JUDITH AND HANNAH did not return to Mrs. Hanson’s until after supper, their bellies yawning with hunger. Though they intended to make straight for the kitchen, no sooner had they set foot across the threshold than Patience Smith hastened up from the foot of the staircase where she’d been sitting, rushed to Judith, and seized her hand.
“Thank heavens you’re here!” Patience was breathless, her face giving the lie to her name as she tugged Judith inside. Other girls were lining the staircase, leaning over the banister to watch, or seated around the parlor in clusters, heads lifted in attitudes of disturbed conversation. Tonight, there was no evidence of games, no playing cards, no one seated at the pianoforte.
“What’s happened?” asked Judith.
“It’s Abigail—she—we—you’d better come and see. Perhaps you too,” the girl added to Hannah, less certain.
Irritated more than intrigued, intrigued more than alarmed, Judith allowed herself to be pulled up the staircase, past the others waiting in various states of agitation. The third floor, they found deserted except for Sarah Payne, who stood knitting outside the doorway of the dormitory shared by Patience, Abigail, and four others. The needles clicked and clacked menacingly, as if singing the tale of their sharp points. After recognizing the three new arrivals, Sarah stood aside, allowing them to enter the dormitory. She swiftly retook her post as soon as Hannah had passed.
Inside the bedroom—even smaller and darker than the room where Hannah and Judith slept on the fourth floor—Lucy and Lydia flanked a bundle of quilt and pillow, which was shaking with sobs.
“It’s no less than you deserve, you craven little mouse,” Lydia excoriated the sobbing bed clothes. “By heaven, Judith was right!”
“What is this?” asked Judith herself.
Leaving others to explain, Patience went to the fireplace, where she stood worrying a hangnail and watching.
“It’s Abigail. She feared for her family.” With a weary sigh, Lucy sat down on the bed beside the bundle, which squinting Judith could make out was the pitiful shape of a young woman curled up below the quilt, the pillow mashed over her head with two trembling hands. “She tried to go to Mr. Boott.”
All pity that Judith was prepared to feel disappeared. The attitude of the operatives downstairs and Sarah Payne’s armed vigil at the door grew clearer. “To Mr. Boott? Why?”
In response, the bundle wailed, and from the fireplace Patience pled her fellow’s case. “Judith, don’t be too hard on her. All of us have kinfolk at home depending on us.”
“Yes,” Judith agreed thinly, “and yet none of us save her went over to the enemy. But someone tell me what happened.”
Lydia sniffed and Lucy patted what seemed to be the bundle’s shoulder. “Near as we can figure—it’s come out only between sobs, you see—Abigail decided to ask if the mills would take her back, with that five-cent raise Mr. Boott promised,” said Lucy. “She’d no sooner set out for the Boott Palace, however, than she felt a tug on her hair. Well, she turns around and no one is there. So, on she goes. A few steps more, and she feels it again. She looks around, but she’s quite alone in the lane. Of course, now she feels queer and haunted, but cowardice won’t feed her family, so on she goes, determined to ignore the tugging.
“Firmer and more frequent it grows, from all quarters, and she’s sure she’s under attack by spirits or worse. She goes running into town, covering her head as best she can with her arms. She meets Laura and Betsy returning with the groceries for Mrs. H, and begs them to shield her. Well, of course, they don’t know what’s going on, but Laura lends her a shawl to throw over her head, and she makes her way back here like that. Little enough good it did her.”
“What do you mean?” Judith asked, blinking fast, unsure whether she credited Lucy’s account or not. It certainly appeared Lucy believed it.
“Oh, show her, you ninny!” said Lydia, seizing the pillow from over Abigail’s head. The girl’s scalp appeared briefly, pale and bald in the dim firelight, before she pulled herself below the bedclothes again like a tortoise taking shelter.
All of Abigail’s brunette locks were gone.
Judith clapped her hands over her open mouth. Had the spell—her spell, Hannah’s spell—truly worked so well? She wheeled around to look at the Seer, to find that Hannah had sunk to the foot of the empty bed nearest the door, holding herself tightly and staring sightlessly into the corners of the room.
“What do you want to do with her?”
Lucy’s question brought Judith back to the huddled traitor. “Do with her?”
“Some of the Union”—Lucy measured her tone precisely as a new bolt of cloth—“have a mind to run her out of Lowell. Others understand her reasons—they might even do the same if pressed to it—and say she’s been punished enough.”
“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.