“But I have found a wee grave. I think it is your Abigail.”
“That means nothing. This day, and a thousand others, have I held her upon my knee. She walks and wakes and abides with me as much as not. It is only when the wind blows that she goes with them and I must flee.”
“Do you mean, you know she is dead?”
“She’s nothing of the sort. Only buried. That means nothing. Fairies don’t stay buried. Nothing of the sort. I have cheese to press. Come with me or leave me be, but do not pass through that hollow again. Come around the path.”
“Will she come to you when I am there?”
“Abigail, now, do not vex your mother. I have cheese to press.”
*
By the first of September, when the air was heady with mists that parted by noon to reveal the earth, I had gotten the stone cottage quite to my purposes. It remained a rude structure, dark inside for I had no candles. Keeping out the rats and birds, squirrels, and a raccoon I had evicted from their longtime abode continued to be a constant source of aggravation. Yet I had a hearth and water, cooking implements, two spinning wheels and a loom. I warped the loom by the dim light from the window. Did my spinning in the doorway and began weaving with memory more than sight.
On Sundays, I walked the length and breadth of the land, avoiding the misty hollow between Goody’s house and this one. I did not consider this my land, rather thought of it as lent to me. However, I was free to make use of the apples, grapes, strawberries, and pears. Goody helped me gather plants for dyes and then I was able to create some browns, one a reddish hue and one a yellow-brown. I collected the berries I knew as bleuets though Goody feared they were poison. I experimented with them in making a dye, and found that I could boil a quantity with bitter apple and while it did little but gray the wool, it put a deep blue shade into my linen. I spun four or five hours a day until I had enough to warp my loom with twenty-yard strands of the dark blue linen thread. Then I set about weaving six plain strands to one blue. It made a pleasing shade, a unique look, and I knew that twenty yards of it would bring me a goodly sum.
On a hot September morning that threatened rain with large, dark clouds, a man and girl came by herding nine goats. They had some water and an apple apiece, too, and stayed a bit to rest before they went on down the road. While they stayed I heard much from him about the road from Concord to Lexington, and what went on from the Indians about, the danger of an alliance with the French and Iroquois tribes. I gave him five shillings for an older ewe and a younger one, along with a buck.
It was the custom in this country for any laborer seeking wages to walk up and down the lanes looking for work. Goody cautioned me against tinkers and tradesmen alike, for a young woman alone was prey to any who might throw her down, she said. Always say there was a man about. Anyone who lived nearby would soon learn otherwise, but a stranger from some other town might be less likely to hurt me if they thought so. I was not afraid. The goats made a racket when any person approached, and Goody insisted I have geese, too, for that very reason. Soon, during the warm hours my yard was full of the sounds of a country home.
On the last day of September, in the birdsong-laced coolness of an early morn, I pushed the shutters open at the window to find a grizzled face staring in at me. I screamed and banged the rickety shutter back into place, latching the dogs. “Go away!” I shouted.
“I come for to do your work,” the man said. His accent was thick, the r’s rolling like a syllable of their own.
“I have no work for you. Now go. You will wake my husband and he’s a cruel giant of a man. He will break your bones if you wake him.” Only then did I hear the geese awaken and the goats begin their plaintive call that warmed me as if a child called “Ma-ma.”
With shaking hands, I put water in my kettle and stirred the coals. I needed more wood from outside, but I got a flame going and found a burned limb in the ashes to lay over it. I listened at the door and the shuttered window. I had not heard the man walk away, but neither had I heard him come, and the animals had slept through him arriving. I shuddered. His face had been savage—more frightening to me than an Indian in paint and rattles—for he was a wild-haired, dirty, one-eyed tinker with the look of a pirate if not the smell. I put my bread and a pear upon the trencher, and blessed it. The water began to boil. I had no tea or coffee, but some herbs, mint and comfrey and rosemary, and so I poured the boiling water over them. I listened again. Sipped. Took a bite of the bread and one of the pear.
The knock on my door caused the barrel staves that held it to fall from their places. I took the teakettle in hand, my skirt over the handle, intending to throw boiling water at the man, and picked up an iron rod from the fire. “Who is that?” I called.