The Pilgrim

by Hugh Nissenson

  Then the Devil came down in great wrath upon me. For well nigh a year, he came unto me in my chamber almost every evening and drove me into the streets or into inns or brothels to seek out comely, young whores. I often drank myself to sleep. Sometimes, half drunk, I went for a walk with the intention of getting a breath of fresh air. I averted my eyes from the street walkers but always found myself in some inn, looking for a comely, young girl who was for sale. Whenever I saw one, Sarah’s veiled face came to my mind, and I ran away.

  But I returned like a dog to his vomit. The Devil frequently led me to the brothels in Spital Fields, beyond Bishops Gate, and Whitefriars. Night after night, I sat in their parlors for hours without speaking. Then the bawd in a stew in Shoreditch said to me, “Don’t be shy, sir. Choose one of my pretty lasses and enjoy yourself.”

  I went into a bedchamber with a comely lass and put off all my clothes. A babe wailed from the cradle in a corner. The girl said, “My darling Susan is awake and hungry. I must needs nurse her, or else she will keep crying and spoil your sport. Will you wait, sir? It will not take long.”

  I put on my clothes and hastened home. With every subsequent sunset and the coming of the dark, the Devil tempted me, and my resistance to him grew more and more feeble. At length, in February in the year of Christ 1622, I said to Rigdale, “It is only a matter of time before I again surrender to the temptation to fornicate. I have decided that it is a greater evil to live and sin against God than to kill myself. Therefore I will kill myself. But how? Not by hanging. I could not abide that. I will buy a musket and shoot myself in the mouth. I have given the matter much thought. I will prime and load the piece, light the match, stand upon a stool with the butt upon the floor between my bare feet, thrust the muzzle against the back of my throat, and pull the trigger with my big toe.”

  Rigdale said, “Join me instead in a new life. Come work with me in a plantation that will soon be established in New England. It will be comprised only of men, so you will be free of the temptation to fornicate. I am going there so that I may at last preach the Gospel without a licence and, with God’s grace, awaken slumbering regenerate souls to their heavenly destiny.”

  He told me that a member of his church, a former ironmonger named Thomas Weston, had been the treasurer and guiding spirit of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London. In 1620, Weston and his Company had established for profit a settlement of Separatists in New England called the Plymouth Plantation that would trade various and sundry cheap goods with the Indians for beaver skins and hewn timber.

  My beloved father, in his heart of hearts, was a Separatist. He believed that the Church of England was no true church because it was a national church governed by the hierarchy of archbishops, and their courts and canons, and thus far removed from the primitive Church of the Gospels. He would have thanked God to see me settled in New England.

  Rigdale said that Weston had severed his connection with the Merchant Adventurers, with the idea of establishing a second settlement in New England solely for profit.

  He said to me, “A beaver pelt from the Plymouth Plantation sells in London for eleven shillings! Eleven shillings for one pelt! And the timber! A single pine balk fifteen foot in length from New England sells here for one pound, five shillings, and sixpence. We’ll be rich!

  “This morning, I signed a contract with Mr. Weston to serve as his plantation’s joiner for one share of the expected yearly profit together with five pounds, three shillings in money. I am to bring my tool box.”

  Weston said to me, “Rigdale says you are a scrivener for attorney Henry Appletree, whose chambers are in Westminster. Appletree represents Edward Williams, the merchant owner of the good ship Swan which I recently hired from him for sixty pounds a month, together with a bond of eight hundred pounds.”

  I said, “Yes, I know. I copied the contracts. The Swan is a seaworthy vessel. As I recall, it hath a burden of ninety tons.”

  Weston said, “I would like to hire you as scrivener for my new enterprise. You will sail on the Swan with the other men I hire. You will list the names, occupations, shares, yearly wages, and other particulars of the labourers. Also, of all supplies and their purchase costs that are loaded in London upon the Swan. I would pay you the same as Rigdale: one share of the expected profit, together with five pounds, three shillings in ready money.”

  “How many shares are there in all?”

  “Forty-four.”

  I said, “I will be your scrivener for eight pounds a year in ready money and one share of the expected profits.”

  “I will pay you seven pounds a year.”

