My Name is Resolute (38 page)

“I will help you, if you like.” I meant to be reserved, to keep everything hidden and held, both my shame at being treated so by Wallace, and my guilt in taking his love, if the fault were partly mine, from Serenity. By the time we had breakfasted on tea and bread—I did not tell her my cup had sand in it—I had explained what happened in more detail than I intended. In all of it, Goody Carnegie remained quiet and thoughtful. I wondered if perhaps she could not comprehend my words. Finally, I said, “I need an honest way to earn thirty pounds or more. I want to go home to Jamaica.”

“She is not there.”

“Madam?”

Goody shook her head. “Nothing. I get things mixed sometimes, now and long ago. I see it as if it is happening right before my eyes again and again. Sometimes when I awaken I am in a different place than when I lay down.”

I nodded as if this made perfect sense though I did not understand at all. I supposed she had not heard me. I said, “At your word, men in this town gathered and listened to me. You must have some influence. I have no right to ask your help but I fear I have made enemies and there is no one else I know. Some might help out of Christian charity; some would not for the same reason. There are people here very devout and others up the road who thought I was a fairy.”

“They only listen because they are afraid. That’s the Boyne family. The old man and woman. Their son went down a well and they believe it was fairies did it. Or I.”

“I am afraid my reputation is a rat’s nest already. I know no one who would trust me save yourself. I have some skills, though. I sew, embroider. I can spin and weave, too. If you know someone who would take me in as a servant, paid, so that I could save fifteen pounds—”

“You can? Here I thought you were a lady.”

“I am.”

“I meant not that way.” She scratched her head ferociously. Her hair was matted and snarled, looking like a giant gray animal perched atop her head. “Well, you
could
live here with me but you wouldn’t want to and I would not want it, either. I get too sad, and I fret, and talk to myself and to people who are not here, but I think of them then I talk to ’em. I could not pay you but I could give you the other house to live in. Come here.” With that, she was off, marching up the road, her hair flying in the damp morning. I grabbed my parcels and dashed to catch up with her as she prattled on and on. “At least you’d have a roof. I don’t live there, o’ course. Haven’t since the time of my sorrows, and won’t ever again. It is haunted, you see, and sometimes the spirits in there chase me, when it is raining heavy. They won’t bother you; it’s me they come for. If I could move away to another country I would, to be free of them.”

“But how would I earn money?”

“I’ll show it to you.”

The day went sultry before we had gone a quarter mile. I pictured that perhaps she was taking me to one of the ramshackle hovels I had passed before I got to the Boynes’ house. Goody Carnegie turned up a lane which climbed a small hill and circled it. I was hard put to keep up with her, for her nightly jaunts must have put strength in her legs, or else it was true what I had heard that sometimes the mad are unearthly strong.

“Much farther?” I asked, when she came to an abrupt halt.

“Here it is,” she exclaimed. I saw nothing but a pile of old leaves on a heap of ivy. At one length, an embankment of stone came from the earth, and next to that some stones had been laid so that I saw there was once a wall. She smiled, her grin higgledy-piggledy with missing teeth. “Help me push away some of this frittery.” As we worked, uncovering I knew not what, she gained strength, and happiness began to color her countenance. “Oh, it was where I dreamed of being, always. A bonny house.”

Sure enough, after some tugging and disturbing a large wood rat, a stone wall came out of the leaves, here a corner, there a window grown about with ivy, and at last a wooden door, shorter than my chin.

“Of course,” Goody said, “there is a hole or two in the roof. You’ll need a thatcher.”

I strained to look through the doorway to see anything of a house before me, feeling that she was so unhinged she may have seen this as a palace, indeed. The small square of stone was built into the side of the hill, using the granite outcropping as part of the wall on one side. It was stuffed with rubble, old furnishings, rags, nests, and the smell of various kinds of vermin. I backed out, and as I touched the door it fell from its one remaining hinge, stirring up a cloud of leaves and dust within.

