“My—their girl gave them to me, seeing I had only one fit shoe.”
“This will just make some other way they can look down upon this family. Always with their noses in our business and in the air.”
“Please,” I said, “I could work so much faster if both feet had a good shoe.”
Birgitta turned them this way and that. She handed them to me. “I suppose you’ll be taller, too, and the clothes will fit better? Pah, little spider. Only let the mistress not see them. The daughters have naught so new or fine a pair between ’em. You’ll need a longer skirt for to hide them.” She said it almost as if accusing me of some crime.
“I might sew it all myself, if you would but guide me, Mother Birgitta.”
Her face brightened at that, brows lifting, almost a smile across her mouth. “On the morrow. I’m tired. You’ve much to do.” She lumbered to her cot and sat upon it. “I’ll just sit a few minutes, then I’ll bank up the fire,” she said. But within moments she slumped over onto the blankets and a rattling snore came from her.
I carried her candle to the table so I could see to clean up the cups and plates. By then the entire household had begun to snore. I heard an owl cry and a wolf howl in the distance as I cradled Patience’s shoes against my chest and crept up the stair to my little mat, so tired my ears had a strange sense of fullness and sound, like a hundred insects in my head. The wolf howled again, joined by a chorus of others. They sounded as if they were just under the window.
I thought about my sister and myself, all our travels, all our ways before then, and afterward being sold. I touched my skirt, feeling the petticoat stitching through the thin gown, the places Ma had sewn as if she knew I would live in such cold one day. My sister was not far away and not for long. Our owners were friends to each other and were going a-pioneering. Reverend would marry Rachael, a girl half his age. Lukas would travel with us wherever we were going. All of it made my heart warm and my face flush. I shook my head. He was probably drafty and dull-witted, too. I knew not what attracted me to him at first. My thoughts swirled like coddling posset and my heart ached for him.
When I emptied the morning pots, I put the broken, pinching shoe down the outhouse hole with the mess. After I finished cleaning the morning dishes, Birgitta offered me a bit of brown wool, quite plain, and guided me in the sewing of long side seams and gathering the waist at a band to make a skirt. I made my stitches as small and straight as I could manage. After a while she said, “You called me ‘Mother Birgitta’ the other day. I wouldn’t mind were you to call me that.”
I kept my eyes on my stitches. I had called her that with insincerity verging on disdain. I had also done it knowing the woman might be affected by it, and that it might soften my life until I could find a way to escape. Soft answers turn away wrath, Ma always said. “I shall, Mother Birgitta. I heard we are moving.”
“We start a new settlement in the west. Rachael will wed Reverend Johansen in a few weeks. Mayhap Christine shall marry Lukas.”
I nodded as if I were a wise woman consulted. “I think he should take Christine. She seems, most—inclined to marry.”
“Most natural, you mean. The other is touched in some way.”
I smiled. It was as if we shared a secret that bound us to each other, to agree to something as obvious as that Lonnie was not whole. When the skirt was done I believed by the look on her face that Birgitta felt proud of me wearing it.
When Mistress saw it, her face turned a dark scowl. I feared she would reach for the strop hanging by the chimney. “A waste, Birgitta, a sheer waste when that cloth could have made aught for the girls. And you! Mary, I do wonder but you’ve been growing faster than any of my daughters. Have you been stealing food?”
I feared lest the biscuits and the bowls of goat milk show in guilt on my face. I tried to make it as hard and blank as stone, like the pirate Aloysius nodding before Captain Hallcroft. I lowered my eyes. “I have a sturdy constitution and God’s good grace to thank for my health, Mistress,” I said with a curtsy. I kept my knees bent so that on arising I was not so tall. She said nothing but kept eyeing me so I added, “Perhaps, Mistress, the larger my stature the more work I can do.”
“You’ve been stealing food.”
“No, Mistress. I swear it.” I was getting used to swearing promises that were as hollow as Lonnie’s head.