“You ... feed ... us ... more,” Timothy said resentfully. The little thief lived almost at the subhuman level, and certainly at the subverbal. He never spoke in complete sentences and rarely used a word of more than one syllable. What he intended by this austere collection of four words was if you fed us better food, I work a great deal harder, but to voice a subordinate clause beginning with if was quite beyond his capacity, and comparisons like harder and better were refinements of thought he could not master. He existed in a world of meaningful looks and mumbled monosyllables.
Janney, of course, had developed the ability to translate his grunts into workable if not sensible communication, and now said with a certain respect for Turlock’s ability to work, “Stay with us, Tim, after your term’s over. We’ll own the Rappahannock.”
Turlock did not even bother to grunt at this remote philosophical proposal, but at the end of that year Janney showed him something physical which excited his cupidity. For some weeks they had been collecting tobacco seed from various plantations, and now Janney announced that he and Turlock would take it across the bay to lands which, he said, “we own over there.”
“Where?”
Janney could not be bothered to explain, but he assigned Timothy to the task of helping the slaves build a shallop for the plantation. It turned out to be a sorry affair, more holes than boards, but if Turlock bailed constantly, it did stay afloat. The first long trip was up the bay to Devon Island, where Janney had come to help burn off more acreage for tobacco, and what Turlock saw there was a revelation: a decent house, a wife who kept it neat and who educated her sons, a Papist chapel of their own, and other appurtenances which bespoke wealth. What disturbed Turlock, wide-eyed at the luxury, were hints he overheard indicating that his master, Janney, had almost as much wealth as Edmund Steed. Why ... live ... pig? he asked himself. Why ... seven years ... pig?
The idea gnawed at him, and when Steed said, “Tomorrow we’ll cross the channel and go to work,” he was resentful at having to quit this lovely spot. But when he entered the fields to the north, set down amidst beautiful rivers with unexpected vistas and grand variations, he gaped. Each field he moved to seemed more desirable than the preceding, with deep water at its edges, tall trees rimming its boundaries, and a multiplicity of wildlife. This monosyllabic criminal from the fens of London became the first white man to appreciate the glory of what lay hidden among the backwaters north of the Choptank: the dozen rivers, the score of creeks, the hundred hidden coves.
“God damn James River!” he cried as he viewed this paradise. “My land.”
As the leaky shallop pursued its tedious way back home Turlock brooded upon the miserable situation in which he was trapped; the devastating impact of the Eastern Shore on his mind was not its beauty, which enthralled him, but the fact that it existed now, that a man of courage could enjoy it now. This realization would gnaw at him for a year, and back home he caused more and more trouble.
One August day in 1638, when Janney insisted that he work past sunset, he first grumbled, then refused. “I can drag you into court,” Janney threatened, “and make you work.” Then he assigned him a task too dangerous for his blacks, and Turlock revolted.
“Do you resist?” Janney asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Get down there and chain that stump.”
“How?” Pimply-face snarled, and when Janney bent down to show him, Turlock grabbed a spade and bashed his master’s skull. Then, satisfying himself that the fallen man was not dead, he kicked him twice on the point of the chin to keep him unconscious, then went whistling toward where the shallop was moored. On the way he stole a gun and all the tools he would need, tossed them into the boat, then ran to the house. After giving Mrs. Janney a lively kiss, he stole her scissors, her needles, two of her husband’s shirts and three fishlines with hooks.
“Goodbye,” he mumbled, chucking her under the chin as he left for the river.
He calculated that even if Janney revived sooner than expected, he would not be able to make his way on foot to any plantation in time for the owners to accomplish much, and with the shallop gone, pursuit on the river itself would be impossible. For one solid day at least he had clear sailing.