I held the doorjamb and my heart gave a great thump. Over the center of the doorway above my hand, an icon was affixed to the frame. It was a horseshoe, hammered narrow, small enough to fit a young colt. Cast in iron and forged atop it, a spider. Its legs held the sides of the horseshoe, its head pointed down at the open doorway. “It is the sign of a weaver,” I whispered to no one in particular, perhaps to the spider itself. Had I gone mad, too, just from being near Goody Carnegie? Had I caught her bafflement as I had once caught smallpox?

“It is, indeed,” she said, and began humming. “I am glad that remains. Belonged to my great-gran, back in the Highlands afore they come. She brought it here. Fairies won’t cross iron, you know. There should be something at each window, though that is the only door. Yes, this house shall be yours, dearie. Oh, it is grand, is it not?”

“Mine? Oh, Goody, I am not sure how to thank you. Although I suppose I should be going on now.”

“It is a good house. It once held much love and happiness. And where would you go? Back into the woods? You’d perish there. Into the town? Same result.”

As a slave, I had been housed, and in a manner, fed. As an Ursuline conscript, others chose what I ate, when I slept, and provided everything while I worked as a laborer. Here, in this place, I was free, but that meant I was to both decide and provide all my own means. “I see it
is
a good house,” I said, feeling condescension in my tone. “But the roof?”

Goody went on, as if she’d continued while I had been caught up in reverie. “There is a well. Comes in the side, there, by a stone way.” She led me into the building. It was deeper than it appeared from the front. Inside and outside, the walls were overgrown with weeds and ivy, the floor strewn with a few bits of left-behind furniture, a tub with a hole in the bottom, and an old bedstead. She went on talking. “Open this gate, see?” She pulled on a rusted hinge, which to my surprise opened. Water from a running stream had been somehow caught uphill and forced through a round spout of stone behind the gate. It emptied into a deep granite bowl that drained back through the wall to a trough outside, much clogged with debris and leaves. “Water’s good. A roof can be fix-ed.” She drew out the last word into two syllables, the way Ma did when she was tired.

I could not say if that were the reason my aspect of her seemed to change but at that moment it did. I felt I had been pulled toward her dreamy world of possibilities and must return to the real here and now. I said, “I have no way to eat or to make a living here. I must find a position where someone will pay me for work.”

“You have a little coin. I’ve seen it. You will buy flour and make bread. By and by you will walk to town and buy meat and pulse, and cook in the fireplace. Anything can be done if you have a will for it.” The woman eyed the rock walls as if they made a beautiful castle.

I said as gently as I could, “Yes, it can. But even then, that takes money.” I stifled a shudder. It would take time. And a roof. And knowledge of housekeeping, of which I had none. Oh, why had I been confined to the weaver’s barn rather than the kitchen? If I had done as I was told, and not stolen so much food, I might have learned so much.

“Buy yourself a spinning wheel, two goats, and some chickens, and work hard every day. Sell what you get in thread and eggs and cheese. It is an old truth that ‘thee must spend a crown to make a pound,’ and it will seem at first as if you are going backward in your plan. If I had any money—”

“Oh, no, I would not presume upon you in asking for it. Even if I sold all I had, it is not just the money I need. I need a companion willing to travel, too.”

She put her head down but turned her eyes up toward me with a childish look of apology. “I won’t go over the sea.”

“I understand. It is dangerous and difficult. I would not ask you to take such risk.”

“You’re a kind one, you are. Now, why don’t you live here, dearie? We shall be neighbors. This house is over a hundred years old and she’s had more than one roof before. I shall give you this house as long as you desire to live in her. If you leave and I’m still alive, you give it back to me. If I am dead, it is yours forever. I have no children, no niece or nephew. Use the money you have to get what you need to make your living and bake your bread. In the fall we’ll press cider, and make beer, and put aside roots.”

Fall? I should not be there that long, I vowed. Fall was the time of stormy seas. It was already mid-June. I would only stay as long as it took to get home. At that moment, four large pigeons fluttered through the beams over our heads and landed on the dirt floor of the place. I said, “I think perhaps I should inquire about a position in town.”

At that moment she seized my arm and held it fast. “I was trying not to tell you this, Miss Talbot. You will find no position in this town or any nearby. Talk from the Roberts family is that you caused them rack and ruin, killed the old man, stole the swain from the daughter, poisoned the dog, and spat in the eyes of the old woman as you left.”

