Cape Cod

by William Martin

  After all, it was sin to dwell on thoughts of the flesh, and listening to such sounds could only torment a man who had no woman. Ezra looked out at the blue sea and tried to drive from his mind the vision the sounds conjured. Between husband and wife, it was an act of holiness. Between others, or played out in the mind, it was merely lust.

  And now—especially now, after the untoward appearance of Thomas Weston—Ezra Bigelow had to avoid giving any appearance of lust. For he was a godly man.

  “Good morrow, Master Bigelow!” A few minutes later, Bradford came to his window and looked into the clear sky. “ ’Tis a fine day the Lord hath made.”

  “Good morrow, Master Bradford. May I enter?”

  “Aye. And break thy fast.”

  “Good day to thee, master. How fare thee?” Alice gave Ezra a small curtsy, like a well-bred goodwife. She had already drawn the coverlet over the bed in the corner and was now at the hearth, stirring porridge. How he longed for such a sight in his own house, for a bed tight-slept and well used.

  “Care thee for porridge?” Bradford seemed in bright spirits.

  Ezra shook his head. “My thoughts did wake me… on Thomas Weston.”

  Bradford sat at his table. “I’ve thought on him myself. Given his necessity and past favors, it may be our Christian duty to help him.”

  Ezra slipped his hands beneath his cloak to still them. “He deserves eye for eye, but Christ taught charity.”

  “Fifty beaver skins, then, and begone with him.” Bradford tested his grainy gray meal and found it too hot.

  “He did ask for a hundred.”

  “Come, Ezra, he’s a monger. He barters. Ask for the heavens but settle for the earth, ask for the earth but settle for a colony, ask for the colony but settle for a plot.” Bradford blew on the porridge, tested it again, and slipped the spoonful into his mouth.

  “Fifty pelts will not provision the Swan.”

  “Aye, should ever he find it.”

  Ezra came close and spoke the words he had memorized. “I oppose unwarranted gifts, but I have prayed hard on this and do change my thinkin’. Weston favored us formerly, and fair treatment of him now will bring favor from him in future. Treat him ill, and count on his enmity forever.”

  And William Bradford agreed. They were simple men, given to prayer and honest work and sound sleep each night. In complicated matters, they listened to the counsel of their friends. In the responsibility he had carried for near three years, Bradford listened to his assistants. “A hundred skins, then, done with discretion. We’ll tell the other assistants, but the general population must not know, for we’ll be hard put to explain such charity.”

  “ ’Tis wisdom before charity, done in anticipation of what Weston may do for us.”

  v.

  At midnight, Ezra Bigelow met Weston, Jack Hilyard, and Christopher near the mouth of Town Brook. He had brought a tipcart covered in straw beneath which were a hundred beaver pelts. He pointed a bony finger at Hilyard. “Reveal any of this, and I’ll find reason to stock you for a month.”

  “I give Tom me word.”

  While Jack and his son loaded the pelts onto a canoe, Ezra drew Weston up the path. It was a moonless night. But for the torches flickering at the corners of the stockade, Plymouth was in blackness. Jack could see nothing of Bigelow and no more than Weston’s outline. But his mates used to say that he could hear a whale breach before anyone else saw it. So he listened hard, for, considering the men, there had to be dirty dealing somewhere in this.

  “… the book.”

  “This is the truth…”

  “… what you promised.”

  Weston spoke of leaving before the tide turned.

  “Thou hast not brought the book? But our bargain?”

  A book and a bargain. Jack was right. Dirty dealing.

  “The Indians did strip me. ’Tis gone, in truth.”

  Bigelow’s voice rose. “This is not what was promised.”

  There came the sound of hawking. “… my spat-on palm means truth. I’ll speak none of this…”

  And Jack could hear no more. Soon after, he and his son and Thomas Weston pushed off, leaving the black figure of Ezra Bigelow standing like death on the shore.

  All that night, they held close to the coast, so that they could wade ashore if the sea overturned their canoe. But the night was calm, and by dawn, they reached the mouth of the Scusset, the place where they had first seen Indians.

