by Anya Seton
The Captain ordered the longboat launched and handed the entire Winthrop family into it. He embarked himself, while the Lyon fired off seven cannon shots to apprise those on shore of the Governor's arrival.
Elizabeth was silent in the boat as she had been all morning before entering it. Through the night she had considered many fantastic plans for defeating Winthrop, but sober dawn had shown her that none were immediately feasible, and she had Joan to consider. There was nothing to do but wait until she understood conditions in Boston, found out exactly what had become of her four hundred pounds, and try at least to control the situation without panic. But the inner turmoil precluded normal excitement over landing at last. She glanced almost indifferently at the misty silhouette of a three-mounded hill, and what seemed to be a cluster of small wooden huts near it, then back to the Lyon. The decks were filled with impatient passengers, who would presently be ferried to shore, and as she looked she saw William Hallet, hanging over the rail. He extended his arm in a wave, quickly checked, as though he'd thought better of it. She was too dejected to wave back, but the Governor's sharp eyes had seen, and he turned to the Captain in surprise. "Was that long lad in the Monmouth cap waving at us? It seems very forward."
"I believe 'e was, sir—" said Peirce. "'Tis a young joiner from Dorset, very popular on board, and 'andy with our repairs after the tempest."
"Indeed. An indentured servant, I presume. We've had trouble with them. They turn lewd and brazen over here."
"'E's no servant, sir," said Peirce. "Paid 'is own passage money, and talks a'most like a gentleman. Just a lad who wanted a change o' scene."
Winthrop frowned. Footloose youths were not desirable members of the colony, but he dropped the topic, and began to show Margaret various landmarks ahead. The hill to the left where he intended to build a fort, as soon as possible, if Dudley would stop palisading Newtown across the Charles, and belligerently insisting that Newtown should be the capital. He showed her Trimount, the three-mounded hill, where they kept a sentry posted, and would burn a warning bonfire in case of danger, and another hill where he hoped that Jack would help erect a windmill.
"And our house?" asked Margaret faintly, gazing through the drizzle at the bleak, treeless peninsula.
"There," said Winthrop pointing. "On the flat near the meetinghouse. Oh, we've near a score fine wood houses built, as you will see. Mr. Coddington, he's started one of brick too, will finish it when he returns from England." He glanced at Elizabeth's set, withdrawn face, shadowed by the hood, and his lips tightened.
"I'm sure it looks like a sweet town," said Margaret hastily. During the night she had heard of Elizabeth's graceless behavior, and of John's many other worries too. But she had finally managed to soothe him, and he had slept in her arms.
The boat pulled up at a wooden pier, near which were crowded all the Bostonians and many from Newtown, Roxbury and Charlestown as well. The young men of the militia or train bands had drawn up in formation and now fired ceremonious volleys of gunshot into the air. They had organized a fife and drum corps which began to play. Their captains, Underhill and Patrick, in polished armor, and plumed helmets, stood bowing at the head of the ladder. There were cheers and huzzahs and "God Bless You's," as Margaret stepped up behind her husband to the pier. Elizabeth followed with Joan. She did not look at the mass of curious, respectful, welcoming faces. She watched four halberdiers step up to Winthrop and range themselves importantly before him, also a liveried beadle who carried the Charter in a long leather box. Winthrop said a few words to the people. He raised his hand and his procession formed.
The captains and the train bands started marching two by two. After them the halberdiers, the Governor's guard of honor, then James Penn, the beadle, with the Charter which preceded Winthrop on every ceremonial occasion, as a reminder of the authority invested in the Governor. Winthrop drew Margaret's hand through his arm, and indicated to Jack that he and Martha should follow, and the other members of the family—in strict order of precedence. They all fell in and solemnly trudged up the muddy lane. "Journey's end" indeed, Elizabeth thought as she marched. I have now arrived in the free, the glorious new land.
The muddy lane was called King Street, and ended at the temporary church, a small thatched building with clay-daubed walls and no steeple. It stood at the junction with the High Street which led off the neck to Roxbury. But they did not march as far as the church before a portly gentleman on horseback came hurrying to meet them. It was the Deputy Governor, Thomas Dudley, and the procession halted while he rode up to Winthrop.
