Crane Pond

by Richard Francis

  Hannah fastens his cloak for him then raises her hand and slides her finger and thumb under one of the flaps of his hat, clasps the lobe of his ear and gently tugs it, rather as you might tug the tongue of your shoe to straighten it. Since he started wearing his bonnet this has become a habit of hers. She smiles, then gives him a serious look. ‘Be careful,’ she tells him

  ‘The pirates will be in shackles,’ he points out. ‘They are no threat now.’

  She nods. ‘Be careful anyhow,’ she says.

  CHAPTER 2

  The court chamber is in the Town House, down near the harbour. Sewall plods along a cart track through the snow, one foot placed exactly in front of the other to keep within the groove. The sky is low and dirty and a cold wind blows; from time to time a snowflake stings his cheek, hard like grit.

  A good fire has been lit in the chamber, and he warms his backside at it while waiting for his fellow judges (selected for their experience from the roster of Assistants) to assemble. Jackson, the serving man, brings him a tankard of ale which has had a red-hot poker applied. Finally, he is one of seven judges to take their places on the bench and to be faced by an equal number of pirates, who shuffle into the room with shackles on their arms and legs. The court clerk reads out the names.

  Thomas Pound, a dark-haired fellow, small but with an air of authority even now, even here. He inspects the judges one by one, not with impertinence but as to the manner born, as if he is the judge.

  Next, Thomas Hawkins, bigger, almost shambling, with long pale hair in a pigtail, nautical fashion. These two Thomases are the ringleaders. Then yet another Thomas, one Johnson, the only one of the pirates to look the part, with an expression both scowling and hangdog at once. The others are rank and file, ordinary seadogs who will follow a captain wherever he takes them, spitting their tobacco juice on the polished floor of the council chamber.

  Thomas Pound is, or was, pilot of the frigate Rose, a vessel assigned to Massachusetts Bay three years previously. Since then, his ship has sailed upon strange and uncharted waters, as has the whole of Massachusetts Bay colony, ever since King James ll cancelled the charter which gave its laws and government their legitimacy. Samuel Pepys, his secretary to the navy, commissioned the Rose to patrol the Massachusetts coast after the king installed the roundly hated Governor Andros to take charge of the colony’s affairs while the constitutional niceties were sorted out.

  Sewall tried to play his part. Furnished with Hannah’s pasty, a barrel of beer, and many other necessities, though none of them as necessary as that pasty, he took ship to England to assist in negotiating a solution, though was soon elbowed aside by Increase Mather, one of the leading ministers of Massachusetts Bay, who became the colony’s official delegate and is in London still, negotiating the new charter. (Thwarted in his hopes of courtly intrigue, Sewall filled his year in England by attending to family affairs and seeing the sights.)

  Then King James was ousted in the Glorious Revolution of William and Mary, great news for New England (at least as was at first supposed, since King William was committed to the Puritan cause). The people of Boston rose up and put Governor Andros into prison.

  But it was the task of the ship Rose, pilot Mr. Pound, to uphold the king’s authority. Since Andros was the appointed representative of that authority, the vessel duly entered Boston harbour bent on securing his release. The populace were perplexed as to what to do. It was the king’s vessel and they didn’t wish to be disloyal; only, of course, there was now a different king. A party from the harbour boarded the ship. Its captain suggested that to avoid the embarrassment (for both sides) of clear-cut capture, they should simply remove the sails.

  Now, nine months later, it’s clear that King William wishes to exert a tighter control over his colony’s affairs than even his predecessor did. Precisely because he is sympathetic to their Puritanism he wants to ensure they continue to toe the line.

  In the interval Thomas Pound, his ship not pilotable for want of sails, joined forces with a friend by the name of Thomas Hawkins, who happened to own a fishing boat. The two decided to go off in search of French vessels and try their luck at a little privateering (King William had gone to war with the French, who were therefore fair game). But instead of the enemy they came across a ketch out of Salem, the Mary, and captured that.

