Over the Seas

by Josephine Bell

  The President’s orders were obeyed. His following kept away from the trouble-makers, while noting which of the settlers declared for them. Among these was George Tucker. Alec had watched him all summer, for he frequented the fishing harbour, neither working nor asking for work and always when Alec approached him turning his back to walk away. The Scot remembered he had been one of the crowning party in Powhatan’s capital. He had come forward eagerly to join Alec in an attempt to rescue the would-be assassin, but he had turned back with the rest when Alec ordered them to the boats and went off alone on his errand of mercy. Evidently the shame of his failure still rankled, mixed with the horror of his friend’s death, stirring him even more strongly to a hatred that could not die because be needed its justification.

  It had not taken long before Polly noticed the loiterer and remarked upon him.

  ‘Is that the one who did mischief to thy mast?’ she asked. ‘There’s not a day passes he doth not go to the jetty and the sheds, wander to and fro, inquire thy whereabouts, would speak with thee, but goes off when the fishing fleet be seen approaching.’

  ‘And how dost know all this?’ Alec asked her, smiling at her earnestness. ‘Art keeping watch still?’

  ‘Aye,’ she answered bluntly. ‘They let me take the offal and trimmings from the fish sheds to spread and dig into the pasture Will makes for our Nanny. ‘Tis a very good and profitable excuse.’

  He laughed delightedly; she smiled back. She continued her daily watch and was at length rewarded.

  There was a pattern, she saw, in the man’s behaviour. He wandered from the town to the jetty in the morning. If he found the fleet out, their berths empty, he gave a point to his movements by walking slowly past the smoking shed; or if that were not in use, alongside the curing and salting slabs that stood under cover nearer to the water.

  There came a day when Alec stayed at home while his fishing craft went out with his crew, his second in command steering her. Polly, about her usual task, saw the loiterer arrive, but instead of merely strolling, make with a quick step to where Alec’s small boat lay on the sand, fastened by its painter to a ring-bolt driven into a rock above the tide mark.

  Leaving her work she followed, suspecting the fellow was about some mischief and meaning to discover what it was. So intent was she upon keeping out of sight that she did not notice they were both now out of sight of the sheds, being below them on the sand. So she had no idea of her danger until the man swung round, bounded to her side and grabbed her before she could begin to run.

  ‘So, little spy!’ he said with an evil laugh. ‘I have thee and thou shalt tell me straight the why and wherefore of it!’

  ‘I’ll tell thee nowt!’ Polly shouted and yelled, ‘Help!’ at the top of her voice until the villain’s hand closed over her mouth and he made to force her to the ground.

  Her panic was not so deep she could not rail inwardly at her folly in falling for such a shabby trick. It was, moreover, very like that former occasion at Witton when Ben Flinders had waylaid her. Only this time Sandy was not reaping near by but far away at sea fishing. She forced the hand away from her mouth and cried out once more before two hands came round her throat to stifle her.

  Alec’s fist caught the attacker a first blow behind the ear and as he spun from it a second between the eyes that stretched him on the sand. Polly, gasping, coughing, her eyes blinded by tears, felt herself set back on her feet, and heard Alec’s voice, harsh, furious, order her to her home.

  ‘Back to thy mother, Poll! Meddler, I might have proved his guilt!’

  She understood. He had planned to catch the fellow red-handed about some further mischief to his small craft and she had spoiled his whole plan. She gazed at him, speechless, horror stricken. She saw only a grim mouth, blazing eyes. Sobbing wildly, she scrambled back up the bank and fled for home.

  Alec watched the man recover himself, stand up, straighten his clothes, lay a hand on his sword, but take it away again when he saw the knife that had instantly appeared in Alec’s hand.

  Neither spoke until the attacker had made his way warily past Alec and was standing on the path above him.

  ‘Thy doxy hath tempted me these ten days and more,’ he called down insolently? ‘Tis not my fault thy charms no longer content her!’

  ‘Liar!’ Alec answered, in a low but carrying voice. ‘Liar and coward.’ I know thee, Master George Tucker. If any ill come to me or mine look to thyself for I shall find thee.’

