Over the Seas

by Josephine Bell

  Alec waited. He did not understand the import of this explanation, but rightly guessed that Captain Smith would not welcome an interruption and was used to have his own way, however much he offended those he was with.

  ‘He hath never given any other explanation,’ Smith continued at last. ‘He hath never given any detail. But when he was taken ill of an ague about All Hallows E’en and we had to tend him and change his clothes, we found he had suffered at the hands of those fiends and it was a miracle he still lived.’

  Alec had heard tales both in Bristol and Plymouth of the sort of treatment the redskins, as they were called there, gave their prisoners. So now he nodded and said, ‘Is he deformed? Is it that I must prepare the women to see?’

  Captain Smith shook his head.

  ‘Tell them simply he hath suffered and his mind is affected by it.’

  ‘That will terrify them!’

  ‘But it is true,’ Captain Smith said coldly. ‘In this place no one can escape the truth for long.’

  So Alec did the best he could. He secured from Captain Smith a hut with two rooms to it which he could share at first with Mistress Sugden and Polly. When he returned to the Town Hall to tell them of this he found that Mistress Forrest had been lodged with Master Wingfield, the ex-president. It turned out that she was a relative of Captain Gosnold, master of Newport’s sister ship on the first voyage and this was the chief reason for her coming out, not the more distant connection with Wingfield. But she had to be told to her great grief that Gosnold had died the August before. Since, through Gosnold, she was also a connection of my Lord Willoughby, President Ratcliffe, noting her degree, had decided she must be housed as befitted her station of gentlewoman. What he did not tell her was that Master Wingfield had been confined in the pinnace when he was deposed from office and might very well have been executed on some trumped-up charge had not Captain Newport arrived that morning to release him.

  Captain Smith had also escaped death that day by a hairs-breadth on a lawyer’s quibble put forward by Captain Gabriel Archer, self-styled Recorder to the colony. Smith too had been released by Captain Newport. He had taken it with his customary fortitude, for he had spent a lifetime in peril and was by this time unmoved by any violent change in his fortunes.

  But the news of Mistress Forrest’s arrival pleased him. His own family had contacts with these relatives of hers and though Wingfield in his pride and arrogance had looked down upon Smith as a common mercenary and had refused to treat him as an equal, the latter hoped through Mistress Forrest’s influence to improve his standing in the settlement.

  So the four women were very thankfully housed that same evening, with such of their baggage as could be carried by Alec and a couple of seamen. This included some blankets and mattresses, very necessary in the bitter frost that came down with the night. Mistress Forrest and her maid parted from the others with tears and promises to meet the next morning. Then Alec took Mistress Sugden and Polly to the hut he had been given and they made shift to arrange their goods and prepare a meal.

  A bright wood fire lit them, there were no candles, no furniture but a single bench and a rough table, no cooking pans, only a bowl of oats, some ship’s biscuit and some cheese from the ship’s stores, this last reduced to a kind of friable lace by a multitude of weevils. Alec managed to secure a vessel of fresh water to drink.

  Mistress Sugden made no complaint. She was too shocked and too tired to give voice to her feelings. But Polly, thankful to have Alec still with them for she had feared he would be placed elsewhere when he had been ordered to go off with Captain Smith, managed to take him a little apart from her mother and whisper, ‘What of Uncle Will? Is he not here? Hath he not been here? Is there some mistake?’

  ‘No mistake,’ Alec said. ‘Wait till tomorrow morn.’

  But Mistress Sugden heard them and started up. She could not rest, she declared, until she had seen Will. It was no use Alec explaining what he knew of the man’s history and present plight. She must see him. She must take him into her care, restore him, cherish him. Alec must find him out and lead them to his dwelling.

  Much against his better judgment this was done. They discovered the whereabouts of William Trent’s hut, which was some distance off. There was smoke coming from a hole in the roof which suggested he was within, though he did not open the door when they knocked.

  After a time Alec found there was a latch and pressing it pushed open the creaking timbers. They saw a withered figure crouching by the glowing logs who turned his head to look at them, then turned back without a word.

  But Mistress Sugden had seen his face and recognised it though it was much changed. She moved forward, crying, ‘Will, dost not know me? Dost not remember Witton? Thy home and mine, Will. I am thy sister, Meg! Here is thy niece, Polly. Will, Will speak to thy Meg!’

  He scrambled to his feet then, staring wildly at the three strangers who seemed to fill so completely his small home, who had broken in so suddenly upon his uneasy waking dreams. He made for the door, but Alec stood before it, barring his way. In a second a knife flashed in his hand and Mistress Sugden screamed. But Alec rod gripped the bony arm that held the knife and with his other hand took it away.

  ‘Ye have nought to fear,’ he said, bathing hard, for the other, though so thin and worn-looking, was struggling madly and as he spoke broke away from him, while his ragged jacket fell to the ground, exposing a scarecrow body covered with hideous scars.

  ‘Burns!’ Alec breathed. ‘By the living God, they have burned him to the bone.’

  Mistress Sugden snatched up the torn frayed jacket to wrap it about that fearful mutilated breast. As she did so Will tried to shake her off but only succeeded in dislodging the filthy rag he wore bound about his head with greasy hair hanging from under it.

