“We might have gotten to it without her knowing.”
Hannah shook her head. “You can’t do magic on a thing that doesn’t belong to you, not without the owner’s say-so. But you heard her.” She had to pause to fill her shallow lungs, and when she spoke again, it was Mrs. Hanson’s voice that came out. “‘If I had your gift, I’d live nice as a queen.’”
Judith chuckled. “We’re quite lucky you chose the life of a poor mill girl. Others may have thought up the strike, but it’s because of you we’ll win.”
Phlegm choked her before she could reply, and Hannah had to sit up to cough into the crook of her elbow; Judith rose along with her, thumping her back.
When she finally had her lungs again: “I don’t know. We’re only thirty in this house.”
“Operatives in every mill have already agreed to join, and more will soon.” With every word, Judith seemed more certain.
“Lydia was difficult. Many of the others will be worse—the pious ones, and the skeptical.”
“Lydia is always difficult. When the others see us marching, we’ll have their respect and soon enough their trust.”
Hannah marveled anew at the surety. Many times she had closed her eyes to See Judith’s soul ablaze, like some fiery star come down from its sphere to set them all alight. And when Hannah crawled beneath the quilts at the end of a working day, her weary joints unbuckled beside the warm solidity of Judith Whittier. “I would have left months and months ago, if you hadn’t come to Lowell—” She had to stop once more for coughing. “It mustn’t go on, the way that it’s going,” Hannah finished, resting her head at last against the pillow. The allure of freedom—an income and a chance to better their station—drew girls from all corners of New England to the mills. But every season, they worked longer and faster, had to tend more looms to make the same wages, and to obey heavier rules—they were becoming less free, not more.
“It won’t go on,” said Judith, using her fingers to comb Hannah’s curls out of the way before she settled next to her.
Beyond the boardinghouses, the factories rang five o’clock: the working day had begun! Hannah felt a thrill of power in her own belly, for once, to ignore their summons, while her co-conspirator spat in triumph at the rafters.
“Our grandfathers didn’t shed blood at Bunker Hill so we could be slaves to a bell!”
Unwitting, Judith’s words conjured a memory in Hannah.
“Are you well?” Judith asked, for she must have felt the Seer go stiff as a plank.
“No. I am remembering . . .” The vision danced in Hannah’s mind’s eye—a creature of wings and teeth and scales—coiling about a man’s shoulders as he stood upon the auction block. The much-younger Hannah of the memory screamed and wept, as each blink showed her the demon worming its way into the poor soul’s chest, suckling at his heart’s blood.
Between them, Judith’s pinky, ringed in their plaited hair, hooked Hannah’s matching finger. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“I can but—” Their spellcraft would not suffer Hannah to lie to Judith; if the other girl demanded to know, she must tell.
“You do not want to?”
“No,” said Hannah, limbs softening with relief. “I’d much rather forget that vision than describe it.” She rolled to her side, breaking the momentary link of their fingers. “Anyhow”—she resolved to turn distress into jesting—“you never said who you are in love with.”
Judith gasped and snatched the coverlet all to herself. “You witch! NO ONE!”
3: The Boott Palace
MR. BOOTT’S HOUSE STOOD in the center of Lowell. The façade was tall and broad, with a porch of Ionic columns in the style of the ancient Greeks, lawns and gardens spread out like palace grounds.
And why oughtn’t Kirk Boott have a home as stately as his employers’ in Boston? He embodied their authority in Lowell, carrying their orders to every person from the overseers to the youngest bobbin girl. The wishes of the Boston gentlemen would have no meaning whatsoever, except that Mr. Boott, from his starched collar to the golden buckles on his shoes, to his indeed palatial home, conveyed the owners’ tangible wealth and power.
Moreover, Mr. Boott was a godly man, who cared for the town and its mills and its young female operatives as much as any pastor for his flock. He’d provided promenades and parks for their amusement, clean homes for their safety, and firm rules and regulations for the care of their souls. What other factory posted exhortations against drinking and gambling? Which other employer not only provided beds to his workers but told them clearly when to be in (and out of) those beds? What other town could boast five thousand unmarried young women and not one case of bastardry?