  Master Tucker, as discomfited as Polly, for he had expected both to learn from her if Alec had any proof of his suspicions regarding the boat, and also to take his pleasure of her, returned to his hut with his two black eyes and stayed there until evening, avoiding his friends.

  Alec went for a short sail to calm his temper. He was already sorry for the way he had spoken to Polly. She was, after all, only a woman, from whom one could not expect the sort of intelligence looked for in a friend. She had meant well. But she would have to learn not to interfere in matters beyond her competence. She would moreover have to be guided by him and obey him.

  ‘I am thinking of her as if she were already my wife,’ he told himself with a shocked but not altogether unpleasant realisation of all that meant.

  When he went home to supper he found that Polly had reached home in a very distraught condition and had retired to her bed, refusing food, crying incessantly and complaining of pain in her eyes and throat.

  ‘Tis not surprising, seeing she was part strangled when I knocked down her attacker.’

  ‘Her attacker!’ Mistress Sugden was speechless.

  ‘Aye, so. She thought to play the spy in my quarrel with Ratcliffe’s faction. ‘Tis lucky I was at the same game or it might have gone ill with her.’

  Mistress Sugden jumped up.

  ‘You speak in this way, you villain, you wretch, of one who—’

  Alec was on his feet too, ready to defend himself from the mother’s fury, for her hand was raised to slap his face, which now she could not easily reach. Instead he caught the hand, holding it between both of his.

  ‘Mistress Sugden,’ he said. ‘Dear, kind, faithful, brave Mistress Meg, I would marry thy daughter. Will’t give me thy consent before I speak to her?’

  Mistress Sugden’s face changed. Her anger faded and incredulous joy took its place. But she would not show her relief in words. She said roughly, ‘Aye, lad, if so be thou’rt in earnest. I’ll have no trifling. Be a good husband to her. Love her if thou cans’t. Happen thou’s lost her by thy words to her this day.’

  ‘I hardly spoke—’ he protested.

  ‘One sharp word cuts deep,’ she answered. ‘ “Meddler” she told me thou called her.’

  ‘I’ll to her and ask forgiveness,’ Alec said, but Mistress Sugden forestalled him at the door.

  ‘Wait thou here, Sandy Nimmo,’ she ordered. ‘Thou hast no rights as yet to my daughter’s bedside. So wait and I’ll persuade her to see thee. If I can,’ she ended with dignity.

  Alec waited, half inclined to be angry, half chuckling at the goodwife’s sudden formality. But when Polly at last crept into the room, pale, with reddened eyes and lips that still trembled, he took her in his arms, quite overwhelmed with remorse for his long neglect, his blindness, his hesitation.

  ‘Forgive me!’ he said again and again. ‘My poor, loving, misused Poll, forgive me!’

  He kissed her, was accepted, kissed her again with passion and found an unquestioning, answering passion flooding her body, complementing his own.

  ‘I would wed thee. Poll’ he whispered. ‘Wilt have me, lassie?’

  Still unsure of his real regard, still smarting from the whole upset of the day, she nevertheless felt a suitable triumph and said in tones very like her mother’s, ‘Oh, thou great ill-tempered bully—my dear and only love—aye. I’ll marry thee.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Again the single bell in the church rang for a wedding, again President Smith attended the bride and the whole community, fri
ends and foe alike, flocked to see the ceremony. And if there were sidelong looks and sly sneers from those gentlemen who supported Captain Ratcliffe and an open remark from Gabriel Archer about the hazards of marriage to an outlaw, none of it was allowed to come to Alec’s ears and the feasting and festivities were kept deliberately low.

  For one more ship, a pinnace under Master Francis West, had just arrived, making the seventh of that ill-omened fleet of Governor Gates who still made no appearance nor sent a message of his whereabouts, if indeed he still lived. Of this Master West had no news. He had sailed a sinking ship to the former settlement in the north at Sagadahoc and finding it deserted had stayed only to make repairs and then come on south to Chesapeake Bay.