What he did not take into account was the iron will of the Janneys; if they had survived Indian raids, they could survive servant rebellion. Mrs. Janney, when she saw the shallop disappear, ran about the plantation until she found her husband, lying prone in the mud, his face caked in blood. Screaming for Toby to come to her assistance, she dragged him home, bathed him, placed him in bed, and then set out on foot to the nearest plantation. She arrived at her neighbors’ well past dark, and informed them, “Our servant tried to kill the master.”
From one plantation to the next, word spread that revolt had started. Like a fire burning wildly across dried evergreens, this dreaded message went; this was the consequence that all masters feared, the rebellion of either their servants or their slaves. When they caught Turlock they would kill him.
Timothy, assured that much must be happening at the plantation, kept his eyes to the rear, and when he saw various boats scurrying about guessed that an expedition was forming to apprehend him. Quickly he steered into one of the small estuaries that fed the James, unstepped the mast, and grinned contentedly as search parties swept by.
At dark he raised the mast and slipped silently downriver a dozen miles, then hid as dawn approached—and in this manner, reached the mouth of the James, where he put into operation a clever plan. Satisfying himself that the final plantation possessed a substantial sloop with a stout sail, he steered his shallop two miles back toward Jamestown, built a small raft, tied to it his hoard of tools, then crashed the stolen boat on a shoal, made his way through the shallow water and poled his raft downstream to the waiting sloop, which he appropriated. By dawn he was well into the Chesapeake.
His strategy worked. Searchers on the James spotted the wrecked craft and assumed that he had drowned. It was not till late afternoon that anyone missed the sloop, and by then he was well gone. All that was left to the frustrated plantation owners was to seek out a Jamestown justice, who signed a warrant for his apprehension, dead or alive. As he handed the document to Mrs. Janney he said, “Bring him back and I’ll hang him.”
Alone on the broad Chesapeake, his mast unstepped to prevent detection, Timothy Turlock paddled and pondered his situation. If he went back to England—hanging. If he went back to Jamestown—hanging. If he put into any Virginia river—chains and more hanging.
And then he saw, rising through the mists, the first faint outlines of the Eastern Shore, and he could visualize the cool rivers and peaceful coves he had known when burning fields for the Steeds, and this sanctuary became his target. It would be a new land, far from Virginia and mean-spirited masters. But could he survive alone? As he kept the sloop headed east he pondered this, and for the first time in his life tried to discipline into complete sentences the vagrant thoughts which hitherto had raced helter-skelter through his vacant mind.
Stop ... Devon ... see ... Steeds? He judged not; Edmund Steed had looked like the kind of man who might be a magistrate, obligated to send him back. Indians ... here ... like Indians ... there? He suspected the Choptanks might prove peaceful, else how could Steed live so easily? What to eat? On his earlier trip he had seen ducks and geese and the Steed servants had found oysters. Where sleep? Any kind of shack would equal what Janney provided, and from observing how Indians built their wigwams, he felt sure he could do as well. Can ... I ... live? This was the powerful question, and even though he summoned all his intellect to weigh the variables, he could reach no sensible answer. The effort pained him, quite exhausted his capacities, and he dropped these difficult thought processes. Instead he looked at the land ahead and grinned. No chance ... back there. He was committed to the Eastern Shore.
To escape detection by any English ship putting into the Potomac, he unstepped his mast during daylight hours and lay in the bottom of the s
loop, but once he reached the Eastern Shore, he moved northward at a steady clip, seeing numerous enticing bays. He became ravenously hungry, but his cunning warned him against landing here: too close to the James.
Later, when he felt that he was safely north, he beached his boat, hiding it among rushes, and foraged for what berries he could find. Using as bait the head of a fish he caught, he lured crabs; when toasted over a small fire they sustained him. At dusk he would come out of hiding and sail through the night, and in this cautious way approached the Choptank.
He did not venture directly into the channel south of the island, but lay to for several days, scouting the place, He saw smoke rise from the hidden house and movement of servants along the shore, and to his surprise the masts of two different boats, a bateau and a ketch. He supposed the latter must be an official craft come from Virginia to arrest him, so extra precautions were advisable.
