The Maidenhead

by Parris Afton Bonds

  Her captors were making for the opposite shore. Spiraling tree tops began to take shape. When the water became choppy, she realized the canoe had entered the confluence with another lesser river, most likely, she judged, the Appomatucks.

  The longer they traveled, the more distance they covered, and the more frightened she became. No one would ever find her. Worse, the pains in her abdomen were coming more frequently. There was no denying the fact: She was about to have her child . . . if she was not killed first.

  There was also the possibility that she and her baby might be kept as slaves. She had heard too many descriptions of the hideous atrocities inflicted on slaves. With that thought in mind, she was prepared to leap from the canoe. She could not swim, but a swift death by drowning was better than prolonged torture.

  At that moment of decision, a monster of the deep rose from its sleep to thrust its head through the mist and block the canoe’s way.

  "Ahee!" cried out the weasel-skin-clad Indian. So startled were the canoe’s occupants that their abrupt movements toppled it, and they were flung into the freezing water.

  Rose floundered, sank, and struggled to the surface again. Her clothing weighted her. Her body, tortured by the cramps of childbirth, rendered her helpless. She cried out once, then felt the river sucking her downward to its burial bed.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  The woman had to weigh twenty stone if not more. Her flailing arms threatened to beat Jack senseless. But then he had to have been already senseless to dive into the frigid water. The fleeting sight of the white woman wedged between the two Indians had shocked him, so that when the canoe capsized he had dived from his ship into the water without thinking.

  The thrashing woman put his own life at peril. Scenarios played out before his eyes in quick succession: the Maidenhead sailing the high seas, he on the quarterdeck directing his crew of buccaneers; the glittering towns of the West Indies prostrate before his privateering warfare. Glory, gold, and gentlewomen awaited him.

  The aristocratic face of the Lady Clarissa flashed in the back of his mind, but what he actually saw was a panic-stricken face, scratched and reddened and with hair straggling like seaweed across it.

  Her cries of “’Elp! ’Elp!" told him this was no aristocrat but a coarse commoner.

  "Stop struggling!" he shouted.

  He was wasting his breath. Alternately she battered him with her open hands and clung to him as if she were determined to drag him under the surface with her.

  The two braves were already swimming off in steady strokes and soon disappeared in the frosty mist. Good sense told Jack he should swim off, too. He was tiring quickly.

  Foolishly, he grappled with the woman instead. She lashed out at him, striking him against his temple with the heel of her hand.

  He had no choice. His fist clipped her jaw with enough impact to knock her unconscious.

  His arm locked beneath her chin, he swam toward the canoe. It had righted itself and bobbed on the water between him and the shoreline. The water was numbing cold. He wasn't sure if he had the strength to reach the canoe, much less cling to it in hopes of keeping the two of them afloat.

  Let her go! Let her go!

  Like a dunce, he ignored the inner warning, that instinct for survival that so many times had saved his hide. His lungs felt as if they were caving in, collapsing on him like a pair of bellows. His ears rang with his pounding pulse.

  Somewhere out of the mist, he heard his crew’s searching shouts of “’Ello? ’Ello?”

  Timing was his once again! An eddy swirled the canoe’s bow out toward him. He lunged, grabbed hold, and held on with no strength but that of the will to hold on. It seemed forever . . . and finally he felt his boots drag bottom. He staggered onto the tree-lined shore and dropped his burden. He fell face forward. The sand grated against his cheekbone.

  At first, all he could hear was his breath rasping in and out of his throat and lungs in great gasps of indrawn and expelled air.

  Then he heard the woman. She was groaning and throwing up water.

  He rolled to his side and looked back over his shoulder. “For the love of God, woman, will you shut the bloody—"

  His words choked in his throat. The woman lay on the sand behind him like a great beached white whale. He crawled toward her. "What the—” Again, his words were robbed by what he saw. The way her wet dress clung to her distended stomach. She was with child!

  With a tortured moan, the woman gripped her belly and rolled into a fetal position.

  “My God, if you’re aren’t having a baby!”