  “That’s what Appletree pays me. You will pay me eight.”

  “Done! Eight pounds, to be paid you at the end of the first year, together with one share of the expected profits.”

  I then asked, “What about the Sabbath? Will your labourers keep the Sabbath?”

  He said, “Fear not! Religion and money will jump together in my New English plantation. I promised Rigdale that the labourers there will abstain from work on the Sabbath and attend his sermons. Yes, your friend will at last be allowed to preach the Gospel. He must, however, include in every sermon some words in praise of the Christian virtues of discipline and hard work, and some that condemn idleness.”

  Rigdale said, “And so I will!”

  Weston said to me, “Sign here.” Then he said, “With God’s grace, you will make landfall at the Plymouth Plantation, wherein I have made arrangements with Governor Bradford for all of you to remain until another suitable place for your habitation is discovered in the vicinity. But you will on no account share your supplies with Bradford’s people!”

  Thus upon my twenty-seventh birthday, on the tenth day of March, in the year of Christ 1622, I signed the contract that set the future course of my life.

  • • •

  We parted. I took me to Henry Appletree and told him of my covenant with Weston. He said, “If only I could so easily escape to a new life. Oh, to be young! With God’s grace, a long future lies before you. I am five-and-fifty. I would be lucky to count my remaining years on the fingers of one hand. Sarah will gradually fade in your memory. She will linger within you in bits and pieces. Neither of us will forget her oozing black forefinger. Part of me wishes that your life will likewise be cut off. But only part of me. Most of me wishes you well.”

  We embraced for the first and last time. I recited my little poem over Sarah’s grave in the churchyard of St. Martin in the Fields:

  My grief stole my faith

  And sneaked away.

  I cannot trace the thief.

  His track of tears

  Hath faded from my pitted cheek.

  • • •

  On the second day of April, which was a Tuesday, I arrived in Winterbourne to bid farewell to aunt Eliza and uncle Roger. Grace Orchard opened their door. My aunt called out, “Who is it, Grace?”

  Grace replied, “A stranger, Mistress.”

  And I said, “’Tis Charles, aunt Eliza.”

  “Just in time to dine with us. Come sit you down.”

  Grace served me turnips and a slice of roast lamb. Tom Foot said, “This is Grace Orchard, Charles. She is an idle carder who lived with her mother on South Street. I hired her to be aunt Eliza’s maidservant.”

  Aunt Eliza said, “Grace is a great comfort to a half-blind old woman like me. Bless the sweet child! I could not live without her.”

  Grace gave me a dimpled smile. I told my aunt and uncle that I was bound for the New World to work on a plantation for the space of a year. I said, “I go thence to seek my salvation. I hope to learn whether, by the grace of God, I am predestined to be saved. I think that I shall be more free there from temptation.”

  Aunt Eliza said, “Let us hope so.”

  Uncle Roger went to his chamber and returned with a jingling purse. He said, “I do not think th
at we shall meet again in the flesh, Charles. I drink to you, my dear nephew, with all my heart.” He drank deep from his mug of ale and belched. “Take these ten pounds. If you return to England within four years, I shall leave you all my worldly possessions. You will be rich. If you remain in New England, I shall leave my fortune to Tom Foot, Eliza’s nephew.

  “I have ever loved you, Charles. You are a son to me. When you are a sojourner among savages in the wilderness, remember that the vilest person of earth is the living image of Almighty God.”

  I embraced aunt Eliza and then uncle Roger, and said, “Since my beloved father’s death, you have been my family. I thank you for your care, aunt Eliza, your decoctions, savoury meat stews, and wholesome advice that kept my melancholy at bay. I thank you for your charity, uncle Roger, and the money you have freely given me. I thank you for sharing with me your passion for words. And I thank you both for your love.

  “I shall treasure the memory of this moment. In the wilderness across the sea, I shall see in my mind’s eye the dying fire, uncle Roger’s empty mug of ale, the flickering candle stub on the table. I shall not remember you as you were, when I was a boy, but as you currently appear to me. Your aged faces shall give me joy. Even your cataract, aunt Eliza, is like a pearl to me. Uncle Roger, the skin of your face looks like old parchment upon which the years have inscribed brown blotches and wrinkles at the corners of your eyes. My memory shall preserve your countenances as they are now.