“I never!”

“You best see what you can do about living until you can make your money. You have no choice except the old one that has been the choice of ruined women for all time.”

“
Prostituée?
Oh, la. I would rather perish.”

“Folks will be rude to you. But you show them you are none of that other.”

“Why do
you
believe in me?”

She chuckled and winked at me. “I know who you are. I saw who you was at that funeral, saying ‘morning’ to me with no care for eyes upon you. I have no one left in this world. No one speaks to me as I expect they will do to you, but I have this house and all that land there, back to those trees. Forty-two acres in this tract and another five full of bog berries, by the place I am now. This used to be a fine farm; my grandfather’s and his father’s, worked out of the woods with his own hands. That house I live in is on it still, but I had to live where there weren’t so many ghosts.”

“This is so kind of you. I cannot pay you for it. I have done nothing to deserve it.”

“You have done enough. I have reasons for doing this. We’ll write the deed so I may stay in my house until I die. It is a good and kind thing you do for me, to take it. Please take it. I beg you. I will only stay until I die.”

I could do naught but follow her, for without another word she pressed me on the path toward town. We walked to the town center and to the magistrate’s office. There Goody Carnegie signed away her family farm to me with the contingency she had before named, that I stay until she died or turn it back to her. The man was perturbed at her. Whether he disliked her in general or me in particular, or the plan of hers that caused him some trouble, I could not say. It took three hours, by the time he got done looking this up and consulting some of the same men who had studied my answers when I first arrived. All had to see the papers and read what was writ there before I was granted the privilege to do the same. When I had the papers and deed in my hand, I looked them over. Goody Carnegie was saying something about my putting these in a safe place when my eyes caught the words “four hundred and twenty” before the word “acres.”

I whispered, “Goody, this is a mistake. Look at this paper.”

“Hush now, my dearie. Cush-na, by baby. Be only quiet before the magistrates.”

I raised my brows, and turned to the men. “Is this correct, sirs?”

“It is,” one answered me.

His answer did not bring me comfort. I felt I was being ensnared in some trap. Yet, by that time I knew how to get to Boston, so I stilled my hands from shaking, holding the papers. “Good day, sirs,” I said. Then I stopped at the door and added, to smooth my way in the future, “And God keep you all and yours. Thank you for attending us today.” I should have said more hearty thanks to this daft old woman, I told myself as we walked the road in silence. As a gift it was as perplexing as it was generous, for I knew not how I should live in a roofless stone shed full of rats and pigeons and the stray catamount or bear. Nor did I believe that anything so enormous came without obligation. There was also her vow that the place was haunted and her own stormy jaunting through the woods to contend with. I was not sure I had the heart for it. It was, however, a place to be until I knew of a better place to be. “Goody?” I asked as we ambled back down the path toward her house. “Why was he so hesitant to make the changes to your deed that you asked? Are the men of this town so full of hatred for me?”

“Ach, no. It’s not me they mean to harm, neither. It is my land that raises their ire. They want it, you see. If I should die without an heir, it will belong to the town. They could either apportion it amongst themselves or set something upon it, such as a school or a community farm. It is good land. High and flat, already cleared for the most part. A stream that flows year round. You have woods, too. This is enough for today. I am so tired. So very tired.” She opened the door to her house. “Eat with me, lass.”

“Shall I help you with bread?” While I sliced bread she had made, she cut chunks of cheese, which she had also made, and I admired the knowledge she contained.

Goody poured cider, sniffed it, and said, “Gone hard. ’Tis twice as good.”

I hesitated a moment before the food, thankful for the simple grace of it, thankful to know this most peculiar woman. “May I ask you a question, friend?”

“Aye,” she said, smacking her lips after a long draught of cider. “Anything, friend. Long as you do not ask to sleep here.”

“I do not question your wonderful gift to me of a house and land. You said it was forty acres, yet the deed given to me lists four hundred and twenty. The other five you said is in truth fifty. I would have begged you for but a place to lay my head. Why mislead the amount yet make so generous a gift?”