Soon as I could, I sat beside Patience again. I put two biscuits in her hand. “They beat me at first,” I said. “But less now.”
“Mine do not,” she said. “Although they might if they knew my shame. I suppose they will soon enough.” She put an entire biscuit into her mouth, chewing it quickly.
I broke my biscuit and slipped half of it into my mouth. “I steal from them all the time. Stockings. Food. That is my shame. What shame have you?”
“We won’t talk of that now. Ressie, I cannot bear to think that they beat you.” She reached behind where no one could see and patted my back.
I ate the rest of the biscuit. “Are your people foolish? I think the very name Hasken must mean ‘daft’ in some other language.”
“No. They are genteel, churchy, Pa would have said. I warn you, never speak of saints or holidays. Ma taught us a mixture of Catholic from her childhood and some from long ago, from the Old Way. Some African.”
“Not a single crumb for Shortest Night. Anyway, everyone was ill with a fever. They cut off my hair.”
“Oh, poor thing,” she said, running her hands over my head. I closed my eyes, humming at the smoothness of her fingertips upon my brow. “It will grow. Keep your kerchief on and it does not show.” She took my hands in hers and said, “I so missed Pa breaking open the holiday cakes.”
“We shall go home, Patey.”
“Mary!”
“Yes, madam!” When we were not fetching things Patey and I sat side by side for long stretches without a single word, breathing the same air. I whispered, “If you and I don’t leave I will have to stay eight years.”
Patey looked on me with Ma’s eyes. “Unless a prince comes to pay your price.”
I did not want a prince. Certainly not one as bowlegged and bug-eyed as Lukas. Perhaps there were other young men in the town, comely ones, smart and gentle as our pa. I remembered Patience dreaming for her prince back in England. Perhaps I was old enough to dream of a prince, too, but not Lukas. “What if I pay my own price?” I asked. “My price was five pounds.”
She whispered, “What is the matter with your feet? You’re limping.”
“One shoe is too small. I change them from one foot to the other to let one foot rest.” I held forth the foot wearing Lonnie’s little crumpled leather bat of a shoe. Patience clucked her tongue and held up her feet. Her shoes were new and she had warm stockings of brown wool. I added, “I have stockings now. I stole them.”
The evening was gone too soon. Patience helped them on with their wraps and giant shoes, and I held the door as they trudged out. Patey stepped close to my side, brushing against me with her new crisp clothes. It was as close to a hug as we dared. No sooner had I pulled the door in place than it opened again. Lukas stood with Patience’s shoes in his hands. “Here,” he said, thrusting them at me. “My father will give you these and provide others for our servant. My sister died last fall and she can have hers.”
Oh, Patience! Her shoes! Though now she would go home in the most dreadful cold, other shoes awaited her there. Oh, how simple was this gift, and how valuable! I never imagined that one master might do such for another’s servant.
Mistress began bundling the girls up the stairs. Birgitta stood by the fire, watching me as Lukas closed the door. “Let’s see,” she said. Birgitta snatched the shoes from my hands and made as if to throw them into the fire.
“My—their girl gave them to me, seeing I had only one fit shoe.”
“This will just make some other way they can look down upon this family. Always with their noses in our business and in the air.”
“Please,” I said, “I could work so much faster if both feet had a good shoe.”
Birgitta turned them this way and that. She handed them to me. “I suppose you’ll be taller, too, and the clothes will fit better? Pah, little spider. Only let the mistress not see them. The daughters have naught so new or fine a pair between ’em. You’ll need a longer skirt for to hide them.” She said it almost as if accusing me of some crime.
“I might sew it all myself, if you would but guide me, Mother Birgitta.”
Her face brightened at that, brows lifting, almost a smile across her mouth. “On the morrow. I’m tired. You’ve much to do.” She lumbered to her cot and sat upon it. “I’ll just sit a few minutes, then I’ll bank up the fire,” she said. But within moments she slumped over onto the blankets and a rattling snore came from her.
