Beheld
Page 4
Once, in my kitchen in Holland, before I had any children, William’s arm brushed mine. The peculiar feeling when we were the only two in conversation.
I wrote a response full of the feeling of our shared memories of Dorothy and of my fondness and sense of loss for my late husband. Our grief brought us closer. A life with two boys, without a husband, was difficult. I was hopeful his letters might mean more than what they said.
In his next letter, William asked me to join him in New Plymouth as his wife. I was at my parents’ table when I read it. He did not assume a yes, but in it were instructions. Sensing I had read something urgent, my mother came in, asked, What is it?
I read it to her.
If you deem me worthy, the ship is the Anne and she leaves on the fifth of May. We can send for Constant and Thomas after.
Thinking of my sons without me seemed far worse than what risks they would suffer in making the journey. He had urged Dorothy to leave their three-year-old son, John, behind, and I had consoled her by saying it would not be long. I was wrong. It took seven years and my urging to get her John here. By then, Dorothy was dead. I did not want to leave my sons behind.
At my hesitation my mother said, You will say yes, of course?
A wife does not make demands, at least not in the beginning, before she is even a wife.
I wrote back, Yes.
I left my two sons with my mother and tried not to think that I was sailing in Dorothy’s footsteps, to be befallen as she had been.
Compared to what Dorothy experienced—the Mayflower nearly cracked in two in the middle of the Atlantic—my journey was pleasant. This was a ship now practiced in the transatlantic crossing. On my ship, the Anne, there were no stops along the way, no large storms that made the seamen draw the sails in. Lying in my bed at night, I imagined William’s hands, how they would feel on my body. To be held again. His plentiful lips, how they would caress.
I first saw the shore of Plymouth in July in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and twenty-one. A seaman called Land ho! one morning. I pinned my hair. I wiped my face with a few drops of beer.
Before sundown I was stepping foot on the shore, my sea legs wobbly, but a feeling I enjoyed, still rocking where I knew the ground was solid. I saw Susanna before I saw William. She had her beaver hat in the air, waving it at me, and I liked her immediately, all over again, despite myself. In Holland she was the girl who had teased Dorothy and me—perhaps, I see now, for how we kept our secrets. But here she would, I hoped, be my friend.
There was a gathering of friends to greet us, kind faces I had not seen in at least three years. Elizabeth and Susanna, waist-high children circling around, mothers calling for their sons and daughters to stay away from the water, baskets in the women’s arms, ready to feed us. The men and women had a gleam—their labors in Plymouth were similar to those in Holland, but the walk to fresh water suited them, as did the air, and there was not the dread of a butcher to pay. The only work bell that rang was the one inside their hearts. Heifers had arrived and butter was churned weekly. The colonists’ gauntness had recovered.
There were a dozen or more houses, with drifts of smoke coming from the chimneys. The air smelled of salt and cedar.
My eyes moved from person to person until I saw him. William. The two years not stooping over a loom for twelve hours a day, six days a week, had lengthened him. He was the tallest Englishman, but, as I later learned, all the Wampanoag adults were taller.
He stood upright toward the sun and took my hands in his.
Alice, he said, and embraced me.
The colony was watching.
I could desire him now, and in some ways this was the most desirous of all—acknowledging what had always been present, beneath all those years of acting how I should outwardly behave.
William, I said, and gave him a small kiss on his cheek.
His appearance showed the best parts of age. No longer youth’s folly on his shoulders. He had made his mistakes. When Dorothy married him he was a man of promise, but an orphan, and five years into their marriage he was a man with two failed investments. He brought her to an unwelcoming land on a coast thick with threats—rumors of Savages and wild beasts—and no friends or family to comfort, save himself. Without her son and without the daughter she buried three winters before. Without shelter. But when I married William he was governor of a new colony. Plymouth was repaying its debt at a rate faster than expected. Dorothy had a man betting on his future. I had a man at the height of his success. It was hardly fair that my fate should differ from hers, when I knew it to be that she gave more outward signs, every day, of her inward grace.
