A Roll of the Bones

by Trudy J. Morgan-Cole

  Nancy whispered these wicked thoughts to Kathryn in bed at night, when the curtains were drawn around them and no one could overhear. Kathryn laughed as they plotted out various scenes that might unfold on the shores of Cupids Cove as the men there caught sight of Nora Tyler. “I imagine the dairymaids, Bess and Molly and Daisy, will be chosen sooner,” Nancy said. “They seem like merry girls.”

  “’Twould be different men, though, would it not? The milkmaids will marry apprentices and labourers, while Mistress Tyler, if she does find a man out there, will likely wed a merchant or at least a guildsman.”

  “Do you think such differences will matter?” Nancy wondered aloud. “Will we all keep our station when everyone has to turn their hand to labour together?”

  “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” Kathryn quoted with a giggle. “No, but surely people will still—I mean to say, we must have all sorts of people in the colony. And there will come a time when enough people have settled there that not everyone will have to delve and spin, but people can do the kind of work they are suited for.”

  And we shall all settle back into our proper roles, Nancy thought. Some things would never change. She folded her hands behind her head, looked up at the bed hangings, and said, “I wonder if Ned will fancy one of those dairymaids.”

  “Do you not think he’s waiting for you?”

  “For me? Why ever would he?”

  Kathryn leaned up on her elbow. “Lord-a-mercy, Nan, he sent you a message saying you’d be suited to life over there. That seemed plain enough to me. You’re of the same age and station, and you practically grew up together, here in this house. Would it not be natural, once you are both over there, for you to marry?”

  “But you do not want me to marry, surely! The whole reason I am going is so I can continue to serve you. What good would I be to you if I go off and marry some ’prentice boy the moment we land?”

  “Not the very moment, of course not. But someday...well, I’d love to have you by my side forever, darling Nan, but I’ve always thought you would marry at some point, even if we stayed here in Bristol.”

  “That was your plan. ’Twas never mine.”

  “But if you did, we’d still be close by each other. It might be that you and Ned could live in our household and—”

  “Hush,” Nancy said. “No more talk about me marrying Ned. Yes, he’s a fine lad and all, but I would never marry him, especially when he …” She broke off, collected her thoughts before her words, and finished, “...when he is almost like a brother to me. I think of Ned as part of the family.”

  “Then ’twill have to be one of the other colonists, unless you go off into the woods and take a red man for a husband. I wonder if they are like us—in all manner of ways?” And Kathryn was off on another trail of thought, making entirely improper speculations about the natives, and blessedly clear of the topic of Ned Perry. And what a good thing, Nancy thought. How terrible it would have been if she had blurted out especially not when he has fancied himself in love with you since he came here as a ’prentice lad.

  She knew it was true: Ned’s one careless confession had made sense of so many unguarded words and glances over the years they had grown up together. He had long cherished a fancy for Kathryn. Perhaps he dreamed of her still, but if she was in the New Found Land as Nicholas Guy’s wife, Ned would have to bury those dreams deep again.

  John Guy’s ship was ready to leave Bristol in late May. Just as they had done on that day nearly two years earlier when the first ship left for Cupids Cove, crowds thronged the quay: those who were departing, loved ones who had come to say farewell, and dozens of curious onlookers coming to watch. The would-be colonists bustled their baggage to the docks along with the heifers, goats, and swine that were to be their travelling companions, rubbing shoulders along the way with dark-skinned Africans, swift-talking Italian merchants, busy Dutchmen unloading their cargoes. All the rich noises and smells and sights of the Bristol docks; Nancy suddenly thought how she had taken it all for granted, the background of her life, and now she would never see it again. Perhaps she had been wrong to turn her back on it all. She could have had a life here in Bristol without Kathryn—a hard life, as Aunt Tib had said, but an ordinary one.

  Too late now. She would never know what her life might have been.

  The whole of the Gale household was there: the master and mistress, the three younger children, Aunt Tibby, the apprentices. Neighbours and friends crowded nearby. There were tears and embraces and good wishes as the sailors finished stowing the last of the colonists’ many crates and trunks on board.