  With Master West’s complement of settlers the number of colonists at James Town rose to over five hundred. Captain Smith had provided sparely for half that number. Unless Gates arrived with the other two ships and ample provisions the coming winter would see starvation at a level not dreamed of hitherto.

  ‘For these newcomers be again of no sort to establish us,’ the President raged. ‘Nay, with the trouble-makers returned, we look to be broken up into warring factions, where distraction and waste will take the place of all my careful planning.’

  Captain Samuel Argall nodded.

  ‘I do no good here, nor my crew,’ he said. ‘Tis best I go back to England with news of this dangerous plight you are in. They cannot know how Sir Thomas Gates and the rest have failed. They must be told that relief is very urgent, so that my Lord de la Warr may speed his own preparations to take over the governorship.’

  ‘Do that,’ Smith told him sadly. ‘I shall miss thee sorely but it is necessary. May God go with thee.’

  Captain Argall sailed away with a sad heart, though he meant to return as soon as he was able. It was clear to him that there would be trouble in the colony when Captain Smith’s presidency came to an end in a month’s time. Unless Gates arrived the position would be vacant; there would be no legal authority, no leader to make plans, promote fresh effort in trading for food or laying up stocks. In a few weeks the first snows would come, hunting would be difficult, disease and discouragement would bring food gathering to a halt and the former President was not now capable of resisting a decline.

  When he took leave of Alec and those other stalwarts prepared to take responsibility the captain warned them of this, though they knew it already.

  ‘He grows old,’ Alec said, sadly. ‘He used not to care for lesser men’s gibes. Nor for their plots against him. I think he sees an end to his usefulness here.’

  ‘And I think you agree with that,’ Argall said, looking very straight at Alec.

  ‘He hath aged,’ the latter repeated. ‘All men age. It is God’s law. I do not admire him the less but age hath no place here in this perilous existence.’

  Not long after Captain Argall sailed the masters of the ships that lay in the river met together to discuss their situation. All, that is to say, except Master West, who was made much of by the gentlemen adventurers for his successful boldness in surmounting the dangers of the sea in his small pinnace. The masters, honest seamen, having discharged their duty in bringing the settlers to James Town, had no wish whatever to share their privations. So, having discussed the matter among themselves they went to Captain Smith to announce their proposed return to England.

  ‘Ye’ll need all the food ye can save,’ they told him bluntly. ‘We held back sufficient for our voyage home, as you know. If we stay till that be consumed we shall fall upon your stores and that would not be to your liking, sir.’

  ‘Indeed it would not,’ Smith agreed. ‘But leave us not altogether without ships.’

  ‘There is Captain West’s pinnace.’

  Smith nodded. He knew that West had decided to join an expedition Captain Ratcliffe was planning to discover food and perhaps metals in the interior. It was a venture he very much approved, knowing his enemy was inexperienced, incompetent, still overbearing and vain. His absence from the colony, whatever the result, was most desirable.

  ‘Moreover,’ the masters of the ships told him, ‘there be some would return at once. The long voyage and the unsettled state of things here have frightened them, quite cooled their spirit of adventure.’

  ‘Then good riddance to them, God rot their lily-livered souls!’ Captain Smith cried with something of his old boisterous manner.

  ‘We do not propose to take many,’ they told him and laughed among themselves afterwards, for they found the settlement an obvious, palpable failure and wondered that any should think it capable of surviving many more months.

  Meanwhile Alec, living apart from politics and forebodings in a state of happiness he had not thought possible, enjoyed his Polly and continued his work. Mistress Sugden went to live with Mistress Forrest as friend and housekeeper, taking her chickens with her. Polly kept the goats, now three in number, rejoicing that she had milk at last, to make butter and cheese for her lord.

  William Trent kept his room in what was now Alec’s house, but he was absent from it most of the time, which caused Alec some anxiety on Polly’s account, for he himself was away all day upon the water or at the curing sheds or the salt pans.

  However, Mistress Sugden as usual had the remedy. Polly, she declared, should not be left unguarded. Either she or her friend or both would spend most of the day with the girl or else Polly would go to them. The houses were within sight of one another.

