“Here it is,” she exclaimed. I saw nothing but a pile of old leaves on a heap of ivy. At one length, an embankment of stone came from the earth, and next to that some stones had been laid so that I saw there was once a wall. She smiled, her grin higgledy-piggledy with missing teeth. “Help me push away some of this frittery.” As we worked, uncovering I knew not what, she gained strength, and happiness began to color her countenance. “Oh, it was where I dreamed of being, always. A bonny house.”
Sure enough, after some tugging and disturbing a large wood rat, a stone wall came out of the leaves, here a corner, there a window grown about with ivy, and at last a wooden door, shorter than my chin.
“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.”