"Beg pardon for my tardiness, sir," he said snatching off his black felt hat, "I was delayed at the ferry. Welcome, Madame," he said to Margaret. "I trust the voyage was not too arduous."
She made a polite reply and gave him her usual sweet smile, but having heard from John of the constant friction between them, she decided that the man had a truculent coarse look. His jowled face was red above a grizzled beard. His swollen nose was laced with tiny purple veins. His rumpled brown cloak and mud-spattered boots exhibited none of John's nice elegance.
"Will you dine with me in Newtown, Mistress Winthrop?" Dudley went on brusquely, "'Tis where you should be anyhow, and will, soon as the Governor's finished his house there. 'Tis the right place for our capital."
"I do not think so, sir," Winthrop snapped. "I prefer it here, and don't intend to settle in Newtown."
"You agreed to!" cried Dudley, beginning to breathe hard. His son Samuel, who was an officer in Underhill's train band, seeing that his father was working into a choler, broke ranks and hurried up.
"His Worship's family must be cold standing in the rain, my father," he said quietly. "Shall I help you dismount?"
"No, Sam," said Dudley controlling himself. "If the Governor and Mrs. Winthrop'll excuse me, I have business in Muddy River." He bowed, jerked the bridle and rode to the High Street. Sam Dudley gave Margaret an apologetic smile, and stared at the girls, especially Elizabeth, before he returned to his men.
"Young Dudley seems a courteous personable gentleman," remarked Mary, vaguely astounding Elizabeth who had never heard Mary praise any young man, but she was far too chilly and despondent to answer.
The procession reformed and presently turned left down a cross lane. It stopped before a rush-thatched, clapboarded house two stories high but otherwise about the size and shape of the washhouse at Groton. The windows had shutters but no glass. On the door made of three planks of unseasoned wood, little drops of sap had formed and mingled with the rain drops. The house stood starkly in a sea of mud and trampled weeds.
"Our New England home, my dear," said Winthrop. "I pray God will bless it, and make it a happy one."
Margaret pressed his arm, touched by his pride, aware of pathos too in the brave little procession, and John's obvious pleasure in the honor the people accorded him, but as she looked at her new home she was appalled. Could he have so soon forgotten Groton that he really thought this ugly cot a fine house! And it seemed that he had forgotten other things too. She had been shocked in the night to find that, after all, the churches here had patterned themselves after the Separatist Colony at Plymouth, and that they allowed no man the franchise unless he first became a church member and publicly attested to his salvation. There had been no plans so radical for the colony when John left England.
Winthrop dismissed his guard and the family filed into the house, which was indeed large for Boston, since it had two twenty-foot rooms in front and behind the central chimney. One was the Hall and the other the kitchen. Upstairs the space had been divided into four. Above that was a dark garret where the unmarried maidservants slept on pallets. The indentured male servants lived in a hut near the house.
The Hall contained a long trestle table piled with offerings sent from all over the colony to greet the Governor's family. There was poultry—partridges and geese, some unplucked, some already cooked; a haunch of venison, apples, and a large cheese. Margaret gave an unfeigned cry of delight when
she saw this, and Winthrop smiled complacently. "You see what joyous manifestation of love my people show me!" he said. "It is a great marvel that such store of provisions could be gathered together at so few hours warning."
To Elizabeth this speech was smug but her mouth watered as she looked at the food, and the gnawing in her stomach became so intense that she forgot her other problems until her uncle said, "We will eat nothing until certain guests have arrived—fasting is one of God's most skilful means to chastise the flesh—Mr. Feake will dine here, Elizabeth, and I command that you treat him agreeably."
"I trust I know my duty to all your guests, sir," she said, and went upstairs to the room she would share with Mary. It was furnished with a crude wooden bedstead, roped for support of the bedding they had brought on the ship. There were two stools and nothing else. Though the servants had strewn a thick mat of rushes over the floor, it was very cold. Elizabeth opened the window shutter and saw that the rain had stopped, patches of blue showed amongst the clouds. She sat down shivering on the stool and nursed Joan, then carried the child next door to Martha and Jack's room, which was warmer, since it and the elder Winthrops' room had a fireplace. "Keep Joanie for me, Matt," she said. She shut the door on Martha's anxious questions and went downstairs to the Hall, where she eyed the lavish display of food, hesitated, and cut herself a slice of cheese. She devoured it avidly, ate an apple, picked up a cold roast partridge and ate that.