When I set foot on this coast, William was a different man, and I’d like to think that I was a different woman. My husband dead, and Dorothy, too. We knew what we could lose. Perhaps because of this, we cared more, now, for what we had.
We married the fourteenth of August, one month after my arrival, because a wedding takes time—a dress to sew, a celebration to plan—and our betrothal was also an opportunity to invite the Wampanoag and further build our alliance. Massasoit brought several men and a woman we thought of as queen. We saluted them with the shooting off of many muskets. And so all the bows and arrows were brought into my husband’s house. Though dancing was against our faith, I admired the way they moved their healthy bodies. We believed the outward body displayed the truth of the inward heart. The Wampanoag were tall and lean, with thick black hair down past their shoulders, braided or pulled back at their nape. It was a warm day. They did not wear as much clothing as I was accustomed and I knew not where to lay my eyes. Many had kind expressions. Though they did not believe in God as He would wish, they did conceive of many divine powers. They were men and women like ourselves. In this way, I saw they were not Savages.
The great sachem brought us three bucks. In England it was against the law to hunt deer, as only the King’s men could do that. But it was as if we were at the head of the King’s table now. We ate deer for days. It was a time of great cheer; everyone said so.
I did not consider it then, but above us, on a pole at the top of the meetinghouse, was the head of sachem Wituwamat, a Massachussett, on a stake. His black hair blew back in the breeze, his face half eaten by magpies, telling all nearby that we were a fierce colony. The uncouth John Billington asked Massasoit if he knew him, that head on the pole. Massasoit nodded. It was the only solemn moment of the day.
That first night we slept as husband and wife, Dorothy was in the room with us. Her bowls on the shelves, her blanket at my feet, her husband in the featherbed that was now mine.
I had not anticipated how marrying him would bring me too close to her. When he lay me on the bed, the pillows did not smell of her, for which I was grateful. But all she had touched was there, though arranged as William thought it right. When William was not home, I ran my hand along the coverlet, I touched the lips of the cups with the tips of my fingers.
Ten months after our wedding, William the younger was born.
Eleanor Billington
Knocking on my door while I’m trying my morning nap, who could it be but that no-good Captain Shrimp. I peeked through the window and told my husband to make himself scarce. I did not trust John to control his temper. He climbed into bed, put his finger to his lips, smiled, and became two lumpy pillows beneath the covers.
I opened the door to that Shrimp.
What will you blame us for now? I asked him.
This evening, he stumbled, as I’m sure you’ve heard, we are having a dinner for the new arrivals.
I made to sit down because I knew this would be good. Going to take him a while to clear his throat with these pleasantries before getting to what he was really after, which was for us Billingtons to keep our mouths tight when the newcomers arrived. Ha. We shan’t. But I didn’t mind listening to him request that we did.
But you see there is not enough room at the meetinghouse for everyone. And seeing how your husband prefers not to join us at
services, and you’ve yet to contribute from your garden—
He stopped there, looked around the room.
What are you looking for, Standish? thought I, and I’d have said it, too, but I’d rather amuse myself with his ridiculous bug eyes making themselves so ungentlemanly. He was thinking I was going to fill in the space for him, that’s why he’d stopped talking, or offer some ale from my personal cask, which I would not. I’m no fool. I shan’t say for a man what he must say for himself. A disgrace.
Your husband has spoken against my good treatment of him, as you know. The governor would appreciate you give us this blessing and dine at home this evening.
He’d said it, so now he could look at me, which he doth with a put-on apologetic face.
I stood.
You’ve practiced this list, eh? Keeping tally. Perhaps I moved my arms about. Well so are we.
Mistress Billington, your allotment is just as equal as everyone else’s. I’ve told your husband thus. You received just as many cows, just as many goats.
He was lying, he knew it. I just kept on my trail, I did.
Weston will see that, he said.
