The Winthrop Woman

by Anya Seton

  They buried Martha and her baby on the hillside near her house, the first burial in Ipswich. Elizabeth and Jack knelt together by the grave. "I did love her, Bess," he whispered, "as much as I could. She is in heaven, and knows it now."

  Elizabeth bowed her head. The grave faced to the east, for Elizabeth had so insisted. She too had suggested the epitaph on the wooden slab, which had been hastily carved by the village carpenter. The headstone read:

  Martha Winthrop, b. London 1611. d. Ipswich

  in The Massachusetts, 1634.

  The Lord hath brought me home again.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ON JANUARY 19, 1637, Massachusetts proclaimed a day of fasting and humiliation in order to soften God's wrath. The news from the Old World was bad again. Papists in Europe, Episcopalians in England—both viewed by the colony with equal alarm—were forcing their scarlet ceremonies on the True Believers. Dissenting ministers were being persecuted now as well as silenced. Furthermore there was plague in the colony, and a new Indian menace. The Pequots having murdered John Oldham, the trader, whom they were supposed to love, were now attacking the infant settlements on the Connecticut River. Nor were these afflictions the worst threat to the Massachusetts Bay Colony's comfort. A woman was—

  A tall, burning-eyed, intractable woman of forty-six named Mistress Anne Hutchinson. "Troublemaker, Jezebel, libertine daughter of Beelzebub"—so John Winthrop thought her, and his opinion was shared by all the ministers in the colony except Mr. Cotton, whom she had so admired in Lincolnshire, and her own brother-in-law, John Wheelwright. But she had much following amongst ordinary folk in Boston, where the women flocked to her afternoon meetings when she expounded the Scriptures in her own way and prophesied at times. Tiey came to her for material help too, domestic and medical, and she gave to them lavishly; of late even men had sought her wisdom and the peculiar comfort her presence evoked. Yet many distrusted and feared her strength. She inspired violent partisanship or violent enmity. She provided the greatest immediate excitement the colony had ever enjoyed and Elizabeth who had led three dull years at Watertown since Martha's death, was elated by the furore; an interest all the more stimulating since it must be hidden from her uncle.

  On that January Fast Day, when the schism in the colony be came obvious to all, Elizabeth and the two little girls were in Boston visiting Margaret, while Robert was at Dedham, the new settlement on the Charles River, whither the Feakes thought of moving. Watertown was now crowded, and with the exception of the Patricks, Elizabeth found her neighbors uncongenial. Goody Warren's malice—now unrestrained because Elizabeth's uncle was no longer Governor—could usually be ignored, but there were other reasons for moving. Robert had become more moody: feverishly restless at times, depressed and apathetic at others. She had thought a change of scene might be good for him, and welcomed the thought herself. Last year when many from Watertown, and half of Newtown under the leadership of the Reverend Thomas Hooker, had packed up and left the Bay, Elizabeth had wondered if they too shouldn't move to the wild but fertile lands along the Connecticut River. Robert had been briefly enthusiastic, and they had got so far as to write Jack for advice on the matter and send a manservant off to clear land and build some kind of shelter, when Robert suddenly lost interest. He took to reading the Bible daily, and finding there apt verses which he said were clear guidance against the move. She also realized the strength of his attachment to Daniel Patrick, and that Robert dreaded going so far from the Captain. She thought this adoration odd, but also touching.

  Anyway the matter dropped, and Elizabeth was ultimately relieved when rumors began to filter back indicating that the new Connecticut settlements were even stricter and more godly than those of Massachusetts. Then Winthrop, himself, ever jealous for the supremacy of the Bay, and therefore anxious to establish as many towns near Boston as possible, suggested to Robert that he might help settle Dedham. Robert was flattered and set off at once to buy land.