  Wait Still Winthrop, a fellow judge, leans over to speak into Sewall’s ear. ‘It could have been a simple mistake,’ he suggests. ‘And then they were in too deep. In such an eventuality you can hardly say sorry and go on your way.’ Mr. Winthrop’s breath is a little sour. Sewall recoils as far as he dares. Too deep, yes: that’s the whole tendency of the sea.

  The pirates, as they now were (having missed the profession of privateering altogether), captured more ships. Soon there was a hue and cry. A Captain Pease was commissioned to go after them. As it happened he set sail in that same ketch Mary, by now relinquished by the pirates who had taken over a bigger vessel. There was a desperate battle. Captain Pease was killed, as were many of his men, and many of the pirates too. But seven were captured, the seven here in court today.

  ‘It’s a muddle,’ whispers Judge Winthrop.

  Indeed it is. A king is deposed. His sailing ship becomes another king’s sailing ship, and then is made into a sailing ship that doesn’t sail. A naval officer and a fisherman are privateers, then pirates. The ship Mary is a commercial vessel, a pirate ship, an instrument of the law.

  Sewall thinks about his own experience of the sea, just three months ago while returning from his mission to England. His ship the America had fallen behind its escort. Strange vessels were seen in the distance, flittering on the horizon. Perhaps French, possibly rogue—which would be even worse since they followed no rules of warfare except a cut throat to ensure tales were never told, that no hearings, like those taking place today in Boston’s council chamber, would ever happen. In this emergency Sewall remembered that he had never made a will. At once he retired to his cabin and wrote it.

  In the end there was no emergency. The ships proved to be Jerseymen, friendly enough. When he arrived home he showed his will to Hannah who said, But, husband, if the ship had sunk the will would have done too.

  Sewall looked at her, amazed at his own stupidity.

  Perhaps, suggested young Sam, a seagull could have fetched it in its beak and brought it home.

  In the middle of the ocean there are no gulls, Sewall said.

  Except you, my dear, Hannah told him.

  He thought of that paper bobbing on the waves, slowly surrendering his intentions to the sea.

  Anyhow, father, said daughter Hannah, you came home safely, and your will came too. She sighed with satisfaction at this outcome.

  Now, in the Court of Assistants, Sewall thinks about the ocean’s tendency to swallow up all order and legality, to wash the very words off the page.

  The piracy is proved, the men are sentenced to hang. Only Wait Still Winthrop abstains. But in fact the court has no other sanction. Sewall looks at each condemned man in turn, just as Pound looked at the bench of judges at the beginning of the proceedings. Sewall does not believe in averting his gaze when sentence is passed.

  Pound and Hawkins remain stoical. Thomas Johnson ignores the rest of the panel of judges to give Sewall a savage stare, as if the verdict is entirely his responsibility. One of the common sailors mutters something. The others follow their captains’ example and show little emotion. Their shoulders sag a little in disappointment that their lives have come to this. One runs his finger round his collar as if he wants to do so while he still can, stretches his chin forward.

  At supper Hannah passes Sewall his reserved piece of pie. The others are having Indian bread with cheese. Sewall inspects the helping. It looks as if Betty has taken none, or very little. He holds up the plate and offers it to her but she tells him, rather crossly, that she’s content with what she has. They eat without conv
ersation though Hannah keeps giving him significant looks. She wants to know about the outcome of the pirates’ trial but won’t discuss such events in front of the children.

  Suddenly a cry, loud and sad as the hoot of an owl. It’s Sam. For a moment Sewall thinks he’s deliberately imitating the bird but then sees the boy’s cheeks are streaming with tears. ‘Whatever is the matter?’ Hannah cries.

  Young Sam is so despairing that for a moment he cannot speak, or perhaps his mouth is full of cheese. Then he manages to blurt out, ‘I’m afraid I will die!’

  ‘Do you feel ill?’ Sewall asks him.

  ‘No, no, father,’ he replies impatiently. ‘I’m afraid of dying!’

  Perhaps he’s caught the contagion from Betty, and being a less spiritual child thinks in terms of the physical event rather than of arrangements in the afterlife. If so, he has passed the infection onwards already. Joseph is crying heartily out of sympathy, while buds of tears form in the corners of daughter Hannah’s eyes and Betty’s lips quiver as she chews.