  Christopher gazed east, along the upper arm of the Cape. “We could follow the beach, Pa, be at our island by nightfall.”

  “Our island.” Jack laughed at that, more in anger than amusement. “Our island be no more than a dream to wake thyself from, lad, thanks to thy wanderin’ ways.”

  And there was no further talk of their island. They rested until the tide turned, then pointed their canoe upstream and, like the Indians, let the current take them through the valley. When the water grew too shallow, they carried the canoe over the mile-long path and down to the headwaters of the Manomet. That night, they camped near the mouth of the Manomet, a place the Indians called Aptucxet, “at the little trap river.”

  Word had come that a Dutch trading pinnace was on the south coast, and might stop here, as here was the only place on Cape Cod where canoes could pass from one side to the other without facing open ocean or dangerous shoals. Thus it was the best place for traders to deal with Indians or with a white man who owned a hundred pelts of beaver.

  Thomas Weston slipped off his boots and put his feet by the fire. A big toe poked from his hose like a shrew poking its nose from a burrow. “It might be that a canal could be dug over that portage we took today.”

  “Canal? We’re lucky we has shelters.” Jack put another log on the fire.

  “You could sail straight on to Plymouth without ever seein’ the shoals that did trouble you so in the Mayflower.”

  “Sail right up to Ezra Bigelow”—Jack leaned back and threw his words after the sparks rising into the night—“ask for a hundred pelt, beaver or otter, no matter.”

  Weston gave a growling laugh. “It be a grand world.”

  Jack smoothed a pelt and placed it on the feet of his sleeping son. “I hear thou gets all the pelts thou wants, if thou knows ’bout a certain… book.”

  The grease in Weston’s beard glistened in the firelight. “I did forget tales of thy sharp ears. Well, there be no book, nor anythin’ else to use ’gainst Master Bigelow, ’cept this.” He tapped his temple.

  “Bigelow’s not one for bluff or bluster.”

  “I be the best bluffin’ blusterer what ever there was.”

  “Thou asked last night about Dorothy Bradford…. This book of thine, does it talk of her?”

  Though there was not an Englishman for twenty miles, Weston slid closer to Hilyard and lowered his voice. “Jack, hear the counsel of one who was born poor, got rich, got poor, and who’ll get rich again. Forget books that be lost forever. Think of trade.”

  “Don’t be changin’ the talk, Tom.”

  “I be tellin’ thee why I come here. To get started again, in trade. Trade’s the thing. Trade whale oil, trade pelts, trade the land if you can.” Weston strode to the edge of the river. “Start here.”

  “Start what?”

  “A tradin’ post. The Indians trades pelts to thee for trinkets. Thou trades pelts to the Dutch for profit.”

  Jack looked out at the river mouth. The new moon had risen, a rapier of light glimmering above black water and blacker land. “And the book?”

  “Trade, Jack. To man or nation, trade matters more than faith. After that, there be no more to tell.”

  And no Dutch came that season. So Weston went north and found the Swan floundering from one Penobscot fishing settlement to another. He provisioned her with beaver charity and repaid Plymouth, as Bradford wrote, with “reproaches and evil words.” But he never again spoke of book or scandal. This might have been because he considered it a secret to use again. Or perhaps a perver
ted sense of honor kept him from destroying the reputation of Ezra Bigelow and besmirching the colony he had helped to start.

  When he sailed for Virginia, to test his skills as planter, trader, and member of the House of Burgesses, Weston did not even go with thanks. He called them good beggars on his behalf and bade them good-bye.

  Ezra Bigelow prayed in thanksgiving at his leaving. Jack Hilyard prayed for knowledge of a book that would give him sway over Bigelow and the island called Nauseiput. Elizabeth prayed that the elders would heed her husband, who now urged them to build a trading post on the Manomet.

  She had determined that she would pray like a proper Saint and keep house like any goodwife. But until she could move her family away from those who had punished her so unjustly, she would bring no more children into the world. Upon news of this, Jack seethed.

  vi.