  The morning of the January Fast Day was exceedingly cold. A raw east wind blew in from the sea, and there was ice in the ewer of washing water when Elizabeth awoke. She was grateful for the comfort of the Winthrop mansion, where the windows now were glazed and tight, and where there were plenty of servants to draw the bed curtains and light a fire in her chamber. In Watertown there was no such luxury. Sally was gone. Coincidentally with the expiration of her bond, she had been caught fornicating with one of the Saltonstall servants and haled before the local court, which duly ordered for both culprits twenty stripes at the whipping post, and the wearing of a red letter V for venery upon their backs. Elizabeth had made Robert plead for mercy, but his speech had been so mumbling and indecisive that the town fathers had ignored it. She had then appealed to Daniel Patrick, and was never told what happened, but Sally unaccountably escaped from the gaol on the night before her punishment, and was seen no more.

  When Elizabeth questioned Patrick anxiously he winked and said, "Faith, Bessie, me love, what's the use o' being Captain hereabouts if ye can't juggle a thing or two for your friends? Might be there was a shallop at Medford what would smuggle on a wench as far as Piscataqua where they don't take sich a gloomy view o' love-making as we do here."

  So now, though Robert still had his two menservants, there was no female help obtainable except the occasional hire of one of the neighbors' daughters.

  Elizabeth let her two little girls sleep. Joan was a sturdy child of seven, as brown and buxom as the four-year-old Lisbet was delicately fair. Had this been the Sabbath, Elizabeth would have had to arouse them for the morning service but towards observance of a Fast Day sermon, Elizabeth knew that Margaret would be lenient. Elizabeth herself avoided church whenever she dared in Watertown, but no such slackness was possible at the Winthrops'.

  She dressed hastily in her warmest gown of heavy blue serge and put on her plain collar and cuffs, for the wearing of any lace was now forbidden by law. She went downstairs to breakfast with the family on dry cornbread and water. After a prayer, John Winthrop asked the blessing in an abstracted manner, then spoke sharply to his young sons who had been whispering and scuffling their feet.

  "You behave yourselves in the meetinghouse, do you hear? I'll not have it said the tithing man has had to chastize Winthrops, ever!" He looked at each one of his boys.

  Stephen, now eighteen, was a gravely handsome lad, dark like Jack and their father, and possessing like them the long Winthrop nose. Adam, at seventeen, favored his mother's side, and resembled Margaret in plumpness and a naturally contented nature. Sammy was still but a child of nine and his mother's pet, since the baby, Sarah, had died. He was an exuberant little boy; yet he and his two oldest brothers quieted at once. The fourteen-year-old Deane however looked mutinous, to Elizabeth's secret amusement. The years Deane had stayed behind in England under the genial guardianship of his Uncle Downing had bred in the lad some headstrong opinions which he usually stated, and did so now. "Oh, Father, please, sir, do I HAVE to go to church twice TODAY as well as on Sundays?"

  "You do, sir!" said Winthrop. He had spent many hours praying for Deane and for guidance in subduing him, being aware that he was the most like Harry of all Margaret's brood. "Also," continued Winthrop, "is it necessary to remind you again that here we say 'meetinghouse,' and 'Sabbath,' not those Popish terms you used?"

  "They were saying in London that New Englanders've changed the names of everything to suit themselves—seasons, months, days, churches and taverns—" said Deane not quite pertly. "I don't like calling this good old January 'Eleven month,' and why can't I call today 'Friday'?"

  "Deane!" interrupted Margaret. "Stop fretting your father! You've been told why. We don't use pagan names or Papist ones, and anyway 'tis not for you to question. Eat your cornbread!"

  "I don't want it," said Deane. "It's like sawdust."

  "It might taste better to you after a good thrashing," said his father wearily, "which I should certainly administer now if there were time." He got up and walked out to his study, wh
ere his table was littered with notes relative to the dreadful Antinomian behavior of Mistress Anne Hutchinson and her brother-in-law, Wheelwright, and pages of his own agonized religious experience with particular reference to the opposed covenants of Grace and Works which were splitting the colony.

  "How can you be so thoughtless as to add to your poor father's grave anxieties?" said Margaret. "He scarce slept last night."

  "I don't see why he bothers so," said Deane, unmoved by the thought of a beating . "'Tisn't as though he was Governor, and why doesn't he let Harry Vane do as lie pleases, and that Mrs. Hutchinson too? I like her and maybe she does hear the Holy Ghost speaking. How does Father know she doesn't?"

