She raised her hand as if to slap me and I cowered as she proclaimed, “No supper for you tonight.” I looked at Birgitta, wishing for a sign she would feed me. Birgitta was my protector, but not in everything.
After that, I nurtured my hatred for them all while I stole more food. I took any morsels that I could tuck into a cuff or push up my sleeve, a bit of raw potato or a sliver of trimmed roast beef. I sucked on wheat grains as I had done on the pirate ship. When I milked goats, I took a hearty drink of the milk before I brought the bowl in the house. If I was going to hell anyway, I might as well go with a full stomach.
I hummed a tune and muttered words under my breath while I milked goats. It fit to sing, “Damn your eyes, Mistress Hasken, damn your eyes.” Was I a villain, then? No, I decided. When I returned to Ma I would put off this hate and thievery as I would put off these filthy clothes and pitch them in the ocean. In the meantime, I practiced the salty words and curses I had learned, every one of them aimed at one of the Haskens.
Once the snow quit falling, a few days of warm rain turned everything to a blight of mud. The rain stopped and the air cooled, but for a few days there was blue sky of the oddest, pale shade of blue I had ever seen. With the thaw, a stream flowed nearby, and Birgitta sent me to fetch water from it rather than hauling snow. We were going to wash the winter’s clothing, she said. I took two buckets and filled them half full as I had learned to do on the ship.
I made several trips, filling the cauldron as Birgitta stirred up the fire to heat the water. She added plants she had pulled and dried last summer, as if we were making dirty-clothes soup. Birgitta and I scrubbed dirty linens against boards and rocks, hung things on bushes, while I carried pail after pail of water and kept the fire burning.
“If you intend to wash your raiments,” she said to me under her breath, “do the underthings first. Then when they are dry you put them on and wash the outer. Pretty soon you’ll be all dressed again, and since Master isn’t at home, we’ll start early and be finished. Tomorrow we begin Miss Rachael’s wedding gown.”
I rushed up the stairs, so excited about a bath and clean clothing Ma would have laughed. I worried about cleaning my things with all that lay hidden in them, but the only thing in danger of being found was my pocket. I took the tiny casket from my pocket and burrowed it deep under the bearskin, wrapping it under three folds of the rug and piling everything so that it looked heaped. I smoothed the bearskin over it all and felt pleased at the result. I undressed and removed everything down to my skin, dressed myself again in the brown skirt and pelisse.
I ran and fetched water and was just returning with it when I saw Mistress emerge from the house and walk toward the washing. “Mary,” she called. “I want you to bring more wood. What’s this?” She held the corner of my quilted petticoat.
“’Twas made by my ma, Mistress. Before I was taken from my home.”
“These stitches are new. That looks like my thread.”
It was, of course, but I lied and smiled. “My gown lies there, Mistress. I pulled threads from it to sew the petticoat. The blue there,” I said as I pointed to it.
“This thread is mine.”
“I swear it is not, Mistress.” I bowed my head and curtsied again, and I made sure not to rise fully, keeping my feet well hidden beneath the brown skirt. “I never steal,” I said, shaking my head.
A female voice from inside the house shrieked as if someone had been injured. “Look at this! Look at this!” I heard. Had she found my dirty stockings? My hands went weak and I let go of the buckets. One tipped over on my shoe, flooding it with water.
“Pah!” Birgitta shouted. “Look at that, now!” And she raised her hand to strike me but lowered it without doing so.
Rachael came from the house with something in her hands clutched against her meager breasts, her face brighter than ever I had seen her, squealing with delight. She saw her mother and ran this way. “Mother, Mother! I couldn’t find my rug, the Persian rug you said was my dower, until I discovered that Mary had been sleeping on it, and this was hidden under it. And look what’s in it!” She held in her hands my mother’s gold-cornered wooden casket with the pieces of eight worth two pounds inside. Rachael took the six shillings in her hand and danced around, chanting, “It’s a dowry, a dowry!”
Mistress asked, “Where did you get this?” as she held out her hand.
Rachael placed the coins and the box into it. “Under my rug, Mother. Hidden by a thieving little servant girl.”
I pretended bravery. “That box is mine,” I said. “I will thank you to return it,” and I held out my hand as if expecting they would.