  ‘Oh death,’ Sewall sings, using the York tune (he acts as precentor in the South Meeting House), ‘where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?’

  The words seem to calm Sam down. Hannah stares at her brother as if waiting to know whether she is allowed to feel better too, or whether they should both relapse. Joseph, bored with grief, has scrambled off his chair and is playing on the floor, his little gown tented over his knees.

  ‘What was it, my boy?’ Sewall asks.

  ‘I was remembering when little Stephen died, father.’

  Ah. Sewall remembers it too, so well. All the family now think of it. Wife Hannah was brought to bed of Stephen three years before. The baby died just after he had cut his first two teeth. Next day the family processed to the vaults for the placement of his little coffin, two by two. Sewall had the arm of his wife, little Sam (then only nine years old) escorted his sister Hannah, and Betty was led by her uncle Stephen, after whom the baby was named. There was no baby Joseph then. As the coffin was lowered into the vault, one of the bearers slipped and it was nearly dropped.

  On the way home and after they arrived there for the funeral meats, the children wept bitterly, Sam most of all.

  On the Sabbath the weather is too harsh for wife Hannah to go to church since she has a cold. The girls insist on staying behind to dose her with egg yolk and conserve of red roses. Sam goes with Sewall, however. After his outbreak of grief the other day he would benefit from the support of the minister, and Mr. Willard, with his deep measured tones, can be a comforting figure. Also Mr. Willard’s son Josiah is Sam’s best friend.

  It’s so cold in the South Meeting House that the communion bread makes a sad rattle when broken into the plates. Afterwards Sewall neighbours a little while Sam and Josiah play about (unfortunately they did the same inside, at least until the tithe-man gave them each a poke with the knob end of his staff). Mr. Usher tells Sewall that the weather is even colder in Muscovy, where your spittle freezes before it hits the ground. He goes on to say that last week he went to Thursday Lecture at Braintree, where the sermon was on the danger of over-attachment to the things of this world. Afterwards, the minister discovered that while he was delivering it his house was being robbed and upwards of forty shillings stolen. Sewall and his friend exchange a look of enquiry, as if to ask whether it would be appropriate to laugh a little, or not. On the whole, the looks decide, perhaps not, particularly by the door of a meeting house.

  When they arrive home Sewall finds Judge Winthrop waiting for him in his study. Sewall is chilled to the marrow and Mr. Winthrop, by contrast, seated by the fire as if it belongs to him, is done to a turn. Sewall is also hungry and Mr. Winthrop’s presence is an obstacle to dinner.

  They exchange greetings. Then Mr. Winthrop broaches what’s on his mind: the pirates.

  Sewall takes a deep breath. ‘Mr. Winthrop,’ he says. ‘Today is the Sabbath. It’s not a day to discuss these affairs.’

  ‘I must disagree, Mr. Sewall. It is a very good day to talk about mercy. It is the best of days on which to discuss charity.’

  ‘There’s nothing to discuss,’ Sewall tells him. ‘The court considered the evidence. It found the men guilty of piracy. It sentenced them to be hanged. That’s the way of it.’

  ‘That is the mere skeleton of justice. I am talking about its flesh, its heart.’

  ‘Justice—,’ Sewall begins. He’s not sure what he’ll say next but has noticed that if you begin with a sufficiently resonant word others will bob along in its wake. But his resonant word sinks beneath the waves.

  ‘The flesh I refer to is Madam Winthrop’s,’ Winthrop explains.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It is flesh of her flesh.’

  Sewall looks at him in astonishment. An inappropriate pinkness flashes into his mind.

  ‘My wife is kin to several of them,’ Mr. Winthrop explains. ‘Her brother is married to Hawkins’s sister. Also one of the crew is a cousin of hers. She’s from Salem, as you know. They are all seagoing folk over there.’

  Indeed they mostly are. Sewall’s beloved brother Stephen is one of the leading lights, town clerk, town this and that, not himself a sailor in point of fact but surrounded by those who are, just as the houses of the town are surrounded by the sea. It can be glimpsed down every alleyway, from every garden, between many of the buildings, a silver-tongued ocean bent on insinuating itself into the land. Its presence has made Salem a plump and prosperous place.

