My husband on land. I hope he is safe. I hope our John is, too.
The edge of the ship slicked by cold air and ocean. To stand on the deck and hear the cries of dolphins. To lean off the rail and watch the waves.
An animal arcs across the water. A whale!
A creature William laments he does not have the equipment to kill. All that oil. He means all that profit.
Not a good enough mother, not a good enough wife. My fingers on the railing, staying there until I can no longer feel them.
Good Wife, he calls me.
In death, he’ll call me not.
No, do not think thus, it is the seamen’s illness, making old wounds of the body and of the spirit reemerge.
To break and spread over the sea. Not carried in a casket, not brought back up to the ship.
To act, just to act. That is the glorious thing—
A foot slips and I let it?
If ever I beheld love, John, there was thee. A better mother there will be.
Alice Bradford
The face we wear by day is not the face that appears at night, nor on a vessel seven weeks at sea.
Perhaps she suffered it all privately. She wore her dignified, Christian face at the final wave goodbye to her husband. She walked erect back down to the tween deck, and the next morning she jumped off a ship three stories high, into the November ocean, without celebration or warning.
The night before, she cooked dinner for herself and the very pregnant Susanna, who had trouble bending over to the fire. She put other mothers’ sons to sleep, she gave no sign, the women said, of what was to come. This is how they knew it was an accident.
But in my solemnest of moments, in my prideful moments, I like to think I could have saved her. That I could have noticed in her eyes what we had wondered about in that man on the bridge. In my vainest of moments, I like to think I would have seen the light bend toward an irretrievable darkness, and turned it elsewhere.
Eleanor Billington
He’s dead and buried. I go there and spit on it, I do.
Fool, I say.
Homes are cold dark places when those you love are dead.
I have two graves I visit.
I have firewood, a house, two graves, and a storehouse of food, far more than what Francis and I need.
I do not have my mother, I do not have my son, I do not have my husband.
His body was brought to me that afternoon, purple at the rope line, bluing at his face.
I prayed over him for heaven where the preacher prayed for hell.
My husband killed one man, ’tis true. But Standish killed a dozen, slaughtered men with the knives around their own necks, chased a boy out of the wetu and hanged him from an elm. These elders proudly display the heads of those they’ve murdered, wave the dead men’s clothes like flags, and say it is for our safety.
Crimes happen every day. Some brag of them and are called heroes. The wealthy who beat their servants cite Scripture and are pardoned. Recently, a husband and wife beat their young boy servant and forced him out in winter to mend fences. He died in the snow. He was found with black toes, bed sores, and urine up and down his legs. Bruises and open sores on his chest. Years of beatings. Twelve years old. Were those two hanged? Nay, not with their pockets. No, they were pardoned, paid off just like the bishops who gave alms back in England, which the puritans were so set against removing, saying How corrupt, how corrupt. But they are no different.
Alice Bradford
On the day after Master Billington’s execution, I had a headache, which made it difficult to see my way down the hill. Susanna, Elizabeth, and I gathered our children and went to the dock to wave the Gifte off. The Master of the ship had deemed the weather favorable enough to depart but I suspected he was waiting until the verdict was given, and the hanging done, not being one to miss the entertainment, but also wanting to depart swiftly from the crime.
On the way down the hill, we women discussed the execution. Now that he was dead, we spoke more freely of the Billingtons.
They weren’t right, Elizabeth said. The whole lot of them. You could see they would cause trouble.
They signed up for seven years of servitude, Susanna said. I doubt they gave us one single year.
We all agreed. Profane. From London. Who knew what friends they consorted with? Never knew God.
The least godly creatures God has made, someone said. It may have been I.
From soil to sand we went, through a scraggly line of trees, shallowly rooted to the sand.
I scanned the faces for Eleanor, feeling dread that our paths might cross. There was no escaping one another. I would see her at the meetinghouse, the brook, the ovens, the fields. I wanted to delay facing her, though.
A crowd was gathered to see the ship off. Susanna clutched my arm. I knew what she was thinking. Our servants could turn on us. All of them. At any moment. There were more of them than us. It was important not to remind them of this. It was important to bring them to the church. We musn’t let them see how afraid we were.
Susanna, I said, and pulled her hand away.
I whispered, They are watching. We mustn’t be afraid.
And was that them snarling at us?
Hold your chin high. We’ve done nothing wrong.
Susanna adjusted her posture.
The first in line to board the ship was Thomas Weston.
He said the only positive thing that could be said about what he witnessed in our colony.
The Good Wives serve ye well and blessed be they who have such bounty nearby. May God’s light always shine upon you.
Thomas Weston knew what words to speak, but there was not feeling beneath it. Behind him were three newcomers. One couple, one single man. All of whom had intended to make our colony their home. But now they were sending us their apologies. The single man gave an excuse: My mother’s ill, but the couple, when I wished them well, barely smiled. I pressed biscuits into their hands.
It would be good to be unburdened by more bodies to feed, but it was not good for the spirit to know that they did not wish to be among us.
