“Of course,” Goody said, “there is a hole or two in the roof. You’ll need a thatcher.”
I strained to look through the doorway to see anything of a house before me, feeling that she was so unhinged she may have seen this as a palace, indeed. The small square of stone was built into the side of the hill, using the granite outcropping as part of the wall on one side. It was stuffed with rubble, old furnishings, rags, nests, and the smell of various kinds of vermin. I backed out, and as I touched the door it fell from its one remaining hinge, stirring up a cloud of leaves and dust within.
I held the doorjamb and my heart gave a great thump. Over the center of the doorway above my hand, an icon was affixed to the frame. It was a horseshoe, hammered narrow, small enough to fit a young colt. Cast in iron and forged atop it, a spider. Its legs held the sides of the horseshoe, its head pointed down at the open doorway. “It is the sign of a weaver,” I whispered to no one in particular, perhaps to the spider itself. Had I gone mad, too, just from being near Goody Carnegie? Had I caught her bafflement as I had once caught smallpox?
“It is, indeed,” she said, and began humming. “I am glad that remains. Belonged to my great-gran, back in the Highlands afore they come. She brought it here. Fairies won’t cross iron, you know. There should be something at each window, though that is the only door. Yes, this house shall be yours, dearie. Oh, it is grand, is it not?”
“Mine? Oh, Goody, I am not sure how to thank you. Although I suppose I should be going on now.”
“It is a good house. It once held much love and happiness. And where would you go? Back into the woods? You’d perish there. Into the town? Same result.”
As a slave, I had been housed, and in a manner, fed. As an Ursuline conscript, others chose what I ate, when I slept, and provided everything while I worked as a laborer. Here, in this place, I was free, but that meant I was to both decide and provide all my own means. “I see it is a good house,” I said, feeling condescension in my tone. “But the roof?”
Goody went on, as if she’d continued while I had been caught up in reverie. “There is a well. Comes in the side, there, by a stone way.” She led me into the building. It was deeper than it appeared from the front. Inside and outside, the walls were overgrown with weeds and ivy, the floor strewn with a few bits of left-behind furniture, a tub with a hole in the bottom, and an old bedstead. She went on talking. “Open this gate, see?” She pulled on a rusted hinge, which to my surprise opened. Water from a running stream had been somehow caught uphill and forced through a round spout of stone behind the gate. It emptied into a deep granite bowl that drained back through the wall to a trough outside, much clogged with debris and leaves. “Water’s good. A roof can be fix-ed.” She drew out the last word into two syllables, the way Ma did when she was tired.
I could not say if that were the reason my aspect of her seemed to change but at that moment it did. I felt I had been pulled toward her dreamy world of possibilities and must return to the real here and now. I said, “I have no way to eat or to make a living here. I must find a position where someone will pay me for work.”
“You have a little coin. I’ve seen it. You will buy flour and make bread. By and by you will walk to town and buy meat and pulse, and cook in the fireplace. Anything can be done if you have a will for it.” The woman eyed the rock walls as if they made a beautiful castle.
I said as gently as I could, “Yes, it can. But even then, that takes money.” I stifled a shudder. It would take time. And a roof. And knowledge of housekeeping, of which I had none. Oh, why had I been confined to the weaver’s barn rather than the kitchen? If I had done as I was told, and not stolen so much food, I might have learned so much.
“Buy yourself a spinning wheel, two goats, and some chickens, and work hard every day. Sell what you get in thread and eggs and cheese. It is an old truth that ‘thee must spend a crown to make a pound,’ and it will seem at first as if you are going backward in your plan. If I had any money—”
“Oh, no, I would not presume upon you in asking for it. Even if I sold all I had, it is not just the money I need. I need a companion willing to travel, too.”
She put her head down but turned her eyes up toward me with a childish look of apology. “I won’t go over the sea.”
“I understand. It is dangerous and difficult. I would not ask you to take such risk.”
