“Tie! Tie!” he ordered.
The next girl shouted something incomprehensible, and the first yelped and pulled her hands back, sparing herself a nasty bruise at least as the shuttle came darting across. Curtis did not escape injury, as the power belt on the loom beside him snapped, lashing him across the temple.
Curtis’s man, meanwhile, moved desperately up and down the rows, throwing the brake at one machine after another as more threads broke, belts slipped, and heddles jammed against one another, creating an uncomfortable, smoky friction as they continued striving. The braver and more industrious girls learned by example and threw the braking levers themselves.
Curtis bellowed with rage, clutching at his wounded head. His man gave up on singling out the offending machines and ran for the front of the room. Lifting the overseer’s crook once more, he decoupled the entire fleet from the river’s might.
At last the room quieted. Mr. Boott clutched his heart.
Above him, the power belt continued to spin as if nothing extraordinary had happened. Below, bobbins lay over the floor. The girls who had attempted to follow Curtis’s instructions to repair the broken threads were tangled up, witless kittens in yarn.
At the nearest machine, the snow-white warp hung loose from the harnesses like a cobweb in a doorframe. Beside it cowered a blond maiden, a stranger to Lowell, likely on her very first day of paid work.
She wept like she’d seen the Devil himself.
12: Hannah’s Genius
JUDITH PRESSED HER PALMS to Hannah’s cheeks as she pulled away, lacking breath more than enthusiasm for the cause. The wellspring inside her had become a geyser; she wanted to hug and kiss, to invade with a singularity of purpose she was accustomed to feeling only from righteous indignation.
For her part, the Seer’s face was pale as Mrs. Hanson’s good china, yet the kisses and the witchcraft they were weaving together seemed to have put color in her cheeks and her lips.
“Who are you in love with, Judith?”
“You witch,” Judith gasped, tears springing again, “you know full well!”
Hannah smiled at Judith and bit her bottom lip in the most irresistible ways. And she collapsed.
Judith shouted and strove to catch her beloved, only managing to wrestle Hannah into a slump against her shoulder, while she pressed her hip into Mr. Boott’s desk for leverage. “Hannah!” Judith patted her pale cheek, and the Seer’s eyelids fluttered, but for the rest, she was insensible.
“Wait, hold her still,” Mrs. Hanson ordered sharply, taking time to blow out the candles before letting Judith cross the chalk circle or entering herself. “Now, then.” She stepped forward and took Hannah’s face between her palms.
Judith panted anxiously. “Is she . . . ?” she asked, when she could not wait any longer.
“Don’t be foolish,” said Mrs. Hanson. “She’s only exhausted. But if she keeps on like this, forcing out magic when her fires are burning so low—”
“Her looms!” Judith interjected.
“What about them?”
“Hannah said that working in the mills, she could See her genius going into her looms; she said it was like watching her own breath sucked away! What if I could get it out again?”
Mrs. Hanson frowned. “Even if you can get her there before one or both of you are arrested, what spell will you invoke? I cannot tell you. I’m no—”
“But will you help me get her there?” Fortunately, Judith had never made any promise of honesty to Mrs. Hanson, because she certainly would not have liked to admit that she had no special plan or knowledge either.
The matron looked between the two of them, Hannah quite unhearing and Judith quite desperately listening, before she nodded. “Very well. But we’d best clear this mess first, or Mr. Boott really will see you both hanged. Bring the chalk and the candles.”
* * *
They moved slowly, for they had to hold Hannah up between them, one of her arms draped across Judith, the other over Mrs. Hanson’s elderly shoulders. They had only reached the top of the lane when they spotted Mr. Boott himself, at the head of a crowd. There were Curtis and other overseers, as to be expected, but also Reverend Miles of St. Anne’s and several of the boardinghouse keepers, and girls Judith was sure she had never seen before. Beside them were members of the Factory Girls’ Union, easy to spot with their flowing hair and their armbands. Were they marching with Mr. Boott now too?
No. A few of the men had mill girls by the arm or the hair, forcing them along, and the other Union girls were trying to reach their captured comrades. At once, Judith felt a distinctive tug, urging her to run and help, but Hannah’s weight held her to the spot.
