“Is there anything but heresy taught on such an island?”
“As I come from, madam? I do not know what is taught there. I know only that Ma and Pa were both godly and taught us what they knew.” I felt afraid to say more. I knew by the way she asked it that she expected an answer that matched her creed. We held that the Virgin was pure and that certain of the martyred saints followed and watched over those who loved them, yet the Talbots as far as I knew were Anglicans and not given to claiming any original sins as did Catholics. All my sins were my own creation and had come by way of my invention, of that I would swear.
“So you’ve been baptized? I’ll not have a foundling heretic under this roof. Speak up. Baptized? How?”
“Yes, madam. Baptized, indeed.” I asked myself whether I should say ’twas last spring, or say that I was christened at eight days old—neither of which was true. I hit upon a middle ground. “In the scriptural way, same as you, madam.”
She whirled at me, her hands swirling musty-smelling clothing. “Good, Mary. Now, see if this will fit you.” She tied a rough cap upon my head. She came at me with a gown, whisking my arms into the sleeves, tying it in back but not taking off my soiled things. She gave me a short and oft-patched coatlike casaque. Over that she laid a pelisse which had once been grand, but which was several inches too long. “Oh, that won’t do,” she said. “Much too big.”
The promised warmth of the clothes after these days of cold had an immediate effect and I clutched my arms across my ribs, holding on to the garment lest she take it back. I said, “Perhaps if I also had some good shoes to wear, I would be taller and it would fit better.”
I knew the argument was ridiculous, but the old woman put her gnarled and twisted dog-finger against her lips and pondered it. “No, no,” she said. “If one of the girls has a shoe close to the size—”
“Birgitta!” I heard from another room. “Birgitta, I need you upstairs.”
“Follow me and keep quiet,” Birgitta said. “These people are the Hasken family. Patented and Puritan. You address them as ‘Master’ and ‘Mistress,’ understand?”
“Yes, madam.”
“You call me ‘Birgitta.’ I’m the housekeeper but I am Mistress’s sister, too, full part of this household. I sleep by the door, so there’ll be no running out without my knowing.”
“Yes, madam,” I repeated, as we trundled up the poorest stack of stairs I had ever seen, more rickets than wood and less foothold than the secret stair by the waterwheel. I began to feel warm under the layered coats, yet my bare feet ached from the cold. At the top of the stair, we entered a low-ceilinged room where three beds crowded together in such tight space that there was no room betwixt them. A fireplace that had gone cold came off the chimney. Beyond, the attic was dark and drafty.
“The misses sleeps here,” Birgitta said. “You’ll find the honey pots under there. Mistress won’t allow the girls to the outdoors in this weather. You take ’em to the outdoor privy and dump ’em in the hole. Wipe ’em good and clean, after.”
“Ah, no,” I said. “I told you, I could never do that.” Birgitta rapped me on the shoulder with the rod she produced from a rope at her waist. I gasped in pain. Even the lowest pirates who stole me never whipped me. I cried out, “Do not hit me with that again!”
“Who!” came a child’s voice, from under the beds. “Who is this lady?”
Birgitta patted the bed nearest her. “You hiding again, Lonnie? Come out. This is Mary. She’s to dump the pots. You’re to find your old shoe for her.”
“There’s only one. Mother took one to save for the wall on the new house.” The girl wiggled from under the bed as she spoke. “It’s good luck to put a shoe in the wall of a new house.” She stood taller than I, with a stunted left arm and leg as if she were a doll assembled from two different patterns. “I have a long foot and a short one, a long leg and a short one, a big arm and a little. I even have a big titty and a little ’un. You can’t have my new shoe!”
“No, of course, I would not—” I began.
Fast as the strike of a snake, the old woman brought the stick down upon my forearm. “Don’t talk back to the misses. Best you learn your place quick. Now, Lonnie, give me the old shoe. You, Mary, you say ‘yes, mum’ to everything.”
I was about to insist that Mary was not my name when Lonnie reached under the bed and came out with a squashed and battered wad of leather. I thought it a dead bat and shrank from it in her hand. She shook it at my face and sang, “What are you scared of? Scary Mary! Scary Mary.”
Birgitta took the leather thing and tugged at it. It changed not at all under her hands, and she tossed it at my feet. “Well, there’s one. We’ll find you another.”