She was sucking the last of its bones when John walked in with Margaret. Elizabeth was unable to control a guilty jump, and the childish impulse to hide the partridge leg behind her back, as Winthrop said in an icy voice, "I ordered that no food be eaten until the guests arrive."
Margaret stepped forward quickly. "Indeed, John, you are too harsh. Bess needs strength for suckling her babe, and we have none of us eaten our fill in weeks. I too am famished."
Winthrop looked startled. So accustomed had he become to ruling every detail of his household and the colony that any doubts as to his judgment no longer troubled him. But with Margaret he was never unjust, and he said, "My dear, no doubt you're right. Eat then, since you have such need." He turned to Elizabeth, his eyes hardening again. "Why have you your cloak on? I told you to make yourself ready for our company."
"There is nothing I can do, sir, since my chests have not yet been delivered from the Lyon. I wish to go outside and walk a bit, I've been so long confined."
"True," cried Margaret before her husband could speak. "Exercise will benefit you, but be back soon."
As Elizabeth escaped, Margaret said in a low troubled voice, "John, be gentle with her, as you are with the rest of us. She's not of a nature to be forced."
"And why not? Since it is for her own good, and the child must be obedient to the father. You're quick to plead for her, my dear wife, but forget that her immortal soul is imperiled by the faults she shows. Has she talked to you of her salvation? Is she one of the elect? Has the Lord Jesus marked her for himself?"
Margaret sighed, having often worried over Elizabeth's lack of piety. "I believe not, but she will come to Him in time, for He is a loving God."
"He is a God of Wrath when He is mocked," said Winthrop grimly.
Elizabeth wandered down King Street towards the pier until she could see the Lyon rocking at anchor in the harbor. It would sail again in a fortnight. But how could I get on her? Elizabeth thought. Not as a stowaway, concealment was impossible on that ship. As a passenger then? But who would pay her fare? And even were she to get aboard in some way, what awaited her in England? Ignominious shelter by the Downings, the butt of Aunt Lucy's carping. Elizabeth thought seriously of Mirabelle's method of living as she pleased. I'm comely enough, she thought, but how did one get started? How find men who lavished presents on one, and yet were as complaisant as Mirabelle's lovers seemed to have been.
Even as Elizabeth considered this, she grew more discouraged. For she had neither Mirabelle's temperament nor upbringing. Besides there was Joan.
She turned and walked back up the lane, the cold mud squelching under her shoes, but now that her stomach was full, she no longer shivered. She met two young menservants, who started to accost her, when one murmured to the other, "Wintrup!" They touched their foreheads in respect and passed on. A goodwife in homespun cape came hurrying out of a tiny shop, whose boot-shaped sign proclaimed a cordwainer. She stared at Elizabeth, and curtseyed, saving, "Good day, Mistress Wintrup, I saw ye land."
Elizabeth nodded. So already everyone knew who she was. On the green before the meetinghouse there was a puny man standing in pillory, his head and arms thrust through the holes between the locked boards. There was a large placard on his back with the letter B on it in red. He was groaning feebly and shuffling his feet to ease his tortured muscles. Elizabeth paused. They had stocks in the churchyard at Groton, but she had never seen them used; petty crimes had been fined, and serious ones sent to Hadleigh for punishment.
"Goodwife—" called the man in pillory, seeing only her skirt and feet because his head was vised downward. "In mercy will ye tell me what o'clock it is?"
"About two, past noon, I think," said Elizabeth gently, and as the man groaned again, muttering "Lord help me," she said with pity, "How much longer have you to stand there, poor soul?"
"Till sundown. The pain's so bad now, I doubt I can bear it."
She saw that as he was a short man and the pillory too high for him, he was virtually hanging by his neck. She also saw a bit of plank leaning against an unfinished house across the High Street. She went and got the plank and put it under his feet.
