Now she stopped. “Be interested in your family. Helping my father and brother to develop that island should interest you. Whether your kids can flush the toilet should interest you.”
“A book that Samuel Eliot Morison said was worth millions interests me, too. That would buy a lot of septic systems.”
“We only need one.”
“And one day to track the story down. That’s all I’ll take.”
“I said you were a dreamer when you wanted to move us all to Cape Cod. I said I was a damn fool when I went along. But I was wrong. You’re the damn fool.” She went inside and slammed the door.
Yes, he thought, all the Bigelows had a stubborn gene. Rake had warned him at Thanksgiving dinner during his junior year at Harvard. Geoff had casually mentioned that he and Dickerson Bigelow’s daughter were taking the same Colonial History class, and he thought she was pretty nice.
Rake had poured gravy onto his stuffing and said, “Be careful. A Bigelow is a person who got all the answers but don’t know any of the questions.”
CHAPTER 10
August 1623
For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge
Ezra Bigelow read the sentence: “ ‘For having a child born six weeks before the ordinary time of woman after marriage, fined for uncleanness—’ ”
“Unfair!” cried the mother, and the baby in her arms began to scream.
“Quiet the woman,” Governor Bradford stood on the platform at the center of the settlement, flanked by William Brewster and Ezra Bigelow.
“And the child,” added Bigelow.
The sun beat down on Plymouth like God’s all-seeing eye, good reason why half the population chose not to witness the punishment. After all, some had actually committed the sin for which Jack Hilyard and his new wife were being sentenced.
“You’ll not quiet a woman of good character,” shouted Elizabeth Hilyard, and the baby began to shriek.
“Easy, Bess,” said Jack from the whipping post, “thou frighten the child.”
“Tell ’em we never knew each other till marriage,” she cried. “Deny the sin!”
“No denial carries weight when the evidence is in your arms,” said Ezra Bigelow.
Jack’s neck was as brown as an Indian’s, the rest of his skin cream white. “Afore the sun broils off me flesh, finish your readin’ and take it with leather. Then pray nature never make a liar of thee.”
“Nature is God’s handmaiden,” answered Bigelow. “She does his biddin’.” And he finished the sentence: “Fined for uncleanness and whipped publicly at the post, then man and wife both to stand in stocks till sunset.”
The whipman assured Jack Hilyard he meant no ill will.
“None taken,” answered Jack. Then he looked at Christopher, now fifteen and naught but hands and feet and sullenness. “Take thy mother inside till this be done.”
Christopher scowled. Jack knew he resented it when anyone called her his mother. Secretly he approved of the punishment for her.
“I’ll go nowhere.” Elizabeth handed the baby to Christopher. “Take him out of the sun.”
It was clear that Christopher felt less resentment toward his half brother, and no boy wished to see his father’s back stripped, so for once he did as she told him.
And Jack took the punishment bravely. None in the plantation expected otherwise. Though he was loud and rebellious, he had a harping iron for a backbone, even as it was laid bare. With every crack of the whip, he ground his teeth and tried to think on the strange humor of his predicament.
He had fallen in love with Elizabeth as soon as she stepped from the Fortune. He was not alone. Widowed on the voyage, this strong-backed young Saint of twenty, with flaxen hair, fair features, and all her teeth, had drawn single men like the marsh drew webfoot foul. And the Brewsters, who took her in, ate quite well of the duck and fish brought to their door by her suitors.
That she chose Jack Hilyard was a source of surprise to all, from the Brewsters to Jack himself. He was eleven years her senior, with a sullen son, but he had built a solid house and had ambitions for this life as well as the next, and both mattered to Elizabeth.
Churchgoing was law in Plymouth, but for Elizabeth, Jack went smiling, read loudly, sang in full voice, and made his son do the same. He no longer spoke of breaking the agreement to go off on his own. And once they were betrothed, he made no attempt to lie with her, though he thought, on some nights, to feel the ghost of Onan take his hand.
It seemed a sad joke, then, that his back was stripped because his wife had been delivered early. It could only be punishment for past sins. Or perhaps the elders, who should have been praying for the life of his weakling infant, were jealous that he had gotten the girl.
Time in the stocks chastened most, but by day’s end, Elizabeth was spewing bitterness. Her wrists were rubbed raw, her back was cramped into a fishhook, and she was ready to renounce all association with the Saints. “I hate ’em. With all me heart.”
“Thou’s a good girl. God knows.” Jack moved his shoulders and told her to do the same. He had stood often in the London stocks, and he knew that the cramps they suffered now were as nothing to what would come when they were released.
“If I saw a priest,” she said, “I’d have him turn me papist, this very minute.”
“None of that, now.” It was the voice of Simeon Bigelow, bringing the key to release them.
The settlement was quiet. Most families were taking the evening meal, and few had interest in the stocks.
“Hasn’t been too bad, then?” said Simeon.
“Mortifyin’,” said Elizabeth.
Jack twisted his neck, like a chicken peeking out of its coop. “Can’t compare to London. There, a man in the stocks suffers scorn and rotten fruit the whole time. In Plymouth, him who’s without sin casts the first stone.” He thought that sounded most Saintly. “Now let us out.”