  In the land of Autumnsquam, the Nausets seethed as well, but with fever. As the cranberry vines reddened and the geese took flight in the year that the white men called 1623, another plague came. It swept through the marshes where some still hid from Plymouth’s wrath. It struck in villages where there were good shelter and plentiful food.

  Autumnsquam had once killed a wolf with his bare hands. He had fought the white men in the dawn light. He had refused to be frightened by Witawawmut’s head. But all the courage he could muster meant nothing in the face of this sickness.

  His woman died before him and left Autumnsquam alone to watch their son die. He held the boy to his chest and covered him with kisses. He did not care that the sores on the boy’s forehead broke against his lips. He would be glad to join his family as soon as Kautantowit would take him.

  He buried his boy beside his wife and buried the others who had been his friends. Then he sat back and waited for the fever and the sores to come to him. But they did not.

  After many days, the wind rose, the rain slashed down, and he heard the roar of the sea beyond the bar. It called to him like the voice of Kautantowit. So he paddled his canoe into the east wind, and as he drew close to the inlet, he saw the breakers raging.

  Three times he tried to run the inlet, and three times the sea threw him back. The breakers that he prayed would swamp him did not let him beyond the bay. It was not his time to die. Perhaps it was a sign. Perhaps one day, Kautantowit would call him to wipe this land clean of the English and their god. He went back to his dying village and prayed that it would be so.

  vii.

  Elizabeth Hilyard prayed as well, for four years.

  In that time, she did not conceive again. But she could not deny her husband his due. He was, after all, her master.

  Though a Saint, she had grown up in a most unsaintly section of London and there had heard of a way to prevent the man’s seed from entering her body though the man did. She took boiled sheep guts—meat casings—and fashioned sheaths that her husband could wear when he came to her. He objected, but she promised that if he wore them, she would never turn him away. She kept her promise and they remained, at least outwardly, good citizens.

  Each spring, Jack pressed the elders to permit whaling. But the whales seldom coasted close to Plymouth and the elders would yet permit no settlements in distant parts of Cape Cod. Then he would press them on the need for a trading post at Aptucxet. Press them for anything, his wife said, that might get the Hilyards away from Plymouth.

  In 1627, the London Adventurers echoed Jack’s words on trade. After farming and husbandry had ensured survival of the plantation, the Adventurers suggested that Plymouth’s best hope to work off its debts would be in trade. And the London market craved pelts.

  So Plymouth bought land from the Manomets, made treaties with the Wampanoag nation and the Dutch at New Amsterdam, and built at Aptucxet a trading post more capacious than any Plymouth house, with two large rooms, an upper chamber, loft, and root cellar. The Indians would bring pelts of beaver, otter, muskrat, even mink. The Dutch would come with glass, pottery, cloth, and the metal goods the Indians coveted. Plymouth would trade in the fruits of its husbandry. And all would benefit.

  For Jack Hilyard’s foresight, for his bravery against Witawawmut, and perhaps as recompense for punishment that many considered unjust, Bradford named him proprietor. Ezra Bigelow was glad to be shed of Hilyard, his bitter wife, and his nettlesome elder son. And the Hilyards were glad to move some twenty miles to the shoulder of Cape Cod. Jack would see little direct profit, but much in the way of goodwill—from Plymouth and his family.

  On the first night, he found it in the upper chamber. Beside the rushlight, Elizabeth removed her skirt and petticoats. Then she slid her black stockings down her legs. Then she took off the bodice that encased her upper body and the bum roll that fullened her hips. Then, though the night humors were known to be a danger to the naked body, she pulled her shift over her head and stood, for the first time, completely bare before him.

  “I’ve no fear of the night air,” she whispered. “And I brung no sheep’s guts to Aptucxet.”

  He leaned on one elbow and his eyes caressed the whiteness of her body. “It surpass my knowin’.”

  “What?”

  “Why thou choosed me, when all them fine Saints lined up for thy hand.”

  “Two reasons.” She knelt on the edge of the bed, bringing her sex so close to his face that the smell of her intoxicated him. “Thou art thine own man. And thou hast that—” She threw back the coverlet.

