Becoming Americans

by Donald Batchelor

  The snow was gone by Tuesday morning, but the town's excitement continued. The presence of captured goods, sold at reasonable prices, was exciting, and so were the captured coins which Edward's crew spent lavishly in the taverns.

  On Friday afternoon, a two-masted brigantine entered Town Creek, and Sarah Alice knew it was hers. A sailor from the ship ran to the Lawson house to tell Mistress Harrison that Major Dorsey would be calling on her that evening.

  Hannah Lawson brought out her best pewter and porcelain to entertain the Major. John Lawson was still up in Chowan for consultations with Governor Hyde about the March Assembly. He left knowing that Hannah was capable of being his representative to any visitors.

  Sarah Alice dressed in a dark green damask dress, the skirts separated in front to reveal her embroidered, cream petticoat. Her finest powdered wig draped curled locks across her shoulders and touched the rope of pearls she been given by Craford as a wedding gift.

  Major Dorsey arrived in the splendor of his dress uniform. His sword picked up the candlelight, as did the gold braid on his coat and on his cocked hat.

  Hannah Lawson extended her hand to be kissed, and the Major obliged. He did the same for Sarah Alice, then leaned to kiss his fiancée on the cheek. The children giggled at the kiss, but were awed by the splendid, tall soldier in officer's uniform who was standing in their hall.

  The children ate by the fire as Hannah and her guests sat at the table. The room was bright with candlelight and light conversation.

  "But we sail in two days, Mistress Lawson, so I must disappoint you. My men and I were entertained to excess during our long stay in Charles Town. Now, we must be about Her Majesty's business. I'm sorry to miss John Lawson, but the Admiralty has ordered me to hasten back to London. After waiting all these months, now I'm to hasten. That's the life of a soldier. Nothing new about that. I hope my Sarah Alice can become accustomed to it."

  The couple barely ate the meal that Hannah and her cook had spent such time preparing, but Hannah understood. When John came home suddenly, they sometimes forgot to eat! She watched Sarah Alice playing the coquette, like a courtesan. Within hours, the bride-to-be had left the reality of Bath Town and was living back in the rarefied air of the Virginia elite thinking of going to even higher places. Hannah felt a momentary sadness that her guest had, so suddenly, become the woman that her husband had described as meeting in Williamsburgh—a stilllovely, but fading, cut flower; pure decoration. Maybe, England or Scotland would be best for Sarah Alice Harrison. She bore little resemblance to her brothers, her sister, or her mother. The family—but for Sarah Alice—was part of the New World. The bride-to-be had lived most of her life in imitation of life in a place she'd never seen.

  Richard returned to Bath with his wife and girls to hail a last farewell to Sarah Alice. Edy and Richard's wife, Jean, were tearful at the good-bye, but the town, the colors, and the activity absorbed his girls. Richard noticed with sardonic interest the minute indication of relief Tapoc displayed when she stepped back over an imaginary line to the Williams side after spending five months with Sarah Alice Harrison. Richard prided himself in noticing. It had taken years to learn anything about what these people felt. He'd never bothered to look—or to care— until John Lawson talked to him about Indians. Lawson liked them as people, he'd said!

  It was a festive day in Bath. The ship of naval stores that carried Major Dorsey and Sarah Alice was taking the southern route to Barbados with these supplies, then to London, re-loaded with sugar. Sailing as an escort would be Edward Williams and his cannon-armed sloop. The Pine Reward would return with even better goods this time. Some townsfolk had asked Carman to look for specific articles.

  When Richard came back to Bath in early June, he thought of his sister. She wouldn't be in Bristol, yet. Edward wasn't back—unless he'd gone to Scuppernong—so shipping must've slowed, or his brother was being careful. But, the talk of the town soon took his mind away from family sentiment.

