leave you my best wishes.” I forced myself to smile at Mistress Roberts. America grinned merrily at me. “Good afternoon, madam. Young ladies. I hope your family is well.”
Lady Spencer said, “Wallace and Miss Roberts have just announced their engagement to us. We are all most joyful over it.”
A pain pierced me. I fought to control my lips’ quivering. “A most joyful occasion,” I said. “Congratulations to you, Wallace. Many happy returns.”
Serenity smiled at me with the look in her eye of a cat having stolen a juicy morsel from the mouth of another cat. She held her hands in her lap, curled, like paws, I thought. “Thank you, Miss Talbot. We shall be supremely happy. We will marry in a month and journey to Wallace’s plantation.”
“Only a month?” I asked, fixing my face in a smile that hid my surprise. “I am sure you will have much to do in that time, creating a trousseau. How fortunate that you have your mother and sisters to help you.”
“I hear you are a seamstress now. And a spinster. A weaver, that is the word.”
America said, “And you live in the woods with the crazy granny and two louts.”
“America!” Mistress Roberts’s hand dashed out to pat America’s arm in rebuff. “We have not heard anything of the sort.”
I turned to Lady Spencer. “The committee came to my dwelling, Lady Spencer. I am sure they were satisfied that such is not the case.”
Serenity said, “We wish to buy fine linens. I want the whitest white. What do you have to sell? I shall need a seamstress for the simples. Of course, a qualified dressmaker will be doing the fine garments.”
Lies slid from my mouth as rain fell from the clouds. I formed a face of curious puzzlement. “To sell? Why, Serenity, I have no wares to sell. I sew for myself as many women do, from the governor’s wife to the poorest milkmaid. If you wish to buy you must seek a merchant.” I raised my hand in a slight gesture I thought showed off the ruby ring on my first finger.
“I would hire you to make the simples.”
“I am not for hire.”
“Mother, make her sew for me,” Serenity said. “Wallace? Surely you must insist that this girl create my goods. I told you she had done my ’broidery before.”
Wallace turned to her with that visage of boredom combined with irritation, the face I had pictured so many times after that night he left me at the inn. “Did you not say, ahem, you were not staying, Miss Talbot?”
Lady Spencer gasped at his rudeness and I saw a red flush rise above her high collar. “I have some very good claret we have all just enjoyed. Sit here, by me.”
Wallace forced his beautiful, haughty lips to smile when I joined his mother on a settee. Oswald brought me a goblet of claret. Wallace and Serenity moved to another part of the room. Mistress Roberts and her other daughters sat stoically, as if not sure what their next moves should be.
In a moment, Lady Spencer tapped my skirt with her fan and nodded so slightly I might have misunderstood, were it not for the movement of her eyes. She said, for all the room to hear, “I can see you have had the good fortune to have Johanna the dressmaker create this for you. The fit is exactly the way she creates my gowns. Johanna does not take everyone. Clever to use such light linen in this heat; even though it has rained, the room is stifling today. Perhaps you embellished that frill yourself? Well, why not? A lady may be able to do the finest embroidery and not call it huswifery. Excellent. You have a brilliant hand.”
“I made it myself, Lady Spencer,” I admitted.
She mouthed the words “I know,” then whispered, “Johanna has been busy with a newborn. Nothing like the talk of ladies’ garments to bore my son to tears. I presumed it would leave us some privacy.”
Wallace and Serenity moved from the empty fireplace to a window. The others were conversing and not watching us. I lowered my face and my voice. “I have heard of a sea captain making inquiries of me. I hope it is my brother. Even so, I have enough money now, to return to Jamaica. If you know of any who travel to the Indies and might take a companion, I should be thankful for reference.”
She whispered, “I know nothing of any sea captain. But you’d leave your house? I suppose the work done was not pleasing to you?” She appeared distressed.
Tears brimmed and fell. I dabbed them away and sipped the claret. “I thank you sincerely for the work done, but I have the feeling it is still Goody Carnegie’s house. She wishes me to stay. She is lonely. I—I do want to go home, Lady Spencer. My one wish is to see my mother. To touch her hand one more time. To lean my head upon her bosom to beg her forgiveness for it having taken so very long for her youngest child to return.”
Lady Spencer’s eyes filled also. She stared at the fireplace where Wallace had been, proud and spoiled. “When my youngest child leaves this house, I feel certain he will never return to it.”
“Is it ever thus with children? A mother cannot know if they love her until they are grown?” I thought of Patience, gone to a life that seemed to me a horror. What would Ma think of her actions when she heard?
“It is. Let that be a lesson to you. Once they begin to walk, they are no longer your babes but little men and women placed upon the earth to seek their own means.”
“Mother?” Wallace called from across the room. “Shall we have more wine, or will we be having another for supper? I will send word to the cook.”
I stood. “Let me not intrude on your happy celebration further. I bid you all a good day.”
“Call anytime,” Lady Spencer said. “And do have one of your servants send word when I may be received by you. I shall inquire for you about the other matter.”
I knew that she was aware I had no servants. I supposed she said that to make me seem elevated before Wallace and Serenity. “Lady Spencer, Mistress Roberts. Serenity. America. Portia.” I waited until I was nearly at the door, Oswald’s hand upon the pull, to say, “What was it you were to plant, Wallace? Oh, yes, some vegetable?”
He appeared stung. “Tobacco.”
“Tobacco. Very well. Best wishes for your marriage. May it be ever so long,” I said, with a face as near to Oswald’s demeanor as I could manage.
Jacob and Cullah waited on the street; Cullah sat upon a stand meant to allow gentlemen to alight their horses more easily. One of his large boots lay before him, and on that foot he pulled a new stocking and a finer boot made of soft leather. “Ah, they almost fit,” he said. “With a little lint in the toe, it will be fine.”
“Good trade, son. Ah, you’re found out. Miss Talbot, good day. And did they give you good table?”
I shook my head. “Naught but a single glass of wine.”
Cullah said, “You should have come with us to the kitchen. We had such a repast that we may never need to eat again.”
“Ah, you’re always hungry, boy. Put away them things and give the missy s
omething to eat. That’s the good of going in the kitchen door. A few kind words to a cook and we’ve got plenty in the kit for the road.”
“I have a pie here. I think it is beef,” Cullah said.
“I cannot eat on the street.”
“Too proud?” Cullah asked.
“Proud enough not to be branded a lout for bad manners in public. You yourself ate at table, not on the street like a vagabond,” I said. We found a bench under a tree. Once I had half the pie and gave the rest to Cullah, I moved my money to my pocket, put my dyes and bundles in Jacob’s pack, and we started for the house in Lexington. That house. That place where I slept and cooked and wove cloth. Where I waited for my brother. Waited for calm seas. Waited for these cocky woodsmen to finish their noisy labor and leave me in peace. August was coming, that was the one happiness among all the thorns left in my soul by Wallace Spencer. My heart was full and my feet felt heavy with the weight of it.
The road was not much used, and we found long miles without another soul, so Cullah sang. He tried to teach me some of the words to his sad song. After one particularly bad try, he took my hand in his, faced me, and said, “Watch what I am saying.”
“Could you not write it down?”
“I never learned. Just pay attention; if you can learn French you can do this.” He said the words slowly. I repeated them, then more quickly, then with the melody. Suddenly I realized I had heard some of the syllables before, in the chants and charms Goody Carnegie used for every occasion. We sang it again and again, until I had it. He did not let go of my hand. It was only at my door that I realized we had strolled hand in hand and arm in arm like lovers most of the way. Cullah’s father had followed two steps behind, neither speaking nor slowing. I took my hand away, blushing.