  His shirt formed a little tent above his loins. “Thou knows the words to make a man feel manly.”

  She pushed the undershirt up toward his waist. She made motion to sit upon him, then hesitated, as if she had forgotten something.

  His heart nearly quit when she lowered her mouth toward his root. He had heard of this done, for a price, by London whores. Now, in the exquisite privacy of Aptucxet, far from the prying eyes of the colony, his wife would do it for him. Then she stopped. He understood. They were rebellious, not depraved, and sodomy was sin no matter where done. She wet her fingertips with her tongue and anointed him. “Now, let us make another child, a free child.”

  Jack put his head back and thought how blessed he was.

  In the loft, Christopher heard the creaking of the bed ropes and wished the same blessing for himself. He was nineteen, tall and brawny, with a thickening beard that made him seem all of a man, in no way connected to his wiry father. And there was a sullenness about him that masked a questioning nature.

  The sullenness derived from questions that could not be asked in Plymouth, as they challenged the faith of Plymouth. There was but one church, said the Saints, one path to God, and the fate of all was predestined. But Christopher had befriended Indians who visited Plymouth, had learned their language, had heard of Kautantowit, of Geesukquand and Habbamock and all the spirits of sky and earth, and he had found meaning in them. They explained the world in a way that men could understand.

  And that, he believed, was what faith should do. If one set of beliefs could not teach men the way to live in harmony with their world and themselves, what should men do but seek God in another way? It was for certain that eight hours each Sunday upon a hard meetinghouse bench had never explained to him why the head of one who sought to save his land should rot at the meetinghouse door.

  Thus it was a happy day when his father charged him to go among the Cape tribes and speak of Aptucxet. He yearned to meet the Nausets once more, to seek Kautantowit in the marshes and beaches, and perhaps see the smile of the girl named Amapoo again.

  After three days’ journey, in which he visited many villages, he came to Nauseiput Island, shining like a ruby in the October light. Several Saquatucket families lived in the clearing where Christopher and his father had once tried to settle. The Saquatuckets had built their wetus around the old foundation hole, in which a heap of discarded shells rose higher each day.

  Sepet was the sachem. He was white-haired, with skin hung in pouches where his chest muscles had been, and he dwelt without women or children. “Our world
changes. We are fewer each year. And Kautantowit…”

  “He must be sad.”

  The old man rubbed the saggy flesh of his breast. “Who can say? Sad, or mad that we do not praise him?”

  “Tomorrow I visit the Nausets.”

  Sepet poked at the fire and laughed bitterly. “Do you know the name of their new sachem?”

  “Autumnsquam?”

  “So we wish, but his name is George. He takes an English name to be a friend of the English.”

  “What of Autumnsquam?”

  “Sad and lonely, like me. The sickness of pox took his woman and his son, like mine.”

  Christopher bowed his head. “I must see him.”

  “He lives near the round pond on the bay, with his niece, the girl Amapoo… and her man.”

  That night Christopher slept on Nauseiput, in Sepet’s wetu, on a bed of deerskin. But he did not have blissful sleep. He dreamed of Autumnsquam’s baby, adorned with shells, and woke in a sweat. He listened to the wind in the trees and the rattled breathing of the old Indian beside him, and after a time, he slept again. Then he dreamed of Amapoo, and it was a dream so intense that he woke in the middle of a night-come.

  The next day, with anticipation and trepidation, he moved on to Nauset. He remembered from six years before that Aspinet’s village had spread a great distance both north and south along the shore. Now there were few columns of smoke rising anywhere in the Nauset land. The fields looked to be planted more with weeds than corn. The children were scrawny. The dogs bared their teeth. And many wetus were stripped of covering, nothing more than bent saplings, like skeletons in the sun.

  In respect, Christopher first visited Sachem George, half brother of Aspinet. George wore an English cloak, grinned a great deal, and promised that all the Nausets would bring their pelts to Aptucxet. Christopher gave him a new knife, then went north to the round pond.