“At least,” said Lydia, all righteous fury, “we should show her head to the other boardinghouses, to see what happens to oath-breakers.”
Judith gasped, for she felt much the same as Lydia. In a fortnight, had the gap between the staunch radical and the belle of Lowell narrowed so much?
“No one outside of this house has seen her or knows what’s happened,” Lucy explained. “We agreed to let you decide.”
Judith scowled. “We can’t parade her around—much as I’d like to, Lydia,” she added, when the other girl’s rosebud mouth opened to object. “Surely, the tale of invisible demons plucking a girl bald won’t serve our reputation any. That really might get someone hanged.” She sighed and sat on the bed opposite Abigail, and pulled the quilt off the accused.
The miserable creature lifted her face, bald and tearful as a newborn.
“Abigail, are you sorry?”
“Sorry! Lord.” The girl let out a bitter laugh. “Yes, I’m most contrite and regretful. I am sorry I ever met you, Judith Whittier, or that ginger-haired witch!”
Judith twisted to look for Hannah and saw the words hit the Seer with a force that doubled her over. Without a thought, Judith twisted back and let her hand fly, straight across Abigail’s cheeks.
The blow landed with a crackling smack! At the same moment, a desperate cough exploded from Hannah’s lungs. Startled, Lucy, Lydia, and Patience drew together in a circle around Abigail, clutching at one another’s hands, while Judith rushed to Hannah’s side. The first cough became a fit, ragged breaths sawing through the Seer’s throat as she gasped.
“Hannah, Hannah,” Judith soothed, patting her back. She could feel the older girl’s ribs, even through her calico dress.
Hannah recovered, finally finding breath to sit up straight. She stared across the room at Abigail, who quailed, turned her gaze away, and began to cry again. Lucy sat down on the bed and yielded her shoulder for the miserable prisoner to cry into.
Judith’s hand, with its banded pinky finger, rested on the Seer’s shoulder. “If you put it to me,” she began, “I say it’s up to Hannah. What do you think we should do with her? Is she part of the Union, or isn’t she?”
Hannah reached up and covered Judith’s hand with her own. Her eyes shut once more.
“Part of the Union,” wheezed the Seer. “She was only trying to protect her family.”
The other girls—even Lydia—gave a sigh of relief. Hannah stood up and moved for the door. Judith made as if to follow, but the Seer shook her off. “Apologize to her,” Hannah murmured, gently pushing Judith away. “You’re hungry and tired, and you didn’t mean it.”
Then Hannah left, leaving Judith standing clumsily before the weeping girl she had struck.
After a moment, Abigail swallowed. “It’s all right. I didn’t mean it, either,” she said. “If there’s none swifter, I know the Union is the better way to earn for my parents. I don’t regret knowing you. Or Hannah.” She rubbed tears off her cheeks, then settled her fingers on her head, pitifully feeling for the hair she must know was no longer there. It was strange, how domed and egg-like her pate. With her brunette locks intact, many would have called Abigail as beautiful as Sarah Payne or Lydia.
“It isn’t so bad.” Lucy chucked her on the chin. “Phrenologists are sure to discount your next reading.”
Abigail moaned, while Patience and Lydia shook their heads at Lucy.
“I’ll loan you a cap,” said Judith, unable to force her mouth into words of any more contrite disposition.
8: Kitchen Magic
BREAD DOUGH SMACKED AGAINST the kitchen table with a great thwap, sending forth an explosion of floury smoke within which Mrs. Hanson might well have concealed herself, except that continuous muttering betrayed her position. In fresh curses she protested the crick in her neck, the fatigue in her feet, the indifference of young people, and the arrogance of rich. Most specially that great potentate of Lowell himself, Kirk Boott! Her fingers, so arthritic and unwilling as they kneaded the dough, itched to seize and twist the man’s silk cravat until he choked. She might have known he’d turn their interview into an interrogation. More fool her, for marching upon him without reinforcements or artillery. A mistake she would not repeat.
At least no harm had yet come of it. For here was Hannah, gobbling her supper as hastily as any night, her narrow backside propped against the windowsill.
There’d been some fuss among the girls over that little mouse Abigail North, who’d come in with Betsy and Laura and the groceries, a shawl over her head, and scurried upstairs at once. She did not reappear for supper. Mrs. Hanson felt no inclination to investigate; she had kept the Lowell house long enough not to involve herself in all the little dramas of her wards. One more plate of beans and gravy remained on the sideboard, for Abigail or Judith Whittier, whichever had the stomach to come for it. Hannah—Hannah the Gifted, Hannah the Fire-Kissed—never went to bed hungry. Well, house matrons (like mothers) were entitled to their favorites.
Four years earlier, when the ginger-haired maid came to Lowell, Mrs. Hanson had never seen a child so haunted. Hannah was mute among the robust crowd of girls at meal times, and first to retreat to the dormitories while the others took turns at checkers and cards. Finally, the matron told her that the washing-up after supper fell to the newest tenant in the house, and so drove her into the refuge of a task each evening. There, among the scrub brushes and buckets, Mrs. Hanson talked to her. Idle stories. Gossip from the Acre and English Row. The rising price of butter and the waste of modern fashions. The uselessness of Baptist and Methodist ministers alike. It was no more than the matron would have said to herself, if she were alone. She might as well have been, the ginger girl worked so silently.
Not until she witnessed Mrs. Hanson’s tonics and potions did Hannah speak up. One of the Sarahs was carried home from the mills fainting, and her friends begged the matron not to call the doctor, who would charge much, help little, and report every cough and shiver to the corporation. Mrs. Hanson was not inclined to fetch the man anyhow, but instead brewed a tea for Sarah—Hemingway, she thought it was—to answer the trouble. That night, the good woman discovered Hannah staring into her cabinet of herbs as if to memorize every leaf and root, except that her eyes were shut.
“You too can See the genius in things?” she asked, when Mrs. Hanson nudged her to get on with the washing.
“No,” replied the matron. “I learned by rote. My great-granddam could, or so the family lore tells me. But that was a hundred years ago, on a different shore. Now you tell me: what are you doing in a factory if you have the gift?”
“Gift?”
“Your Sight.”
“It is not a gift to me,” the girl sighed. “My father was a waterman on the Chesapeake where the tobacco farmers ship out; in my eighth year, I first witnessed a slave auction there. One young man was standing on the block when I shut my eyes—his soul shone orange like embers—and the planters made their bids, one after another, until they’d conjured a thing that swallowed those burning embers in its mouth. . . . I howled so loudly, our congregation told my parents they must cast me out or be cast out themselves.”