“A dissembler through and through,” said Judith, through her teeth.
“A clever businessman, he might say,” said the matron.
“But it’s all built on fictions and theft, isn’t it? Boott stole the land. Old Mr. Lowell stole the looms—”
What other thefts the little radical might wish to enumerate would remain a mystery, however, for Hannah interjected a question. “What do you mean, ‘stole the looms’? They’re built here.”
Unperturbed, Judith replied, “I mean the plans. Did you think our Boston overlords are clever enough to devise a machine of their own? No. Old Lowell crossed the sea just to spy on the Lords of Lancashire and copy their inventions, such as they are. The owners christened the new city ‘Lowell’ to honor his subterfuge. That’s how the power loom reached these free shores.”
If the Seer wished to know any more of this history, her inquiry was cut short, for another coughing fit overcame her. She released Mrs. Hanson in order to bend forward, her palms resting on her knees. While the matron winced at one girl’s hacking, she nevertheless caught a glimpse of the other’s face observing her friend keenly. How strange! Always in the past the parts were swapped: Hannah studying Judith as if she were a lesson Hannah meant to learn.
With a hand, the ginger girl gestured her desire for a handkerchief, and Mrs. Hanson obliged before Judith could supply hers.
“I should fetch Dr. Green,” said Judith, though the coughing abated.
“There’s nothing to pay him,” said Hannah.
“You ought to rest now,” the matron advised. Mercifully, the Seer nodded, though her gaze lingered on Judith before passing and retreating out of the kitchen and up the stairs. The other girl moved to follow her co-conspirator, but the matron caught her with a stern glance.
“Wash up those plates, will you? I’ve already started on tomorrow’s breakfast.”
Reluctantly, the bulldog moved, retrieving the plates and spoons which she and Hannah had eaten off.
“Do you know,” said the matron, as she dusted her fingers to take up rolling and smashing dough once more, “why I stuck you up in that room beside her when you arrived in Lowell, not a friend in the world?”
“To irritate Lydia at every opportunity?”
Mrs. Hanson smiled in spite of herself. “She asked for you. I’d just sent you down to the corporation to log your name with the paymaster, when she comes and tells me, ‘Mrs. H, hers is the brightest soul I’ve ever Seen. If she is beside me, when I shut my eyes, it shall be like staring into the sun that blots out every other flame. All else will be darkness and calm.’ Did you know? Did she never tell you how she manages to sleep when phantoms and demons live on the insides of her eyelids?”
The young bulldog had gone still. “I didn’t know,” she murmured.
“Think on that when you decide to keep the strike or not.”
9: The Engineer’s Tidings
HANNAH MAY HAVE FOUND a way to rest easy, but Judith slept fitfully that night. In her dreams, rows of idle machines and empty bobbins mingled with Abigail’s bald head and Mrs. Hanson’s skeptical eyebrows, Hannah’s voice and Hannah’s cough. Something had become uncorked inside Judith that day, a wellspring of soft feeling gurgling—gushing—in a dull ache. What could it mean? Judith didn’t know what to do with her hands or legs.
Mindful of waking Hannah, she tried to keep still. The room was unbearably close and warm, with six hearts pushing hot blood through young limbs, and six sets of lungs exhaling into the shared atmosphere. At last, slick as a spent stage horse, Judith threw off the coverlet and let the night chill her into dead slumber.
A man came before dawn. Florry woke the house, shouting Judith’s name until she came to the door of the dormitory and looked down. Through sleep-blurred eyes, Judith recognized the ruddy face and wide frame of Mr. Reed, the engineer of the Merrimack Mills.
“New operatives are arriving today,” he said as he stood at the bottom of the staircase, his face red in the light of the lantern he carried. “It’s a flatboat from Boston, coming down the canal with a hundred Irish or more. Mr. Curtis said I’m to check the machines, get them running again.”
At once Judith returned to her trunk, seeking the cleaner of her two dresses.
“Mr. Curtis gave me the order,” said the engineer, alternately speaking to Florry, Lydia, and the other girls who had gathered on the staircase, “and I’ve no doubt he had it from Mr. Boott. You know I’m a working man myself; I don’t hold your sex against you Union girls. But I can’t disobey.”
“Thank you, Mr. Reed, truly, for the warning,” Judith called. “Hannah, wake up! The time is come!”
There was no response. Judith jumped back, startled to find the other side of their bed empty. “Where is she?”
“She was coughing a fit last night,” said Lucy.
“I didn’t hear it,” Judith marveled. Or she’d thought it was only her dreaming.
“Mrs. Hanson did,” said Florry, stirring the fire’s embers to brighten the room. “They left the house about an hour ago. I saw them through the window. I thought only for fresh air, but they must have gone to the doctor.”
The tightness in Judith’s chest eased, but only a tick. If Mrs. Hanson had taken Hannah to Dr. Green, she must be very ill indeed.
Shucking off that worry, she glanced around, at Florry, Sarah Payne, and Lucy. Others were just beyond the room’s door on the landing. Lydia, watching and waiting. Abigail, in her borrowed cap and tear-swollen eyes.
The looms, she wanted to say. The looms are ours. They strike with us. But that was a conundrum only half-solved, and without Hannah . . .
The bells of Lowell were ringing: half past four.
“What do we do, Judith?” asked Lucy.
“We must do something,” said Abigail.
“We will,” Judith replied at once. Half a solution was better than none at all. “First, we wake every Merrimack girl we can find, tell them come to the canal.” She finished lacing her boots and tied her Union band firmly to her arm. “We can still win this.”
10: Passions
“THIS IS THE FILTHIEST scene ever witnessed,” Lydia told Judith. “Truly, only you could devise such a thing.” All around them, operatives from the Merrimack Mill were strung along the edge of the headrace, expectorating like sailors. Their spittle flew through the air with lusty Ptah!s that made a counterpoint to the creaking and grinding of the mill wheel. As often as not, the projectiles landed on the cotton lying on the flat skiffs in the canal, but the true target, as Judith had explained, was the water flowing through the wheel, the lifeblood of the mill. The girls made a game of it, forgetting that overseers and matrons had ever admonished them to maintain virtuous deportment.
“It’s all Hannah’s craft. You”—Judith paused to add her own spittle to the unnatural rain—“gave her the idea.”
“Me?” Lydia asked, after hurling her own with all the force her rosebud lips could muster.
“What you said kissing the shuttle,” Judith replied, “when we wove that first night.”