“Ach, a young lady alone at an inn? Heaven strike me dead this instant if I allowed such. No, no. If you must have a roof, you may share mine, but ’tis not a place for a proper young lady to reside. There are better, and there are those that would take you to the sea, child. Have you finished them vittles, then? Let us go a-calling.”
Goodwife Carnegie took my arm in hers and led me up the road. About a mile on, we rounded a small hillock and came to a bustling town street. Dogs barked, children called out, and women called back to them from windows and doorways of at least a dozen houses storied high enough for three floors each. Farther in were a church building and a public hall, a well, and a trade-goods barn with three sides. Fruits in baskets filled the front stalls and people crowded at them. “Halloo,” Goody called, and people in the square turned, staring at us, while children dashed by. “Halloo, see the young gentlewoman who has come to call upon me? Her name is Miss Talbot, and those of you who would meet her must be introduced by myself, first. She is my guest.” She squeezed my arm and leaned toward my ear. “That’ll straighten the curls in their wigs, dearie.”
Within a few minutes, it seemed the whole town had gathered around, and a cadre of men circled at one side. One of them said, “Now, Goody Carnegie, this Miss will have to answer to the council, just as any would. And you, lady-child, where is your escort, your husband or father?”
“Indeed, I have none at present. Pray let me speak to you in private, good sir.”
Another man said, “Be she driven abroad by some other town? Be she a witch?”
And another, “Why else go to Goody Carnegie’s house first of all?”
“Take care,” said another, “let us have her questioned by the committee.”
Goody Carnegie said to them all, “If you will have a committee then I shall bring her. We will await you in the courthouse.”
I felt more than knew not to question her labeling the small building to which she led me as a courthouse. There she bade me sit upon the steps until seven men approached us, one last of them fastening his jacket and trying to right an old wig that did not seem to fit him well. The others were wigless but bore in their demeanor and long beards the feeling of being a council of law. One man spoke, saying, “The Lexington Town Council is now in order. I am Selectman Roberts, and Misters Falwell, Erskine, Considine, and Jones are witnesses, as are Yeomen Franklin and Spotsworth.”
Goody Carnegie grinned, showing yellowed and missing teeth. “They listen to me even though they don’t like it. I’ve got land, y’see. Land talks.”
A shortish man approached the courthouse and waved. “You there, come this way, if you please. We shall mount the steps there and you approach the bar this way.” He pointed to a hitching rail in front of the building. “We will know your purpose here, and your comings and your goings, young Miss, Miss—”
“Talbot,” I supplied. I told them all as well as I could, that my home in Jamaica had been ransacked by privateers, I had been captured, and, skipping the Haskens altogether, taken north into French colonies to an Ursuline convent. Several people gasped when they heard that last word. Then I said, “Another woman and I conspired with a team of rescuers to leave that place—”
“Wast it because you were taught an untrue religion? Because you were made to suffer papist rule?”
“Partly, sir, but most because I was not born a slave. I am a free person, the second daughter of Allan Talbot, Her Majesty’s loyal—”
“The queen is dead,” said another man. “These many years. King Charles reigns in her stead now.”
“How long a prisoner?” asked another.
“Five years altogether.”
“And what is your plan for this place, seeing your first visit with any soul here is to a professed madwoman?”
“Madwoman?” I asked. “Goodwife Carnegie? She has shown me kindness but I knew her not until this morning. ’Twas her house first on the road. Another before it was empty and the one before that, a man and woman pointed the way to Boston. Before that, nothing but trash and dead animals.”
A woman from the crowd behind me called, “Goody’s not in her mind, lassie.”
Goody Carnegie looked down from between two of the men’s shoulders upon me. She smiled and nodded. “It’s true what they say, my dearie. I have sometimes been troubled by a spirit of melancholy.” She tittered, hiding a laugh.
“Melancholy is not madness,” I said, then bowed my head when the men before me stiffened, but I continued, speaking my words clearly so I would not have to raise my voice. “I have known other people not so mad who treated me harshly. Goodwife Carnegie has been only kind. She has shown me here to beg your help.”
“She speaketh with some foreignness of tongue,” a man said.
“Imprisoned by Frenchmen five years!” said another. “Did you not hear her?”
“Do you speak French?”
“I do, sir.” Donatienne’s gentle face, her patient coaching came to mind. I said, “If I was to keep my wits I had to learn what was being said round about me. It was not torture, sir, but teaching as any of you would do.”
“Will you say something?” another asked.