Oh, Weston coming. Now that was news.
So I, Eleanor Anne Billington, stepped forward more.
Trying to keep us away from the newcomers and Weston, are you? So we don’t hurt your pocket by telling the newcomers the truth? Let the newcomers witness what you and Weston set us up for, sir. I hope they have wits enough to get back on that ship before it leaves.
We will not be silenced. Standish took a step back.
You tell Governor Bradford, if he wants a more contented colony, Master Standish, it would be advised of him to keep the colonists content.
I put on my proper voice for the occasion of insulting him, and enjoyed the little screwing up of his eyes when I said Master Standish instead of Captain, as he preferred.
Good day, sir, said I, and opened the door, pushing Standish out of my house.
It was a sight to see. I winked at the righteous ladies in the gardens pretending not to witness it.
Once the door was closed, and Standish out of view, my husband popped his head up from beneath the covers.
Weston’s coming, eh?
What are you thinking, Good Husband?
We’d started calling one another Good Wife and Good Husband, like the puritans did, as a private joke. The hypocrites did not like us talking as they did. But we had kept it up.
Oh, nothing.
Those hypocrites. Had we had theatre, had we been permitted any enjoyable pastime to release us from them, maybe that day would have gone differently. But there was no theatre in Plymouth—the hypocrites hated the way Shakespeare and Johnson had depicted them, the she-puritan who so overflows with the Bible that she spills it upon every occasion. They claimed the theatre was the bathhouse for Satan. All we had for amusement was punishment. The tears, pleadings, and confessions of court, the hangings and the whippings. Instead of the theatre, there was the stocks.
John pulled his pocketknife out and used it to clean the dirt beneath his thumb. He flicked the dirt onto the floor and I didn’t mind this time, not at all.
I looked at John and instead of buttoning my cloak to work in the garden, I undid it. I always liked the thick black curls at the back of his neck, liked to see the sweat glisten there. I smiled and approached him like a woman doth. He leaned back against the wall.
Other voices were out there, passing by our house, going about their day, forsaking a late-morning pleasure like this.
I loved John’s long nose, cold against my stomach. He went betwixt my legs and when I was good and wet he slid inside of me.
Listen, there is nothing wrong with a woman speaking of what pleases her. Perhaps if the dour ones did so they’d smile more often.
I took his buttocks and pulled him toward me, tease that he was. He was gentler than lovers before. Maybe you think that comparison should give me shame? It dothn’t.
I always reached my pleasure before him. It was easy with us, like pulling a well-baked pie from the oven. But had I known how that day would end, I would have gone slower.
Alice Bradford
The women and I were in the gardens when we saw Captain Standish walking down the path. He was a choleric man, as well as the shortest in the colony, a veteran of the Thirty Years’ War, and, aside from Master Billington, the least even-tempered. He was for many years both footman and captain because he was our only hired soldier. By the time of the newcomers’ arrival, though, he had formed a militia of colonists. And on that day, I would come to newly appreciate him.
Morning, he said to us.
We were pleasant. We waved. Three pious women doing our good work.
Before we left Holland, Captain Standish taught our men to shoot a musket and wield a sword. Now William slept with his musket betwixt us. We had been a peaceful colony and lived in truce with the Indians, aside from the one time a potential threat was rumored to be close, and Standish preemptively killed six Massachussett men and one boy, though another rumor claimed the only threat given was instead an insult about Standish’s height. Standish’s main job was to anticipate any violence and end it, and he had once proudly ridden back into town with a Massachussett leader’s head on his lap. His demeanor was to me, though, at that time, a comical vigilance. He disliked how little he was seeing—no battle, no Indians attacking our colony, no hundreds of arrows in flight, to which he would have his musket and barrels of gunpowder ready. He asked often for more supplies—more muskets, more gunpowder—and William usually obliged. He had two lookouts at the two highest points of the colony and spent much of his days walking betwixt them.