He waited till one dark midnight when no lights showed on Devon, then slipped silently along the southern bank of the Choptank until he was well upriver. Then, in waning darkness, he darted across the river and hid along the northern shore, and as dawn approached he saw in the shadowy darkness something which gave him much assurance: a low marshland covering many acres, backed up by what was obviously fast land, for it was lined by towering trees standing dark against the sky. A night bird sang briefly and the broad river lay in unruffled stillness.
Home, the tired little thief thought, and carefully he edged his sloop along the rim of the marsh, not knowing how to penetrate it for the protection he needed. Then, at the eastern extremity, he located a commodious creek, not broad enough to invite inspection from searchers but wide enough to provide safe passage for someone wanting to hide. Lowering his mast to aid concealment, he paddled his boat softly into this passageway between the marsh on the south and solid ground on the north.
When he was far inland and secure from danger, he dropped anchor and stowed his paddle in the bow. He then fell asleep as the fading stars winked their careless approval. Toward noon he awoke with a curious sensation: he felt as if someone were staring at him. Rubbing his grimy eyes, he looked up, and there on the bank to which he had moored stood four Indian braves.
“Run ... no ... more,” he muttered. Rising on his knees, he grinned at the warriors and extended his open palms. “See,” he said hopefully, “no ... gun.”
THE MARSH
FOR TIMOTHY TURLOCK TO FLEE ALONE INTO THE CHOPTANK marshes was an act of madness. In England he had not been a countryman, and in Virginia he had been so busy fighting the Janneys that he had not mastered the skills of rural life. Only one thing enabled him to survive: he had developed a passionate love of land and rivers, and intuitively sensed the steps he must take in order to live with them.
Accordingly, when the wandering braves found him at the edge of the marsh, he knew that he must throw himself into their hands, be as docile as possible and learn from them the tricks he would need. There was no Indian village of Patamoke on which he could rely; that site was a mournful echo populated by no one. The braves who had discovered Turlock had been on a casual hunting foray; for some days they remained with the runty Englishman, rather pleased that he was no larger than they.
From them he learned how to weave marsh grass into the walls of his hut and how to catch the few remaining crabs of autumn. Geese had not yet arrived from the north, so he could not trap them, but he did learn the rudiments of tracking deer.
They could not converse with him, of course, but his habit of talking in single words accompanied by grimaces and gestures prepared him admirably for speaking with Indians, who often did the same, so that by the close of the second day he had accumulated a vocabulary of a few words with which he would conduct most of his later intercourse with the Choptanks: kawshek for oyster; tahquah for crab; attque for deer; nataque for beaver; and the word which was going to prove most terrifying, poopponu for winter.
By the time the four braves had departed, they had provided him with an intensive course in survival which sufficed during the clement weather of September and October. Indeed, when the great geese did arrive, assuring him of food, he felt such confidence that he began preparing small fields for gardens, even though he had no seed or any comprehension of what to do if any fell into his hands.
But in late November, when the first really cold weather blew across the Choptank, he was appalled at its severity, and then began his dreadful testing, as cruel in its way as the starving time which had tested the first Virginians. He had no blankets, but there were pine boughs, and when these were properly interlaced he could creep under them and at least escape the gale. He also deduced that goose feathers, if they could be compressed into some kind of container, might provide warmth, and after many infuriating failures he discovered a way to make a small blanket from one of the shirts he had stolen from Janney. When tied ingeniously and stuffed with feathers, it was comforting. After a week he reasoned that he must throw out the big feathers with tough quills and use only the down; this conserved heat, so that on some nights he actually perspired.
Then came the snow. The Choptank was far enough north for the river to freeze once or twice each winter, and so situated that snow was frequent. He would fall asleep at dusk, his shirt-blanket about him, and during the night would become aware of an overwhelming silence: no sound of any kind, no birds, no boughs bending, no fall of any foot. And then he would hear that softest of all noises, the almost imperceptible touch of falling snow, striking pine needles and drifting slowly to earth, where it would cover his untilled gardens and smother his hut.
