The Maidenhead

by Parris Afton Bonds

  “You assert that you were in the churchyard the night before the marriage ceremonies were conducted?”

  An easy smile curled Radcliff’s mouth, a mouth as thin and lipless as an iron bear trap. "I do."

  Mad Dog rubbed his jaw, wrinkled his forehead. “Now I am very confused, friend, because I have a witness who will testify otherwise. Wilt the Chesapeake maid Palantochas come before the bar?"

  All heads turned toward the back of the room as the young Indian woman made her way to the front. Short of stature and slightly fat-padded, she was well known in the predominantly male community. Her deer hide moccasins made a soft thud against the floor's oak planks. Her limpid eyes flashed Mad Dog a searching glance.

  “Palantochas," he said, “will you tell us what you were doing the night in question?" His words were distinct and deliberate.

  She bit her lip, lowered her head, and her single black braid swung forward across her shoulder.

  He nodded encouragement, hoping his backwoods diplomacy was paying off. He had learned ancient and modem languages, shone at math, read Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe, and studied under William Shakespeare at Blackfriars Theatre. Yet, here he was, defending an unscrupulous wench in a cow dung of a town.

  In a tremulous voice, Palantochas said, "I spent the night . . . in the company . . . of him." Her finger pointed out Radcliff.

  Murmurs erupted. The room sounded like a beehive. Although many of the men had lain with the native women, few admitted it. To do so was as much as to declare oneself infected with the malady the Irish called the Country Duties.

  '"Tis a damned lie!" Radcliff said.

  Mad Dog spread his hands. "Do any of the burgesses wish to question my witness?” He was counting on the members’ reluctance to being possibly identified as one of the maiden’s midnight customers.

  “No one would believe the word of a misbegotten creature like this against mine!" Radcliff snarled.

  "I am finished with the prisoner’s defense,” Mad Dog said. “It hath been a pleasure to serve the Assembly.”

  Chapter Six

  "Mad Dog Jones, doth thou take this maid to be your wife?"

  "Aye, I do."

  What a name! Mad Dog Jones! Modesty did not know whether to laugh or to cry.

  While the minister read the sacred rites, she stood shorn of hair, barefoot, and dressed only in her smock—all because Mad Dog Jones was taking no chances. He was adhering to an old legality which Modesty knew dated back to medieval times that said a man was not liable for his wife’s debts, provided he married her in nothing other than her smock. Even shoes and caps were prohibited.

  "Modesty Brown, doth thou take this man to be your husband?"

  How had she gotten herself into this mess?

  One moment she was camouflaging a stolen snuffbox in London, and the next she was consigning herself to a living hell here in the New World.

  The old minister cleared his throat. "Ummh . . . Mistress Brown . . . doth thou?"

  Beneath raised brows, Mad Dog eyed her as curiously as she had the New World food called maize. She could guess what he was thinking— that she ought to be rejoicing that she wasn't going to be burning like an All Hallow’s Eve bonfire.

  As for herself, she was thinking hard. She was still required to fulfill her bridal contract with the Company or spend a year in the gaol. Having just spent a fortnight there, she doubted that a human could survive for a year. It was said even the freepersons who survived the year of seasoning were full of maggots and rotting above ground.

  God rot the pious citizens of Jamestown!

  There was also the bargain she had made with Mad Dog. She had the distinct feeling he wasn’t the kind to give up easily what he felt was his. Nevertheless, he had another thought coming if he expected her to remain in this English colony long enough to rot.

  "Mistress Brown? Did thou hearest me? Doth thou takest this man to be your husband?”

  She sighed. "Aye, I suppose I do.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  "I cannot take me commissions with me?” Gingerly, Modesty seated herself and her portmanteau of meager belongings in the prow of the birch bark canoe.

  Mad Dog grunted. "They have been returned to their rightful owners."

  "Yew had no right—”

  “You truly art a scurvy wench."

  “Yew are a lump of foul deformity."

  "Thou art married to me now."

  "A calamity it is!" She squinted suspiciously at him. "Wot be yewr real name?"

  "You may call me master."

