services, what might the axmen get up to? Her presence actually made the town safer for its wives and daughters.
So an uneasy truce was struck between the whore and the virtuous womenfolk and had held for seven long years. In times of trouble and illness, she contributed her part, whether they liked it or not: she would tend to the sick and dying, feed the destitute traveler, slip coins in the church donation box when no one was around to see her enter. I couldn’t help but think she must long for a small measure of female companionship, though she respectfully kept to herself and sought no discourse with the townswomen.
Magdalena’s actual circumstances were a mystery to many children. We saw that our mothers avoided this puzzling figure. Most of the younger children believed her to be a witch or a supernatural creature of some kind. I remembered their taunting cries, the occasional handful of pebbles flung in her direction. Not by me-even at a tender age, I knew there was something compelling about her. By all rights, I should never have met her. My mother was not judgmental, but women such as she did not associate with prostitutes, nor would her daughters. And yet I did.
It happened during a long sermon one Sunday. I excused myself and slipped out to the privy. But instead of hurrying back to the balcony and to my father’s side, I dawdled outside in the warmth of a beautiful early summer day. I meandered to Tinky Talbot’s barn to look on the new litter of piglets, pink with black splotches, whirled with thin, coarse hair. I petted their curious snouts, listened to their gentle grunts.
Then I looked sideways down the path-it was the closest I had ever been to the mysterious singular cottage- and I saw Magdalena sitting in a chair on the narrow window box of a porch, a long, blackened pipe clenched between her teeth. She, too, was enjoying the sun, wrapped in a quilt, her hair scandalously loose around her shoulders. The parts of her not covered by the quilt were slender and delicate, the birdlike bones of her clavicle visible under papery skin. She had no powders on her face, just a trace of lampblack smudged at the corner of her eyes, a ghost of stain on her lips.
She was unlike the other women in town. You could tell as much by her very attitude: sitting by herself in the sunlight, enjoying her own company, and not apologizing for being idle. I was drawn to her immediately, though I was also frightened by her. There was something wicked about her. She didn’t attend services, after all; here she was enjoying her Sunday, whereas everyone else in town was inside the church or the congregation hall.
She lifted her hand over her eyes against the sun. “Hello, who’s there?”
I made my decision in that moment. I could have run back to church, but instead I took a few timid steps toward her. “You don’t know me, ma’am. My name is Lanore McIlvrae.”
“McIlvrae.” She weighed the name, satisfying herself that she didn’t know it and, hence, didn’t count my father among her customers. “No, my dear, I do not think I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.” She smiled when I curtsied.
“My name is Magdalena-though I suspect you may know that, yes? You may call me Magda.” Up close, she was very pretty. She stood to rearrange the quilt and revealed that she was still in her night stays and a filmy shift of pale linen, drawn low on her chest with a thin pink ribbon. In a practical house such as ours, my mother owned not even one item of clothing as feminine as Magda’s gently shabby shift. I was struck by the combination of her beauty and this pretty item of clothing; it was the first time I’d ever been really covetous of another person.
She noticed me staring at her shift and a knowing smile came to her face. “Wait here a minute,” she said and went inside the house. When she came out, she held a ribbon of pink velvet out to me. You can’t imagine what a treasure it was she offered; manufactured goods were rare in our hardscrabble town, fripperies such as ribbon rarer still. It was the softest fabric I’d ever touched and I held it lightly, like a baby rabbit.
“I couldn’t accept such a gift,” I said, though plainly I wished it weren’t so.
“Nonsense,” she laughed. “It’s only a bit of trim from a dress. What would I do with it?” she lied. She watched me finger the ribbon, enjoying my pleasure. “Keep it. I insist.”
“But my parents will ask where I got it-”
“You can tell them you found it,” she offered, though we both knew I couldn’t do that. It was an unlikely story. And yet I could not make myself give the ribbon back to Magda. She was pleased when my fist curled around her gift, and she smiled-but not in triumph, more in solidarity.
