Dorothy Bradford was the first who died of unnatural causes. Driven to self-murder by her own husband’s cruelty, Eleanor said. No patience, had he, for her grief!
Did the crowd gasp? It felt as if they did.
There are things we do that cannot be taken back. Things that, once done, are irrevocable. This was Eleanor’s.
She was clawing her way from Standish’s grip. She was over the edge now, out of the threshold, but where would she go?
Enough! My husband repeated.
The crowd was parting for him. They turned toward his voice, wondering what would unfold. William walked in quick strides, no longer the ploughman but the governor. At once he was before her.
Eleanor called, Save yourselves! Get back on that ship before the Master departs!
She got that much out before William shoved her shoulders and back she went through the doorframe.
I heard a crack, so piercing, I imagined it to be her arm that snapped in two.
Eleanor Billington let out a yelp.
Hang her! some of the elders called.
The newcomers, watching.
Could the crowd whirl even the new arrivals up into the chaos?
Don’t leave, I thought. And prithee do not think of us this way.
With Eleanor inside, the crowd became chattery, made talkative by the excitement of Eleanor’s speech.
I walked back to our houses with Elizabeth and Susanna. I thought of all there was left to do before the execution, to prepare for the visitors from neighboring towns. Bread to bake and stew to simmer. Straw beds to build, blankets to gather, and floor space to find. Likely, they would stay at the meetinghouse, just a floor betwixt them and the accused. The men still needed to build the gallows. Hopefully the visitors would make a few purchases, too.
Governor Winthrop had sent his regrets. I was thankful he would not be coming, for it meant less of a burden for us to be formal in our arrangements.
I thought of Dorothy. Her son was with the men now, nearly a man himself. He seemed to have grown into a polite boy, thus far. He took the plates and washed them on his own accord. He listened to his father with deference. He did not seem to dislike me. Oh, Dorothy, if you could see him. Perhaps you can, though, every day, as your gaze falls downward upon us.
Dorothy
Once, crossing the bridge on the way to the market, as girls, we passed a man. In his eyes was a look that no longer submits. Alice glanced at me as if to say, What will happen? But I kept my eyes onward.
The man in the stand beside ours, the one who would later make coins disappear and re-emerge for my John, said, Girls. A man has jumped.
The vendors were leaving their eggs and vegetables, were surging toward the canal to see the spectacle. We were no different. I carried Prince, the black fowl I told my father was just, for some reason, not selling.
Along the canal, we pressed forward. A body lulled back and forth with the water. Dead. A man pulled him out. From the crowd, a woman screamed and ran forward.
In England, self-murder was a crime punished by God and the King. In England his wife would owe the King his possessions. But in Holland, his debts were absolved. In Holland, a man had dominion over his body. In Holland, a wife could grieve. Long after, I thought of the woman running forward.
Why think of this? William would say, and turn back to his work. He would go back to the loom, go back to the fire, blow gently on the little flame. His interest was in perseverance. He looked to how God deemed us favorable and turned away from that which did not fit. Sadness only entered if it showed how God tested, but how He prevailed us.
Alice and I made up stories about the man we had seen earlier that morning. He’d gambled his week’s wages and, stepping out on the walk home, sobered by the sunrise and reconsidering what he had just done, and who would not be fed because of it—his growing son, his patient wife, his young daughter—he concluded the world would be better off without him. He crossed the bridge to take himself home, stepped instead to the side, and after we passed and went forward to the market, he, perhaps considering his decision to be the best thing he had ever done for anyone else, his least selfish act, jumped.
Who wants to join a colony where the governor’s wife was so inconsolable she committed self-murder? Instead, one wants to join a community founded on freedom. A place in God’s honor. Where beaver is so plentiful, one cannot catch and skin them all. Where, as William wrote, The schools of fish will never leave one hungry.
Eleanor Billington
On the last day of September, in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and thirty, the colonists gathered to watch. The righteous women were there, of course, gawking like the rest, then pretending to hide their faces in their husband’s shoulders as if the death they supported was too much to bear.
Two grey dogs whimpered, then ran away rather than come to their puritan masters. They knew what these men were made of. Dogs are not fooled by fine cloth and endless quotations from Scripture.
I saw Francis Eaton, the town carpenter, who I’d known to be a profiteer since the Mayflower, when he’d benefited from selling his goat’s milk at a high price to the thirsty on the ship. Here, he sold roasted chestnuts for the occasion of my husband’s murder. Men would get full while my husband was killed.
People from the Massachusetts Bay Colony took the Wampanoag footpath south, a days-long journey, to watch the first hanging of a colonist in Plymouth. Plymouth, a land in God’s good favor, showing signs of being touched by the ungodly. If it were not my own husband at the gallows, I would have enjoyed watching it myself.
Thomas Morton stood by me, good gentleman.
At eleven my husband emerged from the meetinghouse, the minister beside him, my husband’s head down as if bowing. His body slumped like the farmer he was, though I’d never noticed that about him before, the effect of all those years of bending. I wondered then how often I’d not stopped to really look at him.