  Governor Hyde, in whom such reverence and hope had been placed, had convened an Assembly whose actions were intolerable to Cary's independentminded Bath supporters. It passed laws for punishment of speaking against the government, and it levied a fine of one hundred pounds sterling on officials who refused to swear their oath of office. It provided that the Vestry Laws were in force, and it nullified all of the laws of Governor Cary's recent administration. Cary had been particularly outraged by this last act, and was already raising men and gathering arms.

  Cary's army was taken from the malcontents that he plied with promises and good rum. Richard didn't wonder that these men weren't more concerned with their crops—if they owned land—because the winter drought had continued. Early spring rains had brought promise, and fields were planted with corn and tobacco, but the rains had stopped and not returned. It was probably too late for the crops to be saved, so the small planters drank and listened to Cary's speeches of promises.

  Over the past weeks, Richard had resisted pressure from his neighbors and his father-in-law to join in with Cary. He liked Thomas Cary well enough; he'd helped Cary build a house at nearby Romney Marsh some years earlier. But Richard had no interest in rebellion. He was an Anglican if anything, and that, only for his mother. He was prospering, and only wanted government to protect him from marauding, drunken Indians and to establish a separate county and courthouse for the Machapungo settlers. They were too many and too far from Bath. He'd put his mark on a petition to that effect, and expected the new government to grant it.

  Richard tried to arbitrate with the complainers at John Potter's tavern. He hoped the Queen's cousin might be brought to reason, he said; Hyde was new at the job, give him time. A full-scale rebellion would end the prosperity they were enjoying, and—he repeated his mother's warning—all this bickering amongst whites might encourage Indian hopes for revenge and slaughter.

  "But the Assembly has issued a formal indictment against Cary," Potter said. "They've charged him with high crimes. Governor Hyde is collecting forces to come against Cary."

  Doctor Llewellyn had entered the hot, crowded, and smoky tavern and stood on a stool. He demanded quiet, and when things calmed a bit, he motioned Richard to join him outside.

  The doctor took Richard's arm in his and started walking slowly toward Edy's house.

  "A boy arrived in Bath today. Nearly naked. Scratched. Almost dead, he was, from his ordeal." The doctor paused only for a moment.

  "He'd been aboard the ship that carried your sister," Llewellyn said. "The vessel was sunk by a Spanish warship. There was no hope. The boy washed ashore near Lockwood Folly and made his way home overland. Amazing."

  "Are you sure it's the truth?" Richard asked. "What about the Pine Reward? Did Edward pick up survivors? Maybe he…."

  "The boy says the Pine Reward made grievous, elemental mistakes in trimming her sails, and rammed the burning ship of naval stores that carried Major Dorsey and Mistress Harrison. Your brother and Carman are gone, too. Along with the crew. The boy says no one could have survived the flames. Even the ocean was aflame, he said!"

  Richard stopped the doctor and asked Llewellyn to sit with him for a moment by the creek; just time enough to prepare his words for Edy. He thought of Sarah Alice and of his older sister. Edy's early years were difficult and painful, he knew that. But, weighed against her youth, her last years were happy and rewarding. Sarah Alice had been a pampered child and pampered adult; yet, her only happiness had been brief; the happiness of expectations, not of experience.

  His mother! He'd have to ride to Scuppernong to tell his mother—after stopping by Edward's plantation to give the news to his wife, Pathelia. Pathelia had brothers in Chowan to care for her and manage the plantation until she remarried. Richard was worried for his mother. Could she survive two such blows at once? Her madness might return! John and Joseph must be told. And there were no bodies to bid farewell! No funerals.

  The shock turned to anger. How could his brother Edward have been so foolish! He was near
ly forty—had been nearly forty—and suddenly—within two or three years—had turned from a sickly, aloof loner, to a man who'd come to admire and imitate the friends of Fewox. Fewox should have been aboard the sloop! Edward would be better off still pale and weak at his small pine plantation. His mother's pampered flowers were dead. He remembered her once talking of pampered tulips that had died.

  Edy's wails of agony were torture to Richard, as he held his sobbing sister. How could anyone so ugly as Carman had been so loved, he wondered?

