The Winthrop Woman

by Anya Seton

  Telaka's thrill communicated itself to Elizabeth. They peered ahead towards a long white strip gilded by the rising sun. Never before except that night at Sandwich before they sailed on the Lyon had Elizabeth seen a real beach, and then the sands had been brown, not of this shining purity. There were canoes drawn up in a tiny cove and several curls of smoke rose above the trees.

  "My people," said Telaka below her breath. "They camp there now near the sand gods for fishing."

  "I wonder where the Patricks may be lodged," said Robert eagerly. "Is this where they'd be, Toby? Where's his hut?"

  "Down there a piece—" said Toby. "D'ye see that wet stony bit 'tween the neck and the mainland? 'Tis a deep passage at high water. Patricks're not far from it on t'other or cove side. I'll wait here to get through wi' the tide."

  He steered inland and they saw movement on shore. Indians running back and forth, pointing to the Dolphin, and gathering near the narrow pebbly isthmus.

  As the Dolphin dropped anchor a hundred yards from shore, Telaka stood up. She waved to the curious crowd of Indians, making signs with her fingers. For a moment they gaped at her, then an old woman screamed out "Telaka!" and ran to the water's edge, her arms outstretched. "It is my mother," said Telaka. "Those sachems behind are my brothers, Amogerone and Keofferam." For the first time since Elizabeth had known her the squaw seemed conscious of her horrible appearance. She loosened her right braid, pulling the black hair forward so that it covered the scarred half of her face. The Feakes embarked in the skiff. Elizabeth forgot Telaka and the Indians as a big man with red hair came running from the forest to the isthmus.

  "By God, it can't be!" he cried as the skiff touched shore. "Damme if I believe me eyes! Rob! Bess! and the children. Damme, but 'tis good to see ye. I can't believe it!"

  He whanged Robert across the shoulders, pumping his hand, and he engulfed Bess in a great hug. "Ha' ye come on a jaunt?" he cried. "Are ye junketing about? Holy Mary, I'm glad to see ye!"

  "We've come to stay, Dan," said Robert, looking up at his friend with trustful joy. "We've come to settle here."

  Patrick instinctively looked towards Elizabeth for confirmation of this astonishing news. She nodded slowly. "'Tis true. We've fled from Watertown—from the Bay. We'll plant ourselves here with you—if you want us."

  Moisture sprang to Patrick's blue eyes. "If we want ye! Anneke'll be—be—" He stopped, unable to express what this would mean to Anneke. "She's the only white woman," he went on. "'Tis lonesome—no mincing that. A hard life—we'd a'most lost heart. But wi' you folks here—" He broke off, blew his nose between his fingers, wiped it on his buckskin sleeve. "I'faith I'm blubbering like a baby. Now then up to our hut wi' ye. I can't wait to see Anneke's face!"

  That night the Feakes laid pine boughs on the ground and slept outside the Patrick cabin on pallets and the feather bed. The cabin was not large enough to accommodate all the newcomers, even though Toby and Ben stayed on the boat. Telaka had announced that she would return to her tribe that night. She had done this courteously, and also said that she would be back soon to help Elizabeth with the settling. But there was a difference in her manner. It was plain that she no longer considered herself bound. This was her country, and she was a chief's daughter; only friendship and inclination could command her services now.

  Elizabeth awoke before the others and lay gazing up through oak leaves at a fleecy blue morning sky. She felt a curious pleasure, and surprise that the night air had not been harmful. For the first time since Plymouth the anguish of longing was muted. She thought of Will Hallet, but not with immediacy. He had withdrawn to some secret chamber in the center of her being. It was possible to bolt the door and look outward.

  Robert stirred as she left the feather bed. "Nay, dear—" she said. "No need to waken yet. The sun's scarce up. Sleep more. There's a stressful day ahead. I'm going to cleanse myself."

