Hester(53)

Double is much more than I am earning at the shop or for my gloves.

“Charlotte has asked only for you,” she adds.

I told Nat his ancestors’ sins don’t belong to him, and I believe it. Why should Charlotte and her child bear the burden of her father’s sins?

“I’ll need thirty yards of white muslin, linen, and cotton,” I say at last.

“Then buy forty of each.” Mrs. Silas hands me twenty dollars in printed bills. “And sew a set of whites for the babe as well.”



* * *



MY JOB IS to hold my tongue and make Charlotte’s whites, and this is what I will do. Each time I think of Edward’s theft and lies my determination grows: I will have what I want with my needle, and Edward be damned.

I hide the paper money in a knot in the wall and buy cotton and linen from several merchants so that no one will suspect I’m making a quantity of petticoats. I bring my steel scissors to be sharpened at the knife shop near the wharves, and buy transparent paper and blue powder chalk at the stationer’s to make the patterns.

I’ve always wanted to be a pattern-maker; to make my own embroidery designs for my own creations. Now I will do it all, from design to transfer and on to the stitching itself. There is no reason a woman cannot do all of these jobs.

Back home, I clear off the table and close up the cottage so there is no breeze. After I’ve drawn out a length of irises twined with leaves and flowers, I fill the pounce bag with new blue chalk and stamp the designs on the cloth. This is exactly how I will transfer my Adam and Eve scene onto the banquet shawl, so I’m glad for the chance to practice now.

Soon Charlotte’s petticoats and tiny baby gowns hang across the backs of my chairs and spread across the table like the pale wings of angels. When I leave in the morning and return at the end of the day, I study them and swear they’ve moved. What stories could Nat tell about souls pinned up with sleeves and collars, souls spread out across a kitchen table or hung on a clothesline from the front to the back of my cottage? I’m sure that he would speak of ghosts and dreams and thwarted desires—but maybe, if he could see the way the white cloth seems to dance across the cottage, he might tell a hopeful tale. Not all ghosts are sinister, I know, for my own mother’s spirit voice has come to me from beyond and offered comfort when I needed it.

The songs and the sounds of my girlhood fill my mind as I stitch, and many nights I work until I hear Mercy’s children whispering through the woods just before dawn.

“Hurry, Ivy.”

“I’m not fast as you.”

Their voices remind me that not all voices in the shadows are filled with terrible secrets. Their voices tell me it’s time to put my needle to rest, and I’m asleep before the children leave my yard.



* * *



ONE DAY MERCY comes for water in the morning instead of the children. She’s surveying the pole beans I’ve tied up, and when I step outside she greets me by holding up a small jar of thick amber liquid.

“Brought this for you.” It seems she’s softened to me. Perhaps she’s sorry she was harsh when we spoke last. “Maple syrup from the sugar house. If I give it to the children, they’re likely to drink it away.”

“I saw marigolds in your yard,” I say after I’ve thanked her. “It’s good for skin troubles, I remember that from Edward’s shop.”

I offer to make her a tincture and an ointment for the scratches and bumps that are risen on her arms—she says it is poison ivy, but it looks more like a rash from some sort of wet work—and she agrees.

“The beeswax you brought is nice.” She holds up the jar. “You have any bread for this syrup?”

She follows me into the cottage, where I quickly cover up Charlotte’s whites with my red cape. The whites are hidden from sight, but my cape is right there for Mercy to see. While I cut a piece of bread, she runs her finger over the sea monsters I sewed while the captain stitched his own whites.

“You say your mama taught you?”

Her hand hovers over the iris, the tiny letters where I stitched LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to see if I could hide them beneath other shapes. Just as Nat seems to always have a notebook in hand in which to write down his thoughts as they arrive to him, I’ve been using my cape to record memories, to test my ideas, and to practice my tiny letters. I meant it to be a private workplace for myself, but I cannot deny that it is something more—a protective cloak that has kept me safe and warm, that has carried me across oceans and time and wishes and fears.

I’d like to fold it away from Mercy’s eyes, but it’s too late now. My gaze goes to the place where I stitched Nat’s words—YOU INTRIGUE ME—but she is leaning over to examine the flying figure of Isobel Gowdie.

“Why d’you have a witch here?” she asks.

There’s no sense denying what’s there in plain sight.

“My ancestress was accused of being a witch in Scotland. I learned her story when I was girl.”

Mercy takes the bread and dips it into the jar of syrup, holds it out to me. It’s fresh and sweet in my mouth.

“They say witch, but what do they mean?” Mercy muses. “Witch is a reason to kill you; witch might be someone to heal you; witch can be the Devil, or witch can be a woman so beautiful she makes you lose your sense. They’ve got so many ways of calling you a witch, they just change it to how it suits them.”