  Doctor Llewellyn gave Edy a mixture of her own recipe, and she eventually calmed and slept. Hannah Lawson came with a servant to watch over Edy, while Richard went to fetch Fewox from Cary's crowd at Romney Marsh, and to get his wife for the family pilgrimage to Scuppernong.

  Chapter Eighteen

  For nearly forty years, Anne Fewox had mourned the loss of two children; Mary, who'd been a laughing baby, and the infant son whose death was on the same day as Anne's own birthday, forever marring any celebration offered her. And now, two more were gone. To bury infant children was painful, but not so strange. Nearly everyone performed that dreadful task. But to outlive children who were older than she'd been when widowed by their father was not normal. The delicate and beautiful things she loved all seemed to die. God had cursed her. He'd taken her mother, her babies, their father, and now, her delicate and beautiful grown children. And still, she lived on.

  Robert Fewox comforted his stepmother, the two widows, and Richard's wife and daughters with yaupon tea, as James and Richard sat outside, shaded beneath the ancient grape arbor at Scuppernong, saying nothing.

  Finally, Richard spoke.

  "I'll take Mother back to the Machapungo, with me."

  "Why?" Fewox asked. "What makes you think she'd go?"

  "Edy will come. And, Mother might come if you do. It's time you stopped getting between the government and Cary, anyway, old man."

  "Your mother wouldn't come because of me. You know that. She doesn't need me anymore. And she's got my Robert," James Fewox said.

  "Strange," Richard thought aloud. "She has all these children, but it's Robert who takes care of her."

  "Scuppernong will be his one day, let's remember. It's his now, for all I care," Fewox said.

  A rumbling came across the Albemarle Sound, and then another.

  "Thunder!"

  Richard's little Sally came running out into the sunlight, yelling, "Thunder!" as she shielded her eyes and looked about the clear horizon.

  But no more of the rumblings were heard and Richard looked to Fewox, who was smiling.

  "Cannon," Fewox said. "Cary did get the ships armed. Damn me, for a nonbeliever!" he said, and slapped his thigh.

  "Do you mean Cary has attacked Governor Hyde?" Richard was alarmed. He'd been afraid something foolish would happen, but he had no idea Cary had armed ships. It was a good thing Edward wasn't here!

  Fewox was silent, his hand cupped to an ear to catch more echoes of cannon fire.

  "No rain?" Sally asked.

  "Not today, Sally. Soon, I think," Richard told his daughter.

  Fewox finally took his hand down, puzzled.

  "Damned shortest battle I ever heard of," he said. "Congratulations to the victor," he said, and emptied his tankard of rum punch.

  By nightfall, stragglers from Cary's army were fleeing south across the Albemarle, running from the government troops. Two servants of Edward's came with the large pirogue to tell their mistress and the gathering of mourners at Bull Bay of the happenings. Edward's livestock and servants had been frightened by the noise of Cary's rag-tag army trampling south from the nearby ferry landing.

  Everyone was spellbound by the story that the servants told.

  "Cary had got two boats with six guns, and sailed up by where Governor Hyde was having a meeting of big men at Mister Pollock's. But the cannon balls rolled off the roof into the garden, and some of de Graffenried's servant's— dressed in livery—ran out to see what was happening. Cary and the sailors thought the servants were marines!"

  He stopped talking when Anne and Fewox started laughing. Edward's widow almost laughed. Edy shook her head. Richard laughed, but a serious look from Jean caused him to be more discreet.

  "And Cary's sailors didn't know what they were doing, and they ran aground."

  Anne and Fewox laughed again.

  "Then there was a little skirmish between the two sides, while Cary took off for Virginia. Hyde's sent to Governor Spotswood for help."

  Anne's laughter had already stopped. She was silent for a moment, then returned to the wrenching sobs of earlier.

  Fewox was right, Anne wouldn't move. She'd moved for the last time, she said. Pathelia Williams was nearby, and their shared grief was a comfort. She had old friends in Chowan and Perquimans.