  “Look you! The candle hath flickered out. It conspired with my mind to keep therein a few precious moments that have already passed.”

  Uncle Roger belched again. He said, “Send me some metaphors and similes from the New World.”

  After dinner, Foot took me aside and said, “If you wish, Grace will come to you in the night. She will cost you nothing. What say you?”

  I said, “Bid her come to me at midnight.”

  He laughed. Awaiting Grace in the dark, I heard a nightingale singing beyond my bedchamber window. God be praised, for it was the earliest in April that I had ever heard one sing. His liquid warble cleansed my soul. I arose from my bed, put on my clothes, grabbed my knapsack, crept out of the house, and walked into Winterbourne.

  The departure of the carrier to London was delayed until eight of the clock. I ate breakfast at The Sign of the Bull. The song of the nightingale had sharpened my ears. I went about the town, relishing its familiar sounds: the barking of chained dogs, the clatter of cart makers, the rasping of a wood saw. I listened to children singing in my old grammar school, a blacksmith beating his anvil, a stone mason hammering upon a chisel in Sheep Street.

  During the week following in London, I signed on three-and-sixty more men to labour in Weston’s plantation. They were brought to him by his brother, Andrew, who was to be our governor. He stank of liquor and tobacco. He and his agents gathered men throughout London—from the streets, the docks, and the stews and taverns. Thomas Weston hired a carpenter named Phineas Pratt for eleven pounds in ready money to be paid at the end of a year’s labour. Like Rigdale, Pratt clung to his precious tool box.

  Weston turned away a runaway apprentice barber-surgeon named Phillip Bussel because his black pupils were unequally dilated, the right being larger than the left. Bussel was emaciated, with a sallow complexion, and given to profuse sweats.

  Weston said, “You are an opium eater. Do not deny it! Get thee hence! You are not wanted here!”

  Bussel said, “When I eat opium, my bowels become sorely constipated, but the better portion of my nature becomes divine.”

  Weston hired one-and-twenty idle husbandmen, an idle needle maker, an idle currier, a former weaver, a former felt maker, and a former haberdasher. They were all to be paid three pounds per annum. He hired six-and-thirty rowdy vagabonds for the same amount each. At least half of them were pitted from smallpox. The one named William Butts was drunk when Andrew brought him into his brother’s chamber near the dock. I marked down Butts’s name &c. Then he said to me, “Also write: I am alone in this world. I have given over my stinking family duties, for under them lie snapping, snarling, biting covetousness, hypocrisy, envy, and violence.”

  Andrew said, “Hire him, dear brother. Behold the girth of his arms.”

  I said, “These rude fellows will be our death.”

  Butts said, “Look me in the eye! Display no fear! I’m not so tough as I appear.”

  I reported his extempore rhymed couplet to my uncle Roger in a letter; he replied,

  Thank you for your parting gift. The simple couplet, produced naturally without labour from ordinary speech, is much to my liking.

  Tom Foot and Grace Orchard are betrothed. I caught you gazing at her dimpled smile across the table. I had the wild fancy that you would remain at the Hempstead and marry her. I would have disinherited Foot.

  Why did you flee from here in the night? ’Twas the night I heard an early nightingale in the big oak by the small barn. You must have heard him. I like to think that, however far we will be apart, we will be bound by the beauty of his song.

  I compiled a list of annual supplies of victuals and drink for Weston’s sixty men sailing on the Swan.

  Item. Victuals and drink. 480 bushels of meal. 120 bushels of pease. 120 bushels of oatmeal. 80 gallons of Aqua Vitae. 60 gallons of oil. 30 gallons of vinegar. Pepper, ginger, nutmegs, cloves, dates, raisins, damask prunes, rice, saffron, salt. 1 barrel of pippin vinegar. 60 barrels of beer. 8 tun of cider.

  Item. Arms. 60 long pieces, five foot or five-and-a-half foot in length. 90 pound of powder. 270 pound of shot or lead. 60 bandoleers. 25 melting ladles. 15 bullet molds. 60 forked gun rests.