  Nancy had never been much of a one for tearful goodbyes, but she allowed Mistress Gale to take her in her arms as she said, “You dear, sweet girl, the only bit of peace I’ll ever have is knowing our Kathryn has you by her side.” Master Gale wished her every good fortune and told her they were trusting her to look after Kathryn. Only when Aunt Tib took both Nancy’s hands in hers did Nancy feel a telltale burning behind her eyes.

  “’Tis a hard thing, to have my only flesh and blood go off on the other side of the ocean,” Aunt Tib said. “I’ll think of you every day and say prayers for your safety.”

  “Say your prayers, and say a little charm or two in secret,” Nancy laughed.

  “Oh, you know I will, I’ve all the old blessings. Send word back to me, if ever you gets the chance.”

  My only flesh and blood. Nancy hugged Tibby’s solid, muscular little body close to her own. The only family she had ever known. She wondered for a fleeting moment, as she had wondered before, about the mother and father who had perished with the plague. Had they ever been real, or only a respectable story for a maid with an unwanted baby to tell? Are you my mother? She had thought a dozen times that someday she would ask Tibby the question. Now, likely, she never would.

  “I will send word. You know I will. Mistress Kathryn will write letters home and I’ll add in all my own notes, with love for everybody but especially for you. I’ll never forget all you’ve done for me.”

  “Aye, well, thank me by taking care for yourself,” Aunt Tib said, wiping away tears with the edge of her apron. She was the only one to tell Nancy to take care of herself, not just of Kathryn, and Nancy cherished that farewell as she climbed the gangplank to the ship. She wondered if following that advice would prove impossible.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Parcel of Females is Delivered

  Clear-skinned, true coloured Wives , with exact features,

  With wise, mild, chaste Souls, are the best of Creatures.

  Clear-skinned, fair-coloured Wives , with exact features,

  With shrewd, lewd, wild minds, are the worst of creatures.

  CUPIDS COVE

  JUNE 1612

  THE FIRST ENGLISH VESSEL TO ANCHOR OFF CUPIDS COVE that spring was a Devon fishing ship whose men were surprised to find Guy’s colonists still living in the cove. “We heard half of you died, and the other half went back to England,” the ship’s mate told Philip Guy, over the evening meal in the Cupids Cove dwelling-house.

  “Not so! We have had only seven men die in two winters. Five went back to England last summer. There’s a few of us gone down the shore to Renews to clear ground for a new settlement, but we still have two score men here, and the governor is bringing back more.”

  “And some women!” called George Whittington, to cheers and laughter.

  “Well, I heard the lot of ye were turned pirate, thrown in your lot with Easton because he threatened to burn your settlement if you never paid him tribute,” another of the Devon men said.

  “No, not one of our men has turned pirate,” Philip Guy said quickly, as if eager to dismiss the topic. “Not a one.”

  It was William Colston who added, “We did have dealings with one of Easton’s captains. But they’ve left us alone now.”

  That was making short work of a long tale, Ned thought, but it was clear none of the masters wanted to discuss their dealings with Easto
n’s men. Everyone who fished along this coast had to deal with pirates, and this Captain Easton sailed into Conception Bay with the greatest pirate fleet ever seen in these parts, according to the fishermen’s tales. It was only to be expected that any attempt to plant a permanent settlement here would attract the pirates’ attention.

  One day back in the early spring, a tidy pinnace flying the pirate’s black flag had sailed into Cupids Cove. The ship’s guns were trained on the settlement, and the men of Cupids Cove manned their own three guns, ready to fire on command. It was Master Colston who decided to allow the captain of the pirate ship to row into the harbour under flag of truce.

  The pirate captain wanted to meet with not just the masters but all the men; he knew Governor Guy was back in England and wanted to put forth the offer that any of the colonists who were weary of the venture could join one of Easton’s crews.