I carried her candle to the table so I could see to clean up the cups and plates. By then the entire household had begun to snore. I heard an owl cry and a wolf howl in the distance as I cradled Patience’s shoes against my chest and crept up the stair to my little mat, so tired my ears had a strange sense of fullness and sound, like a hundred insects in my head. The wolf howled again, joined by a chorus of others. They sounded as if they were just under the window.
I thought about my sister and myself, all our travels, all our ways before then, and afterward being sold. I touched my skirt, feeling the petticoat stitching through the thin gown, the places Ma had sewn as if she knew I would live in such cold one day. My sister was not far away and not for long. Our owners were friends to each other and were going a-pioneering. Reverend would marry Rachael, a girl half his age. Lukas would travel with us wherever we were going. All of it made my heart warm and my face flush. I shook my head. He was probably drafty and dull-witted, too. I knew not what attracted me to him at first. My thoughts swirled like coddling posset and my heart ached for him.
When I emptied the morning pots, I put the broken, pinching shoe down the outhouse hole with the mess. After I finished cleaning the morning dishes, Birgitta offered me a bit of brown wool, quite plain, and guided me in the sewing of long side seams and gathering the waist at a band to make a skirt. I made my stitches as small and straight as I could manage. After a while she said, “You called me ‘Mother Birgitta’ the other day. I wouldn’t mind were you to call me that.”
I kept my eyes on my stitches. I had called her that with insincerity verging on disdain. I had also done it knowing the woman might be affected by it, and that it might soften my life until I could find a way to escape. Soft answers turn away wrath, Ma always said. “I shall, Mother Birgitta. I heard we are moving.”
“We start a new settlement in the west. Rachael will wed Reverend Johansen in a few weeks. Mayhap Christine shall marry Lukas.”
I nodded as if I were a wise woman consulted. “I think he should take Christine. She seems, most—inclined to marry.”
“Most natural, you mean. The other is touched in some way.”
I smiled. It was as if we shared a secret that bound us to each other, to agree to something as obvious as that Lonnie was not whole. When the skirt was done I believed by the look on her face that Birgitta felt proud of me wearing it.
When Mistress saw it, her face turned a dark scowl. I feared she would reach for the strop hanging by the chimney. “A waste, Birgitta, a sheer waste when that cloth could have made aught for the girls. And you! Mary, I do wonder but you’ve been growing faster than any of my daughters. Have you been stealing food?”
I feared lest the biscuits and the bowls of goat milk show in guilt on my face. I tried to make it as hard and blank as stone, like the pirate Aloysius nodding before Captain Hallcroft. I lowered my eyes. “I have a sturdy constitution and God’s good grace to thank for my health, Mistress,” I said with a curtsy. I kept my knees bent so that on arising I was not so tall. She said nothing but kept eyeing me so I added, “Perhaps, Mistress, the larger my stature the more work I can do.”
“You’ve been stealing food.”
“No, Mistress. I swear it.” I was getting used to swearing promises that were as hollow as Lonnie’s head.
She raised her hand as if to slap me and I cowered as she proclaimed, “No supper for you tonight.” I looked at Birgitta, wishing for a sign she would feed me. Birgitta was my protector, but not in everything.
After that, I nurtured my hatr
ed for them all while I stole more food. I took any morsels that I could tuck into a cuff or push up my sleeve, a bit of raw potato or a sliver of trimmed roast beef. I sucked on wheat grains as I had done on the pirate ship. When I milked goats, I took a hearty drink of the milk before I brought the bowl in the house. If I was going to hell anyway, I might as well go with a full stomach.
I hummed a tune and muttered words under my breath while I milked goats. It fit to sing, “Damn your eyes, Mistress Hasken, damn your eyes.” Was I a villain, then? No, I decided. When I returned to Ma I would put off this hate and thievery as I would put off these filthy clothes and pitch them in the ocean. In the meantime, I practiced the salty words and curses I had learned, every one of them aimed at one of the Haskens.
Once the snow quit falling, a few days of warm rain turned everything to a blight of mud. The rain stopped and the air cooled, but for a few days there was blue sky of the oddest, pale shade of blue I had ever seen. With the thaw, a stream flowed nearby, and Birgitta sent me to fetch water from it rather than hauling snow. We were going to wash the winter’s clothing, she said. I took two buckets and filled them half full as I had learned to do on the ship.