“You’re a kind one, you are. Now, why don’t you live here, dearie? We shall be neighbors. This house is over a hundred years old and she’s had more than one roof before. I shall give you this house as long as you desire to live in her. If you leave and I’m still alive, you give it back to me. If I am dead, it is yours forever. I have no children, no niece or nephew. Use the money you have to get what you need to make your living and bake your bread. In the fall we’ll press cider, and make beer, and put aside roots.”
Fall? I should not be there that long, I vowed. Fall was the time of stormy seas. It was already mid-June. I would only stay as long as it took to get home. At that moment, four large pigeons fluttered through the beams over our heads and landed on the dirt floor of the place. I said, “I think perhaps I should inquire about a position in town.”
At that moment she seized my arm and held it fast. “I was trying not to tell you this, Miss Talbot. You will find no position in this town or any nearby. Talk from the Roberts family is that you caused them rack and ruin, killed the old man, stole the swain from the daughter, poisoned the dog, and spat in the eyes of the old woman as you left.”
“I never!”
“You best see what you can do about living until you can make your money. You have no choice except the old one that has been the choice of ruined women for all time.”
“Prostituée? Oh, la. I would rather perish.”
“Folks will be rude to you. But you show them you are none of that other.”
“Why do you believe in me?”
She chuckled and winked at me. “I know who you are. I saw who you was at that funeral, saying ‘morning’ to me with no care for eyes upon you. I have no one left in this world. No one speaks to me as I expect they will do to you, but I have this house and all that land there, back to those trees. Forty-two acres in this tract and another five full of bog berries, by the place I am now. This used to be a fine farm; my grandfather’s and his father’s, worked out of the woods with his own hands. That house I live in is on it still, but I had to live where there weren’t so many ghosts.”
“This is so kind of you. I cannot pay you for it. I have done nothing to deserve it.”
“You have done enough. I have reasons for doing this. We’ll write the deed so I may stay in my house until I die. It is a good and kind thing you do for me, to take it. Please take it. I beg you. I will only stay until I die.”
I could do naught but follow her, for without another word she pressed me on the path toward town. We walked to the town center and to the magistrate’s office. There Goody Carnegie signed away her family farm to me with the contingency she had before named, that I stay until she died or turn it back to her. The man was perturbed at her. Whether he disliked her in general or me in particular, or the plan of hers that caused him some trouble, I could not say. It took three hours, by the time he got done looking this up and consulting some of the same men who had studied my answers when I first arrived. All had to see the papers and read what was writ there before I was granted the privilege to do the same. When I had the papers and deed in my hand, I looked them over. Goody Carnegie was saying something about my putting these in a safe place when my eyes caught the words “four hundred and twenty” before the word “acres.”
I whispered, “Goody, this is a mistake. Look at this paper.”
“Hush now, my dearie. Cush-na, by baby. Be only quiet before the magistrates.”
I raised my brows, and turned to the men. “Is this correct, sirs?”
“It is,” one answered me.
His answer did not bring me comfort. I felt I was being
ensnared in some trap. Yet, by that time I knew how to get to Boston, so I stilled my hands from shaking, holding the papers. “Good day, sirs,” I said. Then I stopped at the door and added, to smooth my way in the future, “And God keep you all and yours. Thank you for attending us today.” I should have said more hearty thanks to this daft old woman, I told myself as we walked the road in silence. As a gift it was as perplexing as it was generous, for I knew not how I should live in a roofless stone shed full of rats and pigeons and the stray catamount or bear. Nor did I believe that anything so enormous came without obligation. There was also her vow that the place was haunted and her own stormy jaunting through the woods to contend with. I was not sure I had the heart for it. It was, however, a place to be until I knew of a better place to be. “Goody?” I asked as we ambled back down the path toward her house. “Why was he so hesitant to make the changes to your deed that you asked? Are the men of this town so full of hatred for me?”