Yet here in his library sat another overseer, telling another tale of mutiny.
“Third day in a row,” said Mr. Curtis, overseer of the Merrimack Corporation. “Third in a row they do not come!” His was a thin face, somewhat overly endowed with crooked nose, that did nothing to hide his tempers.
“Certainly it isn’t every girl,” said Mr. Boott, hoping a calm demeanor might prevent his visitor from upsetting the tea service.
“Today I have enough weavers for one floor only! And not enough spinners to keep them in thread.”
Mr. Boott noted as much in his ledger. “They can’t stay out forever. They require wages for their room and board.”
Curtis’s singular nostrils flared. “You don’t know women, do you? They’ll last for weeks on spite alone.” He slapped the desk like an impertinent schoolboy, which caused Mr. Boott’s pen to splutter.
A frown creased the agent’s face. With his powers of empathy, it was no great exertion to imagine many a man (or woman) chafed under Curtis’s supervision. “Let it not be said we are cruel masters,” he said, coming to a decision. “Give the operatives who’ve stayed on an extra nickel this week. I’ll put it out that any who return at once will get the same.”
The overseer scowled. “Better to drag the rebels back in by their hair.”
“To what purpose?” Mr. Boott blotted his ledger. “Earning even more spite?”
“At least you ought to make an example of the ringleaders. I could point to a few.”
“I am sure you could. But this isn’t the old world, and our operatives aren’t serfs to be whipped and transported.”
The maid interrupted to announce visitors at the front door. None too disappointed to leave this meeting, Mr. Boott rose to go and see. A dozen mill girls were standing between the Greek columns.
“Mr. Boott, we are so pleased to find you at home,” said a short, sturdy child of fifteen or sixteen.
“Good morning.” Something about the girls’ appearance disquieted Mr. Boott, beyond the obvious fact that they were on his porch instead of in the factories. “Who might I have the honor of addressing?” His first glance had been wrong: there were more than a dozen of them. Many more.
The one who had spoken smiled. “We represent the Factory Girls’ Union of Lowell.”
Union? So it was war, was it? The working men—women—against the capitalists; precisely the sort of thing he and his employers had designed Lowell to prevent.
Mr. Boott cleared his throat and chose to remain calm. “Oh? What’s your business with me?” It would not be the owners’ side that opened hostilities.
“You may have noticed that we have not returned to work since Friday. We are here to present you with our demands before we do so.”
Before he understood what was happening, she had pressed a leaf of paper into his hand. Mr. Boott was literate—quite so—and yet his mind could not make meaning of the runes it found on that page. At most, it snatched out words he recognized. Clocks . . . boardinghouses . . . ventilation . . . health . . . females . . . equal.
“None of us,” said the girl who had handed him the page, “will return to our posts until the corporations comply with these demands in good faith.”
Mr. Boott stared, wondering what sort of creature he was facing. Not a lovely
one to look at: her small eyes were black and round, and quashed together with a blunt nose at the central latitude of her face. A bonnet might have helped, but her head was bare, brown hair wild. Indeed, all the young female faces before him were framed with free-flowing locks, from the freckle-faced girl with flaxen hair to the dusky beauty with lips like a gem. Each one wore an armband of the most curious variegated cloth. It wasn’t cotton.
The skin at the back of Mr. Boott’s neck prickled.
“My dear young woman,” he began, composing his features carefully into a smile. “Young women,” he added, acknowledging the full crowd. “Clearly, you have considered your lot and noticed many arenas for improvement. I understand. But even the simplest of alterations cannot be accomplished in the space of a day.”
The black-eyed leader cocked her head. “We’ll wait.”
Kirk Boott, of course, was a Christian and an educated man—a man in full mastery of his base animal nature. And yet, when she held her face at that angle, every bit of him, from the marrow of his bones to the tip of his eyelashes, wanted nothing more than to shatter that arrogant smirk against the back of his hand.