  And now it was Polly who shrieked. For the rag fell off and the dirty locks with it. William Trent’s bone-white, hairless, scalped head shone in the firelight. He covered his face with his hands and sank to his knees. Too appalled to move, in silence, the three heard him begin to sob, while hopeless tears trickled from between his fingers.

  Chapter Ten

  They waited until the poor wretch had recovered himself somewhat, when Mistress Sugden took off her kerchief and bound it about his head. Alec offered his jacket but it was so ludicrously too big for Trent that the latter refused it with pathetic dignity and politeness. He seemed now to have recognised his sister and to have recovered completely from his initial fear of the visitors. His outburst might even have done him good, Mistress Sugden decided, when at last they left him. He had plenty of wood for his fire, stacked in a corner, and was not without food.

  ‘In the morning we will go again and maybe persuade him to lodge with us in future where we may see to his wants.’

  ‘’Tis clothing he needs above all,’ Polly said. She had been shocked by the filthy rags her uncle was wearing and had already decided that he must have a new jacket even if it meant sacrificing a blanket to provide material for it.

  This discussion took place in their hut while they were trying to arrange their beds and dispose of their possessions in some sort of order. Discussing clothes for her brother made Mistress Sugden’s thoughts turn to her loom and spinning wheel.

  ‘I’ll go see if they be landed yet,’ Alec offered. ‘The boats have been plying back and forth all evening, bringing provisions and stores. By the shouts we hear they are continuing into the night.’

  He went to the door of the hut and looked out. Where before the night sky was brilliant with stars it was now clouded over, while a red glow shone through the haze and the acrid smell of burning swept over him and into the hut.

  ‘Fire!’ cried Mistress Sugden, springing up. ‘It cometh from our landing place. Sandy…!’

  But he was gone, running through the haze with a hand over his mouth. Soon his eyes were blinded by the smoke so that he could scarcely see his way, but he stumbled on, only too conscious that the wind, driving the smoke towards hi
m, must be driving the fire too in that direction.

  It had in fact been only a chance gust that had turned the smoke, for it moved again just as he reached a group of frantic men beating at the ground, tearing at the smouldering ruins of huts to pile them together and form a gap across which the active flames could not leap.

  Whatever had caused the blaze it was no time for questions, but for action. Leaving the group he had run into, whose labours were having their intended effect. Alec turned and ran towards the crowd that battled with leaping flames, beating at them with sticks, pulling at a stacked pile to drag away its parts.

  ‘Dear God!’ thought Alec, ‘some fool or knave hath lit our stores! This is disaster, indeed!’

  But he kept his anger and despair to himself, joining the new group with a strength and vigour ten times more effective than their feeble attempts. Copying the first party he had encountered he directed those about him to take what they had salvaged to a distance up wind and stack it there in charge of one who could be trusted to protect it. The light from the still raging fire was enough to work by. He snatched away and stamped out several torches brought by late-comers and which could only add to the present peril.

  The work went on till dawn, when, the fires out, the damage done, exhausted men lay down where they had worked and slept until the cold woke them, when they staggered back to their huts if these still existed. Others, having taken salvaged stores to the Town Hall, sought shelter there.

  A large part of the new provisions had gone, also many of the larger personal possessions of the newcomers, those articles they had not been able to carry when they went ashore. Much of the general equipment and tools had not yet been unloaded and so was saved. Mistress Sugden’s loom and spinning wheel were among these and in due course were restored to her.

  The most serious and dangerous damage concerned the loss of so many of the former tents and huts. Poor as they had been they had sheltered the surviving population of the settlement. Their occupiers were homeless as they had been when they first landed. And many of the newcomers were still un-housed.

  Alec, who had gone back to his hut as soon as the fire was finally subdued, found the women still up and dressed. They had tended the fire and had managed to cook some porridge in the bowl that held the oats. They offered this to him but he waved it away, saying he was too tired to eat.

  ‘Eat you must or your strength will leave you,’ Mistress Sugden scolded.

  ‘We saved the oats for thee,’ Polly added. ‘We stinted ourselves.’

  ‘Then eat thy fill now,’ he told her. ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Great gormless fool!’ she cried and burst into tears. To his own and Mistress Sugden’s surprise he took back the bowl and ate.

  Later they asked about the fire but he could tell them very little except that the hardship they had accepted would now be more severe.

  It must have been their impatience to get at the food,’ he said. ‘In the dark, with torches, those near-starved wretches may have dropped a flame or sparks. The goods had been well stored and were bone dry to keep the grain from swelling and bursting the ship as I have heard can happen—’

  ‘So our food is gone,’ said Mistress Sugden, shaking her head at the greed and folly of mankind. ‘So now we starve as Will hath starved these last weeks.’

  ‘That we shall know later,’ said Alec. His head was aching, his eyes burned, his ears sang, his limbs felt too heavy to move.

  ‘Get thee to bed, lad,’ Mistress Sugden told him. And Polly added, ‘We have still a roof over us and for that we should thank Sandy.’

  Thank the Lord for His mercy,’ Mistress Sugden snapped. ‘Who hath brought us through all these perils.’

