by Leah Fleming
40
My heart warms to recall the merry party that completed our nuptials. We shared a fine meal of capon with fresh pies made of squashes and tree syrup with syllabub covered in forest berries soaked in brandy. There was a bride cake to share among the servants and guests, cordials to toast and a fiddler came to set feet tapping. For the first time in my life, I allowed myself to lift skirt and petticoat and dance a jig around the room. It released within me such joy as I joined the circle of merry folk. If dancing be of the devil, as I was told, why did it bring such laughter and pleasure? Singing and dancing released my body and mind from its tight restraint.
Soon it was time for leave-taking but Sabine had gone ahead to prepare the bridal bed as is the custom here. We were staying close to the fort in quarters set aside for us. There was much ribaldry that made me blush and clanging of pots to alert the town that a bride and groom were off to their chamber. I wished them all gone but customs must be observed and there was much shouting when we entered the bed chamber from the street outside. To my delight the bed was adorned with a quilted counterpane full of flowers and strewn with herbs.
I trembled as I shed my fine new dress and jacket to be left only with my shift. My hair unfurled from its prison of pins fell down my back. I had dreamed of such a night in my darkest hours and waited for the Captain of my heart to join me. I felt shy at this new intimacy, knowing full well what we were about to do. I snuffed out the candle so he would not see my red face.
‘What are you thinking?’ he whispered in my ear.
‘I don’t want this day to end. It has been so full of richness and friendship,’ I sighed.
‘But the night has only just begun and it is a long time till dawn,’ Jordan laughed holding me close so I could taste his skin. His hands roamed over my body. I sank into the feather mattress with a secret smile knowing I had made the best of choices in this man. Was Henri Boyer laughing in heaven knowing I had exchanged days of sorrow and duty for many nights of joy? I was not disappointed.
Still my hand lingers lovingly over recollections of those early days of our marriage when the whole world outside our chamber faded from view as we lay in each other’s arms to find pleasure in our bodies. We were one flesh indeed and I longed that this union would soon bear fruit but as the months went by there was no sign of a child. At first we were wholly occupied with each other but the threat of Jordan’s departure still loomed large.
How quickly I came to live the life of an officer’s wife, preparing suppers for guests, helping younger wives in their domestic troubles, shopping and visiting friends but there was at the back of my mind a lingering guilt that without a child, my life was without purpose. I envied Sabine and Tamar who called to announce she was now the wife of Jacob and was with child.
She did not desert me as I feared but slipped in quietly to give me news of Good Hope and of the school for Indian children that Jacob established among the Lenape, the school I had hoped would be mine too one day.
On hearing this, next morning I took my gauntlets to the haberdashers to see if they were of value. Mr Cook examined them with interest. ‘I’ve seen these afore: nice work, good quality, more of a keepsake than practical but I can give you two guineas for them, Mistress Thane.’
I nodded and passed them over without regret. All these years they had been a talisman to me but I had no need of such now that I knew they could be put to better use.
When Tamar called a few weeks later, I presented her with the guineas and some extra I had saved to be spent on their school.
‘Are you sure? This is most generous,’ she smiled with those dark serious eyes. ‘It will help us feed some of the orphans.’
We did not talk of meeting business. I sensed her testing to see if I had regrets. I had yet to find a regular place of worship on First Day which I now called Sunday. I dressed plainly even though we were not without means to dress me in finer clothes. Our town house was well appointed and I had a maid to help me with daily chores. I had the use of a carriage should I need it but I preferred to walk to where there was green wilderness or a park. It helped me sort out the muddled thoughts in my mind that my life was now empty of purpose, my spirit restless and in need of consolation.
I have been examined many times by doctors, treated with potions that did not open my womb. Was this a punishment, this barrenness? Had I forfeited the right to this special joy when I chose to leave Good Hope? If so it was a bitter pill to swallow, but over the years I have become accustomed to this loss.
It was Jordan who suggested I might like to mother on someone else’s bairn, an orphan child in need of a good home but I was still hoping that all would come right in the end if I prayed and found some use for my few talents.
As those months turned into years I found myself with slate in hand and a room full of soldiers’ offspring to teach to read and write as I was taught by the Sampsons in Windebank. At last I found a distraction that gave me reason to rise early to greet the day. Pupils come and go which can be annoying when children are removed by families to take up land or travel back to England at short notice but I leap ahead here.
We have been at war for years with France and I dreaded the day Jordan would get his own marching orders. We got plenty of news when ships came into harbour but I heard nothing from Yorkshire. That bridge was truly broken and beyond repair. I could hardly recall the hills and dales of my birth place. When they heard through that strange link of kin within the Seekers of my desertion, I knew there would be no more contact with me.
It was the summer of 1694 that Jordan was ordered to take his troop to join a command further north. I waved my husband off not knowing if I would see him again in this life. There were no nights of joy after that but long empty days when even lifting my head from the bolster was an effort of will.