  “Rations are good aboard our ships, ye’ll want for nothing. Any man who wants easy gold and good conditions on board is welcome to join with us, any time. I dare say ye’d do better under the black flag than under John Guy.”

  Ned remembered the clutch of fear in his belly, the terror that they would be pressed into the pirate’s crew. He was ashamed, even now, to remember that what had frightened him most was not the prospect of being forced to rob and kill innocent people, but the possibility of spending most of his time for the next several years on board ship. If the dread of facing the ocean again had already convinced him to stay in the New Found Land instead of going back to England, how would he survive life on a pirate ship?

  None of the men was anxious to take up his offer, but Captain Sly was untroubled. “Ye hear a great many stories about men captured by pirates, but the truth is, most of our crew came with us of their own free will, and the same is true for all Easton’s ships.” He waved a hand out at his own ship in the harbour. “’Tis not a bad life.”

  What Easton wanted, short of new recruits, was an agreement with the Cupids Cove colony. He would tell his ships to leave the settlement alone, even protect them from other pirates, if they in turn would agree to stay out of the coves and bays that Easton considered his territory along the coast. While Captain Sly sat down to negotiate with the masters, four pirates who had come ashore with him sat down for a meal with the colonists. They were all eager to assure the colonists that being a pirate was no bad life.

  “Better than what ye got here, anyway,” one of the men said, giving the dwelling-house a skeptical glance. Ned felt stung: he and the other colonists were proud of that building, and justly so, he thought. The settlement now had two completed dwelling-houses and a storehouse, several outbuildings, another dwelling-house framed out, three boats built and one larger ship under construction.

  “Why are you so sure ’tis better?” he asked the pirate.

  “You should see the grand house I’ll build meself, once the time comes for me to give this up and retire back on land. I got a woman and two youngsters back in England, but tell the truth, I’m in no hurry. We’re free to go with every breeze, to chase after gold or even just better weather. When the winter hits here and ye’re all snowbound in this bloody great house, we’ll be down in the Caribbean, enjoying the sunshine and the lovely native girls.”

  “Have you ever had dealings with the natives round here?” Frank Tipton asked. “We’ve been here near two years and not seen sign of one yet.”

  “They’re not plentiful on this part of the island,” the pirate said. “I never seen none meself at all, but Captain Sly says he talked to a fellow that saw some red men, over in Trinity Bay. They spend the winters inland, and come out to the coast when the seals come in. We don’t trouble them and they don’t trouble us.”

  By the time they met the pirates, the colonists had already made it through their second winter, harsher and colder than the one before. The crops had not prospered. Two men took chills and died not long after Christmas. By spring, the men were on short rations and growing discontented. Philip Guy sent Captain Sly packing with a promised truce, but Ned heard George Whittington and a few others wonder if they might not have been better off to throw in their lot with the pirates after all.

  Waking on cold winter mornings in his blankets near the fire, Ned almost agreed. It was not only the toil and sometimes the hunger; it was the sense of being cut off from the world, especially when fishing ships went back to England in the autumn. Once winter closed in, it was as if they had fallen off the edge of the map. Here be dragons, he thought, remembering the inscription on a chart John Guy had shown them once.

  Well, no dragons so far. Plenty of cold; a little hunger; lots of hard work. But worst of all was the knowledge that if he died here, it would be months before his family back in England even heard of his death. Their lives moved on without him. He did not know which of his brothers or sisters were married, what nieces or nephews had been born, even if both his parents were still alive and well.

  He had thought of Bristol, of his parents’ house and his master’s house, more in his second winter in Cupids Cove than he had during the first. Home: a place where people bustled in the streets and goods were sold in the markets, where you could see the faces of women and children and old people instead of the monotonous sameness of the colony’s men, who were by now all sick of the sight of each other.

  When the snow had melted and the pans of ice disappeared from the harbour, when the pirate ship had sailed away, when the ground had thawed enough to begin planting again, the men looked every day for sails on the horizon. And though the first ship was from Devon, not Bristol, and brought no news of their home city, still they welcomed new faces eagerly and were happy to be able to tell the fishermen they were neither dead, nor given up, nor turned to piracy.