Mr. Boott called out, “There they are, Reverend, the Devil’s brides!”
The reverend, leaning heavily on his walking stick, waved in their direction. “Is that Mrs. Hanson I see? Good lady, tell us the meaning of this?”
“They’ve bewitched the mills!” Mr. Boott interrupted. “The belts keep slipping, the rolls won’t wind, the looms miss every other pick!” He marched directly to Judith, his cravat askew, his jabbing finger stopping just short of her chest. “You did this!”
Judith spoke into the cravat, because his face was an ugly thing without his customary decorum. “I won’t be charged for a crime you cannot prove.”
“Hah! Cannot . . . ? And what of your friends expectorating all morning, what of the machines’ behavior, what of the threads snapping on the harnesses? Are we to believe these all coincidence? Reverend, you hear, you see—”
“Do you want to destroy Lowell, Mr. Boott?”
The question came from Lydia. With Abigail and Lucy alongside, she had fought her way to the front of the crowd, and now she addressed the agent herself, sleek black hair and rosebud lips as beguiling as ever.
“Careful, young lady. I’ll see these two flogged before the day is out; I won’t scruple to add a third.”
“If you ever want so much as a bolt of cloth out of Lowell again, you’ll sign and agree to our demands,” said Lydia, producing a fresh copy out of her pocket.
“What demands?”
“You’ve seen them,” said Abigail, who’d lost her cap somewhere, leaving her bald head exposed. “We are the Factory Girls’ Union of Lowell.”
“There’s hundreds of us,” added Eliza, of the Concord Mills, “and not a one will work until you and your masters agree.”
Mr. Boott wouldn’t have it. “We have already hired new operatives—”
“Who can’t use a single one of your machines. No one can, save us and those we choose to,” said Lydia.
It worked, then. Judith couldn’t have been sure until she heard it from one of her sisters’ mouths. “The spell worked,” she whispered to Hannah, who gave no sign she could hear.
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Boott. “I’ll hang these two if I have to and break their glamour.”
“Go ahead!” said Lucy—a bit too enthusiastically for Judith’s taste. “Flog them, hang them, drown them like rats. It won’t change the facts: we are the ones who poured our sweat and souls into your looms. We have rights to expect a little loyalty.”
“Reverend?” Mr. Boott tried desperately.
“Well, it isn’t—it doesn’t—it could be Satan’s work, but—”
“Satan’s work or not, you won’t free yourselves from the laborers of Lowell unless you raze the town and start again somewhere else. We’re in the mills and in the river, and we’ll get ours back again if it’s the last thing we do.”
Judith had never expected such a speech to leave Lydia’s mouth, of all people. Lucy clapped her on the back, but Abigail hadn’t moved, staring at Mr. Boott.
The agent snapped like dry thread.
His face turned from purple as a beet to white as cotton. Judith knew he must be imagining what he would have to tell his employers now, that all their machines and their industrial town were useless without the striking girls. Well, wasn’t that his job: conveying unpleasant messages to po
werful men?
“Now,” asked Lydia, wafting the paper before him, “are you ready to discuss our demands?”
Mr. Boott gave the merest of nods. Ever the gentleman, however, he offered Lydia his arm. “Shall we . . . shall we discuss it over tea?”
Judith hadn’t moved, nor had Hannah, nor Mrs. Hanson. As she passed with Mr. Boott, flanked by Abigail and Eliza now, Lydia caught Judith’s eye with a questioning look, to which Judith nodded. “Well done,” she mouthed.
The party had no sooner passed than the other girls of Mrs. Hanson’s house and Mr. Reed the engineer ran to Judith.
“What’s happened to her?” Lucy asked, while the kind man lifted Hannah.
“Please,” said Judith, “I need to get her to her looms.”
13: The Power Loom
MR. REED CARRIED THE SEER across the footbridge and through the gates of the Merrimack Mill. Judith walked quickly at his side, carrying the candles from Mr. Boott’s house. Someone had begun ringing the bells in the Concord Mills, and soon the Lawrence Mills were answering, and even the bells of St. Anne’s Church.