But the threat is gone! I wanted to say. Now we can live as God intended!
What a fool I was back then, thinking the death of one person could end the lasciviousness of others.
A seaman placed a coin on the starboard side. The sails were ready, the anchor was up, and the passengers were below in the tween deck. We said prayers for them, hoped God would grant them a swift, safe journey back to London. I hated to see a ship off, even if those aboard would have given us difficulty. I hoped the ones who had stayed feared God and the gallows. But it proved not to be so.
The sounds of the wilderness had always been among us, but now they appeared more sinister. While tending livestock, making candles, baking, knitting, or weaving, through the oak groves I would hear a sound and wonder, was that a bear or was that a man set against us?
At night the mastiffs and spaniels of our community, each separated in our homes and gardens, called to one another. A lonely call, wanting at night their friends of day. I heard this as I lay in bed, unable to sleep, listening to the breath of my husband and children, and at the community’s edge, the lurking wolves.
William installed a lock upon our door. Susanna’s wreath came down, taken off by her husband, and instead on the door he put two latches. We looked at those who did not attend church with more and more suspicion. Danger was everywhere, we learned, and sometimes the grandest threat was within your own community.
Part Three
Eleanor Billington
Six years have passed since my husband’s execution. I’m a fifty-three-year-old woman and do you know what they have done to me of recent?
There was a man, John Doane, who looked on me with lewd eyes when no one watched and scornful eyes when someone did. A church deacon he was, no different from the rest, wanted power. Took it where he could. Making his hand linger at my arm when I passed him. I told Alice and all who’d listen
he was vile.
She said, Be careful, Eleanor.
Slander is what she warned of. She was wrong, but if there was any benevolence in a Bradford, it was in her and not her husband.
I called it as I saw it. For speaking the truth, I tell ye, the truth about my neighbor. John Doane, as I said, was looking for any opening to put his seed into. He set his eyes upon me, a widow, living alone. All I had to protect myself was my mouth. So I spoketh.
I shall tell it how it happened. One evening I was milking, and John Doane came to me and offered me abuse by putting his hand under my petticoat. I turned aside with much ado, saved myself, and when I was settled to milking again he took me by the shoulder and pulled me nearly backward. I clapped one hand on the ground and held fast to the cow’s teat with the other hand and cried out as loud as I have ever yelled. I did not think at fifty-three I would be fending off men as if I was a young milkmaid. A servant boy, Abbott, heard me. Doane told the boy to go on about his business. I bade the lad to stay. The lad remained, but all the while Doane chastised him for obeying a woman.
In the morning I went to Standish to report what Doane had done.
Slander, Standish accused me thus.
He and Bradford called a trial of me and I was convicted.
I was ordered to be stripped from the waist up, even my linens, my wrists tied to the back of an oxen-drawn cart and whipped through town.
On the cold morning in early June of my punishment, Myles Standish reached toward me, tried to lift off my linen. I grabbed it back.
That’s only for me and my late husband to do, I said.
The crowd chuckled. They didn’t deserve my merrymaking.
I took off my clothes. Oh, how those hypocrites watched.
My breasts were bare and my nipples were so cold and erect they stung, as if from a suckling infant with newly emerging teeth. I was aware of them, flopping by the weight and the men—and some women, too—watching them. I’ve always had a nice bosom.
Myles Standish cracked his whip behind me and ordered the oxen to start walking. He snapped it a few times in the air to entice the crowd.
The whip lashed against my back. I gritted my teeth.
I’ll have you remember! I called to them. It was I that wiped ye faces and ye arses that first winter. Half ye’s died!
I knew this was the only time—unless whipped again—that I would have this much of the colony’s attention. I had to make the most of it.
Your brethren dragged the dying into the woods and propped them up against trees, with muskets by their side. Concerned, so concerned they were, for themselves more than the dying. But not us Billingtons. We cared for them. Your governor wanted the Indians to see a forest sentinel to save himself. I’ll have ye remember there would have been more dead without us. We Billingtons did not drag the dying bodies into the forest. I cared for ye!
I looked out on that crowd. They were unmoved. Why did their faces smile? Then I realized. Only three of the women here had been on the Mayflower. Only a handful of men. This crowd was a crowd of strangers. They didn’t remember what I had done for them, they didn’t know, they did not care. To them, I was the widow of the first murderer.
I kept talking because I had to keep walking and it helped to draw my attention away from the pain. The whip turned, singed. He’d broken skin. I felt blood slide down my back as if it were thick sweat. I would not cry out. The onlookers were confused, or uninterested by my speech, enthralled instead by my naked body. Nothing I could say meant anything to these strangers.
I, a widow, fifty-three years of age. I, a woman, with every right to speak the truth.
The old bloody linen and bird-pecked skull moved in the wind above us.
Get a look, I said.
That’s what they had come for, those hypocrites, to see a naked woman’s body beat into submission. I shan’t be beaten down in spirit, only in body can they scar me.
John Doane was there, happy to see what I had denied him. The hypocrites gave him the view he wanted all along. Some men enjoy it, seeing us women bare-breasted and whipped—it is what they would to do to us if they could.