“Ach, no. It’s not me they mean to harm, neither. It is my land that raises their ire. They want it, you see. If I should die without an heir, it will belong to the town. They could either apportion it amongst themselves or set something upon it, such as a school or a community farm. It is good land. High and flat, already cleared for the most part. A stream that flows year round. You have woods, too. This is enough for today. I am so tired. So very tired.” She opened the door to her house. “Eat with me, lass.”
“Shall I help you with bread?” While I sliced bread she had made, she cut chunks of cheese, which she had also made, and I admired the knowledge she contained.
Goody poured cider, sniffed it, and said, “Gone hard. ’Tis twice as good.”
I hesitated a moment before the food, thankful for the simple grace of it, thankful to know this most peculiar woman. “May I ask you a question, friend?”
“Aye,” she said, smacking her lips after a long draught of cider. “Anything, friend. Long as you do not ask to sleep here.”
“I do not question your wonderful gift to me of a house and land. You said it was forty acres, yet the deed given to me lists four hundred and twenty. The other five you said is in truth fifty. I would have begged you for but a place to lay my head. Why mislead the amount yet make so generous a gift?”
She smiled and turned her eyes to the cheese before her, pushing it on her plate with one finger until it made a complete circuit of the cracked old dish. “To watch your eyes. I saw no greed. No grasping. I saw you were but stunned and perhaps unbelieving. If evil led your thoughts, I could have changed my mind with no more word than that I was yet mad when I said it.”
Goodwife Carnegie intended that I sleep in my new “house” yet I could not. The house was home to many creatures with which I had no intention of sharing my bed. I slept that night under the great tree by the door of the stone house, placing boughs for shelter and a hiding place. I vowed I would sleep as the Indians had made me do, glad the night was warm, glad I smelled no bears. Only in the morning light did I marvel to myself that I had slept deeply, unafraid, unbothered by dream or squirrel.
My breakfast was an apple Goody had sent with me when I left her home. My one complaint was that it was too small. I started in with the old broom handle, pulling back vines and rubbish, dragging everything out of doors where I could sort through it to see if there was aught that might be of use. In the corner by the old bedstead, I found a rotted pair of boots. I got to the front corner and took away a nasty vine full of thorns that had grown over a rotted woven blanket, which seemed to have been stitched with padding in it, just as Ma had made the petticoat. When I moved it, a rat darted at my ankles, clawed at my skirt a moment, and I shrieked in terror that the thing would climb my clothing. It tangled one foot in my stocking as it struggled to get away, and I swung the broomstick at it. The rat ran from me and out the door into the light as I hit my anklebone with the stick. Grimacing, I used the stick to raise the blanket.
A spinning wheel.
I pushed away dust and leaves, dragged the thing to the center of the room, and pressed the pedal. It gave an awful groan and the leather strap fell away. I pulled it into the light. The thing was old, painted black, decorated with delicate lines of red with tiny green leaves. All was sound except for the spindle, which some animal had gnawed, yet it still went into its place, still could hold wool. A spindle could be gotten. No doubt Goody must have forgotten and would want it. I sighed, for far more than the land she’d tempted me with, this was something I knew I could use to my advantage. Later, she helped me replace the leather strip that moved the wheel, and clapped her hands when I pushed the pedal. This was not my home, I repeated with each step.
The next day Goody and I started at sunup and walked all the way to Boston. We arrived when the sun was well overhead and the day had become warm and misty as a baker’s kitchen, with a threat of impending rain. We found a jeweler. I spent many minutes eyeing his stock, memorizing his prices and wondering what he might give for what I had brought. I sold three more gold rings for ten pounds and seven. One of the brooches from Patey’s apron was one I remembered Ma wearing. A sapphire, as crystal blue as a Jamaican lagoon, surrounded with gold and small clear stones that might be diamonds. I would not part with it. The other brooch meant nothing at all to me, so that I sold for another sovereign. Altogether, I had enough to get a passage home for two people, if I could find another ship sailing there, another captain willing to take passengers, and a person willing to travel with me as an escort.
