Beheld

by TaraShea Nesbit

  Her master’s brother whispers, If you speak thus, no one would believe you. You would be tried for slanderous speech.

  She says nothing.

  You love your sister, don’t you?

  She says nothing.

  If you tell anyone, I will kill her.

  She sees he is not lying. He is capable of killing.

  Meanwhile, she tells no one until nine months later, when she has a daughter of her own. The elders come for her, accuse her of lying with a man before betrothal.

  At her trial the judge asks, And why, if he did what you said he did, why did you not tell your master at once?

  As if delay were not a sign of shock, as if delay were not proof of indignity, but instead a sign of embellishment. She transfers houses. Her daughter grows strong. The master’s brother is acquitted and returns on occasion to Plymouth. A new servant girl takes her place.

  Who is this woman? Any woman. Meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile.

  Alice Bradford

  There was so much I did not notice on that day, such as the growing tensions within the colony and the anger toward my husband by those estranged from God. Instead, I wanted to read what my husband had written.

  Joseph was asleep on my breast, his mouth slightly open. Now was my chance. I laid him on the bed next to Mercy, who had, to my good fortune, fallen asleep on her own. I went back to the desk.

  I lifted the papers. I had never seen that leather-bound before. What a husband wishes to keep hidden, a wife knows well enough not to pursue. I opened the book. Of Plymouth Plantation. 1620, it said, and in William’s penmanship, In their hearts, they were pilgrims.

  I read and turned pages for far longer than I knew was right, which made it, I confess, more enjoyable. The story of us. Not I and him, but of us believers, in Holland, and the Mayflower journey, and the last ten years here. In vanity I looked for myself, but I was not there. And after myself, I looked for Dorothy. I went back to the pages of the Mayflower. The lascivious seaman who wished to throw them overboard was there, and his death was told as God’s punishment for how he treated them. The cracked timber that nearly killed them all was there, and was told as God’s test and subsequent rainbow. All the deaths aboard the ship and all the deaths that first winter were there, except the death of her, his first wife, my dearest consort, Dorothy May Bradford. Why does our love pass by some bodies but still at others? Anything we say about love we say as an absence.

  There were other things, too, that William did not speak of. No mention of the footpaths and graves. The small child buried with a beaded bracelet and leather shoes, next to a full-grown man with long blond hair still attached to his skull. William scarcely mentioned how we buried our dead and did not say that in the worst of times, that first winter, we propped our dead Englishmen against the trees at the edges of our colony, with muskets, to make it seem as if we had soldiers amongst us, a forest sentinel, and not the truth: that we had lost more than half of our people.

  I went out to do the washing and left the door ajar to listen for the children. Something in me had been stirred. That smell, that absence. I needed fresh air. It was this distraction, perhaps, that blinded me from seeing the signs of what was to come later that afternoon.

  Part Two

  Newcomen

  Newcomen was not pleased with his interaction with John Billington.

  He went to Standish’s post. Standish’s servant was sitting on an overturned bucket, whittling, and did not look up when Newcomen spoke.

  Left for Duxbury. He’s got land there.

  John looked up at a blood-splattered sheet flying above them both.

  The servant shrugged. Looking for a quieter way of life, he said.

  Newcomen thanked him and started over to the meetinghouse, to see what the women had cooked. He did not want to ask for much, but he needed sustenance to help him through the rest of the day.

  Newcomen had been looking for quiet, too, but Captain Standish had put him next to what he suspected was the town’s most difficult man. Newcomen tried not to muse too long on this, though, for he could easily linger on how men with power always took more for themselves, how men who have had nothing hoard what they have and take what is not theirs, how the world is a terrible place he was trying not to avoid. How this follows him everywhere, even to a town striving to be in God’s favor.

  John Newcomen saw Captain Standish approach the meetinghouse on a black horse. So he had not gone to Duxbury. Standish got down and tied her up to a post. Newcomen knew to take this moment to speak with Captain Standish alone before the passengers on the boat out at sea, arriving within hours, would occupy his time by inquiring about their land.

  The acreage, Newcomen said, abutting the Billingtons?

  Yes. Standish took off his black gloves, exposing his long, pale fingers. Fingers too pristine for the type of work building a colony required.

  Where doth it begin?

  At the oak, as I showed you.

  Perhaps another plot is available?

  I’m afraid not, Standish said.

  Why had he, John Newcomen, been so vain as to want for more than England?

  For Eugenia. For his mother. For himself.

  John thanked Standish for the kindness he had not shown him, lowered his head, and stepped into the meetinghouse.

  Alice Bradford

  From the chest I pulled a blue and yellow blanket, one I believed to have been John’s. I kept it at the bottom of the chest, despite all need for any warmth, because I wanted it to be as close to how he remembered it. I shook it high in the air and watched the dust motes fall like tiny stars.

  I pulled out the trundle bed and placed Joseph atop it, then lifted the blanket off quickly.

  Where is Joseph?

  There you are.

  That game that delights all children.

  Mercy nudged her way betwixt us, wanting the attention I was giving to her brother.