The evenings when the shutters closed for the night were the worst. I had some sewing and mending but little to occupy my time except to visit my dear friends and listen to their news. Sometimes I stayed to mind Marianne while they were out. I stared at their pianoforte, wishing I could play like Sabine. Instead, I did some crewel work and dressmaking for the orphan children, adding little skin gloves to their outfits. Yet my mind was restless, going over all that happened to bring me to this city. Then the idea of writing down my thoughts on parchment came to me one morning.
Seekers were trained early to read and write, to study scripture and a little learning for both boys and girls. We often would debate and argue for nothing was ever done in meeting without the consensus of all. This strengthened the use of our native tongue in its infinite variety. I have always used words and phrases that do not habitually flow from a servant’s lips: now I could put them to good use.
I went to the bookbinder to buy myself a leather-bound journal which had at first the smell of musty Bibles in its pages but soon became my faithful companion of a night. With quill and ink I set down all that had happened on the journey that brought me to the City of Brotherly Love from my beginning in the West Riding. It has been a slow and steady labour of love to recall as much of the detail of those early days.
Strange as it may be, as I wrote from my heart long forgotten scenes opened up as I relived them: those precious years on a Yorkshire farm, the months I spent in my grandfather’s house and those first heart flutterings over Miles Foxup. I could see his mother, Priscilla, as if it were yesterday, when I can scarce remember what I need going from one chamber to the other. Soon I had filled every page and bought two more. My stay-at-home nights were no longer lonely knowing there was so much to record.
I have had many experiences that might be of interest should I ever share my words but not in my lifetime. How can I say what needs spoken onto a page of the intimate happenings in a woman’s life or describe folk for whom I have little sympathy?
Speak the truth in love I was taught so I have tried to be charitable but sometimes my own pride and mistaken loyalties get between the lines. With a cup of warm cordial b
y my side, I spent many hours revisiting my past history.
I had hardly begun the journey by ship from Hull before a rumour came to my ears that chilled my heart. Our militia had been in some skirmish close to the frontier and many men were missing and taken prisoner. By the time more news reached us it was already stale so I spent hours with Sabine trying to comfort myself that Jordan would not be among the lost but no dispatches arrived or letters and this silence made me fear the worst.
I found no comfort in my journal pages and set it aside. I had a duty to other young wives who were as fractious as I was in waiting for news. Then one forenoon we were summoned with fresh news. The prisoners had been taken to Canada to a place called Mont Real by Indian tribesmen loyal to the Frenchies in the hope of a ransom. Jordan was among them. There was however to be an exchange of prisoners and he would be returning with the remnants of his men by ship. We were to make preparations for their return.
How could I sleep, pacing the floor in a fever of plans and lists to make his homecoming welcome and comfortable. I longed for a letter but none came. News like wildfire swept through the city and I knew months of anxious waiting would soon be over.
We stood on the landing dock for hours before the sighting of their vessel was possible. There was a stiff breeze and I was glad of my fur-lined hood and cloak to stop myself from shaking. Slowly the great sails appeared and we saw the deck crowded with soldiers waving and cheering. My eyes were pinned on each one but in uniform they were hard to pick out.
When the gang plank went down and the able bodied men disembarked, their women rushed to greet them. I hung back, jealous of these joyful reunions, impatient for my own to come. The ship was almost emptied of travellers before I saw a man being led out slowly, held up by others. There was something in his height and gait that set my heart thudding. I walked forward hoping it was my husband. I saw him stumble at the sight of me and I rushed to help him with tears flowing.
‘Careful Mistress, he’s much wounded in the head. He is unsteady on his feet.’
‘Oh Jordan, you are home at last. Why did you not write to me?’ I cried as I held his hand. He did not reply and only then did I realise that one eye flickered unseeing but his smile was as always. ‘Joy’ he whispered as he trembled and was given over to my care. In that moment I knew our lives had changed forever. We took a slow painful walk back to our house and within the privacy of our four walls did he remove his tricorn hat. I saw with horror the scars, the bare wounded flesh at the back of his head. My beautiful man had suffered a scalping, not enough to kill him but to leave him maimed. Only then did I weep for this loss. ‘How did this happen?’ I cried.
He waved away my pity. ‘I survived; so many good men did not. Some were roasted in cages before my eyes. No more tears, Joy. I am alive but very tired.’
He slept for two whole days and nights. All my plans were abandoned in the nursing of him. He was home and we were at one again. Whatever the future held we would face it together. Of one thing I was certain, my husband would never lift a musket again.
41
I want no pity from any who read these my words and wonder how a man and woman survive such disasters to find each other again. In due course Jordan set down an account of his terrible captivity for the Governor to read and spared them no horrific detail in order that other soldiers might know what could befall them in enemy hands. It makes grim reading. Yet in the midst of all this misery there was one little snippet that gave me much amusement when he told me his story.
‘We were kept prisoner in a Canadian fort close to the border and those who had anything to sell were able to buy extra food and comforts for themselves. I became aware of an English man, a debtor who tried to ally himself with the Frenchies, a rough sort who was not above begging from us and who for some reason I thought I recognised from Philadelphia. He was friendly enough in his way but there was something about his ingratiating manner that set my teeth on edge. I did not trust him.