I persuaded Goody to go with me to the harbormaster’s offices where I had left notes for August. In one of them, the paper was missing. I asked a man there if someone had taken it, and he shrugged as if I were no more than a squawking gull.
Goody said to me, “You put them notes there? You writ them in your hand?”
“Yes.”
“Then we need more notes. We need to get a woodsman and a thatcher.”
“I need to think,” I said. She had granted me a miserable hovel in which to live, but I did not want to spend my few coins to live there. I had no kettle, no cup, not a knife or a trencher. No bed but pine boughs. I rubbed my head, not because it pained me but just to close my eyes from the sight of her for a moment. I also needed to believe that perhaps my brother had taken the note.
Goody Carnegie said, “Oh, let us have some cider and a bite. We’ll find a nice place and share some victuals, you and I, and talk of all that you must do. I brought bread and cheese.” We bought a flagon of ale, rather than cider, and it was fair stuff for I liked it better than some I had tasted before.
She gulped down the ale and smacked her lips. “Ah, look at them all. Staring at me as if I was the devil himself.”
I looked about the room. “I am sure we are not noticed here,” I said.
“They’re lookin’. I feel it. Lookin’ under their eyes, down their noses, up their sleeves. Ha.”
A shudder of desperation came over me. If she were to appear to be drunk in public the innkeeper would toss us on the street like tinkers. I had to turn her speech to something other. “Please tell me what it was you meant to say earlier. You said you would tell me ‘what to do.’”
“I’ll whisper so’s they can’t hear us, dearie. Now. You got a place to live and you’ll come to me and learn some to cook if you don’t know. What can you make?”
I thought. “Posset. Hasty pudding. Boiled chicken. Mixed eggs. Roasted goat.”
“Ah? I love goat. Now. With what could you earn your bread?”
“Spinning, of course. Sewing. Embroidery. But any woman does that. Weaving.”
“Weaving and spinning they do, also. But not fine. Can you do it fine?”
“Yes.” I did not want to do that, nor to spend my precious coins for a wheel or loom. I wanted never to touch another wheel or loom.
As the ale affected her, her light accent deepened into a brogue. “There’s a look on your face, dearie. What would you do, lass, if you spent all you had to get there and dinna find w
hat you were searching for? Even if you did not return here, how would you live? Do you think the only thing you must do is arrive, and someone will take care of ye?”
“My mother.”
“Aw. I tell you, that is not enough. You ken yourself she is not at the plantation. She may well be somewhere, earning a living or kept at another fine house, but you cannot assume it will be so for you. You must ha’e more than your passage. You must ha’e a boon. A way to preserve to yourself a life o’ yours. A means to go on if all comes to fail. That’s where a woman falls. That Mistress Roberts, what could she ’a done if she had a boon put by? Buy up her own house and not be turned out, that’s what. Give yourself the time to put by more and enough to go on, so that you are not put out. Where would I be if not for that? A woman is a fool that lives from penny to farthing and n’er looks to the possibility of loss.”
“Wallace told me when it came to business to mind my tatting.”
“Ah. A flapjack for his tatting!”
People did turn then, staring at the source of their disturbance. I whispered, to pull her closer by having to lean in to listen to me. “Is it then ladylike for a woman to earn money? I trow my pa swore to me I should never earn a ha’penny.”
“Wherefrom are you? Did you never struggle to survive? Did you unhinge your wits, and let the wind blow you where it lists? No. You made up your mind to go on. I’m telling you. A woman’s business is business. Think about what you’ll do if all your plan to go home comes to naught. I have given you this place because my own bairny cannot have it. The Crown may tax it out from under you. If you don’t think of these things you will be on the street a vagabond, a whore, a fortune-teller, or drowned for a witch if you make your means by aught else. Even if she marries, a woman must know of thrift and house. Now, tell me, what would you do to keep yourself?”