Thomas Morton called himself not the leader but the steward of Merrymount. He was wary of the corruption leadership caused. On John Billington’s first trip to Merrymount he saw how jolly the place was, which further put into relief the dourness of Plymouth. But Plymouth was where he had land, and where his son was buried, and he would not let that wretched lot of hypocrites run him out of town, too.
The spring before, Thomas Morton had been chased out of Merrymount by Standish’s militia, as all good, profiting, dissenting men were. Chased away because unlike the hypocrites, he made friends with the Indians. He had fun and, most crucially, he made money. The Indians preferred trading with him to trading with the puritans. The elders did not tolerate money being made that did not benefit them. Standish ordered the militia to burn Thomas Morton’s house and claimed they did so because of Morton’s erection of the Maypole. The puritan leaders sentenced Morton to a small island off the coast, until an English ship can return you to London, Bradford had said. But that was a lie. They sent him to that rocky, inhospitable land to starve.
You’ll pay for this, Morton said, pointing a finger at Bradford, his last words before he was put into the shallop.
Morton had friends in high places. If anyone could make that threat, and keep it, it would be him.
On Billington’s last trip to Merrymount, his Algonquian connection told him Morton was not dead, but back in London. He had been kept alive by Algonquian friends sailing out to that island with food.
This past season, after Morton’s exile, Billington had fished instead of hunted, to save his gunpowder. And now, with the arrival of new colonists, and the new parceling of land to them, this was his opportunity to purchase the plot before new property lines were made. He just needed a little more money. Just one more trade.
Morton had told him who would purchase at the highest price.
In case something happens to me, Morton had said, in an uncharacteristically solemn moment. They drank ale around the fire and revelers danced in the distance.
Billington had wanted that land ever since it had been denied him. But then, in spring his eldest, John, had fallen ill at Warren’s house, and what that land represented was now so much more.
At midday, John Billington would meet a man by the lake that his youngest son, Francis, had discovered. Billington Sea, it was called, for the first Englishman to find it, named it. Billington Sea, though called differently by the man he was meeting. Two miles west, just barely out of Plymouth, which was a risk.
Billington was working the scythe, thinking of this impending journey, this one last trade, when he saw a tall man, red-cheeked and young, approaching him. As the man got closer, he recognized him as a Johnson boy. Well-liked, that family was. This Johnson had a bushy beard and thick brown hair on his arms. His sleeves were rolled up and in his arms was his new daughter, Mary, born two months ago. Her mother, Billington knew, as the whole town did, had died in childbirth.
Something must be wrong. Billington set down his scythe and went toward him.
It’s Mary. We pray over her but the fever persists.
Billington observed the infant. She was splotchy from crying, but kept her eyes closed. He looked out on the field.
It was ye that convinced Lyford. And helped the Conners. Please. Anyone that could baptize.
Billington had persuaded the former Plymouth pastor, John Lyford, to preach to all of Plymouth, not just the puritans. They needed their children baptized, in the Anglican way, to protect them from death. The hypocrites forbade it.
When a boy was dying and needed an Anglican baptism, Pastor Lyford had agreed, though it took some persuasion. Sunday pie made by Eleanor and what trade items the Anglicans among them could spare. The boy survived. Lyford was found out by the elders and warned. Still, on Sunday mornings, Pastor Lyford led the puritan congregation at the meetinghouse and on Sunday evenings, at a commoner’s house, Lyford whispered the Gospel to the Anglicans. Again he was found out and this time, Bradford held a big trial, the first in the colony. Lyford was accused of consorting with the vile and profane colonists, Captain Shrimp had the gall to say aloud. When confronted, Lyford burst into tears. He was given six months to leave the colony.
Since then, Plymouth was without a pastor, and one hypocrite elder, Master Brewster, served as lay minister for the puritans. Brewster would never perform an Anglican baptism. Would likely have Billington hanged for asking.
The infant whimpered, then fell silent.
Billington’s corn looked strong, nearly ready to be harvested.
Let me see her, John Billington said, and outstretched his hands.
The young father put his daughter in Billington’s arms.
She was lighter than he imagined and floppy. Billington had seen this look of a baby before. An infant on the Mayflower, two infants here, and his own younger brother. The infant, he felt certain, would die. If he went asking for a favor and found a lay minister to baptize the girl, he would be asking him to break the law. Billington would be risking his standing in the colony—not that his standing was much—as well as the lay minister’s. He would also be risking their lives. A puritan pastor would be banished from the colony for such actions, as Lyford was, but the two commoners would be hanged.
Billington put his finger to hers. Slowly she wrapped her hand around his index finger. Her grip was faint. His sons never seemed this small. Never this weak. But he believed in miracles. A baptism had worked before.
Go to Master Tomlan. Tell him I sent you. He’ll know what to do.
God bless ye, God bless ye, Billington, the young father said, nearly jumping.
If you want her to live, tell no one where you went or to whom you sp0keth.
You have my word.
Johnson thanked him again and loped quickly through the field toward town.
Billington made his way home. One more trade and he would have enough money to purchase his son’s acre. But first, he must ready his gun. He held the image of his dead son’s face in his mind and vowed that he would fight for what was rightfully Billington land.