  ‘All the more reason for them to need protection from pirates,’ Sewall points out.

  ‘Mr. Sewall, my wife is distraught. I am distraught.’

  Sewall doesn’t appreciate being Mr. Sewalled in that peremptory fashion. ‘Mr. Winthrop,’ he replies, ‘you know the expression well enough: Justice is blind. It is the same for an Indian, a negro, or a relative of Madam Winthrop.’ He is aware this is not always exactly the case. ‘Or should be,’ he adds a little lamely.

  ‘You insult my wife, comparing her to such people.’

  ‘I don’t mean to,’ he says, blushing. ‘My point was simply that one can’t make exceptions for personal reasons.’

  Mr. Winthrop obviously realises he too has been hasty, and adopts a more moderate tone. ‘This is still a small colony, Mr. Sewall. We don’t know everybody but we usually know of them, or we know somebody who does.’ Sewall accepts the truth of this. More than that, he loves the truth of it, even though it has its darker side (he finds himself going to funerals of people he knows, or nearly knows, almost every week). ‘It adds a certain flavour to all our affairs,’ Mr. Winthrop continues.

  The smell of roasting beef is wafting into the room. Sewall inhales it as discreetly as possible. ‘A savour,’ he agrees.

  ‘Exactly,’ says Mr. Winthrop. ‘A savour.’ He gives Sewall a significant look, hoping he has driven his point home: justice subtly seasoned with personal knowledge and connections.

  ‘Mr. Winthrop, may I ask you a question? Do you know why we use hanging as the chosen method of execution of felons rather than some other strategy, lopping off of the head, for example?’

  Mr. Winthrop is clearly baffled by this turn in the discussion. ‘Ah, no,’ he replies.

  ‘I think the reason is that hanging involves no direct action by an individual.’ This is a matter Sewall has put some thought into. ‘It’s merely a conspiracy, so to speak, between the fixity of the rope and the weight of the body. In short, it emphasises that justice is impersonal after all. Perhaps we can continue this discussion at dinner, if you would like to stay and take it with us.’

  Mr. Winthrop has the aghast look of a man facing the prospect of discussing hanging while eating roast beef, as Sewall expected (and rather hoped) he would. ‘Thank you, no,’ he replies. ‘Madam Winthrop is expecting me. And this afternoon I plan to go and see Governor Bradstreet.’

  Simo
n Bradstreet, very advanced in years, is acting governor pending the implementation of the new charter. He’s one of the founding fathers of the colony, having come over on the ship Arbella in 1630. Because he recalls the time when the settlement was tiny, the governor may be sympathetic to Mr. Winthrop’s ‘personal’ argument. Mr. Winthrop is making a threat.

  ‘Give Mr. Bradstreet my best respects and duty,’ Sewall says with as much aplomb as he can muster. ‘And Madam Winthrop too, of course.’

  Boston is quiet that night. The streets are muffled by a new fall of snow, and the drifts are too deep for the watchman to watch and the lamplighter to light. Once, around midnight, there’s a forlorn moo from the Sewalls’ cow, stabled in an outhouse at the back of their property.

  Sewall wakes, he doesn’t know why. Perhaps the cow has mooed again. She couldn’t be blamed for complaining about the intense cold. Then he becomes aware of a form standing at the foot of the bed. His heart pounds so loudly he’s afraid that it will wake Hannah. He doesn’t want her awakened into the middle of his own fear—another person’s terror is more terrifying than one’s own. And, by reflex, he will experience Hannah’s enhanced terror in turn. He has been on such a fear shuttle before.

  As his eyes learn to make use of the dim coals of the fire, he realises that whoever it is is small. ‘Betty?’ he whispers.

  ‘No, sir,’ the small shape whispers back. ‘Susan.’ Susan is their youngest servant, just fourteen.

  ‘Susan? Whatever is the matter?’

  ‘Susan?’ Hannah asks, surfacing. Then, in a different tone, ‘Susan?’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘Is it one of the children?’ They have had nine children from their marriage so far, four alive and five dead. It wouldn’t be the first time a servant has brought them terrible news in the small hours of the night.