"God bless ye—lass," he whispered, with a long sobbing sigh, as some of the strain eased. "I hope nobody saw ye do it."
"No," she said. There was nobody in sight but some children playing ball near the town pump. "Forgive me, but why are you pilloried? What does the B stand for?"
"Not buggery," he said with a bitter laugh, "or they'd 've hanged me. The B's for Blasphemy, you must be strange here not to know."
"I am," she said, "and sad to find Boston stricter than ever Suffolk was."
"That's it!" he cried, trying to twist his head to see her. "That was my blasphemy. D'ye know what I said? I said I'd left England to be rid o' the God damn Bishops' rule, and found myself worse off here under the God damn Brethren's rule, and I say it again."
"Ah—" she murmured after a moment. "Then why do you stay?"
"Ye may be sure I won't if I can help it. But winter's no time to be starving alone in the wilderness, and every place in the Bay's as bad. Come spring, I'll get me up to Piscataqua where they leave a man's soul be, if he's willing to work... Ye'd best move on from here, gentle lass—" he added quickly, "The guard'll be making rounds and nobody's allowed to talk to prisoners."
Elizabeth walked slowly down the High Street, past a few new houses, and struck off on a path which led towards Trimount or Sentry Hill and the Common. She paid little attention to her surroundings, for the words of the man in pillory had closed still another imagined avenue of escape. No, winter was no time to be starving alone, or with Joan, in the wilderness. She came to the burying ground which was enclosed by a sapling fence. Already there were over thirty headstones in it. She leaned her elbows on the fence and looked at them. The most elaborate one commemorated Isaac Johnson, the next stone was for Mary Coddington, and then an infant, Edward Aspinwall. The rest were wooden slabs, with hasty carving.
"Have you melancholy thoughts, Mistress, so soon after landing?" said a diffident voice beside her. She turned to see a slight young man well dressed in black cape and plum-colored doublet fastened with tiny gold buttons. As she looked at him in surprise, he removed a fine beaver hat, which disclosed short cut flaxen hair, so light it was almost white. His features were neither large nor small, his eyes pale blue set between pale lashes, had a trick of blinking as though the light hurt them. He was smiling in a timid, anxious way as though begging her not to resent his having spoken, and she was quick to put him at his ease.
"I'm—I'm deeply sorry to hear it," he said with so much emotion that for the first time in two days she felt like laughing. "I know what melancholy is, I would never have you suffer from it."
"ME?" she said. "La! Sir, do you always flatter ladies so, on first acquaintance?"
His face fell. He moistened his lips and said very low, "'Tis not first acquaintance, Mistress Winthrop. I sold you that brooch you're wearing."
She looked down at Harry's gilt and crystal gift. "The goldsmith—" she murmured, groping. "The goldsmith—on Lombard Street?"
She remembered their laughter in that shop, the pleasure of finding the gaudy brooch so cheap, the excitement and passion that quivered between her and Harry. She didn't remember the goldsmith at all.
"Aye," he said, in the same anxious tone of apology, "f am Robert Feake, I—I've never forgotten you."
Elizabeth took a quick breath and stepped back, staring with more amazement than indignation. When Winthrop first mentioned his plans for her marriage, she had pictured Feake in the likeness of William Coddington, or at any rate as a burly domineering man whose arrogance and self-interest had deceitfully leagued him with the Governor into pretense of affection which he could not possibly feel.
The reality was a startling contrast to her fancy. This was a delicate-appearing man scarcely taller than she, nor could he possibly be out of his twenties, though his pale hair and lack of beard might make him look younger than he was. His clothes were fresh and spotless. She caught from them a whiff of lavender. He had withdrawn one glove and was crumpling and smoothing it as he bore her scrutiny with obvious unease. She saw that the long sensitive hand was white as the Earl of Thanet's had been, and moreover Feake's fingernails were clean. In that first moment of shock, her heightened senses received three strong impressions. He had been hurt at some time, and was afraid of being so again, beyond that she felt a strange quality, eldritch, fey—an echo from the fairy tales of changelings her Suffolk nurse had told her. And the third impression startled her most, for the look in his light blue, occasionally blinking eyes seemed very like pleading tenderness.