Birgitta said, “If you have done your duty, you’ll be granted free in eight years. We have paid your indenture and you are ours. You go to your mother after that. Or you hire out under wages. Until then, you do as you are told.”
I sank to the floor. The pain in my toe took my breath away. Eight years. It was more days than stars in the sky. Thousands and thousands of days without Ma and Patey. Without August. Pa dead. In eight years, August would have come back to Casco Bay to find me and I would not be there. I was the daughter of Allan Talbot, not a slave. My eyes filled with visions of dark women wielding arm-length blades against the sugarcane under a heavy sky, dank with approaching hurricane. Their chants filled my ears. I shook from the inside as if my bones had gone cold, already dead. The smell of goat dung overpowered me. My bones turned to water. I woke later on a pallet before the fire. My throat was raw and pained me to swallow. Every bone ached. My head felt pierced by a great pinion chained to the floor. “So thirsty,” I said. “Please. A drink.”
Birgitta’s voice hovered in the air over my head and lifted a cup of warmed cider to my lips. It was difficult to swallow. “Sudden fever. I’ve seen it before. Possible you’ve been bewitched. Or taken water-sick. Mistress would have sent you up to bed but ’tis better you keep by the fire.”
“Water?” I asked. She fed me the strong cider. Was there not a drop of water in this hellish prison? I slept a deep sleep so that I felt pulled by fairies and duppies through forests and ocean waves, cold as ice and warm with sweat, barely breathing, barely alive. Ma came to me and held me against her breast. She told me I was dying and not to be afraid. When I asked her how she knew, she said she had died, too, and not to trouble about it. “No!” I screamed with all my might. I found myself sitting up in a wretched cave, dressed in rags and watched over by a witch, the kind of raspy bogle’s maidy that guarded the captives in any story of fairy folk and duppies, selkies or brownies.
“You little spider! You scared the marrow out o’ my bones!” Birgitta’s voice said. “Where did you get them stockings?”
“I want my ma,” I said, and lay upon the hard floor. I stared into the fire and soon I slept and soon Ma cradled me again in her arms.
“Mary! Get up and empty the pots!” Mistress called, jabbing my bottom with the broom. “Lazy lout. Up with you!” I kept my eyes closed and my body still. My head hurt. Every bone felt every deprivation and bruise, and I wore my agony like a cloak. Indeed, some type of blanket covered me yet I shivered, too, with cold. “I am sick, Mistress.”
“What’s that? You lazy thing. Up from there!”
Birgitta said, “Best leave her for a time. It could be contagion.”
“Well, then,” Mistress said. “Then you will empty the pots.”
“As you say, Mistress,” Birgitta said. With my eyes still closed I heard her mutter, “Yes, sister. You old spider.”
CHAPTER 7
December 19, 1729
It was a fortnight, rather than three days, before I could arise from the pallet. When at last a bit of strength returned, I woke to discover that someone had shaved my head, and sank down again, this time to weep in self-pity and self-loathing. Every few moments my hand crept under a wrap to my head, feeling the strange bristling under the kerchief. Shuddering, I cried again. “My hair. Oh, my hair.” I slept.
Birgitta’s voice awoke me. “There you are, girl. Here, Mary. Have broth.”
“What happened to my hair?”
“Hair holds fever. Had to come off. It’ll grow.”
Tears rained upon my face. “My lovely hair.”
“Now, there. It’s a known cure for dry-ache fever. You’re alive. Think on that.”
I took the bowl and spoon from her. “I can feed myself, thank you.”
“Well. That’s improvement. The misses is all sick, too. Master has a cough and Mistress has misdelivered another babe before its time. Parson Johansen had been at the Mayweather house and they was all afevered, so likely he brought the fevered air here. It took right quick, coming on us all.” She looked on me and smiled. “Had a heavy snow, day before yestidy. The goats’ll be the death of me. That’s why it was such a great help to teach you. You get well now, then you can get back to work.”
I adjusted the wrapping on my head as it began to fall. “What is this smell?”
“Comfrey, borage, and yarrow, wrapped in honey balm, on your head. And hill wort. Other things. Guards against blindness with a fever.”