People jammed through the meetinghouse doors to see him. More full than any service. Every person wants to feel that they have avoided death. For a few days longer, anyway.
Bodies lined up, blocking the windows.
Captain Shrimp started things off by saying my husband was guilty of murder and that he’d been given a fair trial.
Liar! I yelled.
Thomas Morton took my hand.
The crowd turned, most of it, but Shrimp was accustomed to talking loudly over any words a woman like me spoketh. He did not pause. A minister I did not recognize—from Marshfield, someone said—wore a sanctimonious expression. He was young. This would be the first sermon he would have five hundred listeners for.
In the minister’s hand, I saw, was a primer book for priests. The Convict’s Visitor. He opened the book. His voice was dry and his hand shook.
He did not begin with grace, instead he started with a stilted fury: Master Billington, God has shut you up in a place of darkness. A violent death is soon to remove you from the land of the living.
The crowd leaned and pressed foward, enraptured by the fate that was not theirs. This stranger extolled the lack of virtues in my husband.
He said, Let us learn from what we now behold.
The minister turned the book to my husband and put his finger there. There were parts for my husband. My husband’s line: O Lord, turn them from darkness to light. He said it, he did, for my husband wanted to show them all he could read.
But no more, I said inwardly to him, do not follow the lines of this minister.
Now you say, the minister intonated with this finger.
My husband scanned it—I saw his eyes moving across the page—but he did not speaketh.
The minister registered this refusal and changed directions.
The minister said, Consider, Master Billington, that now you must die before your time. Consider that there is a second possibility, for you to escape the second death. Though your sin be great, God can pardon it. Yea and He hath—upon deep and unfeigned repentance�
��forgiven those that have committed this sin which you are now to suffer for.
My husband looked out into the crowd.
All the crowd saw was a criminal.
The minister said, There are some in heaven who were once bloody sinners. Consider David …
He went on about David.
The minister said, God is a great forgiver, God is a great forgiver! So I say to you in His Name, the Lord is a great Forgiver. It is His name that can forgive transgression and sin. Consider presently it will be too late for you to think of these things when once you are dead.
The minister spoke to the crowd, for this whole display was not for my husband, but intended to gain the minister more parishioners. He said, Oh, consider it and let it break your hearts.
My husband was both a criminal who should die and a sinner who deserved pity for how he refused to repent.
The minister called for all sinners among the crowd to repent. He looked out expectantly, as if a sinner would then step forward. But with the gallows so close, no one would, particularly the criminal.
The minister put his arm on my husband’s shoulder, and said, Let us pray.
I expected my husband to protest, but he did not. He bowed his head.
Again he was told to confess his sins. Oh, John Billington, repent of your wickidness!
It was my gun, but it was not my volition. These hypocrites, that lying Shrimp—
Quiet, the minister said low and mean. I saw a glimpse of the man this minister boy would become. Thick brown hair over his eyes, fervent and never questioning himself. That kind of child, the most indignant and self-righteous, brought up to be that way from their fathers.
My husband added, The investors promising bloom and delivering rot.
Quiet. Quiet. God does not—
But even Shrimp was tired of the minister. He stepped forward and said, Enough.
My husband’s last words?
I love thee, my son. I love thee, Eleanor.
Death near turned him a milk sop.
True, he was.
A true, true fool.
Standish led my husband out of the meetinghouse, to the gallows erected by the sons of the hypocrites, including William Bradford’s son John.
Standish guided my husband up the stairs. The last moment drew near. He pulled the cap over his eyes. It happened fast and slow at once. When in the presence of a life ending, one thinks the world should shudder, too, but it does not. Standish kicked the crate John’s feet stood upon. My husband launched down into eternity. John’s body shook, then stopped. The crowd cheered.
He hung there half an hour before he was permitted to be cut down.
Francis Eaton made quite the profit. And so, too, did Bradford and the rest of the hypocrites. All those people coming into town, purchasing oxen they’d walk back to Boston, buying food and ale to watch my husband hang. But little did I know there was another impending conviction. Two officials from Salem waited until the crowd dispersed to take each of Tom Morton’s arms.
I turned, ready to fight myself.
What is this? Tom asked, gentlemanly, but these men were not gentlemen, they were looking for more death.
You are wanted, Thomas Morton, for slander and speaking out against the King.
Let him go, I yelled. I’d had enough.
One of the men pushed me down in the dirt. Bloodied my lip, he did. Of course they took him anyway.
It was his New Canaan, his version of life in the colony, the true depiction of the hypocrites, catching up to him. Tom was not even given a trial, but ordered to be banished from Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and sent, once again, back to England.
The man with the infant daughter came to me.
Your husband saved my girl, he said.
What’s this?
I had not known anything about John saving a girl.
Found a priest to baptize her, he did, and now look at her.
Before me was a dough-cheeked baby, healthy as can be. My husband had said nothing to me of this. But that was his way. He didn’t boast of what he did for others.
