The Winthrop Woman

by Anya Seton

  "Petrus—" she said, still wiping her eyes on a lace kerchief. "You have bestowed such happinesss today." She kissed his thin furrowed cheek, while the Dutch secretary discreetly went and stood by the window. "Now there's one thing more. They must have a church wedding. Please order Dominie Backerus to perform it tomorrow."

  Stuyvesant frowned, though he did not draw away from her, as he did when he was angered. "This is not the sort of marriage for church record," he said. "She is neither maid nor widow. Hemel! Is she not satisfied with marriage by magistrate? She would have to be in one of her own Puritan colonies."

  "No doubt she would be," said Judith quietly. "She was so wed by magistrate to Robert Feake, which never seems like real marriage to me. But I feel there is that in her which wants God's ceremony and His blessing on her union with Hallet—she should have it."

  "You and your whimsies..." said Stuyvesant, tapping his peg-leg on the floor. "This woman has bewitched you. There, there—Juutje, I'll speak to the Dominie. Be off with you!"

  So it was that William and Elizabeth Hallet were quietly married in the Church-in-the-Fort next day at noon, by the pastor, Johannes Backems, who was about to sail for home, being displeased with affairs in Manhattan and critical of the Governor, though the Hallets did not know this, nor would have cared.

  The Governor was not present in the church, but his lady was, and George Baxter, and Toby Fealce. Toby, stuffed into his best bottle-green doublet, and full of celebration rum, was as astonished and pleased at this development as he was capable of being. It even occurred to him as he watched his aunt and Hallet kneeling by the rail that they were a handsome couple. Will still wore, perforce, his brown homespun suit, but it had been pressed by the Stuyvesant servants, and he had bought himself a new linen collar and cuffs. Elizabeth, however, had been dressed by Judith, in one of that lady's best gowns of yellow satin with an upstanding wired frill of finest Mechlin lace. Judith had also lent a short veil of golden gauze, and supervised her maid at the hair-curling, the powdering, the judicious application of fragrant Hungary Water.

  Will was thunderstruck when Judith led Elizabeth towards him in the church. She had never been more beautiful, and he had forgotten that she could look like this after seeing her for months pale, tired, and clothed in drab, increasingly shabby garments.

  They did not understand the Dutch service, but as the Dominie gave to Will and Elizabeth the rings they had taken off, and while they then replaced them on each other's fingers, they both thought of the cabin on Totomack Creek, and Will whispered to her, "The pretense came true, hinnie."

  "It was no pretense," she whispered back, looking up into his eyes.

  Suddenly Elizabeth began to tremble. She was thrilled with awe as she stood beside Will at the church rail. How strange it was that at that moment of her utter despair on the threshold of the Governor's mansion after she had abandoned strivings or any hope—the release had come. The wings, and the shelter, were they perhaps not lies after all? Could it be that joy was permitted as well as the suffering which most certainly was not only permitted, but ordained? Joy. Gratitude. Thanksgiving. Did one dare surrender to these? She felt that her cheeks were wet, and quickly wiped them on a corner of Judith's little golden veil.

  The Dominie went on, unheeding. They stood and knelt and stood again in answer to his gestures, and knew that it was finished when he turned away, and George Baxter cried out fervently but with an edge of laughter, "Thank the Lord! I feared never to see this day!"

  Nor would they see it now, if Stuyvesant had known the whole tale, Baxter thought with wry amusement as he walked up to congratulate the bride and groom. Will and Baxter had had a long conversation that morning, during which Baxter had been appalled to hear of the persecutions in Stamford, New Haven and finally Hartford—none of which had filtered through to New Amsterdam. And so the Hallets had been at long last favored with a stroke of luck. Stuyvesant assumed that because Massachusetts Colony in the person of the late Governor Winthrop, and Connecticut, represented by John, Jr., were Hallet partisans, that all the Puritan colonies must be. He would have thought twice before reinstating a couple in disgrace with Governor Eaton and Governor Haynes.

  But it was done now, and the Hallets were safe.