Standish planned our community for how it could be defended. It was on the downward slope of a hill, stretching toward the sea. Our broad streets, eight hundred feet long, were wide enough to haul a cannon out into the middle of the road and shoot into the ocean. The meetinghouse was a large square building made of oak, with six cannons atop the flat roof. Each cannon could shoot five-pound balls of iron. Beneath the meetinghouse, Standish kept the gunpowder and iron balls. Squanto, our Wampanoag interpreter, had learned English when he was stolen for slavery by Captain Thomas Hunt years before, but, with great cleverness, had been able to wend his way back home to Patuxet. He told the Indians we kept the plague below the meetinghouse. My husband did not mind the rumor. Standish had threatened the Wampanoag Indians in Namasket this way in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and twenty one, when he told them he would put the plague under their beds if they did not obey his demands. A month later, nine sachems came to Plymouth to sign a treaty of loyalty to King James. Before we arrived, the plague had killed more than half of their people.
Next to the meetinghouse were our instruments of justice: stocks, a whipping post, and a cage. On top of the meetinghouse was the head of an Indian and next to that waved the bloody linen Standish carried his head into town on. The meetinghouse was where we ate together, prayed together, and, together, punished.
These days, instead of fighting Indians, Standish squabbled with those he deemed the black sheep of the colony. Mainly, John Billington, who was frequently seen coming from Standish’s lookouts, again requesting, my husband told me, that his plot of land be extended past the marshlands, or that he was deserving of a third goat. His requests gave my husband ire, but not yet real threat.
We women waited until Standish was past us to peek above the fence and see just where he was headed. The sight of him often portended ill but he was a person it delighted us to speak of.
Standish was standing in front of the house of Master Billington, whom we had not yet seen out that morning though the sun was striving toward the middle of the sky. It was ten, I would have said, the time men who have worked on home building are climbing down from their ladders, wiping their sweaty foreheads on their sleeves, and having a pint.
In Plymouth, for the first six years, according to our bylaws, no matter how much or how little wo
rk a person did, they were entitled to the same amount of food and beer and wool as the rest of us. There were some exceptions and some added benefits, for the elders. The indentured did not vote on this law, nor did the accused and those deemed guilty of committing certain crimes. This was for their protection. Until the lands were separated, we all had to share the work but we divided the harvest equally, aside from what we grew in our private gardens. Many grumbled that the Billingtons, given the amount of time they did not spend in the fields, should get less than the rest of us, but still, my husband, in his benevolence, gave them equal share.
Captain Standish knocked on the Billingtons’ door.
What’s Billington done now? Elizabeth said.
I knew the reason, but I did not speak it.
Breathed, said Elizabeth.
Elizabeth had a calm about her. Her first son, Damaris, dead; her second, Oceanus, born aboard the Mayflower, dead; her Caleb, the age of my young William; her Deborah, four; a second Damaris, two years of age; and Ruth, a newborn. They were children who had been given acres to roam and a nearly worriless mother, who seemed somehow to view what she had from a knowing distance I myself could not ascend to. Or perhaps you lose so much you learn to no longer clench.
Eleanor Billington opened her door and Captain Standish stepped halfway inside. I’d have been more amused myself, had I not been privy to my husband’s concerns—mainly, the economic risk of Billington sending blasphemous letters back to England. A new ship meant new people to be persuaded, new people to feed—prithee let them not be a burden—and new carriers of gossip to send Billington’s disgruntled opinions back with them to London. Moreover, there was the representative, the direct line to our money. William would be keen to keep Billington’s mouth as far away from him as possible.
It was not long before we saw Myles Standish reemerge and cross the threshold of John Billington’s house, backside first. His left leg caught on the threshold and he fell backward. Out of kindness, we averted our gazes. This was Myles Standish’s lot, it seemed, to bluster and blunder. Myles Standish stood, brushed the dirt off his pants, and kept his eyes ahead. He walked swiftly past us women, this time looking forward only, and did not lift his hat.