Newcomen
On the morning of the murder, John Newcomen arrived to the colony from Salem. He was not a puritan, though he suggested as much to get himself aboard the ship from London headed that way. He had landed in Salem and his plan was to then make his way south to Plymouth. But he had wavered after talking with the men at the boardinghouse.
A seaman there asked him where he was headed and when John Newcomen told him, the seaman repeated it like a question. Plymouth?
Another seaman leaned over the bar and asked, You a puritan?
Newcomen knew enough to say no, but privately he was considering becoming one. A literal interpretation of the Bible seemed better than none at all, as he had known as a child.
A fur trapper—telltale knife at his waist and fox head atop his own—and another man with high ruffles—likely a bank representative checking on a loan—raised their eyebrows.
The banker said, Things are different down there.
John Newcomen had done what he needed to do to get himself out of England. His stepfather was not religious, nor was his mother, though both obeyed the law by attending church. On weekends, his stepfather sent him to the village center while he drank his morning ale. Young John Newcomen was to sell his stepfather’s ragged chickens, which no one wished to buy, and when he would come home with more chickens than sterling, his stepfather punched him in the face.
I’ll do better next time, Father, John would say, spitting blood.
Very young he learned that to survive, he had to say something quite the opposite of what he felt. He moved into a boardinghouse as fast as he could, with a narrow bed he shared with another man, and ate as little as was necessary to keep his body moving. He’d saved his wages until he could buy this land.
Plymouth was the least expensive acreage he could find. The pamphlets advertised the most fertile soil and the investor he had purchased from, Thomas Weston, co
nfirmed it. John Newcomen wanted a future, the kind a new place like this could give him. He chose a colony with seven years of experience. Newcomen had researched as much as he could from two thousand miles away.
He was not a lascivious man, nor a dancer, and he did not mind being around those who strongly believed in God. What harm could it do to believe?
They aren’t your ordinary puritans, said the banker.
Nay, said the trapper.
The men laughed.
Who could John Newcomen trust in this new land? He did not know. He’d see for himself just how Plymouth was.
He thanked the gentlemen for the shared meal and retired upstairs that first night on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. But he slept little, thinking instead of what the men had cautioned him against. When he had fatigued those worries, he considered instead every worry and wrongdoing he had done, or had been done to him. The curse of exhaustion was dread.
The next day, Newcomen arrived in Plymouth on a borrowed horse. It was late morning. The town was quiet, except for the lovely, tinkling sound of hammer against thatching pins, men high up on roofs. A hopeful sound. Men intending to stay a while and keep up what they built.
A woman walked toward him, introduced herself as the governor’s wife, took from her basket a loaf of bread and offered it to him. He thanked her, felt a blush creep up his neck, and adjusted his collar. She said a pint awaited him in the meetinghouse and pointed the way. At first bite of bread, John Newcomen knew this to be the tastiest bread he had ever had. He called to her and said so. She kept her head down but returned the smile. John Newcomen thought he could not have asked for a better welcome.
Captain Myles Standish met him at the meetinghouse and marked on a map in the dirt where his land was. John noted with promise how near the brook he would be. Was this a preferred spot, he wondered, or did it flood? He did not know if he should be happy or disappointed—somehow the betwixt of these seemed impossible.
A bell chimed, announcing a meal, but John Newcomen had salted beef, the governor’s wife’s bread, and anticipation to power him all afternoon. He wanted to eat, but he wanted to see his land even more.
Eugenia would like it here. John thought of his fiancée, all that she might be fond of when she joined him, how welcoming it would look from her eyes, too, as he took himself down the trail to his land.
Alice Bradford
This place was once called Patuxet but renamed by Captain John Smith a more proper, English name: Plymouth. Ten years ago my husband led forty from the Leiden congregation, plus thirty-nine freemen who were not of our faith, eighteen indentured servants, and five hired hands to this coastal land. When they arrived in November, winter had gotten here first. Atop this hill were graves. Many Indians were dead from plague, as if God had cleared the land for us. As if God said directly to us: Bring forth fruit, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heaven, and over every beast that moveth upon the earth.
The soil, we would quickly learn, was not rich, but there was a footpath to a small brook and other paths leading north. It would do.
We soon saw this was not unpopulated territory. This was Wampanoag homeland; these were their footpaths and their animal traps. William caught his leg in a trap, was flung upward in a tree, and had to be cut down. It gave the expedition quite a scare. Trails led through the forest in all directions, toward fields and ponds, toward neighboring communities. In the distance were their wetus, houses made from bent saplings. The Wampanoag had not ceased this place, but instead moved inland for the winter.
By August of the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and thirty, we had a longstanding agreement of peace with the Wampanoag leader, whom we called Massasoit, more than three dozen houses, and more than three hundred English residents. We had a meetinghouse and fort, a palisade to prevent attack, outdoor ovens, acres of nearly ripe corn, beans, and squash. But the number of English coming to our colony was decreasing. Even our friends were acquiring land elsewhere, building homes along the coast. What agreements these men did or did not make with the Wampanoag, I cannot speak of. Captain Myles Standish broke soil in Duxbury. He said he favored the country.