  Before I could admonish her, there was a knock on the door and then the door burst open. It was Susanna.

  It’s here! Susanna said.

  They are here! Elizabeth said, coming in behind her. She looked at both of us and ran out, leaving the door open.

  We all rushed outside. The pounding of hammers on the roofs had stopped. The light was fragile and the air felt that way, too. There was the boat, so ordinary, so small, carrying so many wishes. I started running.

  Watch them? I called to Elizabeth.

  She gave a put-out face, but stepped back into my gardens.

  Susanna and I broke into a run, like girls, through the path, not the forty-year-old women that we were. Though my innards were as delicate as cheesecloth from birthing Joseph, and she was nearing the end of her pregnancy, still, we ran. We let the momentum and wind surge us toward the dock.

  The ship lay anchor. I hoped the new colonists would be stronger and more pious than the last.

  The first heads to pop up from the tween deck were small black-capped men. Then came three heifers and a bull and behind them, more men, half a dozen women, and with them a handful of children. There they were, four dozen or so, sickly and sea-legged. Their pale English bodies, weakened by the journey, as if ghosts, crossing over. One by one, the women’s bare ankles and leather shoes dipped in the surfaces of the sea. I knew their look well—their hopeful and fearful imaginations of the present situation.

  They stepped ashore, many of them likely harboring the seamen’s illnesses, and it would be our women’s work to lay them down, put wet cloths upon their heads, wash their clothes, feed them broth, and assure them they would not die. Though some likely would.

  Where was John? Was he the one with his head down, coughing? Was he the sturdy one holding the rope of a large black cow? It had been seven years—I doubted I would know him.

  On shore, William walked forward, then back. For each person who stepped across the water, he put one arm on their shoulder, and shook the other. Welcoming, he was. Tall and strong, wearing his most open fac
e.

  But not three feet away from him was John Billington. Billington crossed his arms and smirked, ready, it seemed, to counter all of Governor Bradford’s enthusiasm. In the middle, but behind them, was Captain Standish.

  I saw a man wearing the tallest starched white collar of ruffles that I had ever seen.

  Who is that? I asked Susanna.

  Those ruffles? Some London fool.

  I squinted and looked closer. When he took off his hat to greet my husband, I saw that I did know this man. It was Thomas Weston.

  I did not think William was expecting the Thomas Weston himself, the financial backer who had arranged the Mayflower journey. The one I thought had colluded with pirates on our last shipment back to London. The way he shook my husband’s hand confirmed it. Not only had a representative been sent to check up on us, their investment, but he’d also been sent to evaluate my husband.

  Master Weston, I heard William say.

  William used more force than usual, putting his other hand over the handshake.

  Thick was the musk perfume around Master Weston, denying the smell of the human body God granted him. He was trying to disguise himself as God disapproved.

  Susanna and I watched more men depart the ship, cross the water, and step onto the shore. I scanned for Dorothy’s son, looking to see a chin I recognized, a smile I remembered. I looked to John Billington, wondering what he would do.

  When he, too, saw that it was Thomas Weston, John Billington stepped forward.

  Well, if it isn’t the biggest liar in all of England.

  Though his voice was loud, Weston did not hear him, or feigned not hearing him.

  Ah, ’tis good to be among friends, Thomas Weston said, patting my husband’s back.

  My husband led him up the hill, away from John Billington.

  I had known Thomas Weston for two decades, but he was nearly unrecognizable to me. When he was an ironmonger marrying my friend Mary, he seemed like one of us, transporting Elder Brewster’s pamphlets against the King to London, passing our dissenting voice back to those who needed it. My husband had trusted Weston enough to have him procure the investors for our venture. But those ruffles were an outward sign of his inner fall.

  He had traded in children and lied to us about their origins. For the Mayflower journey ten years ago, he asked the congregates to take along four orphaned siblings. Weston claimed they were brought to him by their uncle, Lord Zouche, who offered a healthy sum to give them a second chance at the godly way. The eldest, Ellen More, was eight and the youngest girl, four. All but one died before that first winter was over. At the death of the second youngest, Jasper, on the Mayflower, Ellen told a different story. She said both her parents were very much alive.

  Why are you here, then? Susanna asked her.

  Ellen said it was the neighbor who was her father.

  Had we known these men were separating a mother from her children, I like to think we might not have agreed to take them.

  So as one could see, Thomas Weston was a man who cared not how he earned a profit, only that he got it. Seeing his untrustworthy face again, I was certain he hired those pirates to take our profits. If he had ever been in the godly way, it was easy to look at those ruffles now and see how far he had strayed. His shirt’s collar was as high as his ears and his nose was high in the air—as it had to be to hold up such a grand artifice.

  Susanna clucked her tongue. She said, Ah, the new rich, having nothing else in them but a few fine clothes.

  When the men passed, I pressed down my bonnet and tucked the stray hair behind my ear.

  Good day, madam, one said.

  So it was, I was a madam. I had not grown accustomed to it, madam over miss. Yet another vanity of mine, for which I apologized to God. The young men meant it in respect, they did, and yet each time I heard it I thought to look behind myself, to where a madam might be standing. In our hearts, we madams would always be misses.