Instead, he swallowed and patiently, as if speaking to his own adorable but wayward progeny, explained to the young women that they worked for a modern concern, a species which required continuous production to survive among its rivals. “I promise you,” he finally said, “the Boston gentlemen will get a full account of your demands. But no change will be possible unless you return to work. Any girl”—he redoubled his tolerant smile—“who does so immediately will receive an additional nickel in her pocket at the end of the week.”
That quieted the little swarm.
“A nickel?” asked the stout little leader.
“Yes,” he replied, pleased that he had chosen this gentle, generous form of persuasion. “This week, and next, until the end of your contracts.”
“You raised our board by twenty-five cents last week.”
Mr. Boott’s mouth opened but he had no reply.
The girl shook her head. “We are a union now. Tell your masters.” She nodded at the paper in his hands and then gave some signal to her sisters. The crowd turned about and marched away, militaristic precision in their steps.
Mr. Boott shut the door before they were out of sight. He stretched out an arm to the lintel, supporting himself while his limbs took to trembling.
“Well, did the carrot move the mules?”
Mr. Boott lifted his head. Curtis stood watching him, those prodigious nostrils flaring with the answer he must already know.
“This impertinence is uncanny.”
“That’s what comes of giving women a free rein. Wages spoil them—soon as they have money in hand, they get to think they’re people-in-the-world and they want to say what’s so. I’ve seen it even in some men. Better ship this lot back to the farms and let your Boston nabobs start over.”
Mr. Boott grimaced, remembering who was the superior man. Curtis was a blunt instrument—useful in the appropriate moment but hopeless in most others. Instead of listening to the overseer further, Mr. Boott thought about the bands of strange cloth wound about the girls’ arms, and their hair flowing wild over their shoulders. He thought of the violent temptation that had reared up inside him, to strike their leader.
Might that not be his soul rebelling against the presence of something foul and evil?
Mr. Boott crossed himself, and then thought better of it. Witchcraft? No. There hadn’t been a witch in New England for two hundred years. Besides, what worker would go so far? This wasn’t Lancashire; this was Massachusetts. And yet . . .
These girls were so very defiant.
Mr. Boott crossed himself again.
4: The Advertisement
WORD OF THE BATTLE at the Boott Palace spread from boardinghouse to boardinghouse and from factory to factory, whispered from one worker to another. So too went word of the Union’s demands. At all hours, a knock might come at Mrs. Hanson’s door, to reveal another girl on the step, her cheeks pink with excitement.
“I’m looking for the Factory Girls’ Union,” she would say, as if the words themselves were an incantation, and she would be invited inside by Lucy or Georgie or Sarah Hemingway, whichever might be on guard duty. A girl might come eagerly with her hair undone, carrying fistfuls more from the operatives in her weaving room. Or she might arrive skeptically, and then Judith was summoned, always with Hannah, who watched silently through closed eyes while Judith explained that the Union was both a cover of hardiest sailcloth and flimsiest gauze.
“We are the thread, all of us together,” Judith said. “If one of us snaps, the whole bolt might unravel. If we hold fast, the corporations have nothing but empty factories.”
If the girl nodded and agreed—and if Hannah did the same—then the house woke again, rose to the attic like the steam off Mrs. Hanson’s cook pots, and wove once more, drawing new threads into the Factory Girls’ Union of Lowell.
By week’s end, there were fewer weavers inside the mills than out. Though many had not yet pledged to the Union, only the least liked and most craven operatives answered the mill bells’ call at half past four, and when they did, and the overseers counted their numbers, they only sent them away to the dormitories again. The machines could not run with so few.
* * *
On the twelfth day of the strike, Florry arrived just in time for supper, to make her daily report. “The men in the Concord Mills are still with us.” She had volunteered herself ambassador because she had ten brothers, and knew how to speak so a man would hear.
“That’s a piece of luck,” Lydia marveled. While the Factory Girls’ Union stayed out, the male hands and dyers had no work either.