  "Respectability," said Will, grinning, as Baxter pumped his hand. "A novel, and delightful sensation, isn't it, Bess?" He put his arm around her and kissed her. She laughed, a laugh with a quaver in it. "Happiness is a novel and delightful sensation, I don't know what to do with it."

  "Come back with me," said Judith, radiant with sympathy. "We have a little wedding feast. His High Mightiness said he would be there too."

  The Hallets lingered a while in New Amsterdam at the City Tavern, enjoying with sharpest pleasure the change in their fortunes. They were no longer poor, nor dependent on anyone's charity. Pieter Cock had dutifully brought to Stuyvesant the money and valuables the Hallets had been forced to leave behind in Greenwich fifteen months ago. Their property had been locked in the Munitions room at the Fort. The Governor now issued an order for its restitution, and the Hallets were enabled to make necessary purchases before their return to Greenwich.

  They talked much and gratefully of Jack, whose extensive help in solving her troubles Elizabeth now understood. They all, Stuyvesant, Baxter, and the Hallets, hoped that Jack might come and settle in Dutch territory. Stuyvesant particularly wished this because he had not enough Dutch emigrants to populate the lands he claimed, and therefore must rely on English settlers. And to capture one as prominent as Mr. Winthrop would certainly improve inter-colonial relations.

  On July 15, George Baxter wrote Jack a letter warmly inviting him to visit New Netherland, and incorporating in the letter the cryptic and discreet statement which he knew would be understood. "Mr. Hallet hath graunted him what he required." Under separate cover there were official instructions for the return of the Feake children to Greenwich, and these Jack immediately carried out.

  Jack also received a letter from Elizabeth who was back in Greenwich and hers he held in his hand and read with a medley of strong emotions. He read and reread the first sentence.

  Deore Brother, All the love and service and thankfulness I am able to express is next unto god due unto yourself as the instrument of my present well being...

  It had pained him to receive her incoherent little note from Toby's ship knowing that she had misunderstood him when he sent her away, and he had been extremely anxious over the outcome in New Amsterdam. His relief now was poignant.

  At last he put Elizabeth's letter down and went in search of his wife, whom he found in the dairy. "Will you step outside a moment?" he said to Betty. "I want to talk to you."

  They went into the barnyard amongst the pigs and clucking chickens. Jack drew his wife down beside him on the bench near the stable, and said, "I've just received a letter from Bess, a most happy one. It confirms that all her troubles are over, she sends you her respects and gratitude."

  Betty compressed her mouth. "I should think so," she said. "The embarrassment she has caused us—and the deceit! John, that you should have been party to that monstrous deception they foisted on us here, harboring those two shameless—"

  "Hush my dear," he interrupted. "It's over, and I want you to forget. Bess, by temperament or fate, has incurred discredits which could never afflict you, I know that, and admire you for it. But I also must remind you that there are many societies and periods of history when the Hallets' conduct would not be shameful, when indeed their fretted love and loyalty to each other might rather be thought brave and praiseworthy."

  Betty looked at him blankly, apprehension gathering in her startled blue eyes. "You worry me when you speak like that, John. I simply don't know what you mean, except that your poor father would have been much grieved. As for Governor Haynes—I shudder to guess what he thinks of you."

  "I know very well what he thinks of me," said John dryly, having received several secret and outraged missives, "but 'twill blow over n
ow. All the same, I confess I'm restless, the climate of the Bay under Endecott, and of Connecticut under Haynes, I find both harsh and stifling. I'm strongly urged by Stuyvesant and Baxter to join with them ... and I wonder—"

  Betty rose abruptly, and her well-bred voice had lost control as she cried, "John! You are mad! I never gainsay your moves and sojourns. I have gone with you to Ipswich, to Salem, and Ten Mills! I uttered no complaint when we moved to Fishers Island and then to here. But I will not tolerate your going to the Dutch, not for any reason you could give. And in my turn I wonder—"

  She stopped and laced her large white hands tightly together. "Is it possible that the strength of your attachment to your 'sister' Elizabeth is more binding than I suspected, or than you are willing to admit?"

