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 what 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?”
“Could a woman make a living as a weaver?”
“There are those. Find a way to add more color than what is available on the ships from France. You will have to risk the coin you have to find out.”