Judith shook her head. Finding Hannah was the task at hand. Where would they keep her? Lowell had no jail. Perhaps the post office?
Mary Paul, the Vermonter from the Lawrence Mills, caught her by the hand, running in the opposite direction. “The new workers!” She gasped. “New workers coming down the river!”
Distinctly, Judith could feel the threads of the Union pact tugging at her, pulling her toward the dock.
“Tell the other girls to spit,” she told Mary, resisting. “Spit in the river. Spit in the canal.”
“Spit?”
“Ask Lydia!” Judith called over her shoulder. Like a shuttle passing through warp threads, she went dodging lines of her fellow mill girls, who were gathering under the poplars that followed the canal. They are the warp, she thought. And Hannah and I—we are the weft.
She let her feet take her, following, she realized at last, the path to the Boott Palace itself.
* * *
Perspiring and bewildered, Judith stepped into the shade of the columned porch and stopped. Nervously, her hands rose, and she turned the braided ring of Hannah’s and her own hair around her pinky finger.
Surely, whomever Mr. Boott had left on guard would not simply hand over the prisoner. Perhaps Judith ought to fetch Mrs. Hanson from the boardinghouse, to plead their cause. Perhaps she ought to have gathered some of the operatives to assist her.
Before she could think any further, the door swung open, revealing the figure of Dr. Green and his medical bag.
A voice spoke from the interior of the house. “Thank you, Doctor, yes, we’ll be sure she gets fresh air.”
“See that she does,” the doctor replied, exiting reluctantly. As the door began to swing shut behind him, Judith darted forward and stuck her foot between the door and the lintel.
“Doctor,” she said brightly. “Thank you so much for coming.”
Her appearance startled both the doctor and Mrs. Hanson, who proved to be the owner of the voice from within. Judith paused to stare.
None of the mill girls had betrayed them. Mrs. Hanson knew as much as they did about the spellcraft, but the boardinghouse keeper was under no bond of loyalty to the Union.
Recovering her presence of mind, Judith spoke to the doctor. “Poor Hannah kept us up all night with her coughing. But Mr. Boott has been so kind to look after her personally, and Mrs. Hanson is one of the Lord’s own angels.”
Dr. Green looked between the mill girl and the matron, as if he trusted neither, but both smiled back benignly, and Judith slid over the threshold with the grace of a cat slipping into forbidden rooms. Mrs. Hanson couldn’t very well stop her while the doctor was watching.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” said Dr. Green. “Good day, young lady. Mrs. Hanson.”
After thanking the man, Judith took the door and shut it, sealing herself inside the Boott Palace. At once she turned on the matron.
“You traitorous hag!”
The older woman backed away, raising her hands before her face in the nick of time, before Judith’s claws could reach her cheeks.
“All that talk about Hannah’s gift! All your awe for magic, and old ways, and your granddam the wise woman! All while spying and sneaking and preparing to betray us!”
Judith landed a flurry of blows on the matron’s arms before, with a quickness and strength that belied her age, Mrs. Hanson caught the girl’s wrists and held her firm.
“What did you think, my girl?” Mrs. Hanson’s face was harder than Judith had ever seen it, and she shook the younger woman to rattle her teeth in her head. “That one coin from Georgie’s family could keep thirty mouths fed? That I run a charity house, with no belly nor family of my own to think of? I have daughters, married off younger than you are now; they risk their lives in childbed every year, to please their husbands. I have sons, who’ll die at sea like as not. Call Sunday the Lord’s day if you want to, I never had a day of rest in my life, not from work and not from trouble. You radicals—I ought to sell the lot of you and hire myself out to witch for the corporations when the next cotton mouse gets it in her head to strike. Least then, I might hold two dimes to rub together before I’m dead.”
Judith was stupefied. In all her grumbling, all her muttering, Mrs. Hanson had never said so much to one of her boarders, and all Judith could do was burst into tears.
Mrs. Hanson was shocked enough to let her go. “What are you crying for?”
“Where’s Hannah? I need Hannah.”
The matron groaned and shook her head. “In there.” She pointed, then, seeing that the younger woman’s tears hadn’t stopped, took Judith’s hand and led her through a parlor that was as unlike the matron’s own as an oyster to a pearl. The walls were papered in pale green, to match the sofas and the gold-and-green carpets, and the golden frames around the portraits of Mr. Boott and his wife. Beyond this room opened a library, with a writing desk and a row of pigeonholes and looming bookcases, which must serve as the agent’s workplace when he was at home. Inside, a figure clad in a white shift and surrounded by long locks of coppery hair was unrolling papers one-handed.
“Hannah?” Judith brushed tears off her cheeks.
The Seer turned, dropped a handkerchief pressed to her mouth to smile at Judith, and immediately lifted it again. She made the cruelest hacking sound ever heard. Judith ran to her.
“Judith,” she wheezed, “good. Help me. We must find the plans.” Her voice had hardly enough vigor in it to make out words; Judith couldn’t think what she was talking about.
“Hannah, I must get you away from here, and then you must rest. You’re ill, you’re—” When Hannah dropped the handkerchief again, Judith saw a vivid spot of blood, red against the white cotton.
“There isn’t time,” Hannah wheezed. “Mr. Boott will return soon to question me. He wants me to denounce all the Union as witches. Of course, our spell won’t let me, but he hardly knows that.” Her coughing turned into laughter and back into coughing. “Help me.” She pulled yet another roll of paper from the desk and thumbed through the pages.
“What are you looking for?” Judith asked at last. “Plans?” Meanwhile, Mrs. Hanson had picked up a piece of chalk and was drawing a ring on the floor to encircle both girls and the desk. “What is happening?”
Hannah had to hack and spit in Mr. Boott’s inkwell before she answered. “Our spell. There!” She unrolled a sheaf and weighted the papers on the desk with a brass candlestick.
Hannah shut her eyes, in the gesture Judith knew meant she was using her Sight to examine the document; unable to do the same, Judith squinted with her very ordinary gaze. The script was too fine to read at a glance, but the illustrations were clear.
“Looms?” she asked.
Hannah’s hair had never spread more wildly about her as she opened her eyes and met Judith’s gaze. “It’s as you said. Many years ago, the city’s namesake, Mr. Lowell, went spying all the way to England and took down the plans, then claimed the patents here.” She stretched out her free hand to Judith, and Judith took it. “This is the papercraft that gave the corporations mastery over our looms. I can See it now: this is how they conjured it.”
Judith’s heart beat faster, as she began to understand Hannah’s meaning. “Conjured what?”