  Item. Tools. 40 broad axes. 40 felling axes. 40 pickaxes. 30 steel hand saws. 30 two-hand saws. 40 hammers. 30 shovels. 30 spades. 30 augers. 30 chisels. 10 grindstones. 400 nails of all sorts. 30 hatchets. 10 pair of pliers.

  Item. Household implements. 40 iron pots. 40 kettles. 40 large frying pans. 40 gridirons. 40 skillets. 40 spits. platters. dishes. spoons of wood.

  Item. Goods for trading with Indians. 80 hatchets. 40 pounds of glass beads. 30 iron pots. 200 brass bells. 40 broad axes. 40 knives. 30 blankets. 30 hats. 25 ells of red cloth.

  Rigdale sold his stock of furniture for fifteen pounds and eight shillings. We both bought four pair of shoes, three pair of Irish stockings, two cloth suits, one suit of canvas, one Monmouth cap, three shirts, one pair of garters, one rug for a bed, one pair of canvas sheets, one coarse rug, and five ells of coarse canvas to be filled with straw, to make a bed at sea. We also purchased one barrel of dried oxen tongues and one barrel of beer for us to consume on shipboard, and two bottles of Aqua Vitae. I took with me my Commonplace Book, and Rigdale and I each carried a Geneva Bible.

  Part III

  Andrew Weston, Rigdale, and I boarded the Swan with Weston’s fifty-eight other men at St. Katherine’s wharf at five of the clock on Monday morning, the twenty-ninth of April in the year of Christ 1622. The last two passengers to board were a young gentleman armed with a sheathed cutlass sword and a comely maid. We made their acquaintance on the quarterdeck. Their names were Henry and Abigail Winslow. I was relieved to learn that they were brother and sister. Abigail had auburn curls.

  The wind being east and north, and the weather being fair, the Swan’s crew weighed anchor at about seven of the clock.

  Captain Green called out, “Let go forward!” and “Let go aft.”

  I leaned upon the port rail, just aft of the bow, and said, “Farewell, England.”

  Andrew Weston said, “Farewell, sack. Farewell, claret and malmsey. Farewell, roasted beef, roasted pork, mutton, woodcocks, and capons.”

  Rigdale gazed across the Thames and said, “Farewell, Southwark. My beloved Ann is buried in Southwark. Our little daughter, Joan, is buried beside her in St. Olave’s churchyard. I hope one day to join them there.”

  The Tower of London, London Bridge, and S
t. Paul’s slowly receded from my sight as the Swan was towed out on the Thames away from the other ships, with their forest of masts, that thronged the river.

  Captain Green cried out to his crew, “Cast off tows!”

  Henry said, “God be praised! We are free of the Church of England, its bishops, and ecclesiastical courts.”

  I said, “Its surplices. Its hallowed water. All of its lewd ceremonies.”

  Rigdale said, “Its profanation of the Sabbath. Its licences to preach the Word of God.”

  Abigail said, “Its persecution of the Saints.”

  Andrew Weston said, “Its Book of Common Prayer with St. Chrysostom’s prayers. Who is this St. Chrysostom? I warrant St. Chrysostom was a papist.”

  Henry Winslow said, “Well said, gentlemen. We hold the same beliefs. My sister and I hope to join our cousin Edward, once of London and Leyden in Holland, who now abides among the Saints in the Plymouth Colony. Are you gentlemen also joining kin who dwell in that godly colony?”

  I said, “No, sir. Master Rigdale and I are Master Weston’s men. We shall all sojourn in new Plymouth for a little while before we venture into the wilderness and establish a colony of our own. There, with God’s help, we shall fell timber for English markets and trade with the Indians for peltry and get rich.”

  Henry said, “I have read that the Indians of New England delight to torture their prisoners by flaying some with sea shells and cutting off the fingers of others and roasting them to eat.”

  The Captain cried out, “Man the sheets! Haul and make fast!”

  The sailors hauled in the sheets, the wind swelled the mainsail, and the flags atop the mast unfurled. The Swan heeled away from the wind to starboard.

  Abigail stumbled down the sloping deck into my arms.

  She said, “I thank you, sir. You saved me from a grievous fall.”

  I said, “Would that Eve could have spake thus to Adam.”