by Anya Seton
"My son! My son!" said a clear voice from the doorway. "Is this the way you show penitence? Encore des péchés?"
The Jesuit priest walked slowly through the crowd, and laid his hand on Daniel's shoulder. To Elizabeth's amazement the big Irishman heeded the touch. He stepped back, while Blauvelt collapsed on a bench, spitting out a tooth and holding a wadded napkin to his streaming nose. Blauvelt seemed utterly defeated but Elizabeth happened to see the look he sent Daniel through puffy, discolored lids. It was a glare of purest hatred, malignant as a serpent's. Shocked, she turned quickly towards Daniel and the priest.
"He's an old enemy, Father," mumbled Daniel, staring at the floor. "Did me dirty at The Hague once, long ago. Told lies about me to me general, was jealous o' me advancement."
"That makes no difference, my son," said the priest with a faint compassionate smile. "Now go to your bed. You are very drunk."
The Hollanders intently watched this scene, disappointed that the fight had not been resolved. Elizabeth and Kieft alone were relieved, though the Governor's intervention had sprung from no objection to anything so natural as fighting, but from a point of etiquette. A patroon of New Netherlands must not demean himself by fisticuffs with a common soldier. His Excellency gulped down a few more swallows of wine, stroked Elizabeth's cheek, then put his head down on his arms and went back to sleep.
On Tuesday morning, Toby, Daniel and Elizabeth finally sailed home to Greenwich. Toby had refused to leave until he had sold his pelts and taken aboard a cargo of spirits, spices and squealing piglets, the latter having been specially commissioned by New Haven.
Daniel was in a fine contented mood. He had drunk very little since Saturday night and was pleased with all that had happened on the expedition to New Amsterdam; especially by his encounter with the priest. Daniel had been to Mass again each morning and held long converse with the Jesuit. Besides that he had won six fathoms of seawant in an archery contest Sunday.
"Ye know—Bess," he said as the shallop again sailed past Flushing, "those Nederlanders're a fine merry lot. I'm glad we joined 'em. Only thing I regret is not having knocked that ugly Blauvelt's face in fur him afore the Father stopped me. But now I've vowed not to."
"Promised the priest?" she said slowly, remembering the vicious look in Blauvelt's eyes. "And you'll keep it?"
"To be sure—" said Daniel. "Wi' the Blessed Virgin's help. I'll try to love me enemies." He gave her a quick, boyish grin.
Elizabeth was touched and puzzled. No longer vexed with Daniel, or shocked by the Romanism which had caught her unawares, she was able to appreciate this new facet of his nature which she had always thought as fundamentally irreligious as her own. She could not conceive of finding comfort in papacy herself, but she now had a moment of wistful recognition that it would be sustaining to believe in something, and she thought with far-off poignancy of Anne Hutchinson.
"D'you know where Vredeland is?" she asked Toby. "Mr. Baxter said the Hutchinsons would settle there soon."
"Somewhere up yonder," said Toby waving towards the Mainland, north of them. "Nobody there yet but the Weckquasageek tribe."
"Vrede means 'Peace,'" said Daniel thoughtfully. "Hope the poor woman finds it at last, she's been hunted plenty from pillar to post."
"Aye," said Elizabeth. "Peace for her and for us, I believe. Don't you feel it, Dan?" She thought of Monakewavgo, her beloved island of retreat. Tomorrow I'll go there, she thought, just for a little while. I'll take the children. We can eat on the sands. We'll be happy.
Daniel crossed his legs, and the wind having died, pulled pipe, tobacco and tinderbox from his pouch. He lit his pipe and answered Elizabeth. "I believe ye're right, me dear. Till now I've been overfull o' frettings and foreboding. 'Tis gone. D'ye know—" He leaned nearer so that Toby wouldn't hear. "Ever sense finding those wretched Laddins, God rest their souls, I've had a kind a feeling. Shivers down me backbone, as though 'twas waiting for an Indian tomahawk ... Death—" he said, beneath his breath. "I could smell it, as me old grannie used ter say in Armagh ..." He smoked hard for a moment while she looked at him with sympathy. "Well, i'faith!" he said, straightening up. "'Tis not like Danny Patrick to be skeered o' Indians, an' me ditherings're over!"
"I'm glad," she said softly.
"'Twill be good to be home," said Daniel. "Can't wait to see Anneke's face when she sees the lace coif I've brought her. 'Twas the costliest in New Amsterdam."