  Robert grunted and turned over. Baby John who had slept between them made a whimpering sound but did not wake. Elizabeth glanced at her three little girls, snug on two joined pallets, their arms sprawling, their faces rosy and sweet as gillyflowers topped with brown and flaxen and red hair. My pretty babes, she thought, over a pang of fear. Anneke and Daniel had lost their youngest last month. The child had ailed, Anneke said, ever since they had come to Greenwich. Nor were young Danny and his sister quite well. Anna had some bowel complaint, Danny had cut his foot on a clamshell, and the wound kept festering. Elizabeth thought of the herbs she would have used to help these children, and of other medications she relied on to keep her own brood healthy. But the garden was a hundred leagues away in Watertown, and of her dried or bottled supplies she had brought nothing on the night of flight.

  But the morning was too beautiful for gloomy thoughts. Elizabeth tucked up her woolen skirts and leaving the little clearing around the Patrick cabin, followed a trail towards the waters of the cove. Again the tide was out, and she was not attracted by mud flats or matted tussocks of eelgrass. She pushed south along the cove and came to the isthmus, which connected the mainland with the axe-shaped neck called Monakewaygo. It was a narrow bridge of drying pebbles scarce fifty feet across and she ran over it lightly, drawn by the dazzling white sands ahead. The sands were deserted. The beach lay like a silver crescent tinged with pink by the early sun. Seven miles to the east she saw the dim streak of Long Island, but between that and the beach there was only heaving burnished water, small waves that gurgled and plashed on the sand. She kicked off her shoes and kilting her skirts higher, plunged into the ripples, laughing at the shock of cold and the soft tickle of running sand beneath her toes. Soon she flung off her dress and shift and splashed herself all over, rinsing away the staleness of the voyage. The sparkling glow intoxicated her, who had never yet bathed in the sea. At last a little chilled she rubbed herself dry with her shift. She lay down between two mounds of sand and let the sunlight beat on her body. The gulls wheeled lazily over the whispering water. Elizabeth sniffed the salt and fragrance from a clump of wild roses that grew close to the beach.

  The sun grew warmer, her well-being mounted but changed gradually from pure sensuous basking to curiosity, and a zest for adventure. She pulled her gown on, and her thin soft shoes, then buoyed by a delicate excitement, set out to explore further. She had eaten but scanty food the night before, yet she felt no hunger. She walked farther south along the beach and saw the smoke of a fire amongst a stand of sumac and locusts. Faintly she heard a woman's voice singing. The Indians, she thought—perhaps Telaka. She turned inland at once, unwishful of seeing any human. The singing died away. She mounted to higher ground and entered a virgin forest of huge oaks, pines and maples where the warblers and the thrushes trilled. In the center of the forest there was a marshy fresh pool. It glimmered with an iridescent light. Blue herons streaked upward as she approached, and a white-tailed doe, her dappled fawn beside her, raised a startled head and gazed at Elizabeth with gentle eyes.

  This neck of land that Elizabeth explored that morning was but a mile long, and half as broad. Seldom did she lose sight of the sea. There were boisterous waves and flying spray at the far south western point where the wind blew unchecked for many leagues, there was rippling dark water amongst the grassy islands of the sheltered cove which stretched up to the north, past the spot where she had set out from the Patricks' and where the Dolphin now lay at anchor. For Elizabeth every view was magic. Her steps never flagged unless she paused to watch a chipmunk nickering to its mate, or to pluck the flowers which grew thick as a carpet near the pool; lady's slippers and blue flags—the strangely petaled rose and green of the pitcher plant. In one warm sheltered spot she found wild strawberries and crammed herself with them until the rosy juice stained her face and fingers. Thirsty then, she went back to the pool where the doe had been drinking, and gulped up handfuls of the sweet water.

  She had never dreamed that it was possible to fall in love with a place, nor quite realized now what caused her exaltation. It was not until she again went b
ack to the white sands and stood with the breeze blowing through her hair that her trance was penetrated. It came to her as a shock—the yearning for possession. "I want this," she said aloud to the wind and the water, "for my own."

  During a moment of hopeless yearning, she sank sadly down on the sand, until with wonder a new idea came to her. She walked back briskly along the beach until she came to the isthmus, and stopped in astonishment. The bridge was gone. Monakewaygo had become an island, separated from the mainland by many rods of water, how deep she did not know.

  She was daunted only for a second, then she laughed. All the better, she thought. It is thus more my kingdom. And she sat down on a rock to wait for ebb tide.