Bradford leaned against a house rather than do the whipping himself, as if I might not notice him and recall that it was he who had issued the punishment.
When it was all over, I returned home to discover they had impounded my trespassing heifer, who had escaped beyond the fence while I was away.
The next day, the young Johnson father, whom my husband had helped, brought me milk still warm from his heifer.
Alice Bradford
My husband’s comfort, in his final years, was Hebrew. Many of our friends had left Plymouth by then. Susanna and Edward built an estate in Marshfield. Captain Standish lived in Duxbury. But us? Though we had the means, we never left the house in Plymouth that William built, just added more rooms.
Nightly, my husband lamented: Their appetite for land has caused the town, like a mother grown old, to be forsaken by her children. Not in affection but bodily presence … it will be the ruin of New England … and will provoke the Lord’s displeasure against them.
I told him to rest. I told him it would be as God intended.
He tested his life’s work and teachings to God’s original language. To get as close as he could to God’s words, he learned Hebrew. After thirty years as governor, he was a child again, learning language, and delighted in what he could recall, and agitated at what phrases he could not hold together. Sometimes, he wrote poetry that spoketh of God making this banquet in the wilderness for us. But my husband disputed over riverways with Dutch companies, both parties presenting Indian deeds they claimed were granted to them. Eight years after Billington’s punishment, Governor Winthrop asked for my husband’s help in securing safety for colonists to the north and soldiers my husband did send. The Lord blessed their endeavors. They slew or took in seven hundred Pequot Indians. The men not slain would not endure the yoke and were sold by Governor Winthrop to investors in Bermuda in exchange for African slaves, as were the male children. The women and girls were disposed about in the towns. Those that arrived to be our lifelong servants appeared so terrified that it was a fright to receive them.
That same year, it pleased God to bless Plymouth with several healthy calves, but also that year there was a fretful earthquake, heard before it was felt. What gave God such displeasure? The world rumbled, coming northward, which caused the platters and dishes that stood upon our shelves to clatter and fall down, and caused I myself to fall. People were afraid of the houses themselves. But my husband said henceforth that the summers were not so hot after the earthquake and therefore quite favorable for the growth of our corn.
One morning, William woke from bed, as the sun was cresting above the sea line. He turned to me, lighter in spirit than I had seen in months. He ran his hand along my thigh, upward.
Good Husband, I said. It had been years.
He found his way betwixt my linen slip, and placed his middle finger at the source of all my body’s tingling. He circled his finger there.
My husband said, I have just seen the entertainments of Paradise.
I bid him to stop what pleasure he was wishing to give me. So near it seemed he was, to the end, and so oddly joyous now. Is this profane? I wondered, but did not speak it. My husband continued.
We lay there, together, him and I. If these were his final moments, this was not the deathbed scene I would tell our children, our townsfolk, or the colony.
He closed his eyes and kept them that way. I closed my own.
Here we were. He was sixty-seven.
I let out little puffs of breath.
He said, My dove in the clefts of the rock.
I turned and kissed him and thought of that first time, on the shores of Plymouth.
The days tending to his care had left me more tired than I’d let myself realize. I had forgotten what pleasure could feel like.
Afterward, we both drifted asleep. When I woke, his hand was st
ill betwixt my legs, but it was cold. I startled upright. I thought him dead. But he was not yet dead. God granted him two more weeks.
The final hours of a man reveal him.
On the ninth of May, in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and fifty-seven, at sixty-seven years of age, my husband, William Bradford, said, I have heard God. He promises happiness in another world.
He said: Farewell, dear wife. I love thee. Your better husband is above.
To heaven he went, our dearest country. We buried him on the summit of Burial Hill in sight of the sand hills of Cape Cod.
Eleanor Billington
Just me and Francis here in Plymouth. I tried to send him north to find his place away from these puritans, but he is as oxen as his father. He finds himself in court too often.
The raised skin on my back is smooth now, thin like pine roots, but pinker than the rest of me.
Governor Bradford has written quite the story, borrowed from myth, it is, Of Plymouth Plantation. A failed colony his was, but preserved in his writing as he wished it would have been. More lies than truth, just like the man. It was Tom Morton who spoketh the truth: my husband, beloved by many, wronged by the leaders of Plymouth.
We gave them our best bodies. We gave them our workhorse years. And what did they give us? Murder. Banishment. Starvation. Revoking on what was rightfully ours. My husband killed a man, yes, it is true, but that land was ours.
Once, being a Billington was a mark of bravery. It was my husband who found the first brook here, my husband who was brave enough to see first what was beyond the forest’s edge, and my son who found the lake. Now, even in colonies farther north and south—in Massachusetts Bay, in New Netherlands—they think of Plymouth as cruel and unpredictable.
A place in God’s favor? Ha. They’ve made again what they claimed they wished to leave. They have the indentured English, but also Indians they’ve coerced or forced into servitude. The only difference is they are the ones in power. They are the ones to blame.
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