“It isn’t luck, it’s Florry’s eloquence and the men’s good sense to listen,” said Judith.
“Here, come and get it!” Mrs. Hanson bellowed from the end of the long trestle table, as she let a steaming pot clatter onto the surface.
“Gruel again?” asked Sarah Payne, peering inside with disappointment.
“How else can I keep feeding you? Not to mention myself . . .”
“We’re only grateful, Mrs. H,” said Lucy, wrapping her arms about the matron and forcing a kiss on her cheek. “Girls, think! We could all be homeless by now.” The mill owners had stopped payments to the boardinghouse keepers, and some of the matrons had taken retribution against their charges, locking out tenants and tossing their belongings into the street.
“Humph,” grunted Mrs. Hanson as she ladled out supper to the nearest of her charges. “I ought to have given the boot to the whole lot of you.”
“There’s one Boott in particular I wish you could give us,” said Judith, taking one bowl for herself and one for Hannah. “I’d hang him by his toes in the root cellar until he turned on his masters.”
“Stay clear of him. If he’s smart, he already suspects every one of you of consorting with the Devil. How long before you’re denounced and arrested?”
“He wants us in the mills,” said Judith, sliding away from the matron, “not in jail.” She held the two bowls high to avoid clumsy elbows and wrists.
“A few hangings might convince the rest to go back,” Mrs. Hanson called after.
“Hangings?” gasped Sarah Hemingway.
Lucy laughed. “She’s only trying to frighten us.” If Mrs. Hanson voiced any disagreement, it was lost in the clattering of spoons and the chatter of other boarders.
“What proof could they have?” Judith squeezed past the long queue of girls still awaiting their portion. Hannah sat quietly, closest the parlor door and the staircase, and accepted the bowl Judith passed her across the table. “Unless Mrs. H is planning to testify.”
“She wouldn’t,” said Lucy, who had slid along the opposite wall to sit at Hannah’s right. “Too soft-hearted.”
“Besides,” Judith waved one hand while she dug into her gruel as if it were the finest meal she’d ever eaten, “arresting me wouldn’t en
d the strike. Someone else would take the lead.”
“Who did you have in mind?” lovely Lydia wanted to know, claiming the next span of bench beside Judith.
Judith shrugged with her mouth full. “Maybe Amy from the Hamilton Mills, or that Vermont girl Mary Paul. She’s clever with a speech.”
Lydia scowled across the table at Lucy, who grinned and lifted one shoulder.
“There have been more evictions?” Hannah asked, wheezing.
“Two more houses on Prescott Street,” little Abigail North confirmed.
“It won’t be for long,” said Judith. “The owners must be ready to crack.”
“You’re their confidante now, are you?” asked Lydia, pursing her rosebud mouth.
“Between the late freeze and the strike, they haven’t seen a profit in months,” Judith replied, without concern. “What else matters to a capitalist?”
Under the table, Hannah’s foot nudged her. “We ought to see to the evicted girls. Whether they need help with their things, or—”
“It’s done,” said Lydia. “Some found rooms with the Universalists, and the rest have gone to Mrs. Warrington’s boardinghouse.”
With that settled, each of the young militants turned full attention to her food, tasteless as it was. Mrs. Hanson retired to the kitchen, where she took her tea nightly in relative peace.
As they ate, Laura Cate came around with the post, distributing letters and newspaper subscriptions. Most of the news came from home, as often about the doings of younger siblings and the family cow as about the strike. Georgie Hempstead gasped when she saw inside her letter, then promptly stood up, went to Mrs. Hanson, and deposited several jingling coins in the matron’s palm.
“From my people,” said Georgie, blushing. “They said it was for the strike.”
“How did they manage?” others wanted to know, and “How much?”
Mrs. Hanson’s fist tightened around the coins, hiding them from view. But she said to Georgie, “Your family meant this for you. Are you sure?”
“Sure as sure. It’s for all of us.”
The Factory Witches of Lowell Page 2