Free Bound by Sally Gunning Page B

been able to push them. She shook them out; they smelled of piss and puke yet; she balled them up again and returned to the stairs.
    If the widow sent Alice away she needn’t go to the tavern; she could empty the widow’s money jar as Freeman had suggested and set out for Yarmouth, as Freeman had also suggested. But at Yarmouth, what then? She might find another widow. Or another Verley. Or another tavern.
    Alice returned to the keeping room. Freeman had disappeared. The widow took her clothes from her without fuss and said, as if it had been the subject all along, “You claim some skill at spinning?”
    “Yes, madam.”
    The widow held up her scarred hands. “I manage the loom, but not the wheel. For a time my granddaughter Bethiah spun for me—” Her voice trailed off.
    Alice looked again at the widow. Yesterday Alice wouldn’t have thought her old enough to have a granddaughter able to spin, but now something seemed to have aged her, troubled her. Had the granddaughter Bethiah died? The widow collected herself, went on. “And then, of course, foreign cloth came in so cheap, but now—” She stopped again, no doubt reminded of the men’s talk of the night before. Was this what had been on her mind all along? She had hoped to do her part to aid the non-importation plan, but as she couldn’t spin…
    Alice turned to the wheel that stood pushed back in the corner of the keeping room, a walking wheel, for turning fleece into woolen yarn, not the smaller foot wheel that was used to spin flax into linen. Alice had begun to use the walking wheel at Mr. Morton’s as soon as she’d come into her height, but at Medfield, Nabby Verley had put both her wheels away in favor of purchasing the more fashionable imported fabrics.
    Alice said, “Where is your wool, madam?”
    The widow turned and climbed the stairs. She returned with a dusty basket half full of combed and carded rolls of fleece, as if the spinner had been forced to leave off abruptly. Alice picked out a roll and pulled the end into a thin snake; she wound the snake onto the spindle with her bandaged hand, pleased to see she could work the fingers as she needed above the bandage. She tested the wheel, rocking it back and forth to take its motion, and began. It took her some time to recapture the rhythm: three steps back and spin the wheel clockwise to twist the fleece into yarn, three steps forward and spin the wheel the other way to wind the yarn off the spindle; three steps back again to wind the yarn onto the bobbin. Backward, forward, backward. Backward, forward, backward. Alice’s fingers needed some time to adapt to the restriction in the palm, her aching shoulder wouldn’t rotate as fast as she’d have liked, and she walked many unneeded steps, but soon enough the roll of fleece began to draw down and the yarn to build up on the bobbin.
    The widow observed Alice for a time but then left her to her task and returned to her own. The wheel hummed like a steady wind, isolating Alice in her corner, and her attention was so fixed on her task that by the time she looked around she was amazed to see how much the widow had accomplished. The laundry tub had been set up in the dooryard, the water lugged, the washing already done and spread out on the shrubs to dry.

     

    ALICE FINISHED OFF the basket of fleece that afternoon; that night she and the widow sat with the hand reel, winding the yarn off the bobbin and knotting it into skeins. Four of them, all told. Even Freeman, sitting nearby tilting a thick book toward a candle, looked at the finished skeins and lifted an eyebrow. Did Alice’s small success disappoint or please him? The one arched brow didn’t tell.
    That night, as Alice climbed the stairs, she heard the widow’s voice rising up behind her. “She’s a good spinner. You might mention that in the village.”
    “I shall. Although you might recall my efforts last evening didn’t end well.”
    “And these our better citizens. If she were to end