  "I call no one me master."

  "Egad. What happened to the willing hands and faithful heart you pledged unto me?"

  "Yew got yewr fifty acres headright."

  A wry smile curved his lips. "And I am out of pocket for your transportation costs. For which you shall serve me faithfully and willingly, I promise thee, wench."

  “Me name’s Modesty. How did yew know that Radcliff had lain with Palantochas?”

  “I didn't."

  "But I heard her tell the burgesses—”

  "How thy tongue doth wag."

  She waved away a haze of gnats and said indifferently, "Yew are an unkempt churl.”

  "You were the one who bargained for marriage."

  For the first time since they had set out in the canoe from Jamestown, he looked at her. Before, he had kept a hawklike gaze swinging in a steady arc from one side of the bank and its dark, impenetrable forest to the other. "Why me? Why didst thou bargain marriage with me, wench?”

  “Modesty. Who else would be mad enough to marry me than a man called Mad Dog?”

  Indeed, she thought ruefully, who would be mad enough to marry a woman accused of witchcraft, a fugitive felon? "Besides, Jack— yewr bondservant—told me how yewr fine words saved him from being broken on the wheel."

  "You have heard of the saw 'jumping from the frying pan into the fire’?”

  She figured she may have well done just that. The man’s feral gaze seemed to pierce into the secret recesses of her mind. "For the cost of me transportation, yew could have almost bought a headright of fifty acres or bought an indentured servant—or yew could have taken yewrself a wife of yewr own choosing. Why me?"

  "Do not flatter thyself.” His searching glance swung to the somber glades of forest and back to settle on her. "In the bargain I sought satisfaction, small though it was, of an old score."

  She was already humiliated, and his words wounded her. "Yew took me because no other woman would have yew. Look at yewrself."

  The wintery gleam in his gray eyes halted any further words she had been about to utter. Still, with an inward shudder, she inventoried her new husband.

  Like the Indians, he wore moccasins that folded up below his knees. This time, however, deer hide trousers encased his thighs. The trouser leggings were tucked into the moccasins, and a leather jerkin was belted at the waist.

  His thick dark brown hair, streaked by tropical sunlight and the seasoning of years, flowed like a lion’s mane to fall heavy upon his shoulders. His skin was the color of burnt crumpets, his broad mouth as unpredictable as a river. At one moment she thought it scorned her, at another it took her by surprise with its deep, wry twist of a smile.

  Indeed, there were many twists and unexpected bends to the man. Grudging admiration crept into her voice. "Yew played those web-toed burgesses like a fiddle. Plucking a string here and there, then yew leaned back, watching them."

  His smile was just a quiver away from being a grimace. "Aye. I am a turkey buzzard. An avaricious creature, by my troth. I wait until a prey is helpless, then I strike. Dost not put thy trust in me. I use people, as thou dost, wench."

  “Modesty." She should have been affronted by his poor opinion of her, but she was more intrigued by the incongruity of his character. A London barrister living like an animal at the edge of the world. A wild animal with the voice of a god.

  He had a tall and powerful frame that held a leashed strength. His shoulde
rs were strong and broad, and his arm muscles flexed from the unceasing thrust of paddle against water.

  Her view, looking upriver from the canoe, was like gazing on an eternity of rushing water. The more she gazed, the more she realized the river’s awful power.

  In the New World, according to Mistress Pierce, other than a few Indian paths, the only roads were rivers, which, Modesty suspected, was why farms were granted in long strips along a river. Occasionally she sighted a farm amidst the trackless forest, but it had been several hours since she had last seen sign of human habitation.

  At a place of vine-hung coolness, the wild man beached the canoe. She glanced at him inquiringly.

  “We’ll spend the night here. We got a late start, and Ant Hill is too far upstream to make in the time we have left.”

  Cautiously, she stepped from the wobbly canoe. She was sure there must be a trick to keeping the canoe upright in the water. She followed him ashore. "Ant Hill—yewr place?”

  “Aye.” In a clearing, he collected twigs and dead leaves for tinder, then opened his leather possibles bag.