  She had not waited long before she heard the plash of oars and the squeaking of tholepins from the cove side of the neck. It was Daniel in a clumsy little rowboat he had made himself.

  "Ahoy there, mermaid!" he called as she ran to meet him. "Marooned, are ye? Ye've given us all a turn, but I guessed this might be the way o' it."

  He beached the boat as she came to him and stood beside the gunwhale, her hazel eyes shining. "Dan," she cried. "I want to buy this—" She waved her hand over Monakewaygo. "All of it, for my own. D'you think I could?"

  Patrick laughed. She looked like a happy child with her skirts kilted up, her black hair all tangled on her shoulders and her mouth berry-stained. "I'm certain ye could. The Indians'll sell anything if ye have aught ter gi' 'em. I haven't had. Been squatting and making promises I've not been able to fulfill. But wot would ye want wi' that old neck? Naught but sand and trees."

  "It's beautiful," she said. "It's enchanted, I think. It belongs to me, and I to it."

  "I'faith, lass—ye're daft," Daniel snorted. "Ye need good meadow land to support a family, rich soil what'll grow corn and crops."

  "I know," she said. "We'll get that too, on the mainland somewhere."

  He sighed, and stretched out his big paw to help her in the boat. Full of joyous vim Bess looked this morning. No longer taut and weary-faced as she had so often been in Watertown. She'd no idea of true hardship yet, of the backbreaking work it was to subdue the wilderness. But he would not dampen her spirits now. And he understood that she who had never known freedom, nor done as she pleased without accounting for it, in particular to that long-nosed prig of a Winthrop, would naturally yearn for a place entirely her own.

  "Aye"—he said, hunching over the oars. "The lust for land runs thick and strong i' the blood. We all feel it. I do meself. Bought those islands at Norwalk, but I've not been back 'cause I've naught to gi' the Indians fur 'em. Bess—had they sold my home lot at Watertown? Toby doesn't know."

  "Oh, yes," she said. "I'm sure it's sold. Mr. Phillips has the money for you. We left so fast that—"

  "Don't ye try to tell of it, lovey," Daniel cut in. "I understand the black fiendish way they acted. But what of your own property there, and furnishings—ye've brought so little. There's nothing to buy here, ye know ... and Robert—" He shook his head. Daniel was very glad to see the Feakes and relieved that Robert's spirits seemed good, his mind clear and confident like the best times at Watertown. Still his body was delicate, the slender white hands were unfitted for rough work, and by temperament he was hardly a promising pioneer.

  "I'm going to send Toby back to the Bay," said Elizabeth with sudden decision. "We've gold and he'll be willing. He can bring your money and ours when Mr. Phillips has arranged the sale of our place at Watertown. Also bring some of our possessions that we couldn't take. You'll see, Dan. All will go well with us here. We shall be manor lords. And I, myself—" she added, half smiling at her excitement, "shall own Monakewaygo and the white sands."

  Two months later on July 18 of that year 1640, the Feakes and Daniel Patrick bought from the Indians all the land that the English called "Greenwich." A tract running north without limit between the great cove and Asamuck brook on the west; and the little stream to the east called Totomack which marked the boundary line of Stamford.

  It was a broiling hot afternoon when the deed was signed, but the usual south breeze blew at Monakewaygo, where Elizabeth had insisted that the momentous transaction should take place. Moreover Telaka had reinforced this notion which the white men all thought foolish. It seemed that between the sands and the Indian fishing camp there was a huge flat rock which the Siwanoys considered sacred. The rock was used for powwows and councils; its spirit or Manitoo might be annoyed if the white men ignored its power.

  When on the morning of the purchase Elizabeth explained this to Daniel, he laughed, saying, "So be it then! We'll sign this on the confounded rock, if you an' your squaw're so set on it. I'm not the rascal to gainsay two determined women. What do ye say, men?" He turned to the five other Englishmen who stood by his hut door and were to act as witnesses. These were Jeffrey Ferris, a lean taciturn farmer of thirty, with a crest of auburn hair, near as red as Patrick's. Ferris had decided to establish himself in Rippowam, or Stamford, five miles away since that tract had just been bought by the New Haven Colony, but Ferris had already wintered on land west of Totomack cove and wished also to retain this small portion of Greenwich.