I made several trips, filling the cauldron as Birgitta stirred up the fire to heat the water. She added plants she had pulled and dried last summer, as if we were making dirty-clothes soup. Birgitta and I scrubbed dirty linens against boards and rocks, hung things on bushes, while I carried pail after pail of water and kept the fire burning.
“If you intend to wash your raiments,” she said to me under her breath, “do the underthings first. Then when they are dry you put them on and wash the outer. Pretty soon you’ll be all dressed again, and since Master isn’t at home, we’ll start early and be finished. Tomorrow we begin Miss Rachael’s wedding gown.”
I rushed up the stairs, so excited about a bath and clean clothing Ma would have laughed. I worried about cleaning my things with all that lay hidden in them, but the only thing in danger of being found was my pocket. I took the tiny casket from my pocket and burrowed it deep under the bearskin, wrapping it under three folds of the rug and piling everything so that it looked heaped. I smoothed the bearskin over it all and felt pleased at the result. I undressed and removed everything down to my skin, dressed myself again in the brown skirt and pelisse.
I ran and fetched water and was just returning with it when I saw Mistress emerge from the house and walk toward the washing. “Mary,” she called. “I want you to bring more wood. What’s this?” She held the corner of my quilted petticoat.
“’Twas made by my ma, Mistress. Before I was taken from my home.”
“These stitches are new. That looks like my thread.”
It was, of course, but I lied and smiled. “My gown lies there, Mistress. I pulled threads from it to sew the petticoat. The blue there,” I said as I pointed to it.
“This thread is mine.”
“I swear it is not, Mistress.” I bowed my head and curtsied again, and I made sure not to rise fully, keeping my feet well hidden beneath the brown skirt. “I never steal,” I said, shaking my head.
A female voice from inside the house shrieked as if someone had been injured. “Look at this! Look at this!” I heard. Had she found my dirty stockings? My hands went weak and I let go of the buckets. One tipped over on my shoe, flooding it with water.
“Pah!” Birgitta shouted. “Look at that, now!” And she raised her hand to strike me but lowered it without doing so.
Rachael came from the house with something in her hands clutched against her meager breasts, her face brighter than ever I had seen her, squealing with delight. She saw her mother and ran this way. “Mother, Mother! I couldn’t find my rug, the Persian rug you said was my dower, until I discovered that Mary had been sleeping on it, and this was hidden under it. And look what’s in it!” She held in her hands my mother’s gold-cornered wooden casket with the pieces of eight worth two pounds inside. Rachael took the six shillings in her hand and danced around, chanting, “It’s a dowry, a dowry!”
Mistress asked, “Where did you get this?” as she held out her hand.
Rachael placed the coins and the box into it. “Under my rug, Mother. Hidden by a thieving little servant girl.”
I pretended bravery. “That box is mine,” I said. “I will thank you to return it,” and I held out my hand as if expecting they would.
Mistress held the coins, dropped them into the box, and closed it, shaking it, listening to the satisfying rattle of money. She wheeled around and loomed over me, saying, “Where did it come from?” Mistress shook the casket at me. “Speak up, Mary. You never have a want of words. Let’s hear where you got this.”
“My mother gave it me,” I said, never taking my eyes off it. “When we were captured by Saracens. I have kept it in my pocket. It will help buy my price, when I can earn some other coin to go with it. I shall have it now, if you please.”
Mistress said, “In your pocket? All this time? I don’t believe you. Why did you not present it to us to keep for you if it was honest gain? No, you hid it like a thief.”
“The box is worth some, too,” Birgitta said. “This has gold.”
I waved away the thought. “Gold? I think not. Pure brass. Who would give gold to a child? It was just an old casket Ma threw some coins in as I was taken from her. If there were gold in it, the Saracens would have had it. The English privateers did not want it when I offered it in trade for food. Why, they laughed in my face and threw it back at me. They had trunks full of gold doubloons. Why would they want an old box with brass corners? They would have kept it, if it were gold.” I held my hand closer to the box, ready to snatch it from her fingers.