In the morning he would peer from his doorway and see only white; even the river’s ice would be covered, and he would know that on this day he would be hungry and cold and bitterly alone.
The winter of 1638-1639 was unusually severe, and Turlock suffered through five snowfalls that depleted his pemmican and made it impossible for him to catch either fish or geese. When the sixth storm swept across the Choptank he was near dead, and when the river thawed he surrendered. He would sail down to Devon Island and give himself up to whatever charges the authorities in Virginia might want to bring against him.
Dolefully he stepped his mast, unfurled his stolen sail and left his sanctuary. Once in the Choptank with the island visible, he felt a sense of resignation; at least on Devon he would find food and warmth, and it might be months before the Steeds could deliver him to Jamestown. His spirits did not brighten, but did focus on the fact that during a postponement covering some months a clever fellow like himself might be able to think of something.
It was remarkable that Turlock had been hiding in the marshes for nearly half a year without those on Devon learning of his existence; after all, the two locations were only ten miles apart, but it must be remembered that the Indians had left Steed’s employ, and the servants who had taken their places were not allowed to penetrate the back country. Therefore, when one of them noticed a strange boat putting into Devon Creek, considerable furor swept the settlement.
“Master Steed!” one cried as he ran toward the house. “Boat! Boat!”
The master was absent in one of the fields, but from the trim door of the house a tall woman with a black shawl about her shoulders appeared, studied the snowy fields, then saw the boat. She was in her forties, with whitening hair and a skin still pallid. She moved as if the island belonged to her, as it did, and after satisfying herself that only one passenger occupied the boat, she sent messengers scurrying about the plantation.
As the sloop tied up to the wharf she saw an emaciated white man climb ashore. Walking unsteadily, he followed the footpath to the house, but had come only a short distance when he collapsed.
“Help him,” she told the servant at her side, and Turlock was dragged into the house, where Mrs. Steed could almost see the warmth penetrate his near-frozen bones.
“Who are you?” she asked when he had sipped some pork broth.
“Turlock.”
“Oh! You’re
the one who worked here with Simon Janney?”
“Same.”
Delicately she avoided disclosing that she also knew he was the one who had bashed Janney’s head with a spade and stolen his boat.
“Janney ... live?” Turlock asked.
“He did,” she said evenly, “no thanks to you.”
“He ... was ... bad.”
She did not believe this. Both Janney and his wife had testified that neither had ever struck their fractious servant and that both had seen to it that he ate as well as they. Turlock had been presented to the court as an ingrate who—
“Master Steed is coming!” one of the men cried, and Turlock rose, expecting to meet Edmund Steed, with whom he had worked. Instead, a fine-looking young man of twenty-two entered, his cheeks red from frost, his hair tousled.
“This is my son Henry,” Mrs. Steed said. “He interrupted his law studies in London when my husband died.”
Turlock knew he ought to say something about the death, but graciousness was not his specialty. “Bad,” he grunted.
“You worked with my father when I was away?” young Steed asked.
“Uh-huh.”
There was an awkward pause, during which Turlock stared insolently at the glass window, the first he had seen in the New World. It ended when Mrs. Steed explained, “We’ve discussed his attack on Janney.”
“A wonder you didn’t kill him,” Steed said accusingly.
“No ... good.”
“He was your legal master.”
“Liked ... slaves ... better.”
It was remarkable how quickly one became accustomed to Turlock’s truncated conversation; when he provided brief verbal clues the educated mind leaped to fill the interstices, as if he were primal and restricted to the barest essential thoughts. The Steeds understood him readily.
Henry was about to lecture him when Mrs. Steed interceded; she said gently that what this repugnant little fellow needed was not moralizing but warm food, and she took him into the kitchen where pots were simmering and fed him. Then she led him to an empty bed, and he fell asleep under real covers.
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