  Margaret looked so shocked that her eldest came to her defense. "Oh, stop blabbering, Deane—" said Stephen. "Get up and go wash your hands for the meeting, or I'll give you that thrashing myself."

  Deane made a rude noise, indicative of his disbelief in the threat, for he was as big as Stephen, but he got up and shambled out of the room. The other boys followed, and Margaret said sighing to Elizabeth, "I wonder why the Dear Lord wished me to raise only sons. They can be so trying. A daughter would have been a comfort." Her gentle brown eyes filled with the tears that came easily of late. She had grieved much for little Sarah, and was afflicted with melancholy and physical ailments relative to the age she had reached and the certainty that she would never bear another child. "And it seems that I have nothing but daughters," said Elizabeth as lightly as she could.

  "Oh, you'll bear a son, dear, I'm sure," said Margaret, instantly sympathetic. She thought it strange that four years had passed since Lisbet's birth, and tried not to guess the reason, though she was quite perceptive enough to see Robert's peculiarities and effeminacy. How sad that God had thought it needful to afflict Bess with unfortunate marriages. The women, in silence, exchanged a look of affection, then jumped as the warning horn blew from the meetinghouse steps, and the bell-ringer paused by the corner of School Street jangling his bell and calling, "Hear ye all! Hear ye all! Come to Meeting!"

  Most of the morning service was as excessively dull as Elizabeth had feared. Mr. Wilson had the pulpit and prayed for nearly an hour on the general themes of fasting and humiliation. But then came a more stimulating moment as the minister lined out for them the Seventieth Psalm in the Puritan's special old psalm book, and the congregation started off in the nasal drone considered appropriate until at the second verse Wilson suddenly became impassioned. His thick voice rose to a shout, his bullet head stuck forward, and everyone saw that he was glaring from the pulpit at Mrs. Anne Hutchinson and her family, while he sang:

  "Confounde them that apply

  And seek to make my shame

  And at my harme do laugh and crye

  So So there goeth their game."

  Elizabeth could not resist turning in her pew to see how Mrs. Hutchinson took it. The lady, her dark eyes flashing, stood stiff and straight, and immediately raising her own voice, sang all the words of the psalm right back at the minister, who reddened with anger. By this time the whole colony knew that at her afternoon meetings Mrs. Hutchinson had called Mr. Wilson unsanctified, a benighted adherent to the Covenant of Works, like all the other ministers at the Bay except Mr. Cotton, and her brother-in-law. But the battle had never come into the open like this and there was an irrepressible gasp when Mrs. Hutchinson, instead of seating herself for the sermon, walked majestically down the aisle, followed by her meek little husband and their older children. The street door shut behind them and Wilson, turning purple, clenched his fist on the Bible.

  How brave Mrs. Hutchinson was! Elizabeth thought. Fancy defying Mr. Wilson and Uncle John like that, and yet there was such dignity about her. She had an almost tangible magnetism and real beauty despite her iron-gray hair and plain big-boned face; a shining secret look that made Elizabeth long to know her.

  The ripple of excitement gradually died down. Mr. Wilson controlled himself and having apparently decided to avoid further conflict, fashioned his two-hour sermon around some obscure text from Deuteronomy to which Elizabeth did not bother to listen. She clasped her cold gloved hands tight in her muff and allowed her mind to wander. The women sat on the hard unpainted benches to the left of the aisle, the men on the right, and all arranged according to rank. The Winthrop ladies shared the first pew, but the new young Governor Harry Vane held the corresponding seat of honor across the aisle.

  Elizabeth therefore had a good view of the handsome aristocrat. His blond hair fell to his shoulders over an elegant green mantle. He had extremely regular features and a full sensuous mouth, slightly petulant. A pretty boy, she thought, and not a very wise one. Winthrop, and indeed all the colony, had been immensely flattered last year at the arrival of this newly converted Puritan whose father, Sir Henry Vane, was actually Secretary of State to King Charles. They had fawned on the young man, despite the fact that he set out at once to reform the colony, and had even taken Winthrop and Dudley to task publicly for their many disagreements. Then he had been elected Governor and horrified Winthrop, who had been elected Deputy, by siding with Anne Hutchinson, and passionately maintaining that he DID have a personal union with the Holy Ghost and believed in the Covenant of Grace, fn the ensuing fuss Vane tried to resign, and finally burst into tears before the whole court. They had persuaded him to remain until May, when his term was up, chiefly because Winthrop was afraid of what might be said in London if he went home like that. But Vane looked, Elizabeth thought, like an unhappy lad, and she knew that he and her uncle had ceased to speak to each other in private no matter their public courtesies.

