The Sea Hath Spoken

by Stephen Lewis

  “Go ahead, then,” Catherine said, because unlike her servant she felt drained by the waiting and did not know if she could rise to her feet. She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds made by Edward, who continued eating as though unaware of the interruption. In a few moments, her worst fears were confirmed as she heard male voices jangling against Phyllis’s. Among the men, she clearly could make out Roger’s tenor and the deeper tones of Minister Davis. The third, she concluded, must belong to Constable Larkins.

  She hurried from the kitchen through the hallway that led to the entryway and the voices. Phyllis was now almost shouting.

  “I must remind the gentlemen that this is Mistress Williams’ house, and this young gentleman himself is a guest under her roof.”

  “That is the point,” Minister Davis now said, as Catherine arrived. She saw his face purple with anger. Roger, towering above the others and wearing his broad brimmed hat, looked bemused. Constable Larkins, the same one who had applied the whip to Roger and Jane’s backs, now wore an expression that indicated he wished he were somewhere else.

  “And what is that point?” Catherine asked.

  Minister Davis looked up at Roger.

  “Your guest, Mistress, welcome as he may be in your house is not in mine where he abuses my niece.”

  Catherine watched for Roger’s response, a sign of embarrassment, a confession in the twitch of an eyelid or the quiver of a lip, the rise of color to his cheeks. Instead, he smiled.

  “If I abuse Grace by loving her, then I abuse her indeed,” he said, his voice gentle and lilting. Catherine could only admire his composure before the minister’s wrath.

  “You cannot love her without my permission, which I do not grant.”

  “Have you asked your niece if she returns his affection?” Catherine asked.

  “No.”

  “And why not?” Catherine insisted.

  “Look at the man,” Minister Davis said. “Does his back not bear the scars of our displeasure?” He shook his head. “Grace cannot love him. I forbid it.”

  Catherine glanced at the constable.

  “What is your business in my house?” she asked.

  “Nothing, Mistress. Only to accompany him here,” he looked at Roger.

  “I would have come of my own volition,” Roger said.

  “I summoned the constable,” Minister Davis intervened. “I did think to have him take this young man to the jail to await the pleasure of the magistrates, but decided instead to return him here.”

  “That was kind of you,” Catherine said.

  “No, not kind at all, for I have given you a burden. In your hearing I tell this young man that he is not to come near my house or my niece, at peril to more than the flesh of his back.” He spun on his heel. “Come,” he called to the constable, and together they walked to the door. However, instead of continuing on out of the house, they paused, and Minister Davis turned back to Catherine.

  “Your other stray sheep returns,” he said. “And if I am not very much mistaken, she has been studying heresy whilst her brother practiced fornication.” He and the constable stepped aside as Jane walked in. She passed by them without a glance, and then without looking back pushed the door shut with her foot. Roger took a step toward her, but she stopped him with a stone faced shake of her head, and then she went upstairs. Roger shrugged, waited a moment or two, and then followed.

  After a little while, as Catherine sat at the kitchen table, muffled words came from upstairs, and then the volume of the voices increased into angry tones. The anger behind the words was now clear, but the words themselves had become indistinct. Then there was silence.

  Chapter Six

  Massaquoit saw the movement behind the tree and grabbed Jonathan’s arm.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  Jonathan’s face was wet with perspiration from the rapid pace of their walk. He began to smile at the prospect of a rest when Massaquoit directed him to a fallen log at the side of the narrow trail they had been traveling.

  “Sit, as though you are resting,” Massaquoit said. “Then begin walking again. If there is more than one, you can then run.”

