“Light candles,” I said. “Have you more candles? We shall stay with you all night. Light lamps, light candles, and we will block the hearth with charms and prayers.”
“There are not enough candles in all of Christendom. I have no fear of the road, only this hearth. Open the door to me in my own house, you brigand!” A gust blew against the house, shaking the shutters in their dogs. Lightning filled the room for a moment with blue, illuminating even the motes in the air; the cannon roar of thunder deafened me and something like an inhaled breath snuffed every flame, all but the fire in the grate. Goody picked up the long-handled fork she called a tormentor from the crane and held it at Jacob as if to run him through. Jacob moved not at all. Cullah slid his feet noiselessly toward me so that he was but a foot away, and leaned on the table with one arm as casually as if it meant nothing, but I read the intent in that strong arm stretched before me. He meant to keep her and her weapon from me. I said, “Dear Goody, please tell us what you fear. We may help you.”
She howled as if she were a wolf over a killed deer. The sound faded to a moan that wove itself into the wind as it howled through the eaves of the house. “Let me go! You cannot stop them. They know what I have done. They made a changeling of my babe, new as it was; in the midst of a storm they took her. I knew it was they. I only held her to the fire a little to chase them away, to make the fairies leave her and return her to me. She cried out in an unholy voice, so used was she by them. I don’t know, I don’t know!” Her voice trailed off and she covered her head with her arms. Then she drew in a strong breath with a shriek. “I don’t know why it happened. I dressed her in white. I offered them gold and rosemary. Gave the babe hairwort and periwinkle. Oh, but I could find no dog’s head! I called the chants and charms until I was hoarse but she would not stop her changes. Only a little more fire, a little more, I thought. They caused the dress to catch fire. Abigail! Abigail. The fairies took her breath away in the fire. Now they’re coming for me. In the winds and rain, they chase me, trying to get the one that leaped from the fire to my heart—”
With that, she knocked Jacob a strong whack on the knee with the tormentor and threw it wild across the room. As he bent to rub his knee, she thrust herself past him. The door swung on its hinges, banging into place. I rushed to it and opened it, Jacob and Cullah behind me. Leaves blew in as if borne on fairy wings, like the souls of hundreds of duppies intent upon populating the house. Lightning flashed about the yard and sky as one, as if the storm had sat upon the ground before us.
“I’ll go for her,” Jacob said.
“No,” I countered. “Leave her be. She had better run.” I felt ill, as if I could cast up my food, stating, “She put her child in fire.” Nothing I had ever known could compare. No Jamaican, African, or Guinean chant required such. Neither Protestant nor Catholic. I stared at the door, my brow furrowed, my chin taut with unspent tears. We watched the rain begin now, gentle for but a moment, then a torrent from on high engulfed the world before us. None of us could speak. At last the rain came aslant, and we shut the door. “Lock it not,” I said and turned to them. “She may return before daybreak if the storm stops.” I mopped my face upon my sleeve.
We made beds, honoring the blanket Goody had hung, though I slept in my clothes, awake long after the men’s snores rattled dust out of the thatching. I placed a knife from the worktable under my pallet. Whether I feared Cullah or his father, or Goody Carnegie more, I could not have said. I wished I had stayed in my own tiny place, tucked under the false roof over my loom.
My loom. My cloth. My home. Was this my home, this terrible place?
CHAPTER 19
October 3, 1736
Goody did not return the next morning. We left as soon as it was light to see if aught needed care at my place. Since it was still raining that evening, I fed her geese and chickens, and she did not come home then, either.
Jacob and Cullah slept at Goody’s house that night. I slept alone in mine. All those days and weeks before they had arrived, I had little noticed the lack of other human beings there. Then with the rain, I felt closed in, confined as if in the cattle hold on the ship. Jacob and Cullah so far away. There was nothing they could do in the rain, for certain, yet I missed them.