  This arrangement satisfied Alec for the time being. He still feared a reprisal from Master George Tucker who had made that ill-advised attack upon Polly, bringing down notable punishment upon himself. Alec regretted the loss of direct evidence of the fellow’s intention to damage his small boat, but he felt a certain wry gratitude, for had not the whole event brought light to his mind and heart regarding his dear wife? So he kept careful watch and went armed, warned all the women soberly and hoped, without much confidence, that Master Tucker would join his master, Captain Ratcliffe, in the proposed expedition to the Falls beyond Weromancomoco.

  ‘No chance of that, I warrant,’ Mistress Forrest declared. ‘He is no adventurer, that one. Ready with plots and secret acts of villainy, but he lacks direct courage, as our Sandy knoweth. Moreover they tell me he frequents Mistress Bartlett to the exclusion of her other customers. She is quite infatuated, rumour hath it.’

  ‘I think he looks to provide himself with a lodging for the winter,’ Mistress Sugden suggested. ‘She hath saved up those gifts in kind men have presented her in lieu of money payment. For a private store of food there can be few to equal hers.’

  This estimate was a true one and no one was surprised when Master Tucker abandoned his small bare cabin for the far more comfortable home at the former ‘Honeypot’. This move was not much resented in the colony, for among the large increase in the population there was a considerable number of women, among them several professional doxies, perfectly willing to ply their trade in their new surroundings.

  In his preoccupation with his marriage, his business and his care for his own and his family’s safety, Alec was fully occupied. So it came to him as a great shock and instant matter of remorse when he learned one day of the terrible accident that had just befallen President Smith. In the explosion of a powder-bag that he was wearing suspended from his waist he had been most severely burned about the body and thighs and was not expected to live.

  Alec went to him immediately. All his easily accepted conclusions about the old soldier’s decline fell to the ground. He was ashamed of himself for holding them, full of contrition for his neglect of the President in thought and deed. Was it truly an accident or should he have been there to guard the most precious life in James Town?

  ‘Nay, ‘twas no treachery, lad,’ Captain Smith told him faintly. ‘But mine own fault, for which I look to pay the final penalty.’

  His agony was very great. Alec had neither the knowledge nor the means to relieve it, though Polly sacrificed some of her precious butter to soot
he the edges of the terrible deep burns and Will brought a concoction that rendered the sufferer unconscious for a time. Fearing it was poison, he refused a second dose. His indomitable courage and wonderfully strong constitution did save his life in the first days of pain and shock but it was clear he could not live through the winter in his reduced state and his wounds’ untreated condition. There was now neither physician nor surgeon in James Town. He must go home to England.

  The news of his going was received with calm. It was clear it had been expected for some time, accident or otherwise.

  Captain Ratcliffe with West and many of the turbulent gentlemen had already started on their journey in search of food and wealth. Apart from Alec and his friends the only mourner was the Princess Pocahontas, a frequent visitor to the colony since her difference with her father.

  She was present at the parting when the injured man was carried to the last of the ships to leave. She wept and cried aloud, holding his hands pressed to her bosom, unwilling to loose them for she believed she would never see him again.

  ‘My little love, my little beauty,’ Captain Smith groaned. ‘You must let me go, my dear. My time here is over. Remember I am an old man. Thou wilt love more wisely when I am gone.’

  So he sailed away and for a time the talk and the conjectures and the stories about the President and the Princess continued. But Alec felt merely a large grief, a new regret for the end of his last hero worship, for the end of his youth; but an enhancement of his responsibility in this faction-torn, impoverished, struggling community.

  By the end of September there was still no sign of Sir Thomas Gates. Then Francis West with a few stragglers, the survivors of Captain Ratcliffe’s expedition, came back from the Falls. The Indians had been hostile, the result complete failure, the captain and most of his gentlemen slain. In despair, West went aboard his pinnace, hastily provisioned, and left for England to describe the now desperate state of things at James Town, the probable loss of Gates, Somers and Newport, the approach of famine.