  Jack's mouth tightened as he looked up at his indignant wife. Aye, he thought, it is possible, and also very undesirable. How useless and cumbersome were trailing emotional attachments, once the main trunk had been cleanly cut. This past year he had certainly given too much thought to Bess, and Betty, though mostly unaware of this, had real basis for her anger. More than anger, he saw now, for proudly as she was trying to conceal it, there was hurt in the quivering of her lips and the moisture in her eyes.

  "Then stop wondering, my dear," he said rising and kissing her on the forehead. "You're an excellent wife to me, and I wish you to be content. We'll not refer to this again and I'll make my peace with Haynes."

  Betty's face softened and her fair skin flushed. "John—" she whispered and leaned near as though to kiss him too, but she saw Kaboonder shuffling through the courtyard towards the stable, and she drew back.

  "Are the Plymouth commissioners to arrive tonight?" she asked, smiling and in her usual calm voice. "Do you wish to do them special honor, and if so, I had better direct the maids to bake your favorite blueberry pie?"

  "That'll be splendid," said her husband. "You make me very comfortable, Betty."

  He went back into his study, laid Elizabeth's letter in a chest with other family papers, locked the chest, and walked out to the creek to see how the building of the gristmill was progressing. He ignored a sense of blankness and loss, and gradually as the days went by it receded, so that he could put his whole heart into family and business matters again.

  In Greenwich, Elizabeth thought herself settled at last. Their house welcomed them, it was a joy to be surrounded with their own furnishings. The great silver salt, and ladle, the pewter dishes, all twinkled once more on the dresser. The Turkey carpet glowed upon the newly polished parlor floor. They replaced items which had been left behind at Stamford and at Pequot. Will rounded up the livestock, which neighbors had been tending. Several had died but he started again. He mended the outhouses and fences, and in the spring ploughed the neglected fields, and planted crops. Anneke and the other Greenwich folk had fervently greeted the Hallets. No awkward questions were raised, only Anneke knew the exact date of the marriage, the others did not care to know. The Hallet reinstatement at New Amsterdam confirmed their land titles, and that was enough.

  One day shortly after Elizabeth's return she set out for Stamford to see Joan, whom Anneke told her had been delivered of a daughter named Mary. Elizabeth, anxious to see her grandchild, and though still detesting Thomas, never dreaming that he might still be dangerous, asked Will to saddle the horse, and she set out along the shore trail towards Stamford.

  She had not reached the boundary creek near Will's old cabin when she heard him shouting for her. He came running through the trees, Richard Crab stumbling after him.

  "Halt, Bess!" Will called. "You mustn't cross the frontier! Fool that I was not to think of it!"

  Astonished she reined the horse in, and waited until the men came up to her. "I mayn't see Joan?" she asked half-laughing. "Why, that's ridiculous now."

  "Nay—Mrs. Hallet," said Richard Crab, his weatherbeaten face all twisted with concern. "They'd grab ye fast's a cat can wink his eye if ye go into Stamford. Haul ye to New Haven, very like."

  "They couldn't!" she cried. "That's all finished."

  "Not in New England, Bess," said Will. "There you're not divorced, nor are we married. Crab tells me Thomas hasn't given up at all, still claims your property."

  "The whole of Stamford thirsts for Greenwich land," said Crab. "The bastards. That's what we wrote to Governor Stuyvesant—Husted, Sherwood, John Coe and me. We're clear for the nonce, but I sometimes fear they'll be too strong for us yet."

  Elizabeth angrily turned the horse around, and as it walked back home, her resentment against Thomas Lyon revived with added strength and now included Joan.

  The awed joy and gratitude of Elizabeth's marriage day had inevitably faded, as indeed had the corroding memories of shame and persecution which preceded it. Both the anguish and the ecstasy now seemed to her hysterically exaggerated and even embarrassing. Her one desire was to wipe out all the past and live in secure wedded love with Will. That there should be any continuing frustrations or thwartings infuriated her.