  How many mistakes in judgment Uncle John had made, Elizabeth thought, remembering how delighted he had been with Vane at first, and with Mrs. Hutchinson too. Or were they mistakes, exactly, since all his actions sprang from his consuming desire for the colony's survival, and she had not forgotten the respect she had felt for his ideal on the day they had journeyed to Ipswich. If only he weren't so deadly serious always. She glanced back to the next pew behind Governor Vane.

  John Winthrop sat there gravely listening to the sermon with his two eldest boys. Deane and Sammy were stuffed in the gallery with other lads where, if they misbehaved, the tithing man could bang them on the head with the knob of his tipstaff.

  Jack was in Ipswich, but between Elizabeth and Margaret sat Jack's new wife. "The intruder," as Elizabeth always called her to herself, nor had she been able quite to conquer her shock and resentment when Jack returned from a long voyage to England the year after Martha's death bringing with him a strapping, fair-haired girl of nineteen called Elizabeth, who had been a Miss Reade of Wickford in Essex, and was stepdaughter to Salem's vociferous new minister, Hugh Peter.

  There had been a bitter scene with Jack on the October night of the reception in Boston for his new wife. The Feakes, of course, had been invited and Elizabeth had stood stiffly in a comer gazing at the "intruder" when Jack came up, and taking her hand, pulled her out the door into the chilly garden.

  "Bess," he said smiling uneasily as she snatched her hand away. "You were staring at my wife as though she were an adder—don't!"

  Elizabeth backed against the house wall, and raised her chin. "You lost no time in replacing my poor Matt, did you, Jack!"

  "Why—" he said, still smiling into her angry eyes. "You couldn't expect me to remain a widower? A man needs a wife and children."

  "Ah, to be sure," she said grimly. "This one looks very healthy too, and I see has already started breeding. She should suit you well."

  His smile faded, and he responded in a sharper tone. "Elizabeth suits me very well, and I marvel that you seem so shrewish."

  Her eyes blazed green, and she could not stop herself from crying, "And she would bear my own name, of course! Not even that is left to me for myself."

  It took Jack a moment to understand this speech, yet because of all that had been between them, and which could never entirely die, he finally did. He looked with attention at the flushed
face, framed by dark curls, at the red trembling mouth, and said quietly, "She cannot help her name, Bess. There is nothing taken from you, or Martha ... but what must be..." His voice trailed off.

  There were leaves burning in the High Street side of the garden near a clump of frost-bitten marigolds. The fragrant blue smoke drifted around them, and they both thought of a London garden where they had stood facing each other like this, nine years ago, before Jack had sailed for the Levant. Then they heard a babel of voices from inside the house, and the high-pitched assured laugh of Jack's new wife.

  "I'm off for Saybrook—" he said abruptly, "for the Connecticut country—on the business My Lords Say and Brooke entrusted to me in London."

  "Ah..." she said with malice, "so even this fair, suitable young wife cannot keep you at her side. She will be desolate."

  This time he ignored her tone and looked deep into her eyes, seeing there the desolation she imputed to another, and said, "Bess, I wish to God you were happy—if ever I can—" He dropped his voice and flushed, "You still have my glove?"

  "Aye—" she said on a long breath, the jealous hurt dissolving a little. She slowly raised her face to his with an almost soundless murmur of longing, and in return he whispered something while he bent and kissed her on the mouth. A timeless instant that yet included time enough for the door to be flung open, and the other Elizabeth to step out and give a sharp cry "John!"

  They sprang apart, and Elizabeth leaned against the house wall, trying to still the pounding of her heart, but Jack, from guilt and confusion, spoke in anger to his wife. "Well, what is it, that you gape like a hooked fish?"

  "You were kissing her," gasped the fair-haired girl, her handsome rather bovine face turning pink.