  “I hope the name isn't an apt description of yewr place." She slapped at a whining mosquito that had lit on her temple, where once rebellious curls had strayed from her cap. The shame of having her head shaved and then having to stand practically naked before the minister crackled like a flame inside her brain.

  "Let’s just say that Ant Hill is a far sight better than the Jamestown gaol.” Hunkering down, he struck a glancing blow with the steel on the chunk of flint. At the glow of a spark, he began blowing, and nursed it into a small flame.

  "Let’s hope that yew aren’t as barbaric as the good people of Jamestown.”

  From the canoe, he took out a fishnet of some sort of bark fiber and lines equipped with hooks that looked like fish bone. “I have the distinct notion that you have no idea of the concept of the word ‘good.’ ’’

  She huddled before the fire, where the smoke warded off the pesky mosquitoes. "It has been me experience that goodness and virtue are seldom rewarded."

  Her temporary husband sat on his haunches at the bank to spread his net in the shoal water. "Oh? What is?"

  In the day’s dying light, she watched an egret search the opposite shoreline for crayfish. “Quickness of wit for one thing. ’Tis far better to be wise than good, and better still to be shrewd.”

  He jerked in the net with its catch of fish. "Ahhh,” he said in a bitter tone, “‘An excellent wife, who can find? For her worth is far above jewels.’"

  "Proverbs." She rested her chin in her hand, grinned, and said, “‘A joyful heart makes a cheerful face.’ ’’

  He looked askance at her. "So you can read.”

  He proceeded to clean, then plank the fish over the flame.

  "Aye. Books and people. Now yew—well, yew’re the kind of man who takes pleasure in the precise application of logic. No imagination to yewrself."

  Over the fire's blazing streamers, he flashed her a disgruntled look. "And you think you are imaginative?"

  "Aye.” She shrugged. ‘"Tis like being a fairy. Yew can make anything happen."

  "I trust you are not confused between a fairy and a fury. Or perhaps it is I who am confused. I would swear I have taken the latter for a wife.”

  She ignored him. "What kind of fish are yew cooking?"

  "Shad. Do you ever stop talking?”

  "Fairies are good talkers.”

  "If you've ever read Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, then you know a lock put on the tongue is an excellent way to achieve silence."

  "Never read anything but the Bible and a broadside about Jamestown." But his reference to silence made her realize that with nightfall the forest was alive with sounds of screeches, hoots, howls, and chatters. By now, a muggy fog shrouded the river.

  Then she heard the trill of a clear liquid note, and the rough-hewn man across from her answered it with a warbled whistle.

  She tensed. "What was that?"

  He didn’t reply but passed her a portion of the planked shad on a palmetto leaf. Behind her, the brush rustled. She whirled, almost dropping her food. A tall, dusky-skinned Indian stepped from the tangled copses. He carried a feather-tipped lance. His immobile face contained much dignity despite its smears of paint. One half of his head was shaven; a feather was tucked into the dark brown braid that fell from the other side.

  Mad Dog said something in the Algonquin dialect. She picked up the word pokatawer, fire. Apparently he was inviting the Indian to join them, because he crossed the clearing to squat before the fire.

  "Arahathee,” Mad Dog patiently explained to her, "is the chief, the werowance, of the Monacans. The tribe lives above the falls at Rasauweak. The Monacans are actively hostile to the Powhattans and unfriendly to most English."

  That was reassuring. “Mawchick chammay," she said, using Palantochas’s phrase for best of friends.

  The Indian only nodded, but the condescension disappeared from his stony gaze.

  Mad Dog darted an oblique glance at her before resuming conversation with the Indian.

  While they talked, Modesty ate. The shad was surprisingly tasty. When it looked as if the two were going to talk through the night, she curled up beside the fire. She had not realized it, but her face and hands were sunburned during the river journey, so that she was chilled. Later she was partly roasted by the blaze and partly frozen, but too fatigued to move.

  Sometime during the night she awoke. She thought she was alone, and terror rattled through her. Then she saw Mad Dog asleep on the fire’s far side. The Indian was nowhere to be seen. Relieved, she went back to sleep, only to awake to find Mad Dog hunched down over her. She gasped. "What do yew want?”