Simeon shook his head. A sliver of sunlight still sat on the hilltop. “The letter of the law, Jack.”
“Damn your laws, along with your brother,” said Elizabeth. “Me babe cries for the breast.”
Simeon grasped her hands, which protruded from the wood. “Forgive him, Bess. This is a fragile outpost on the edge of blackness. God protects us for he knows we push the blackness back. But if he sees the blackness block out our own light—”
“I done nuffin’ black.”
“God knows, but we have laws. Betimes the laws do hurt, but they show the way.”
“No more sermon, good master. Let me out.”
Just then a man came lumbering down Leyden Street from the blockhouse.
Though he wore motley clothes two sizes too small, he had a familiar face, and Jack thought he recognized the gait, or what he saw in the glance. It was the look of a Londoner, and Jack expected rotten fruit to follow.
“Excuse me, good master,” the man said to Simeon, “but where be the house of Governor Bradford?”
“Weston?” said Jack.
The man stepped closer. His face, covered with bites and bruises and a few more carbuncles, warmed in recognition. “Jack Hilyard. If ever a man ends up in the stocks of Plymouth, ’twould be thee.” He shook the yoked hand.
“Thou be far from London and well worn.”
“Thomas Weston.” William Bradford had come out to see the Hilyards and saw instead his former patron, reduced now to beggary. He looked him up and down, as though in no way surprised. “Uncertain and mutable are the things of this unstable world.”
ii.
The Hilyards ate well that night for all their pains and cramps. Sympathy brought food from many a house. All knew the need for the blindness of the law, but more than one child had been born before a full nine months, and food always eased pain in a hungry place—a baked bass, a bread of corn flour, long beans snapped succulent from the garden, a bucket of clams, a summer-fat duck roasted and still hot, a pudding made from all the kinds of berries growing wild.
“I should stand the stocks more often.” J
ack cut up the fish. “Belly cheer and good beer make the pains fly.”
“But not the humiliation.” Elizabeth held the baby to her breast while she served out the squash.
Christopher Hilyard tore silently at the duck.
“For a meal like this, I’d face another year like this,” said Weston, downing a draft of beer.
Word was about that the original London Adventurer, for whom few had good to say, had journeyed on foot from the Strawberry Bank trading post at Piscataqua. They might have begrudged him this meal. But he was entitled to some small hospitality… as long as he did not stay.
Weston had made Jack Hilyard’s first harping iron and many more after. When Jack had tired of whaling and moved in with Kate’s fishmongering family, Weston had given Jack a job selling supplies to cooperages. When Weston began to recruit Strangers for the Mayflower, he had encouraged Jack.
“Would that I’d picked more like thee for Wessagusset, Jack, and more like these Saints.”
Elizabeth spat out a disgusted laugh.
“Bess…” chided Jack.
“Me face burns from the sun, and me pride burns from the embarrassin’.” She sat. “I would leave here the first chance.”
At that, Christopher looked up.
“After a certain lad led us on a dangerous hunt two years ago,” said Jack, “Ezra Bigelow promised he’d never let us go where we wants.”
With his sleeve, Christopher wiped duck grease from his mouth. “I went to meet Indians. Human people like us. Not heads to be mounted on pikes.”
Jack snatched a duck wing from his son’s plate and pushed the succotash toward him. “Mix some beans and corn with that duck, boy, or thou’ll be quackin’ afore dawn.”
“Ezra Bigelow…” Weston chewed on the name along with his fish.
“Bloody hard man,” said Jack.
“Bloody bastard,” said Elizabeth.
“Bess,” said Jack, “that’s no language for—”
“She be right, Jack. Bloody bastard. He sat with Bradford when I spake to the governor.” Weston belched and held out his mug for more beer.
Jack filled it. Elizabeth shifted the baby from one breast to the other so skillfully that the men did not notice. Christopher settled back into silent combat with the duck.
And Weston went on. “I told ’em I needed pelts to sell, to provision meself and the Swan, should ever I find her.”
“If the elders give thee beaver charity, this colony might mutiny.” Jack pulled a fish bone from his mouth. “The pelts be saved for the next ship. We be in want of clothes and implements.”
“Thou talk like the governor.”
“Him and me has little truck.”
“ ’Cept when he punish us,” said Elizabeth bitterly.
“The governor be polite enough to me,” said Weston, “but Bigelow, he damned me.”
Jack was not one to spare words, even with an old friend who had fallen on hard times. “Thou deserted us, then damned us with sixty worthless beggars who damn near brought the Indians down on us. Thou deserve a little damn-in’.”
Weston slammed his beer mug down. He had been a master of high dudgeon, but after all his reverses, there was little of it left, and he was saving it for someone else. So he shrugged. “Business be business. Should the elders stake me, I’ll find them sixty beggars and the Swan and turn ’em all ’round smartly.”
“With what in return?”
“I’ve hope of another ship and good supply. If the elders help me, they’ll have anythin’ they stand in need of.”
“But thou lost their trust. Once ’tis lost, ’tis bloody hard to get it back, ’specially Ezra Bigelow’s.”