  Edy went with Richard to the Machapungo, quiet and resigned. Her mother had insisted. There were single men in Bath, she'd said, and Edy would need a man to take care of her.

  Fewox was easily persuaded to come back to the Machapungo. Glover had no need for him, and he was known and laughed at in Albemarle. There were plenty worse than he in Bath and, even at his ancient age, he could be of help to Richard with his ciphering. He'd always had a mind for numbers.

  By September, Cary had been captured and sent to London for trial. Daily life returned to normal, even though an air of uncertainty hung over the Pamticoe and Bath areas, and the yellow fever had not slowed.

  Early in the month, Joseph came to the Pamticoe to trade with a hogshead of "sweet-scented" he'd earned by trading shingles and staves through his brother John.

  Joseph's trip to Middlesex for "sweet-scented" had been unsettling. John had moved from the manor house and was, now, a paid overseer, living with his wife and son in a small cottage built by the new owners. Joseph was gratified with his own success, though, pleased to have his "sweet-scented," knowing that with it he could get gold coins in Carolina from privateers and merchants. He could make a better deal on a slave in Norfolk if he paid in gold.

  A fortnight after leaving Middlesex, Joseph took his recovered son James on a long-postponed trip to Carolina. The boy was strong, at last, and Joseph was certain that this son was not like his brother, Edward. This boy was level-headed and destined for success. He and James led the oxcart—with the tobacco aboard— down the Carolina Road and over to John's Currituck plantation.

  The Currituck plantation had been a disappointment to John. His final hope for becoming rich—with naval products from Catherine's inheritance—had been, sadly, dashed when he realized that the land had been cleared of pines. Pines were the easiest and first to go when Dean settled there forty years earlier, and they'd not been allowed to re-seed. Drainage ditches that Dean had dug, however, had proved invaluable this year. John had rented men to work the plantation and had them use fresh water flowing from the Swamp to irrigate the corn during the year of drought. They produced a scrawny crop of corn, but John did better than the farmers down in Bath and Pamticoe.

  Father, son, and two of John's rented men transferred the hogshead of tobacco from the oxcart into the wide cypress pirogue. Joseph, and his silent James, sat in front of the hogshead and helped John's strong men pole and row the loaded boat down the Sound and up the Pamptico River, then the Machapungo, to Richard's pine plantation.

  This trip to Machapungo was the first meeting of the brothers since the family losses. Richard was a busy man, with little inclination for mourning. His wife and children made his life full and he was proud of the life that he could afford them. He and Jean were expecting another child in two months, and Topac had assured them it would be a boy, his first son. He told Joseph of his plans to build a two-room frame house this winter, that would be built with sawn lumber, imported brick for two chimneys, and glass windows to look out at the broad and beautiful Machapungo. Joseph admitted his dream of building a mill.

  Edy seldom spoke, now, Richard said. She should be living with her mother. Fewox stayed drunk and was of little
use, although he was tolerated, even as he issued orders that everyone ignored.

  After dinner, Richard and the drunken Fewox urged Joseph to take this opportunity to visit his mother and Pathelia while he was in Carolina. The road north from Bath was safe now, Fewox said, and after his visit Pathelia's man could take Joseph from Scuppernong to Currituck to rejoin James, at John's plantation. Richard promised that if Joseph preferred he, himself, would go with the men to take the young James back to Currituck.

  Joseph relented, and on the second morning Richard joined them in the pirogue, and they coasted with the outgoing tide and river flow into the Pamticoe.

  The Pamticoe was low and sluggish because of the year's long drought. Trunks of dead trees were exposed, and sandbars had become islands with grass already covering parts of them. Richard worried aloud that, before long, even those boats of shallow draft that carried away his naval stores wouldn't make their way to Bath. Already, his pier into the Machapungo was too short, and his goods were loaded—with great labor—from shore to boat and then aboard the larger boats. But, he didn't worry overly, he said. Life was good and getting better. Now that there was only one, undisputed Governor, there was hope for stability.