  Not yet, Ned thought. The Devon fishermen also brought the news that Peter Easton’s ships were gathering at Harbour Grace, where the pirates had built fortifications and were challenging the French and Portuguese fishermen who plied those waters. Every man in Cupids Cove fervently hoped the pirates would confine themselves to plundering and fighting foreigners, and not turn their guns against fellow Englishmen.

  A Bristol ship came a fortnight later, and this one bore news. Governor Guy wrote to say he was returning in June. He was bringing with him twoscore new men, some for Cupids Cove and some to begin the new colony at Renews, as well as ten heifers, two bulls, and sixty goats. “And lastly, but by no means least,” Master Philip Guy announced, “our governor has found sixteen women who have the courage to make this voyage and throw in their lot with us. Among these are my own wife, and the wives of Master Nicholas Guy, Master Colston, Master Catchmaid, and Sam Butler, as well as many unmarried women. He says that all are sturdy wenches of an age to marry and bear children, to which end I am sure you will welcome them.”

  Cheers went up around the room, and George dug Ned in the ribs with his elbow. “Those sturdy wenches won’t hardly have their feet on the ground before they’ll be on their backs, I don’t doubt.” George had regained much of his saucy humour in the year since his brother’s death, and the prospect of the women’s arrival seemed to reconcile him to the thought of staying in the New Found Land.

  “’Twill be good to see women again,” Ned agreed. “I doubt you’ll be so quick to get any of them on their backs, though. Master Guy will want respectable marriages, not a slew of bastards. The women will no doubt be kept under close watch until proper offers of marriage have been made.”

  “I’ll make any offer they like as long as I can get my hands on one of them.”

  Ned’s own imagination had snagged on the news that Nicholas Guy’s wife was to be one of the women colonists. Kathryn was, likely as not, even now on a ship crossing the ocean towards them. Coming to join her husband.

  The third dwelling-house was already under construction. Now, as the news of the women’s arrival spurred everyone to greater efforts in completing that house, Philip Guy determined how the settlers would be divided. He and his wife and ch
ildren, along with the governor and the Colstons, would continue to live in the original dwelling. William Catchmaid and his wife, along with Sam Butler and his wife, would dwell in the second; Nicholas Guy and his wife would move into the newest house. The unmarried girls would be divided up into threes and fours under the watchful supervision of the married women, and the unmarried men also would be divided among the three dwelling-houses. Most of the new men were apprentices sent out by a nobleman named Sir Percival Willoughby, who had invested heavily in the New Found Land venture: these men were coming on another vessel and were bound for Renews. But all the women were coming to Cupids Cove.

  A new energy thrummed through the cove. More male colonists, more cattle, and more grain were all good news, but it was talk of the women that kept the men entertained throughout the month of May as they worked at the boats and wharves and houses, planted their crops and built up the fortifications that protected the settlement from piracy.

  “Will they be pretty lasses, d’ye reckon?” Frank Tipton wondered.

  “I don’t say Master Guy will have lined up all the women in Bristol and picked the handsomest—I’d say he’ll have brought those who were willing, and healthy, and hard workers,” Ned said. “But then, you’re not so handsome yourself, are you?”

  “There’s not nearly enough of them to go around,” George complained. “There’s more than a score of single men here already, and how many of those new men coming over are unmarried? Those girls are going to be able to pick and choose. He should have brought enough for every man to have his own.”

  “Not likely there’s so many women in Bristol eager to try this life,” Ned said. He glanced back at the dwelling-house as he spoke, then out over the harbour. He had seen no other landscape but this for nigh on two years. He knew every path, every tree, every corner far better than he’d known the Bristol streets between his parents’ house and Master Gale’s house, even, during the years of his apprenticeship. Familiarity had made him proud of how they had made something out of nothing in Cupids Cove; he knew how settled it looked compared to the empty wilderness they had found on their arrival.