  Polly responded devoutly, but in her heart she was convinced that it was Alec who had saved them again. When he had managed to take himself to the other room she lay down on her mattress near her mother and drifted into a pleasant dream where her tall hero walked with her in a sunlit Yorkshire vale and told her of his love.

  Later that morning Captain Newport with the Councillors inspected the damage. This was seen by daylight to be less disastrous than had appeared in the dark when smoke and flames seemed a true forecast of hell and many of the settlers believed their world had indeed come to a punishing end.

  One of the younger gentlemen adventurers accompanied Captain Newport. He had already been named for the Council in place of that Captain Gosnold who had died. This was greatly resented by one George Tucker, who had expected his own preferment.

  Master Matthew Scrivenor was young and energetic. He exclaimed in robust terms at the poor state of the settlement.

  ‘What have they been at, these lazy bastards, in the weeks and months we have battled with the seas on their behalf? Could they not have sown crops and reaped a harvest before winter? Must they for ever keep arse to ground and mouth open like the cuckoo, waiting to have it filled? Master President, can you not drive these laggards to work if only to set their lousy dwellings to rights?’

  Captain Ratcliffe received this outburst with a sour smile and a shake of the head.

  ‘There hath been much sickness,’ he explained. ‘Many died of it and they that recovered wanted the food to give them back their strength.’

  ‘That hath not been the whole of it,’ Master Councillor Martin put in. ‘Mine own son died of the dysentery that took so many. But he did not receive all he might have done to save him. There hath been nothing but argument, dispute, factions formed, the gentlemen too proud to mind the artisan, the craftsman avoiding the jailbird—’

  ‘There hath been no Christian spirit of charity,’ interrupted the Reverend Master Hunt. ‘It cannot be wondered at, for many are atheist and proclaim it. They rebel against our English Church law of attendance which they obey not. It is much to be deplored.’

  So the argument continued as the President, the preacher, the principal councillors and the two new arrivals walked about the whole of the settlement, discovering many ruined huts, some totally destroyed, much squalor among those that escaped the fire and a good deal of genuine illness still afflicting the first settlers.

  Captain Newport noted, and remarked upon it to Scrivenor, that the former president was not of their party but had shut himself into his own house with Mistress Forrest and her maid. Having heard the full story of Wingfield’s imprisonment and Captain John Smith’s danger, Matthew Scrivenor laughed aloud. He knew of Smith’s background, his past adventures and his total disregard for birth, position, manners or class.

  ‘A worthy leader for this poor, confused rabble,’ he said. ‘A lone adventurer of the calibre we need for this enterprise.’

  ‘Not lone any longer,’ Captain Newport said, ‘I had a fellow join me at Plymouth worth four of the usual recruits. You may have noted him aboard, Master Scrivenor. It seems he hath a past in some ways not unlike John Smith’s, for I learned more of him in London than I expected. He is of humble birth, son of a Scots fish-merchant of Fife, grandson of a Scots fisherman. But worked for a City Alderman and had a certain slight connection with the Court. The Prince Henry knew and favoured him.’

  ‘Then what horrid deed brought him here?’

  ‘He killed my Lord Lennox’s pimp, fled to Scotland, an outlaw, came back into England and took ship with us.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Here,’ said Captain Newport, who, while telling Alec’s story had been leading young Scrivenor to the hut his valuable recruit had been allotted.

  They found Alec, with two other men, standing before the cabin arguing and planning some drastic improvements. Of the two others one was a carpenter, the only survivor of his trade in the settlement the other a former blacksmith, a man of great strength demoralised by having no opportunity in this horseless community to follow his true calling.

  As the two came up they heard Alec say to him, ‘But ye understand the working of metals, dost not? Ye could turn us out grates for our fires and spits for our meat. Thou hast the tools to set
up thy smithy?’

  He broke off when he saw Newport and Scrivenor approach, the others of the party behind. He was full of his plans for improving the hut and while the smith and the carpenter, fired by his enthusiasm, put their minds to the work and even began to make some measurements, he explained what he proposed to do.

  This was no less than to add another storey to the hut to turn it into a real house something like the Cow and Calf inn at Witton. The hut had been built upon good foundations, much better than many of the makeshift cabins at the other end of the settlement.

  ‘We’ll not have space on the ground for all the folk that be coming,’ Alec said. ‘With the fire and all there’ll be a great need to build and to build high will save ground room.’

  ‘The lad’s right’ Captain Newport said to his companions. ‘I have a mind to help his plan. Let us go find Captain Smith. ‘Tis time the like souls came together.’

  From that day a new spirit took hold of the little community. The fire seemed to have burned away much of the apathy that illness and privation had imposed upon it. With fresh food, much encouragement and also from sheer necessity a great spate of building began. The sailors from the ship, even the gentlemen, were set to cut down suitable trees, the settlers sawed them into proper lengths, using the skill they had learned in making clapboards for the first cargo to send to England. Several two-storey houses went up, though many still preferred the simpler form of hut. At the same time the palisade was strengthened and the Reverend Master Hunt managed to persuade his irreligious flock to repair the church on the side that had been destroyed in the fire.