  His brows furrowed with disgust. "I believe I can control my raving desires for the while, mistress. Tis time to leave.”

  By the time they shoved off in the canoe, the morning fog had lifted. Later in the morning he pointed out a sleepy waterfront village. "Henrico.”

  Farther on, they passed a cluster of homes and a two-story waterwheel that he identified as Falling Brook.

  "How much more traveling in this infernal country afore we reach yewr place? And where is yewr bondsman? Jack Holloway?”

  "Earning his keep, as thou shall be anon."

  "I am yewr wife, I remind yew. Not some indentured servant."

  Amused contempt glittered in his eyes. "Aye, my wife for life, God help me.”

  "Oh, so yew believe in God, do yew now?"

  The canoe had slid into a gentle current that momentarily carried it near the bank, and the dips of his paddles ceased. He rested, his arms braced against the paddles, though occasionally he pulled the boat along by hauling on cattails and overhanging oak branches, draped with moss. His hands were the most massive she had ever seen. “You do not?" he asked.

  “I believe in meself. I believe a person gets wot she takes from life.”

  For a moment there was only the silence of the great forest. Then he said, "You get what you give.” His eyes were empty. “And in the end, you give what you take."

  He resumed paddling. His eyes had a faraway gaze. His manner was so remote that she decided silence was in her best interest, after all.

  But not quite just yet. She felt that her suffering belonged to her alone, and she wasn’t about to let a lawyer full of words get the last one. "Yew may have taken yewrself a wife, but it 'pears to me that I am the one doing all the giving. To have to work like an indentured servant the rest of me life in a rathole of a frontier settle—”

  "—with willing hands and faithful heart," he reminded her with a black look that this time did silence her.

  At length, when the western sun was balancing on the tips of spiraling pines and the parasol spread of ancient oaks, she sighted a long pier with a wharfhouse at its tip. A path of crushed oystershell led up through ragged grass to a clearing plowed with crops. On a hill were clustered several houses of various sizes.

  Mad Dog banked the canoe and
, collecting his flintlock, strode on up the path.

  She grabbed her portmanteau and hurried to catch up with him. So tall was he that the top of her coif came only to his chest. She had to double step in order to match his lengthy stride.

  The main house was constructed of oak slabs chinked with mud and reinforced with moss and roofed with cypress shingles. She followed him inside.

  The place had the clean smell of new wood. And it even had a floor, a puncheon floor of split pine. By squinting, she could tell that the window frames were weather-tight. The room’s furnishings were sparse—a ladder-back chair with rushing seat, a pine settle, and a short stool, not counting the long board table, of course.

  The fireplace was of goodly size with an oven built into its wall. A lugpole with a variety of hooks, chains, and trammels hanging from it stretched across its mouth. A shovel, tongs, and a pair of bellows were piled at one edge of the stone hearth, and around its rim were heaps of cooking equipment: ladles, saucepans, skillets, pots, cauldrons, and the like.

  She smiled. She hadn’t done too badly for herself for the meanwhile, but she wondered how her other matchmaking attempts had fared.

  “You can put your things in the bedroom.” He nodded at another doorway that opened on what looked like a lean-to. ‘"Tis the original cabin I built of logs when first I came to the colony. There's a double chest—"

  She supposed she should have expected him to get around to this matter sooner or later. She set her portmanteau on the board table, put her hands on her hips, and nodded toward the bedroom. “Yew be wanting a wee one anon?"

  His mouth quirked again, she wasn’t certain whether with laughter or contempt. Or mayhap both. He lounged against the entrance doorframe. Its tall lintel didn’t even clear his head. “Well, now, you have agreed to be my wife, and I do not recall any stipulation such as the one you arranged for the Lady Clarissa and her husband, Reverend Dartmouth."

  "How did yew find out about that?"

  “Thorough investigation was part of my training in reading law.”

  She wondered how much else he knew about her. Had he learned about her nocturnal enterprise back in London? "I’d be pleased if yew’d tell me just wot me duties be."