  Jonathan nodded and hunched himself on the log. Massaquoit took a quick step over the log and into the cover of the pines that lined the trail. The ground was covered with dried needles and so he walked as though over hot coals. He sensed the motion from the trail and knew that Jonathan, doing as he had been instructed, had now gotten up and was walking. Massaquoit worked his way a little deeper into the woods to a line of oaks where he felt hard dirt beneath his feet. He trotted parallel to the trail until he saw the figure crouched with his back toward him. For a second he contemplated letting the assailant have a free opportunity at Jonathan, but he dismissed that idea. In a couple of quick steps he was within reach of the figure who turned to face him. Massaquoit relaxed as he looked into the familiar countenance of Ninigret, whom he had not seen in years, but whose mature features had not changed so much from the boyish ones Massaquoit had known. Ninigret shrugged.

  “So you are the keeper of this English?” Ninigret asked.

  “I take him back to Newbury,” Massaquoit replied.

  “To be hanged, I hope,” Ninigret said.

  “I do not think so. What is your interest in him.”

  Jonathan’s steps now indicated he was about to draw abreast of them. Ninigret tensed, and then looked back over his shoulder. Massaquoit followed his glance and saw the girl.

  “He has taken something from her, “ Ninigret said.

  The girl came forward, her head bowed. She was holding a pouch. She handed it to Ninigret, who untied the leather string at the mouth of the pouch. He pulled the pouch opened so Massaquoit could peer into it.

  “It is empty,” Massaquoit said.

  Ninigret, though, did not answer. Instead, he tossed the pouch to Massaquoit and jumped out onto the trail. Jonathan grunted as he was hit. Massaquoit took two quick steps onto the trail. Jonathan was on his knees, holding his head.

  “I did not hit him so very hard,” Ninigret said. “I do not want him dead yet. Not until he can tell us what he did with what was in the pouch.”

  Jonathan stopped rubbing his jaw and stood up. Blood trickled from his lower lip. He spat a stream of mixed spittle and blood. He stared at Ninigret with undisguised contempt.

  “I came to bring you God’s word,” he declared.

  Ninigret beckoned the girl forward.

  “Were you preaching to her when you were lying between her legs?” he demanded.

  Jonathan shrugged.

  “My flesh is weak. She invited me to lie with her.”

  The girl who had been keeping her eyes steadfastly on the ground now raised them and they flashed anger. She shook her head violently from side to side.

  Jonathan seemed unperturbed.

  “What I say is true nonetheless. Perhaps she misunderstood the price.”

  “I offered you nothing,” the girl said.

  “We want what was in the pouch,” Ninigret declared. “Then, perhaps, I will not kill you.”

  Massaquoit had been standing a few feet away, listening and ready to intervene at the first hint of violence.

  “He is under my care,” Massaquoit said to Ninigret. “I will bring him back to Newbury and you can accompany us and make your report to the magistrates.”

  Ninigret sneered.

  “And do you think the English might punish him?”

  Massaquoit remembered the bloody backs of Roger and Jane, along with other victims of the English’s justice, blasphemers whose tongues had been bored through, thieves whose hands or foreheads had been branded, and he nodded.

  “It is possible,” he said.

  “And if not?” Ninigret demanded.

  “Then there will come a time when he will not be in Newbury, when you can do with him what you want.”

  Ninigret seemed to consider for a moment or two, although Massaquoit knew the young man would not challenge his
authority or his strength.

  “The letter,” he said simply.

  “I know nothing of a letter,” Jonathan said.

  “It was in the pouch,” Ninigret replied. He held out his hand and the girl placed the pouch in it. “This pouch.”

  Jonathan shrugged.

  “I tell you I know nothing of that pouch or its contents.”

  “I will question him further as we walk to Newbury,” Massaquoit said.

  Ninigret stepped back.

  “As you say, there will come a time.” He took Minnehaha by the shoulder and led her into the woods besides the trail. Massaquoit watched them disappear. When they were out of sight, Jonathan nudged Massaquoit.