  There were present today besides Jeffrey Ferris a Robert Husted and his son, Angell, who intended to settle in Stamford and were already living in wigwams by the Rippowam River while their own negotiations pended. The other two, Andrew Messenger and Richard Williams, were enterprising lads exploring the coast, whose boat had only yesterday put into the Rippowam.

  Daniel, through Jeffrey Ferris, whom he knew better than the Husteds, had summoned these Stamford men so that there might be as many English witnesses to the deed as possible. They all waited near the Patrick cabin, while Daniel laboriously finished the document. Anneke bustled around deploring the lack of beer or ram to signalize the occasion, and wishing plaintively that Toby had returned. It was now six weeks since the Dolphin had sailed back to the Bay, and they had decided not to wait for Toby any longer. The Siwanoys were on the move, and would spend the rest of the summer far less accessibly in one of their northern villages. Besides, thanks to Telaka's good offices, the Indians were selling cheap. Eleven English coats would satisfy them as down payment, fourteen more to be handed over later when Toby came back. This was far less than the New Haven Colony—in the person of Captain Nathaniel Turner—had paid the Rippowam tribe a few weeks ago and the Stamford pioneers were envious and astonished.

  "Still and all—" said the elder I lusted, while the entire party walked along the trail to Monakewaygo, "Ye're taking a chance o' trouble wi' the Dutch. Going it on your own like this. I'd ruther be fair n' square under New Haven Colony, and know where I stand."

  "We wouldn't!" Elizabeth flashed. "We want to be our own masters."

  Goodman Husted laughed, thinking this handsome wench must be a handful to manage, and from all appearances that ninnyhammer husband wasn't the one to do it. But it was none of his business, and a good thing to have white folk living west of Stamford, whatever they were. His goodwife would be relieved when she heard, and less unwilling to follow to the wilds.

  Jeffrey Ferris said nothing, because he never spoke idly and was in a hurry to finish these negotiations and get back to his patch of com which was ready for picking.

  The Indians awaited them behind the great rock. Not the whole tribe, but only the sachems concerned in this sale, and Mayn Mianos, the chief, who had walked here from his main village of Petuquapan which lay some miles to the west across the great river which the English called Mianus in his honor. Mianos, overlord of a large territory, would not ordinarily have concerned himself with such an insignificant sale, nor did lie like white men. It was Telaka who had brought him, and gained his consent to the transaction. Though he bowed gravely once as the English party approached he spoke not a word, while the deed was spread out on the rock. He stood with arms folded under his turkey-feather mantle, a wolf's tail—his totem—dangling from his roach of scarlet-dyed deer hair which held six heron feathers tipped with copper—th
e sign of sovereignty. He and the lesser sachems wore wampum earrings and necklaces. On their foreheads were painted the yellow stripes of peace. But Mayn Mianos did not look particularly peace-inclined. His fierce old eyes moved slowly over the eager faces of the three purchasers—Daniel, Robert and Elizabeth. He did not smile when they did. He raised his hand in a sharp impatient gesture.

  "My father wishes you to read the paper," said Telaka. "I will tell him what it says." She spoke pleasantly but looked very strange to Elizabeth in a doeskin mantle embroidered with shells. The ravaged side of her face had been painted white, there was a white star on her good cheek, and into her long braids, glistening with bear grease, the ceremonial scarlet deer hair had been woven.

  They all crowded near—the ten lesser sachems, two of whom were sons of Mianos, two sons of Ponus, the powerful neighboring chieftain. And they listened solemnly while Daniel read the deed and Telaka translated.

  "We Amogerone and Owenoke, Sachems of Asamuck; and Ramatthone, Nawthorne, Sachems of Totomack have sould unto Robert Feaks and Daniell Patricke all their rights and interests in all ye several lands betwene Asamuck river and Totomack ... except ye neck by ye indians called Monakewaygo, by us Elizabeth Neck, which neck is ye peticaler per-chace of Elizabeth Feaks, ye said Robert Feake his wife to be hers and her heaires or assigns forever..."