The land here was stonier than New Amsterdam and the port was shallower than Boston. My husband had chosen an unenviable place, far less fertile than what was around it. Once he learned that, he wrote the investors and told them thus.
Perhaps we should move the colony, he said.
But I did not wish to move. These buildings, these houses, these fences, all that work so that we could harvest a few more beans? This was my home now.
Thankfully, my husband’s complaint was not persuasive. The investors told him, As long as you have bread and fish. They told him it was far better to be in an unenviable location, because there would be less threat of an attack. So here we stayed.
But when people complained—The land is wretched, I shan’t move my plow across it on account of all these stones— William was the first to defend this land and, instead, find wretchedness in the people for their want of easy labor. We needed anyone who would choose to be amongst us, but this created problems, allowing in the ungodly.
On the last ship’s departure, we sent back our largest bounty. We sent beaver pelts, worth more than the finest lace, to be worn around the wealthiest necks in London. We sent sassafras, sold to heal ailments, selling in London for two shillings a pound. We sent cedar, oak, walnut, and pine, chopped down to pay our debts. A cemetery of tree stumps, the northern land was now, burned to make way for more crops. We sent back two hundred pounds’ worth of goods—what we owed our debtors annually—if not more, and waited for good news.
Two months later, Thomas Weston wrote to my husband with regrets. Our ship had been taken by pirates while nearing the coast of England, he said. So close we were to paying off a significant amount of our debt. In my less godly moments, I wondered if Weston was lying, if he had pocketed the profit, or made a deal with the pirates.
I would know which man on this ship out at sea was our investors’ representative by how he exited. The one with the stretched-forth neck, who blinked his eyes, assessing the trees and fields for profit, that would be him. How he looked at my husband would tell me the state of our affairs more than what my husband reported.
We are doing fine, William often said. He would need to convince whoever this man was that we were a fertile, flourishing colony, not one in which colonists were departing and moving outward into Duxbury. It would only be time, I feared, before Plymouth resembled little of what we, with God’s good grace, had intended for it.
On the incoming ship were adventurers—those betting on a future here instead of the weary one they left behind in England—who would be, initially, a burden to us and our storehouses. There were two wives to be reunited with their husbands, four Leiden friends who could not make the last two immigrations, and two children to be rejoined with their parents. More pressing on my thoughts, though, was this: On the ship was John, my husband’s only son from his first marriage. I had not seen him for seven years. His mother, Dorothy, was my dearest consort. By dinnertime, I would be his stepmother. By dinnertime, I would be the stepmother to the son of the closest friend I ever had, and the closest friend I lost.
John’s nearing presence brought me back to Dorothy. If he asked of her what would I say? And if he did not ask it would be worse. I worried he would see her in this house—the bed, the bowls, the baskets—and not take to me. In fables, a stepmother is seldom good. They send their stepchildren to eat the leaves even the deer cannot reach. They keep their stepchildren among the cinders. I was not on the Mayflower when they docked in New Plymouth, so he could not blame me for Dorothy’s death. But had I not betrayed her? Had I not turned back?
DorAlice, the girls called us in Holland, led by Susanna, combining our names together as if it was the cleverest thing. We were the girls always dreaming side by side under the apple tree in Leiden.
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Too close, I overheard Dorothy’s mother say to mine when we were seven, as if there could be anything wrong with friendship.
Dorothy lacked vanity, a kind of luxury afforded the beautiful, not to have to work to look effortlessly fair. I was sturdy and dark, but my eyes were the color of new leaves. I had some pride about their color and therefore dyed my petticoat with larch to accentuate them. It took a while to grow appreciation for the plain, able body God granted me, but eventually, I did.
In Plymouth, I missed the confessions of the childhood friendship I had in Leiden. Dorothy knew all of my secrets and proclivities, before I knew how to restrain myself.
Perhaps all along was this latent feeling, considering what happened to her, my guilt at leaving her on the dock in England, after I had promised she would not make the voyage across the Atlantic alone.
Leaving Holland in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and twenty for an English colony seemed then a sensible answer to the problems of being among the Dutch. Dorothy was not so sure. In Holland we could practice our religion as we wished, but there were other threats. The Spanish-Dutch truce nearly over. The children intermarrying, becoming too Dutch, losing their English manners. Or as William said, Getting the reins off their necks and departing from their parents. We sought a place untouched by corruption. Perhaps only in heaven does that exist.
My husband and her husband led the charge. I told Dorothy we would do this together. Guinea was considered first, but the year-round summer of Guinea did not suit our English bodies. I told her we would make a new community in the Virginia Colony, one in God’s favor. I told her we would do this together, and then, at the last port before opening to the vast Atlantic, I turned back.
Once, William had said, about something the investors promised, All promises are but wind. Mine was, too.
After Dorothy’s death, William wrote to me. He did not say how her death came to be, only that she perished. I suppose the emptiness will pass with time, he said. He wrote to me, I thought, because I loved her as much as he did. I would understand. But there was more.
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