  “I believe this is what they wanted,” he said, holding a folded letter in his hand. Massaquoit noted the smooth flesh and the manicured fingernails, denoting a man who did not labor with his hands, if he labored at all. “I head them talking in their tongue. They did not think I understood. I followed the girl. I entered the wigwam. She was lying on the mat so I would not see where she hid the pouch. I meant only to take its contents. I told her to close her eyes and she obeyed. I took the letter, replaced the pouch, but still she was lying there. I did not think she would mind.”

  Massaquoit brought the back of his hand up hard against Jonathan’s cheek.

  “She did,” he said.

  Jonathan staggered back, rubbing his cheek where the skin reddened.

  “That is twice today I have suffered the indignity of being hit by savages.”

  “The letter,” Massaquoit said. Jonathan unfolded the letter. “I can read your English words,” Massaquoit said, holding out his hand.

  “A wise savage, how marvelous,” Jonathan said and raised the letter to shoulder height. Massaquoit puzzled over that gesture for a moment, and then he sensed somebody behind him. Even as he began to lift his arm to protect himself he knew he was a half second too slow, and then he felt something crash against his head.

  * * * *

  “He must have left during the night,” Phyllis said as she placed the bowl of steaming samp on the table. “And she still sleeps. I looked in on her and she did not rouse. If you ask me...”

  “I did not,” Catherine replied as she spooned some samp into her trencher.

  Phyllis continued as though Catherine had encouraged her.

  “She is worn out from traveling into the woods last night, and as for him, he went with her and did not come back. That is what I think, witches the both of them.”

  Catherine studied the earnest conviction on her servant’s face, and chose not to argue the point. Phyllis looked expectantly for a reply for a few moments, and then she too began to eat. Just as Catherine was almost finished, there was a knock at the door, and Phyllis rose to answer it. Catherine heard a male voice she did not recognize. She sighed in relief, as she was in no mood to deal again with Minister Davis, the constable, or anybody else who might trouble her about her young guests. She waited for Phyllis to bring the stranger in. He turned out to be a young man with the remains of what had been a deep bruise under his right eye. Catherine noted the slight discoloration, just a little yellow where the skin should have been pink, and a slight swelling. It was a bruise, she figured, that had been healing for some time.

  “Good morning, Mistress,” he said. “I am sorry to trouble you. I am Henry Jenkins, and I sail on The Good Hope under your good Master Gregory.”

  “I do not think you will find him here,” Catherine replied.

  The young man smiled, showing a gap where his front teeth should have been.

  “Aye, that I know,” he said. “It is your lady guest I seek, as I have a message for her.”

  “From Master Gregory?”

  Henry shook his head.

  “Then who?” Catherine asked.

  “I am sorry, Mistress, for I am sworn to secrecy,” he said.

  “Why, then, take your secret home with you. I will have none of that kind of business in my house. And at my breakfast, no less.”

  Although Catherine had intended her sharp rebuke to shake the sailor’s confidence, he gave her a quick smile, a little bow of his head, and took a step back.

  “As you like, Mistress. Just tell the young lady that a friend of Billy Lockhart was here to see her, to take up their arrangement, seeing as Billy himself can no longer do his part.”

  After this visitor left, Catherine sat at her desk poring over her account book. She stared at a column of figures but they made no more sense to her. Her mind was busy seeking the connections among the sailor who had just been at her door, the dead sailor Billy Lockhart, whose burial she had authorized in Newbury Cemetery, and Jane. So absorbed was she in these contemplations that she did not hear the light footstep until it was almost upon her. She looked up to see Jane’s face fixed into an expression of almost childish sweetness.

  “I thought I heard a visitor come,” she said.

  Catherine looked up from her figures.

  “Indeed. Were you expecting anybody? Perhaps your Indian friend?”

  Jane only smiled more fully, and Catherine chastised herself for thinking she could disturb this young woman’s self control. She wondered if this calm might derive from Jane’s religious convictions, which focused on the nurturing of the spirit within. But a glance at the sparkle in Jane’s eyes discredited that notion, since that expression spoke more of the passionate nature, barely controlled, beneath the calm surface, and Catherine, remembering what Nathan Whitehead had said, along with her own observations, was coming to the conviction that Jane’s profession of spiritual intensity was specious.