"I've a box o' ginger for her," announced Toby suddenly from the stern sheets. Daniel and Elizabeth turned and gaped at him. Toby had never been known to offer gifts. "Said she hankered for ginger," said Toby, with what would have seemed like confusion in a less stolid face, and he cut short Daniel's amused thanks by shouting to Ben, "Look sharp there, dunderhead! Can't ye see that clew's a-loosening?" The lad jumped, and Elizabeth laughed, wondering if Anneke was aware of her admirer, and reminding herself that though Toby often acted like a man of fifty, he was in fact scarce twenty-one.
In July, Elizabeth's fifth baby was born. It was a big boy, yet the birthing was so fast that Elizabeth barely got home from Monakewaygo, where she had gone to gather wild beach plums with the children. By the time Joan had fetched Anneke from the Patrick house, Elizabeth was lying on a hay-filled pallet in the kitchen, laughing, and with the baby kicking beside her.
"Oh! Hemel, Bess," cried Anneke rushing over to the pallet. "You do not vait at all any more? You do all yourself like a squaw?" She picked up the baby in her plump cleanly hands, gave a cluck of approval, and said to Joan, "Soap and hot vater."
Joan, now a big girl of twelve, went to the kettle which hung from the lug pole, poured water into a pewter basin, and came back to Anneke. "Soap's all gone," she said helplessly. "We've not tallow to make it. Perhaps Toby'll bring some from New Amsterdam."
"Och!" said Anneke laughing. "Vat sad huisvrouws you are here! Veil, then run back to my house and fetch some, Joan. And keep the other children out of here, until I clean Mama and the little brother."
Joan nodded docilely, but she did not go. She was a plain, brown child, and no longer bore the slightest resemblance to Harry. In fact, her lack of enterprise and general timidity reminded Elizabeth sometimes of Martha, but she had not Martha's flashes of winsome intuition.
"Shoo! Scat! Vy don't you go?" said Anneke in some surprise while straightening Elizabeth's coverlet.
"I don't know where to find the soap," said Joan, her stocky legs spread. "And Johnnie's naughty, jumping tussocks in the cove, getting all wet and splashing Lisbet who's crying. They won't mind me." The child waited again passively.
"Hemel!" cried Anneke in rare exasperation. "My soap is where it always is. In the vat in the lean-to. As for the children let them jump! Go!"
Joan obeyed with deliberation.
"Where's Hannah?" said Elizabeth faintly. The elation of birthing was leaving her, she felt weak and tired. "Call Hannah, Anneke. She can manage Johnnie. I don't want Lisbet to get wet, she takes cold so fast."
Anneke bent and kissed Elizabeth, pushing the sweaty hair off her forehead. "Ja," she said smiling. "Little Hannah is your right hand, isn't she? A good girl. Rest now, Bess. Go to sleep. I'll find Hannah."
Robert came back that evening to a tidy, contented household. He greeted his new son with quiet pleasure so as not to disturb the drowsing Elizabeth. "Ah—Anneke—" he said, sitting down at the kitchen table and accepting a trencherful of the rabbit stew she had made. "What would we do without you? It was dreadful that year in Watertown, when you and Daniel were gone."
Anneke gave him a thoughtful look, while she scoured Elizabeth's pewter. "No headaches of late?" she asked. "Bess's medicines helped? Now you will be able to see to the mowing of the south pasture yourself. The corn too must soon be brought in."
"I know," said Robert humbly. "So much to do, and in my bad times I can't seem to. But today—" he brightened. "I talked with Angell Husted, he wants to leave Stamford and come to us. I'm going to sell him land over on the sea. He has nobody
but himself to look out for yet, and he said he'd help us with our crops."
"Good," said Anneke. "Since Jeffrey Ferris is gone, ve are so few here."
Ferris had protested the shift to Dutch allegiance, said he'd named the town "Greenwich" because he liked to be reminded of England, but that since his tiny holding obviously gave him no say against the main proprietors, he would withdraw before Greenwich was called by some outlandish Netherlands name. This view was expressed with a certain grim humor. Nevertheless he had barred the door of his little house on Totomack Creek, and gone back to Stamford where he owned ten acres.
"Richard Crab may come over to us too," said Robert eagerly. "I was talking to him outside Stamford Meetinghouse today. Crab, he wants more freedom than he gets in Stamford, doesn't like the minister either. I said we had good meadow lands to the west, we might sell to him."