“You are most generous, Mistress Magda,” I said, curtsying again. “I must return to the service or my father will worry that something has happened to me.”
She tilted her chin up so she could look down her fine nose in the direction of the congregation hall. “Ah, so you are right. You mustn’t worry your parents. I do hope you will visit me again, Miss McIlvrae.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Good. Then run along.” I trotted down the path, lifting my skirts to avoid the muddy parts. Before I turned the corner, I looked back over my shoulder to the cottage to see that Magda had settled back in her chair and rocked contentedly, staring off into the woods.
I could hardly wait for next Sunday to steal out during service and visit Magda again. I’d hidden the ribbon in the pocket of my second set of petticoats where I could slip my hand in from time to time and give the velvet a surreptitious stroke. The ribbon reminded me of Magda herself; she was so unlike my mother and the other women in the village and that alone seemed reason to admire her.
One thing about her I thought worth admiring, but did not really understand, was that she did not have a man. No woman in the village lived without a man, and the man was always the head of the household. Magda was the only woman in the village who spoke for herself, though from what I could tell, she did very little on that front. I doubted she went to town meetings. And yet she continued to live on her own terms and seemed to be successful at it, and to a young girl that was a very admirable thing indeed.
So the next Sunday I contrived to be excused from service again (though with stern looks from my father) and ran to Magda’s cottage. And there was Magda, standing on her porch this time. Her casual air was gone. She was dressed in a pretty striped skirt and wore a fitted woolen jacket in purple heather, an unusual color. The entire effect seemed calculated to delight, as though it was her intent to impress me. I was flattered.
“Good day, Mistress Magda,” I said as I ran up to her, slightly out of breath.
“Well, good Sabbath to you, Miss McIlvrae.” Her green eyes sparkled. We chatted; she asked about my family, I pointed in the direction of our farm. Just as I was thinking I should return to service, she said shyly, “I would ask you in to see my home-but I suppose that your parents would not approve. Seeing as who I am. It wouldn’t be proper.”
She must have known I’d be curious to see the inside of her cottage. Her own place, the seat of her independence! I felt a tug to return to church, to my waiting father… but how could I turn this down? “I have but a minute…,” I said as I followed her up the steps and through the door.
It seemed to me like the inside of a jewel box, but in actuality, it was probably quite tumbledown and makeshift. The tiny room was dominated by a narrow bed covered with a beautifully embroidered quilt of yellow and red. Glass bottles lined the sill of the one window, sending slivers of green and brown light to the floor. A few pieces of jewelry rested in a ceramic bowl painted with tiny pink roses. Her clothing hung on pegs by the back door, an assortment of full skirts in a variety of colors, trailing sashes, the frill of petticoats. Not one but two pairs of delicate women’s boots were lined up by the door. My only disappointment was that the room was stuffy, the air heavy with a musky scent I didn’t yet recognize.
“I would love to live in a place such as this,” I said, making her laugh.
“I’ve lived in nicer places, but this will do,” she said as she sank into a chair.
Before I left, Magda gave me two pieces of advice, woman to woman. The first was that a woman should always put by some money of her own. “Money is very important,” she said to me, showing me where she kept a pouch full of coin. “Money is the only way for a woman to have any true power over her own life.” The second was that a woman should never betray another woman over a man. “It happens time and again,” she said, sounding sad. “And it is understandable, seeing that men are given all the worth in the world. We are made to believe that a woman’s only worth is that of the man in her life, but that’s not true. In any case, we women must stand by each other, for to depend on a man is folly. He will disappoint you every time.” She ducked her head but I swear I saw tears in her eyes.
I was rising from the floor to leave when there was a knock at the door. A burly man stepped in before Magda could answer; I recognized him as one of St. Andrew’s axmen.
“Hullo, Magda, I figured you’d be alone and wanting company, as everyone else is in church this morning… Who’s this?” He stopped short when he saw me and an unpleasant smile spread over his wind-burned face. “You