But the joyous clanging scarcely pierced Judith’s ears. “Which looms are hers?” she asked Lucy, who worked in the same weaving room on the fifth floor. The machines stood, for now, in silent rows, abandoned by the replacement weavers.
Lucy led them past her own station, where she’d pasted up pages of Miss Wheatley’s book to study while she worked, and showed them the four looms that Hannah had tended for untold hours.
“What about a doctor?” asked Florry, uneasy. “Surely, this is the worst place for her?”
“She needs her spirit back,” said Judith. “She’s spent more of it here than any other place.” She began making a circle, setting a candle down at each of the four looms and a final spot, where, “You can set her here, Mr. Reed,” she said.
The square-shouldered engineer hesitated, eying the chalk circle she’d drawn. “Is it true? Is this all witchcraft?”
Before Judith could answer, Mrs. Hanson interceded. “It is craft, yes. To save someone we love very much. Isn’t that the most Christian of acts?”
Finally, the man nodded and lay Hannah on the floor beside the fifth candle, crossing himself as soon as his hands were free.
Judith sighed and turned. “Sarah, would you?”
Sarah Payne nodded and began lighting the candles. Meanwhile, Judith stepped inside the circle, wondering what kind of incantation would spring to her lips. She’d never worked any craft without the Seer’s directions.
Metaphor and connection, Hannah had said. Spells were built on metaphor and connection.
“Looms,” Judith started, haltingly, “you know Hannah Pickering. With her hands, she’s strung your heddles. With her eyes, she’s minded your passes. With her fingers, she’s tied your broken threads. With her lips, she’s kissed your shuttle.”
The others stood on the outside of the circle, watching and listening silently. Waiting. Quite unlike herself, Judith felt abashed in the center of their attention as she extemporized. Hannah let out a sharp cough that stood out from her wheezing, and Judith shook herself. She could not be cowed by uncertainty while Hannah needed her. Besides, the ears of the looms would not be critical.
“Toiling here, in this mill, in her every breath,” she went on, “she gave up her youth to you. You drank in her soul, her genius.”
Hannah coughed louder, heaving. She curled onto her side toward Judith and hacked into the crease of her elbow. Instinct told Judith to go to her, to comfort her beloved while her lungs struggled, but the spell was incomplete.
“She fed you cotton thread and her very breath. What did you give her in return?” Judith asked, growing louder. “You rendered up cloth but not to her—your finest gift you reserved for masters you’ve never known.”
A startling sound—a groan—passed through the machines around them. Some of the girls reached for one another’s hands.
“She did bewitch the machines,” Florry whispered, as if she could never have believed it before.
“Shh,” said Mrs. Hanson.
Judith licked her lips. Hannah was coughing harder than ever. “All you gave to Hannah was your dusty breath,” Judith went on, raising her voice still higher.
It sounded as if all the looms were groaning now, in cascading echoes through the factory, though their gears remained still and the shuttles motionless.
Suddenly, Hannah pulled herself upright and sat at the fifth point of the circle. Air entered her lungs in long, ragged breaths between each cough.
“We need to get her out of here,” murmured Sarah Payne. “She needs fresh air.”
“You took her genius!” Judith accused, still louder, over Hannah’s coughing. Indeed, it seemed that Hannah would surely do some injury to herself, forcing her lungs to toil so ferociously. And yet she was upright—she was awake—she was alive.
“Judith,” Lucy tried, “I believe Sarah is right—”
“Wait,” said Mrs. Hanson. “Judith, keep going.”
“You took her genius!” Judith repeated, shouting now. The whole mill creaked and groaned like a storm-battered ship. Hannah’s brow was wet with sweat and her hair was crimson. “GIVE IT BACK!”
Hannah collapsed, bracing herself against the floor, one hand on either side of the candle, while she gave a fierce, wet cough that sent a shudder through her entire form. Below her, a fist-sized boll of cotton hit the floor. An instant later, the five candles were snuffed out together. All became silent and still.