  “'Elp me.” Her words were like the rusk of a boat being dragged upon sand.

  He recognized her now from her and her husband’s visit to Ant Hill when she had delivered Modesty's marriage proposal. Apparently she didn’t recognize him. Time and Modesty’s alterations had changed his looks more than he had realized.

  "What—I don’t know what to do.” Her blanched lips formed a gargoyle’s grimacing grin.

  "Neither do I.”

  He broke out in a sweat. He scanned the water for his ship, but fog enshrouded everything. No help there. How far back upstream was Bermuda’s Hundred? He had spent a couple of days with the various planters there, introducing himself and taking orders for English goods after leaving Henrico.

  The young woman’s teeth were chattering. He removed his doublet, wrung it out, and laid it over her. It wasn’t much help, but it was better than nothing.

  She stretched out her arm. "Please, ’old me ’and."

  Her hand was small, like a trusting child’s. “What be your name?" He knew he was prattling like an old spinster who lives out her lonely days spinning yam before a fire and suddenly has a visitor. But he was at a loss as to how to help her.

  “Rose. And ’oors?"

  “Jack. Jack Morley, the Earl of Monteagle." The lie came easily, as lies always did whenever he felt inadequate, unsure, worthless. What the bloody hell, even if he and this young woman survived, he would never see her again.

  "An earl,” she said with wonder and awe.

  "I was on my brig, the Maidenhead, when I spotted you in the river."

  “The Maidenhead." Her little gasping laugh sounded forlorn in his ears. "The man I thought I loved ... not me husband ... he wanted me maidenhead.” She paused and drew a fortifying breath. "But not me."

  "The cad," he mumbled, knowing he might as well be castigating himself. It was likely that somewhere there existed one or more women he had bedded and abandoned with child.

  Her fingernails dug into his palm.

  He waited until the spasm passed, then, to keep her talking, asked, "Where do you live?"

  "Falling Brook, just beyond Henrico. ’Oor ship put in there, did it not?"

  "Aye," he said cautiously, wondering how much she might have heard about his enterprise.

  She screamed out her anguish. Her body writhed with another thunderbolt of pain. She released his hand and rolled from side to side, her arms wrapped around her stomach once more.

  The sight of blood staining the white sand galvanized him into instinctive action. “Sshh,” he said, stroking away the wet strands of her hair clinging to her cheek and forehead. ‘"Tis going to be all right."

  He went about trying to make her comfortable, removing her buckled shoes, stripping off her wet woolen hose. Her feet were no bigger than his palms and blue with cold. He chafed first one foot, then the other, with his hands.

  "Thank ... thank ’oo." Tears trickled from the comers of her eyes. ‘"Oo are a 'ero. A knight worthy of the Round Table.”

  Something that might have been integrity cringed inside him. "You are delirious."

  He began stripping away her bloodied underskirts and pushed her overskirt above the dome of her stomach. "I recall something about clean linens and hot water,” he said, talking to keep her mind off her pain. And off his ignorance in such matters. "We come up lacking with clean linen, but your wee one could not have picked a prettier spot to be b
orn. Lots of water.”

  Her answering laugh was more a groan.

  He felt for his dirk, tucked into his belt scabbard. He could only hope her outcries did not attract any more savages.

  Her hand latched onto his arm. He bent over her again. "Isn’t there something about pushing? Are you trying?”

  A tight laugh issued from the slit of her mouth. “Do 'oo want to try?”

  He winced at her coarse accent. He had not rescued an aristocratic mermaid but a Billingsgate sturgeon. Life was like that for him. Always the leftovers. “Where do you hail from in England?"

  "Middlesex.”

  “A country girl are you now?" His mother had been a country girl, from Hertfordshire. He tried to imagine her as this one was. Young, naive, giving birth to him, a child she didn’t want.

  "The Indians in the canoe?"

  "Kidnapped me, they did."

  "Well, we'll return you. When the mist lifts, the Maidenhead will be prowling the waters, looking for me." He hoped.

  “Ohhh!" she gasped and shut her eyes against the pain. Her mouth was a gash.