"Och!" said Anneke smiling. "That Crab and his wife! Always quarreling. Daniel said he saw her throw a skillet at her goodman last month."
"Where is Dan?" asked Robert. "Has he seen my new son?"
"Nay. He and Danny are in the fields yet. It looks like rain tomorrow, they must hurry. You too, Robert," she said, thinking that a day in Stamford was all very well, and she was glad to see him take an interest in new settlers, but if the field work was not done soon, the Feakes would face another difficult winter in which they must depend on buying supplies in Stamford or New Amsterdam with their cash which she knew to be dwindling. "Dan cannot help you this year," she said. "Ve have so much to do on our own place. Before Angell I lusted comes, maybe you should try to hire some of the Indians."
"Aye," said Robert, slowly. "I thought of that. I talked to the Tomacs on my way to Stamford. To Nawthorne." He pushed back his trencher. His pale eyebrows knitted in their anxious frown.
The nearest Indian village, a collection of bark huts, lay at the head of Totomack Cove on the shore road to Stamford. It was a subdivision of the Siwanoy tribe and ruled by a chieftain called Nawthorne, who was answerable of course to Mianos. Last summer the Tomacs had been helpful to the Feakes and gathered most of their com crop in exchange for a bushel of ears. Today, when Robert had entered the village, he had been received in silence. The squaws had not looked up from the deer hides they were tanning, Nawthorne had continued to chip at a flint arrowhead. It was hard to be sure that this discourtesy was intentional, because as soon as Robert had addressed the sachem, Nawthorne put down his arrowhead and said, "Good day, Mister," quite pleasantly.
The conversation, which proceeded by means of signs, Nawthorne's meager English, and Robert's four words of Algonkian, resulted in a bland refusal. Nawthorne stated that all his braves had gone out on a fishing expedition. They were unavailable. Neither could any squaw be spared. But, said Nawthorne, they could have Wasobibbi if they wanted, and the sachem burst into sly chuckles. Wasobibbi was Nawthorne's son and a half-wit. He was quiet and biddable but far less intelligent than one of the Indian's yellow curs—at last year's planting the Feakes had hired him unknowing and found that he dug up and ate the precious seed com as fast as he planted it. Robert refused the offer of Wasobibbi.
"Something's changed them," said Robert, reporting this to Anneke. "I don't like the way Nawthorne acted, yet I'm not sure."
"The Tomacs vere never much good." said Anneke soothingly. "Do not fret. Ve vill ask Telaka ven she comes here again. She can get her father to send you some boys."
"Aye," said Robert, his face clearing. "I hadn't thought of that." He walked over to the pallet and looked down at his sleeping wife and baby with proud tenderness. Then he went into the other room where the children were sleeping. Through the open door Anneke could see him bend over and kiss them. He came back into the kitchen and opened his carved oak Bible box. He took out his Bible and began to read. Anneke, briskly scrubbing the trenchers with sand, glanced at Robert tolerantly. What if he were inept at chores, and of a womanish delicacy, what if he were sick and melancholy a great deal, still he was not a bad husband, and she could not believe the dark allusions Daniel sometimes made about him, even once a warning to Anneke, "There's a deal ye don't know about Robert, he's like a man groping blindfold on a stone wall. If anything should push him over, there'd be danger." All this the practical Anneke considered nonsense, just another of Daniel's wild fancies when he drank too much.
Little Robert Feake's birth was duly recorded by Toby on July 17 at New Amsterdam in the Book of Baptisms, though no official baptism had been performed yet. This might wait until the child was old enough to be taken to the capital, or until Bogardus or some other minister of the Reformed Church should happen through Greenwich. The permission had been accorded Elizabeth by Kieft during her visit to New Amsterdam, and was customarily given to settlers in far-flung parts of New Netherlands. The important thing was that the new subject should be registered as Dutch. Elizabeth thought this funny. "My little Dutchman," she called the baby. "Gobbles like one, anyway," and she amused herself by learning a Dutch lullaby to sing to him. The Feakes and Patricks seemed to have found the peace so confidently prophesied by Elizabeth. The harvest was excellent. And Telaka had duly brought some Indian boys to help the Englishmen in garnering it. These boys spoke no English, and as Telaka did not mention it, nobody knew that they were not Siwanoys but Rowaytons under the overlordship of Ponus. The Indians worked well, and soon the Feake shed was overflowing with corn and beans and the great round golden pompions. They had no apples yet, but there were plenty of wild grapes on Monakewaygo. During many of the crisp blue-and-gold autumn days, Elizabeth's conscience permitted her to escape from the house and ramble over her own beautiful property gathering grapes and the odd little grayish bayberries which they would melt down into fragrant candle wax during the winter nights ahead.