‘I challenged him why he was not fighting on the British side and he replied he owed the old country nothing. He said he was an apothecary with powers to heal the sick for a fee so we gave him money for potions for our wounded. I asked him to treat my own open scar which in fairness he did his best to protect by making me a skull cap to cover the skin. He called himself Tom Smith but I guessed it wasn’t his true name for his eyes had a shifty look that never kept your gaze. He then suggested we club together to bribe a guard to help us escape but by then few of us had anything left of value to give him. The other prisoners thought him a grand fellow and somehow found enough hidden rings and their boots to help him along. His French was poor. He said he was running from his whoring wife who had robbed him of all his trade but then he was arrested for cheating at cards. They had travelled across America through the Jerseys and Boston, coming from Yorkshire on a ship that was wrecked. It was then I suspected that he was the same apothecary who helped George Emsworth and then lost the goodwill collection.
‘ “Perhaps you’ll know my wife,” I asked to test this out. “She’s from that county. Joy Moorside, captured by Indians from Good Hope. I’m sure I’ve seen thee in Philadelphia and Good Hope.” He looked at me for a moment and I swear he went white. He shook his head and told me, “Nay, sir, never been down that way. I know of no such person. America is a mighty large country.” He removed himself from my side and never conversed with me again.
‘I warned the others of my suspicions but they would have none of it, thinking he would help them make a run out of the fortress. He said he knew a door that was often opened and a man who would row them away to freedom.’
It was my turn to smile, sure in my mind he had indeed met Titus Cranke up to his old tricks again. Why is it that the wicked flourish and prosper? ‘And did they succeed?’ I asked.
He laughed. ‘He did, the rogue, took their silver and scarpered. God help him if any of them meet him again in this life.’
Surely if the law does not catch up with Titus, a higher Judge will call him to account when his life ends and yet for all his trickery, he had given me a safe haven once and kept Jordan’s scalp wound clean. There is good and bad in all of us, I mused.
There were other stories that my husband would never discuss with me, wounds that were invisible to the eye, nightmares when he woke in a sweat crying out for long lost comrades. There were days when he fell into the slough of despond, saying, ‘What use am I to you now with only a pension to tide us over? Better I were dead.’
‘Stop that,’ I cried. ‘For better, for worse: that’s what we promised each other. There will be a way forward for us,’ I told him, more in hope than expectation.
The walls of the busy city seemed to be closing in on our spirits. There were fights and drunkenness and former slaves wandering looking for work. It was no longer safe to walk some streets of an evening. What we needed was a fresh start away from all the smoke and fumes, an open space to breathe freely. What we needed was land.
I had forfeited any right to purchase land after four years by my desertion from my employers. We were not afraid of hard work for I knew what must be done to raise a dwelling and a barn, to grow enough to keep us. It would be a better future than sitting idle in the city. Once the idea fixed in my head, there was no shifting it.
We discussed it late into the night when sleep would not come. I could see Jordan’s spirit rise at such a possibility. He would write to his family in Northumberland for assistance with our new venture. His eyesight was weak but he wasn’t blind. His strength was restored by regular meals but we had, as yet, few capital assets to exchange into acres.
I talked to anyone who would listen. Had I still been within the Fellowship of Seekers, doors would have opened but I could no longer ask in that quarter.
Sometimes, however, answers to silent prayer come from the strangest of coincidences. I had kept my little Dame school in our living space. The fees it brought in were useful. Jordan was not yet discharged from his duties
so along with soldiers’ children, other children of tradesmen joined my group. There were enlightened men who wanted some education for their girls as well as boys. Word spread that I was thorough but a kindly instructor whose husband had been wounded in battle. Soon I took on an assistant called Hetty Prentiss who proved herself more than able and eager to take children aside who were slow to grasp their letters.
Hetty came from one of the earliest English families to settle here and her father had several shops. They supplied seed corn and farming tackle into the Delaware district and up the Schylkill River. I don’t know why I confided in this young girl as we were clearing away the slates and hornbooks sitting together discussing the day.
‘How we’d love to find somewhere out of the city to live for a while,’ I said. ‘Jordan might grow stronger in a greener place. The smoke catches his chest so.’
‘My uncle has a farmstead up towards the German district. He is always looking for help,’ she offered. ‘But you can’t leave this school. It’s the best of its kind for little ones.’
‘That’s kind of thee.’ The odd thee still found its way into my speech. ‘You have learned all there is to know in these past months, perhaps I could lease these rooms for your use.’ Was I being too bold? ‘Does your uncle want a yard boy or a couple?’
‘I will ask,’ she replied. ‘I know Uncle Adam would prefer to come closer into the city. He is over fifty and not in the best of health when we last saw him. His wife died of the yellow fever when it raged over us.’
How is it that when a thing is right sometimes everything falls into place? We travelled upriver to the part where many German families were settled to see if he was willing to let us work his land and we found to our delight a kindred spirit who welcomed us and showed us to a small cottage with a wooden barn and acres of land turned to sheep and cattle. It was to us a piece of paradise.