  I smiled and returned the pleasantries. I wished I blushed—an outward sign of inward modesty—but I did not.

  I heard a whoop and a cheer and someone calling, Johnny Boy!

  Master Billington squinted, raised his hand, smiled, and loped over to a man I did not initially recognize. He was tall and aristocratic—his cloak had metal buttons and he wore a tall black hat. The two laughed and slapped backs.

  Oh no! I thought, suddenly recognizing him.

  It was Thomas Morton, that Lord of Misrule, whom my husband had banished from the colony two years prior. Thomas Morton, who oversaw the trading outpost in Merrymount, but had led the ungodly among us to trade with the Indians and drink to excess. Thomas Morton who persuaded men and women to shed their clothes, whereupon they lay with one another openly. My husband had complained, before Morton’s banishment, All the scum of the country flock to him.

  How had he gotten passage on this boat and returned? I would have to wait until speaking with William privately to find out.

  The last to exit the ship was a young man with a gait like William. His head down, feet sturdy, slow. When he got close enough, I took his hand.

  It was a soft hand, a lithe hand. He was twelve years old and approaching the height of his father. In his eyes was Dorothy.

  Welcome home, I said. Let me show you the way.

  John Billington

  When the bell sounded the ship’s arrival, John Billington went with the rest. There was no one he was expecting, no one he knew on the ship, but it was customary and polite to greet new people.

  The whole town came out. When John Billington first stepped off the Mayflower and onto the shore, he had been greeted only by the whir of cold November winds. No fire or alehouse or friends. After the solemnness of their long journey, these newcomers must be met.

  To his surprise, out of the berth of the ship he saw Thomas Morton emerge.

  I thought they’d killed you! And now here they are, letting you back?

  The two men embraced.

  If one pays enough …

  Thomas Morton let that linger, smiled the secret smile of two old friends.

  Come, let’s have a drink, said John Billington, and they went onward to Billington’s house.

  Alice Bradford

  I was at the fire, stirring the pot of stew I would take to the dinner, when in the house came my stepson, squinting, with the ax. It was just us.

  When would be the right time? I had not yet spoken of Dorothy to him, and with the business of the newcomers, I might not speak to him much at all the rest of the evening. I did not want the weight of her upon me.

  Your mother, I said.

  He put down the ax.

  She loved you so very much, I said.

  Why did I not look at him? So little time there is on this earth.

  He moved toward me. I heard his feet, then heard them stop.

  My grandmum said she slipped, he said.

  In his tone was the question. The wonder if it was true. The question I had been asking myself for years. Who was I to tell him any differently? What good would it do him?

  I turned to him.

  I’m sorry she is not here to see you, to see you now.

  Yes, he said and looked away to a corner of the room.

  A painting taken from her home in Leiden was on the wall. William thought it had come from the market. But it had been a gift from Johannes.

  I remember that, John said, pointing to it.

  He looked to the pottery, too.

  He glided his hand along the ledge.

  I only wanted to eat from this plate. Father said no, that she was indulging me. She would scoop off her own food to put mine upon it. I wish I hadn’t asked for that.

  You were a child, I said. It was too soon for me to say: Children take as much as mothers will give them. I would save that for when he had children himself. It was too soon to say, It is their way, to test their mother’s devotion.

  I heard William’s boots kick against the house. A sound I loved. The stew was ready, t
he bread was fresh, and the fire was strong. We would be a family. We were a family.

  Eleanor Billington

  It was a welcoming surprise to see Tom on that ship and be again amongst friends. He came back to our house for a drink and caught us up on a manuscript he was writing, The New English Canaan, which railed against the hypocrisy of Plymouth.

  Quoted ye, I did, said Tom to my husband.

  What did ye say?

  How you spoke for the people and were punished for it. How these Plymouth leaders are more Savage than the so-called Savages.

  Tom spoke some of it to us.

  He wrote of how the Algonquins he knew could tell a Spaniard from a Frenchman by the smell of their hands, how they behaved as landed gentry—moving from the seacoast inward with the weather, fishing and hunting with the seasons, living as free and leisurely as the well-born British, with their idle pleasures—but that the puritans would never acknowledge the comparison.

  Thomas Morton had much to say and we had much to complain about. Even from the beginning those hypocrites fashioned themselves quite differently from what they were. It was with help from the Wampanoag Indians that the Englishmen of Plymouth flourished.

  While back in London, Morton went to the house of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. He told us of two Indians he kept captive there.

  Purchased in Malaga, and Gorges said, as if Jesus himself, “Saved them from slavery, I did.” Called them “His wonders.”

  And they wonder why your trading post was the most successful, said I.

  No person wants to be thought of as less than human. Tom was a man of wealth. He had little that he could lose, except his life, which is no small thing, but at the time, seemed worth the risk. We clinked our goblets and cheered his truth-telling.

  One drink turned to three. Had my husband and Tom Morton not been imbibing on an empty stomach before dinner and instead gone out to the fields, I am certain the evening would not have taken the turn it did.

  A bell rang through the colony, announcing dinner.