Rather than my usual singing, I wept as I worked. It was as if all the sadness, all the lost people of my life, came to my mind’s eye in somber dirge. I felt so alone. Still, my hands worked as if they belonged to the loom and I merely oversaw them. The rain did not stop for three days. The men returned every afternoon in the downpour, to report that Goody was still gone, to see that my temporary shelter was still holding, and as Jacob said, “To be sure that I was not carried off by salvages or beasts.”
The morning of the third day, a knock at my door stopped my hands. I had my hand on the latch to open it before I realized that it might not be Jacob or Cullah, for they had long passed the need to knock, and usually just opened it with a call to make sure I was not in a stage of undress. I was most surprised to find eight black-frocked men under spread cloaks. “Miss Talbot? We would have a word with thee.”
Eight more people had no room for foothold in this stone house, filled as it was with the loom and the false ceiling. Four came in, one squeezed himself out of the rain at the door, and three peered over his shoulders. They were the men from the town who had met me when I first came, missing, of course, Selectman Roberts, but adding one in his position, the newly made selectman, Mr. Jones. They had heard, and would tell me not from whom, that I was living alone in the woods with two men not my relatives, in the employ of the devil spinning gold out of flax. I could happily report their missing men were at the Carnegie house, and put on my cloak to take them there to show them.
At Goody’s house I was relieved to see her, ragged as a beggar but sitting between Jacob and Cullah, drinking tea from a cup by her fire. The men spoke to each other, satisfied that no illicit behavior had taken place here. I had to wonder what had caused this sudden interest in the condition of my integrity yet I was far too busy to tarry over it. As the men were finished with their inquisition, they bid us good day.
At the end of the path from Goody’s door to the road, one I remembered as Mr. Considine turned and said, “You understand, the committee cannot allow unrighteous action within the reaches of the town? ’Tis bad enough that Goodwife Carnegie has given you her property, but that she holds with old ways. Witchcraft and transport with the devil follow those who do. It was only, Miss, that some sea captain had been asking after your whereabouts. Wallace Spencer declared to us that you were of the highest virtue, and that it did not mean what we took it for. We had to be sure.”
“A sea captain? Who? When?” August had found me! My spirits soared but the man simply shrugged. “I have witnessed no devilment except her own sorrow affecting Goody Carnegie, but I assure you, sir, I hold no ill will toward you for your concern on my behalf.”
“Good day, then.”
“Do you know anything more of the sea captain?” I called toward his back.
“See that you attend church more regularly, Mistress,” was all he said.
In Goody’s house, as we baked and ate, we chatted about the silliness of that visit. She called me Abigail twice. As we spoke, two men, not the ones before me, kept coming into my thoughts to interrupt my speech. Wallace had defended my honor? Yet, he had left me because he thought I had none. And then, the sea captain. Who could it be but August? August, come for me at last. My heart swelled. Laughter came easily. Birds sang and my spirits rose on their melodies until I felt as if I enveloped all before me.
I looked upon Cullah, speaking with his father and Goody. What a bonny young man he was. His eyes sparkled when he laughed, as eagerly as they flashed like flint when he was angered. His hair was as unmanageable as mine and his father laughingly said something about his last having cut it with a broadaxe. I could barely hope my spindly brother had grown to such a good height and broad shoulder. When August came, I would make him a fine linen shirt just to fit him.
When at last the rain stopped and the world outside was a pit of tarlike mud, there was no work to be done with the wood wet and swollen, Jacob declared. He told me they would make a trip to Boston town for hinges and iron-worked handles for the doors. I asked if we could go together.
I took my cloth from the loom, forty yards of fine gold-white linen. I had thirty-three yards of good wool and fifty yards of fine wool. I wrapped my linen carefully in layers of wool, and folded the woolens within sacks of tow. We left in the early morning mist, a fog so thick and cool that the air swam before us as we moved through lowlands by the marsh on the road to Boston.