  “Hast thou been spying on me, Mistress Williams? I do not think my parents thought thou would be so extreme in your watchfulness that thou would follow me about.”

  “I have, and an arduous business it has been,” Catherine replied, not attempting to mask the sharpness of her tone. “I do not think your mother and father expected that their son and daughter would be imprisoned and whipped almost as soon as their feet found Newbury’s shore. I am only trying to do a better job of my governance, which I will continue, whether that please you or no.”

  “I, we, mean no harm,” Jane said in her best conciliatory fashion. “We are strangers here, beholden to thy hospitality, and not familiar with thy ways.”

  “I am sure that is true insofar as you have no Indians in Alford, as I recall.”

  “Indeed not.”

  “And perhaps that is why you find ours, so interesting.”

  The slightest blush reddened Jane’s cheek, and Catherine was glad to see that the young woman’s armor was not impenetrable.

  “But it was not an Indian at our door just now, was it?” Jane asked.

  “A sailor, he said he was, a friend of Billy Lockhart. Do you know such a person.”

  “Poor Billy,” Jane murmured. “He did much to make me comfortable on the voyage when the waves so sickened me that I could not leave my cabin.”

  “This sailor said that you and he had business, which he now wanted to complete.”

  Jane shrugged.

  “As for that, I cannot guess what he has in mind.”

  “Perhaps something to do with your Indian friend.”

  “I do not think so,” Jane replied. “But if I see him, I will surely inquire. And inform thee fully,” she added in a tone that suggested irony more than sincerity.

  “You would be well advised to let your business with that dead boy die with him,” Catherine said.

  Jane’s face brightened into a manic smile.

  “Ah,” she said, “I find such good advice so difficult to accept.”

  “The scars on your back should instruct you otherwise.”

  “Indeed, they are forceful teachers.”

  “I do not think they have taught your brother very well.”

  The smile disappeared from Jane’s face.

  “He does go his own way. I do believe he is secretly visiting his harlot.”

  The word struck
Catherine like a slap to her face.

  “You have no right...” she began.

  “Oh, but I do,” Jane answered, “more than thou know. But I will go seek him. If I find him I shall bring him back and thou can ask him thyself where he has been.” Before Catherine could remonstrate, Jane had closed the door behind her.

  * * * *

  The sun was setting, and there was no sign of Jane or Roger. Edward sat at the table, sopping up gravy with a crust of bread. Phyllis looked up from her own plate.

  “I think it is a good idea,” she said.

  “I do not think so. What do you expect to find out in the tavern? Did I not know you better I should think you had another reason for suggesting you go to The Lion’s Paw.”

  Phyllis reddened.

  “You have no cause. You know me that well.”

  “Of course,” Catherine replied.

  “It is only that the other servants can be found there. And they are the ones who can help us.”

  Catherine stood up and walked toward the hall that led to the front door.

  “Well, then, what do we wait for?”

  “I did not intend...” Phyllis began.

  “Well, I know it. But I cannot rest here while you are there. I want to know the moment you find out something.

  “I do not know if the others will speak freely if they see you.”

  Catherine reached into the pocket she wore around her waist, pulled out several coins, and handed them to Phyllis.

  “These should loose their tongues and blind their eyes to my presence,” she said.

  It was dark by the time they reached the tavern. Beneath a huge maple on one side of the tavern two shadow figures came together so that their trunks blended beneath the outlines of their heads. Phyllis’s foot tripped over a large stone in the path and it went bouncing toward the figures. The taller shadow’s head turned toward them, and then the shadows separated into two distinct bodies. Their heads bobbed back and forth toward each other for a few moments, and then the larger one’s male voice uttered a few angry words. He pushed the other figure away from him and trotted off into the darkness.