  She sent her daughter a curt message by Angell Husted, and one day the girl came to see her with the baby. It was a miserable meeting. Joan looked wan and peevish. She had a sore on her breast which Elizabeth silently poulticed for her, but there was no warmth between them. The baby resembled Thomas, and Elizabeth scarce looked at it. Joan whined a good deal complaining of poverty and a dismal lot. Once she picked up the great silver salt cellar, and said, "This'll be mine when you die, won't it, Mother? Since you got it from my great-grandfather, Adam Winthrop. My Feake sisters and brothers have no right to it."

  "I see that you've acquired your husband's greed," said Elizabeth, "And I regret to tell you that I'll never give you anything that he may enjoy. You had your jointure, and not one farthing, not one tin spoon of my property shall Thomas Lyon inherit!"

  "You're hard, Mother," said the young woman gulping. "You usen't to be hard. It isn't fair. I'm not getting my rights. And I'm not well, you see that I'm not well. Now that you're rich again, I thought you'd do something for me."

  "What?" said Elizabeth. "And why?—If your husband had had his way I'd have been hanged, 'tis true you might thus have got my property, which would, I gather, have been so sweet that you could ignore any foulness in the manner that you came by it."

  "Mother!" Joan cried. "Don't look at me like that! You frighten me! I've never meant you harm. Nor has Thomas exactly. You've never understood him."

  "Bah!" said Elizabeth. "Go back to him then. You've made your bed. So lie in it!"

  This was the beginning of a series of vexations. Another one came from Lisbet. Pequot and the Winthrop mansion had provided the girl with a life she much preferred to Greenwich. She yearned for it and was discontented. Having met many more sophisticated lads, she no longer thought Danny Patrick attractive, and there was no one else in Greenwich of her age.

  Elizabeth's sons, Johnny and Robin, were not discontented, they were always pleased to be near Will, but they were growing into noisy, dirty, quarrelsome boyhood, impatient of their mother, scornful of their sisters—a natural state, but Elizabeth found it trying. Even Hannah was not as sunny-tempered as she had been. She took to going off by herself, and reading Will's books. She learned many of George Herbert's poems by heart, and thought about them. She read the Bible too, steadfastly, from cover to cover, propping it up against the wall as she did her tasks, poring over it at night by candlelight.

  That this worried Elizabeth, Will found amusing, and one night in bed when she spoke of it, he said, "Good Lord, hinnie, you pick strange things to fret about, most mothers'd be delighted at a daughter's piety."

  "I mistrust piety," she said. "And I can't help remembering how Robert—" She stopped, never wishing the thought of Robert to intrude on them.

  To her surprise, Will spoke seriously into the darkness. "Hannah has true sane knowledge of the spirit. Leave her alone, Bess. It would be better if we had the enlightenment that child has got."

  "Why, darling—" she said twisting aro
und, and trying to see his face, "I didn't know you thought of such things."

  "I think of them," he said. "I feel a lack."

  This frightened her. Always she tried to believe that there could be no lack in their private life anymore.

  She put her hands on either side of Will's face, and kissed him. "We have each other now for aye," she whispered, "and so I feel no lack. It saddens me that you do."

  His arms closed about her, and he held her tight, while her head found its accustomed place on his shoulder and her long soft hair spread out over his chest. But he did not speak for a time, and she was nearly asleep when she heard him say in the quiet cold tone with which he met difficulties, "Robert is back, Bess. He's in Watertown."

  She started, and raised her head. "What!"

  "Robert is back from England," he repeated in a level voice. "I've not wanted to worry you, but now I must. Thomas has been to Watertown. He has somehow inveigled Robert into writing yet another document invalidating all our claims here."

  "My God—" she cried sitting up. "It can't be—how can this—coil start up again!"

  "It has, hinnie," said Will quietly. "And must be dealt with. 'Twas Angell told me of this. He says all Stamford's buzzing. They say Robert's destitute, and very wild against us. That he swears we've stolen all his property, and I have stolen his wife."

  "But he was in London, in the Fleet, and quite distracted. I told you what Jack said. Oh, I can't understand this—" Her voice cracked, she turned her face into the pillow with a short dry sob.