If there is anything I can do, the father said.
I thanked him. At least someone had noticed.
On the walk home, I heard the profit jingling in Eaton’s pocket. I resolved to get my son out of here as fast as I could.
Two servants returned my husband to me that afternoon. He was buried beneath the oldest oak tree. I go there and sit on Sundays, watch the birds, call him Good Husband and remind him of all the ways he should be thankful for me.
Now it’s just me and Francis. They took our land. Said I was not fit to care for it. What John, John the younger, Francis, and I had labored on these past ten years.
In those weeks after, I thought our friends would come and check on me, but few did. They stayed away, as if my husband’s murder was a plague they could catch from me. I understood. They were cowards.
The Diary of John Winthrop
Governor of The Massachussetts Bay Colony
September 30, 1630.
Wolves killed six calves at Salem and they killed one wolf. Thomas Morton, of Merrymount, was judged to be imprisoned until he could be sent back to England for his many injuries offered to the Indians, and other misdemeanors. The Master of the Gifte refused to carry him. Finch, of Watertown, had his wigwam burnt and all his goods. Billington executed at Plymouth for murdering one. Mr. Phillips, the minister at Watertown, and others had their hay burnt. The wolves killed some swine at Saugus. A cow died at Plymouth and a goat at Boston from eating Indian corn.
Alice Bradford
On the evening Billington was hanged, my husband climbed into bed and spoke of the colony’s business. A cow had died that morning due to tainted corn. More loss of profit befell us. I thought it must have been heavy on his conscience—what responsibility the colony had now to care for Eleanor Billington, the widow. But I was not exactly correct.
We’ll have to scrub the blood off his land, William said.
Clean it? I asked, like a child.
Remove them.
Excise them from the colony?
He was agitated.
Remove Billingtons as landholders. Put the care to someone else.
I sat up taller.
But where will Eleanor live? And Francis?
William moved away from me.
I’ve extended my duty as governor far beyond what other governors view is most charitable.
My husband quoted Psalm 7:15. Good Wife, he hath made a pit and digged it, and is fallen into the pit he made.
Prithee, reconsider, I said, in a voice too firm, I see that now.
There was a silence, a long silence, though hardly any time passed until what happened next. I did not see the hand move with force through the air, but I felt it on my cheek. My head knocked back against the wall and my body, too. I was the one flung against the wall this time, not some ill-bred neighbor. What would the newcomers think? I hoped the children, too, were sleeping deeply.
William the younger called for me.
John asked, from across the room, All right?
Fine, I said. Just dropped something.
It was plain that was not what had happened.
William leaned in close to me and whispered, It seems, Good Wife, you wish to be the husband.
I had misstepped. I first thought, I shall not do that again.
I second thought, Did Dorothy know this William, too?
In the silence, Mercy screamed.
Before I went to her I said to William, I am sorry. I trust in you.
When I returned to bed, William was kneeling on the floor, his head and hands in prayer. It was a silent prayer. I lay there. When he was through he did not reach for me.
But I woke in the night to William’s touch. As sweetly as he had ever been, with softness and the kindest hands he cupped my cheek and looked me in the eyes. There was apology there.
He kissed me.
You do not understan
d the weight upon me, William said.
So recent in fear of him, but he was correct, I did not understand fully, and I wanted to give him this, my understanding.
I lifted his linen. He lifted up my night dress. Our chests bare to one another, then pressed warm against the evening chill. We fell asleep warmed in this way. But in the morning I woke to the cold metal of his gun betwixt us.
Dorothy
He had no gun in Holland but when we were on the ship he had a gun and he slept with it betwixt us.
Yesterday we saw land but I saw all that there was not: no church, no home, no friends to comfort.
He said, Look around. We are a community. We rely on one another. God’s providence is here. I feel it. Rest with our brethren. I will be back before nightfall.
He kissed the top of my head. I wished he had kissed my mouth.
My husband aboard a shallop of men, his musket high above him. I watched him row away from me. He was a man now of a different sort—was it hunger, necessity, greed?
I went back to the tween deck. I made dinner and ate it.
The next morning, he had not returned. Us women sleeping, except I. I walked past the More children: Ellen, eight years old, Richard, six, and Mary, four. Their bodies tangled together in love and comfort. One brother, Jasper, seven years old and two days dead. A prayer had been said and two seamen rolled him off the deck.
I pushed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. My two front teeth slid forward. In my hands were my gloves. I slipped them beside Ellen. She would need them, and so much more, in the new colony.
I climbed up the ladder and went to the back of the ship.
I am on the deck, remembering. My dearest consort, Alice, cajoling me to get up from the hay and pick tulips with her. Her laughter, her loping, and her belief.
My mother, warning me, after a bad dream as a child, that no one knows who is chosen, that it might not be me, that outward signs of my goodliness might suggest I was. But I tipped over chairs and told lies anyway.
Out on the deck where I am not permitted to be. Something cool and wet inside my ear. I place my finger there. Blood.
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