Robert remained well, the children throve and the two families enjoyed several festivities together. Anneke celebrated St. Nicholas' Eve, and baked "Sinter Klaas" cakes. She told the children the legend of the saint and how he would come down the chimney in the night, then she secretly filled all the little shoes with raisins and tiny whittled puppets. In return Elizabeth celebrated Christ-mas with a wassail bowl, carol-singing and a great feast gratefully provided by Telaka's brother Keofferam.
They had seen nothing of Keofferam that autumn, until one day in November he had come limping through the snow to the Feake house with Telaka. Elizabeth who was husking corn by her kitchen window had seen the two Indians approach. They seemed to be arguing, Keofferam shaking his head and his sister clutching at his arm as though to force him on.
Elizabeth opened her door and called a welcome. "Come in. Come in. 'Tis long since I've seen you both." She noted that Keofferam who was short and had been stoutish for an Indian had lost much weight. That his eyes glittered as though with fever, and that his cinnamon-colored skin was flushed, though it was hard to tell beneath the tattooings.
"He is sick," said Telaka, pushing her brother into the house. "Powwows not cure. Shaman not cure. Plants I give not cure. Chekefuana tell me to bring him to you. He not want to."
"But, of course," said Elizabeth, smiling reassurance to the Indians. "You knew I'd help if I could, Keofferam. We're friends, aren't we? Netops?"
The young Indian gnawed his lip, then looked away. "Netop," he finally agreed, very low. He dropped his turkey-feather mantle on the floor and stood naked but for his breechclout. On Keofferam's right thigh was an enormous fiery purple abscess, big as a porringer, and under the dark skin red streaks ran up into the groin. Elizabeth was dismayed. Once or twice she had treated cankers, but nothing like this. She saw Telaka's eye fixed on her trustfully, and she tried to look confident. "Wait," she said, and went to her bride chest which Toby had brought on his last trip back to Watertown. She got out her Father's old Apothecary Book and the chirurgery box with its lancets and nearly empty salve pots.
She read the section of the book which treated of "Cancers, cankers, Chancres." She felt the abscess gingerly while Keofferam stood unwincing. The top y
ielded a trifle though the rest of the huge hot scarlet cone was hard as wood. "Tell him I shall cut it," she said to Telaka, her heart beating fast. She seized a lancet but it was thick with rust. Keofferam, watching, silently, proffered his hunting knife, and giving herself no time to think, Elizabeth jabbed the point deep into the abscess. Yellow pus spurted out a foot and spattered on the floor planks. "Aieyeh!" said Keofferam in amazement. He looked down at his thigh. "He says feels better," said Telaka.
"Well," answered Elizabeth with a shaky laugh. "You must pray to your Manitoo it stays better, because I'm not at all sure."
Keofferam however gradually healed. He lay at the Feakes' several days while Elizabeth poulticed the wound with red couperus and marigold salve. As she nursed him she grew quite fond of him. And for the Christmas feast he repaid her care with the gift of a whole deer, already dressed and cut into venison as he knew the English liked it. He also brought them two great turkeys and a wild swan, drank beer with them and, smiling, said "Merry Christmas" when little Hannah asked him to. Elizabeth was certain of his good will. Yet as the winter months went by they did not see him or Telaka again.
The snows fell thick that February, the wolves howled in the forest near the ruins of Labden's hut, and everyone must stay in after dark for fear of them. But it was snug enough at home. Driftwood and hickory fires roared up the great chimney, while ice cracked in the cove and the sullen gray winter breakers beat on the snow-blanketed sands of Monakewaygo.
In the first week of March there was a thaw and Daniel set out for Stamford to buy gunpowder. He had shot so many wolves, foxes and an occasional bear during the winter that his stock was low.
He came back the next day and rushed to the Feake house where the entire family was dipping candles.
"Harkye, Rob and Bess—" he said plunging in his haste through the dripping wicks and nearly upsetting the dipping pot. "What d'ye think I heard in Stamford? That damn fool Kieft. that wicked puddingheaded bastard—what d'ye think he's done!"