  His teeth worried his lower lip. “Try pushing again. Maybe that will get this over with more quickly.”

  "I don’t 'ave to try.” She was panting. "The babe is shoving 'is way through."

  "Oh. So ’tis a boy you’ve decided it’s to be?” Her hair was drying, and it spread across the sand like spilt ink. Beneath her pallor, a natural pink color could be detected on her cheeks. “Rose,” he murmured, thinking how perfectly her name fit her complexion.

  “Aye.”

  Before he could reply, she screamed out. Quickly he clamped his palm over her mouth. "I think ’tis best you hurry the wee one.”

  Her back arched. Her heels dug into the sand. Her teeth sank into his palm. God, he felt so helpless.

  Then he saw it. A small portion of the baby’s head. “Looks like your babe is tired of waiting!”

  As he watched the wee one enter the world, exultation overcame him. This was rapidly replaced by a feeling he had never experienced, reverence. The only time he had been near a church was when he had robbed the lottery shack on St. Paul’s cathedral steps. He had felt no reverence then.

  This was something more even. The great mystery of life was unfolding before him. A supreme secret, if he could but grasp it before it disappeared.

  He heard a sputtering little cry, like a kitten’s mew, and put out his hands to receive the baby. ‘"Tis a boy," he whispered. "Just as you predicted."

  “Another boy!” she sighed.

  “Another boy?” He used her petticoat to enfold the reddened, wizened, bawling gift. Black downy hair matted the small head. With wonder, he touched one tiny ear, shaped like a cockleshell. The flailing fists were no larger than a musket ball.

  "Aye," she said, smiling softly and looking for all the world like a lovely Madonna. "I ave meself two other sons. Stepsons, really, but I love them as if they were me own. Me 'usband will welcome another 'and at the sawmill. Let me see me babe."

  Relieved to be rid of the squalling infant, he laid it in the crook of her arm. And with the act, the great mystery evaporated from his mind.

  Chapter Thirteen

  With Jack no longer there to help, turning up the land for the spring crop was taking longer than Mad Dog had anticipated. Would he ever see the cagey chap again?

  He wiped the dribble of light rain from his brow with the back of his hand before picking up the mattock. He needed a plow, but such an implement was so heavy that four horses or a span of oxen would be required to pull it.

  Raising the flat-bladed pickaxe above his head, he swung downward in a mighty arc. The mattock broke up the soil and cut roots of bramble and nettle that were impertinent enough to grow on land he had declared his.

  Thinking of the impertinent woman who had turned his sanctuary into a Bedlam, his tempo increased.

  The hoyden didn't know the meaning of logic or reason.

  With the strike of the mattock, the loosened earth exploded.

  She was harder to read than a Pamunkey war trail. He never knew what to expect from her next.

  He swung again, his muscles straining his deer hide tunic. Clods of damp dirt showered the ground around his high-top moccasins.

  A fortnight ago, he had picked up his pipe, only to find minuscule trolls painted in cobalt blue dancing in a ring around its clay bowl.

  Again the mattock smashed into the earth.

  For all he knew, at that very moment she was forging indenture papers to sell him off as a bondservant. A clever wench, his wife was.

  He could feel agitation churning in his loins. He dropped the mattock and turned his face up to the March drizzle. Any colder and it would be snow. He swallowed the rain water and sputtered and laughed at the thought he entertained.

  By God, he must be mad after all, but he would do it.

  Maybe this was his opportunity to make things right. His chance to turn around the horrible consequences of his rapacious act thirteen years ago.

  He did something that was in complete contradiction with his meticulous nature. He left the mattock where it lay, in the rain, and strode off toward his cabin.

  He passed Juana on her way to the springhouse. Her sharp old eyes scrutinized him. He realized she was wondering what he was doing, returning from the fields so early in the day. Then her tobacco-toothed grin revealed itself. She knew.

  He strode on.

  He found Modesty at the board table. Across it were scattered fresh vellum, unsharpened quills, a perforated wooden sander, and a wax wafer to seal missives. She kept a candle burning for sealing with wax.