Judith’s eyes went dark and she felt her knees buckle. She sank to the center of her circle. After a moment, she felt cool, soft hands on her hot ones. A lock of copper hair dropped into view as her vision came back.
“Hannah?” she breathed, looking up into the heart-shaped face. “Are you all right?”
In response, the older girl took a long, deep breath and exhaled slowly. She smelled of the river after a rainfall and blooming columbine. She smelled clean.
The others broke the circle, rushing in to embrace their comrades, but it did not matter. There was no further need of craft today.
* * *
It was the first of May, and the townspeople of Lowell and not a few of the old Chelmsford farmers gathered on the lawn of the Boott Palace, watching the former agent’s possessions make their way one by one from the house to the waiting wagon. It was the sole opportunity, for many, to marvel at the bronze candlesticks, the Japann’d tea service, the harpsichord, the heaps of silken garments trimmed in ermine and lace.
Among the onlookers stood a trio of gentlemen in high collars and starched cravats, mill owners come from Boston on the morning coach, to witness for themselves the departure of their former employee. Reportage of the mill girls’ strike was confused and contradictory, but abundantly clear was Boott’s innocence in the outcome. Nevertheless, neither Mr. Appleton of the Merrimack Corporation, nor the Lawrences of the eponymous mills, nor any of the absent owners could overlook a contract that bound them to a multiplying payroll, with absurd capital outlays in comfort and ventilation. An example must be made.
Around them, the people of Lowell carried on like revelers at a picnic, pointing and gossiping.
“Take heart, gentlemen,” Mr. Appleton whispered to his companions, “this anarchy will not last. Already my southern friends apply themselves to our problem.”
“Our problem,” replied Amos Lawrence, grinding his teeth, “and it ought to be our solution.”
“My brother means to say,” said Abbott Lawrence, taking a milder tone, “is that we train a different species of labor altogether in Massachusetts. Unless you mean to import slavery?” he added, with a sniff of distaste.
“Never fear. You may continue to play the abolitionist,” Mr. Appleton replied quietly, for Mr. Boott himself was emerging from the house, the blameless Mrs. Boott at his side, red-eyed below her bonnet. “Still, we might learn from the planters’ example.”
For the last time, the erstwhile age
nt turned the key in the lock and surrendered it to Mr. Appleton.
Alone among the onlookers, the trio of Boston gentlemen shook Boott’s hand and wished him well. Near the coach, someone struck up a song, and not a few of the farmers and townsfolk joined in, a new verse to the old tune:
“Up came a thunder from each and ev’ry mill part,
That clever old Boott shook and shuddered in heart,
and he ran from the factory girls and their art!”
Appleton turned to the Lawrences, proposing to resume their ad hoc conference. “Gentlemen,” he spoke, as the chorus of Ri-toot, ri-noot, ri-toot, ri-noot, ri-umpty, ri-tooten-a chased away the Bootts’ coach, “what do you know of conjuring?”
* * *
Meanwhile, into the late hours of the afternoon (but not, now, beyond six o’clock), the weavers tended their looms. On the sixth floor of the Merrimack Mill, Lydia managed five at once, matching Sarah Payne beside her; no easy feat, but between the two of them, they covered their own and the looms which belonged rightly to Judith.
“Damn!” Lydia shouted, throwing the brake on one machine, loud enough that Patience, from two rows over, inquired, “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Lydia clucked, examining the offending loom’s shuttle. One of Judith’s, of course—though the machines ran for Lydia, still they could be trying as their mistress. “Missed a pick. And I’ve run out of weft. Bobbin girl!”
At the summons, little Emelie Adams, now returned to Lowell with her sister after the strike’s satisfactory conclusion, came running with fresh thread.
“Are you going back to Mrs. H for dinner, or to the Acre again?” Patience called over from her looms to Lydia.
“Back to the Acre. And who’s coming with me? Someone’s got to show these newcomers how to twist a spell, or they’ll be no wiser than babes in arms when the next Boott arrives.” As she spoke, Lydia exchanged the empty bobbin for the full, not forgetting to caress the shuttle fondly as she did.
The Factory Witches of Lowell Page 7