Mistress raised it up before I reached it. “You are a liar and a thief. You stole this. Perhaps from your last mistress. And you intend keeping it from me, who has provided you food and a home all these days? I’ll take you to the magistrate to be hung if you so much as say another word about it.” Mistress Hasken gripped Ma’s casket in her fat, greasy fist and stormed into the house.
A stinging thud hit my shoulders as Birgitta brought her stick down upon my back. “You spider. You misbegotten pisspot! I ought to hang you myself.”
“I did not steal it. It was my ma’s.”
“Liar! Liar! Liar!” she shouted with each swing of her arm. “I’ll beat you so you never forget it.”
I shrank to the ground under her blows. I counted them until I lost count. Later, when Birgitta had gone into the house, later, when I was alone, later, later, did I weep for Ma’s casket and the two pounds of my price lost.
The next day, sore of body and soul as I was, Birgitta took me by the arm and stood me, sending me to work. I fixed my face like stone, barely moving my lips to speak. I muttered Birgitta’s name without “mother” attached and said “yes, Mistress” when spoken to. I worked carelessly, spilling things, dragging clothing across the dirt floor, forgetting what I’d been sent for so that every errand took two trips.
Mistress insisted on inspecting my petticoat again, and I clutched the back of my chair as she raised my skirt and squeezed at it, terrified that her hands would find the treasures hidden and I would have no hope, completely adrift. But her hands were no more clever than her eyes, and she did not test the thickness. “This padding? What is it?”
“Woolen, madam.”
“Woven? Carded? Think, Mary. Pah. You’re as dull as a stump.”
I shook my head, trying to remember anything at all of my mother’s evenings spent on this petticoat. “It is two layers with a mat of woolen lint between them. The two are made into one by the rows of sewing.”
“Not carded well, I think. Your mother wasn’t good at it, was she? If indeed she did make this. You and Birgitta will make a petticoat like this for Rachael.”
Mistress produced a hopsack full of goat hair that she wanted used to pad Rachael’s petticoat, and we began matting it out, spreading the hair and pressing it in as evenly as possible. In the bott
om of the sack, I found remnants of goat dung, dark and crumbling, fallen from the hairs at some earlier time. When Birgitta’s attention waned, all of the dung found its way between the layers of linen, under the hair, so that it would add a certain air of elegance to Mistress-Rachael-the-Reverend’s-wife.
Birgitta insisted I sleep with her to keep her warm. Fighting angry tears, I lay there as I was told. Soon as she snored, I crept from her bed and went to my own place up the stairs by the chimney under the bearskin. She said nothing of my absence in the morning. This I would use, I promised myself, my fists in tight balls, the knowledge that she was both forgetful and somehow longed for my affection.
CHAPTER 8
March 17, 1730
I expected Rachael to wed in a church at least or have a ballroom prepared for dancing. Instead, they went inside a house, to a man who put on his head a ratted old wig, and when he asked them if they intended to marry, Rachael and Reverend Johansen said, “Yes.” They signed their names to a paper. It was the dullest wedding I could imagine. Not a note of music or a single sweet. I wondered how the parson came to be burdened with the Haskens’ oldest daughter, but I saw no other single girl whose level of hopeless ugliness might make her willing to marry an old, poor parson. I felt sorrow for him, waking up next to a hag every morning.
Later, Reverend and the new Mistress Reverend sat before the fire talking of plans for their new home, the building of a meetinghouse, a garden, and when we would leave on the venture. I heard him say that he “would abstain from taking her to wife until it can be under our own roof.” Both Master and Mistress nodded as if this made sense to them.
When word came that all was ready for the move, it took two days to get everything loaded into the wagon. As we walked away, the house looked as if robbers had ransacked it. Cupboards stood ajar, a rag lay there and a broken crock here. Fluttering like leaves before a hurricane, we set out on the muddy, rutted road that led away from the town. Family after family joined us on the road, with carts pulled by horse, ox, dog, or cow. One man hitched himself to a wagon and pulled it with his own legs. His wife and two children walked.
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