  Ever since undertaking her enterprise, she had been working industriously. Her craftsmanship was astonishingly good, and could pass even his discerning eye.

  Her tongue tipping her teeth, she was penning her cursive words. Over her shoulder, he read, "This bill of sale made the twelfth day of February in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-one between Lord Richard Radcliff and . . . ." Her head was bent low over the parchment, the better to see her handiwork. Her brown hair, highlighted with blistering red, curled a good two inches below the plain edge of her coif.

  "So this is how my shillings are being put to use.”

  She didn’t even look up as she picked up the penknife to sharpen her quill. "I am turning shillings into pounds for yewr foe’s undoing.”

  He was glad her gaze was trained on the quill’s end or else she would note how undone he was.

  "Juana says that Henrico hosts a fair come Mayday,” she continued, dipping her pen into the brown ink that she made by mixing vinegar and ox gall. "I want to—”

  He fought to bring himself under control, his features impassive, his voice callously indifferent. "I want you." What had happened to his usual eloquence? At that moment he was barely articulate. He fingered a flaming lock at her nape. “Now.”

  The penknife halted.

  He placed his hands on both her shoulders. His voice was low, as rough as her poorly hack-led spinning thread. "In my bed or here at the table. I care not a whit where.”

  Slowly she looked up over her shoulder. Her mouth was set in a hard line, but deep in her eyes smoldered that astounding passion of hers. "I am yewr wife, not yewr whore.”

  He tugged just enough on her hair to tilt her head further back, exposing the long, smooth column of her throat. "Wife, whore, it makes no difference to me."

  She shook off his hand. “Yew stink of manure." She returned to sharpening the quill.

  Her nonchalance infuriated him. She must have seen from the comer of her eye as he drew back his arm. She ducked, but his aim was not for her but the accoutrements littering the board table. With one backhanded swipe, he sent them falling, fluttering, rolling.

  She gasped. Dropping her quill, she shrank as far away as the end of the bench allowed. She held the penknife pointed at his midsection. “I choose me lovers.”

  He advanced on her. Would she stab him?
Did she hate him that much? "Aye, you did. You married me." He leaned over, took the penknife from her, and sent it thudding into the wall.

  “When a man has the key to a room,” she said stonily, "the woman inside can hardly be said to be doing her own choosing.”

  Wrapping one arm around her waist, he slid the other beneath her legs to lift her as easily as he would a bale of hay, and spread-eagled her upon the table.

  She broke his hold. Spitting and spewing, she aimed a well-placed kick at his crotch. He dodged at the last second. She lashed out blindly with pummeling legs. Her shift and skirt were riding up beneath her buttocks, exposing hose-encased calves, bare thighs, and a glimpse of a triangular patch of short, wiry hair.

  His eyes must have betrayed the excitement the erotic sight instantly aroused in him, because suddenly her legs stopped their thrashing.

  Her expression changed from one of impotent fury to blatant sensuality, as if she knew she held the winning hand. Braced on her elbows, her thighs tantalizingly parted for his intimate view, she asked in a husky voice, “Where is Juana?"

  He unbuttoned his breeches. “She won’t return for a while. She’s wise in the ways of a man and a woman.” To his ears, his voice sounded strangled. "As I think you are.” He lowered himself over her. “Mayhaps you are a witch. Mayhaps you have bewitched me.”

  She opened her arms and thighs to enfold him against her and take him in. “Oh, no. I told yew," she whispered against his ear, “I am yewr ordinary fairy.”

  Slowly, rhythmically, he began pumping into her. “Ordinary you will never be.”

  Her soft white thighs closed around him. Her lids drifted closed. Her lips parted. She sighed. "Neither are yew, Mad—’’ Her eyes opened. "What is yewr real name?”

  A humorous bent seized him. "Just call me your coxswain."

  Her response of low laughter was delightful. Gradually her hips began responding in tempo to his. Then they were pounding hard, meeting each of his thrusts. She was engulfing him. "Oh, God,” he groaned.