“This Bigelow, was he a friend of Dorothy Bradford?”
“The Saints be all friends.”
“How did Dorothy Bradford die?” asked Weston.
“Fell from the ship, she did.”
“Accident, then?” For the first time since he stepped inside the house, Weston had stopped eating.
“Aye.”
“Did Bradford hold anyone to blame?”
Jack shook his head. He had stopped eating, too. Only Christopher continued to gnaw duck bones.
“Bradford never spake ’gainst Bigelow?”
Jack shook his head again. “They be fast friends.”
“Show me Bigelow’s house after the meal,” said Weston, “that I may talk with him in private… about business.”
iii.
Ezra Bigelow lived a simple life. In the eyes of the Saints, it was one of exemplary virtue. Most of his time he spent as a governor’s assistant, helping to fashion the foundation of a church-state that one day would reach from Cape Cod to Narragansett Bay. He also did a share in the cornfields, and he hunted, though he was not the best man with a musket. Words were his weapon, and he believed his words were inspired by God.
Inspiration came to him each day from his Bible, and he spread it to the colony whenever Elder Brewster did not wish to preach the Sabbath. There were no official ministers in Plymouth, none who could baptize or give the Lord’s Supper, but Ezra always reminded the people, when he stood before them of a Sunday, that they were the body, head, and heart of the church, and God’s Word was its soul.
He and his brother Simeon had raised a two-room house near the foot of Leyden Street. They had agreed that when one married, the other would move out. But few women had come to the colony, and none for the Bigelows.
Ezra prayed that God would send him a helpmate, but he had not dwelt upon his loneliness since the terrible night when Dorothy Bradford died. Instead, he dwelt upon the Bible. And he had little sympathy for those who could not do likewise when the flesh tempted them.
For the church-state to survive, order had to be preserved in the public things and the private as well. People could not go wandering off at their own whim, nor could the natural members between their legs.
Ezra knew that Jack Hilyard had violated both of these tenets. He had no qualms about the punishments he urged, either when they fetched Christopher back from Nauseiput or after the birth of Jack’s new babe. Ezra knew the infant to be undersized, an eight-month infant at best, but he was certain that Jack Hilyard had committed the act of uncleanness with Elizabeth before marriage, just as he had sneaked off to Nauseiput himself, six months before his son went alone, and so deserved what punishment he got.
With his brother gone visiting, Ezra he would relax with Leviticus, which encouraged the lawgivers.
The dark came earlier in August, but Ezra considered it a high calling to make his own candles, because the candle illuminated the Word and the Word illuminated the world. Whenever he cooked goose or swine, he went into the marsh and cut rushes. These he trimmed to twelve-inch lengths and soaked in animal fat, which congealed around the rush, and there was his candle. The holder was a simple clip attached to a dish of pewter or brass. The flame burned small but intensely bright.
“Good evenin’.”
Ezra looked up from Chapter Twelve, The Purification of Women after Childbirth. “Yes?”
“Your door be open. May I come in?”
“I spake my mind at the governor’s house,” Ezra said impatiently. “Lest you wish to discuss Leviticus—”
“Ain’t that the one what gives all the punishments for when we bung hole horses and goats and such?”
“Death.”
Weston had not toyed with a man in some time. He was not certain of his ability or of his size, which, before his time in the wilderness, had been so dominating that he had seldom needed to toy. “Aye, death. And death to the man that have another man’s wife?”
“The punishment for adultery is so stated. From Leviticus comes also ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ And as you deserted us, so have we deserted you. Good night.” Ezra looked down at the book.
Weston came closer. “I know of another book, more recent. It tell of the first months here, and—if I be wrong, strike me dead—it tell of adultery… and murder.”
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p; Ezra Bigelow put down his Bible and studied the face dancing in the shadow of the rush candle. “What murder?”
“Dorothy Bradford.”
Ezra Bigelow wore only black and white, yet even in the dimness, what color there was seemed to drain from his face. “An accident, as stated in our records.”
“That’s not what Master Jones wrote in his sea book.”
“What did he write? Where is the book?”
Weston shrugged. His purpose was better suited without the book, as only he could interpret what Jones had written of that night. And he could ignore the good things written later of Bigelow. “I cannot tell thee where the book be, but it damn thee, Master Bigelow. It damn thee for certain.”
Bigelow jumped to his feet and slammed his hands on the table. “I am a godly man, sir. No adulterer… and no murderer!”
“As a godly man the world sees thee”—Weston stroked his beard—“but the words of that book could bring terrible scandal on a godly man, and a godly plantation.”
“Bring forth the book, that I may read it.”
Weston pulled out a chair and sat at Bigelow’s table. “In good time, master. In good time.”
iv.
At suncoming, Ezra Bigelow stepped over the ruts in Leyden Street and hurried to Governor Bradford’s house. The cocks crowed in their pens, the dogs barked at the black-cloaked figure, and Ezra stopped to study the stream of smoke rising from Bradford’s chimney.
The young governor had taken himself a new wife, Alice Carpenter Southworth by name, and Ezra wished not to disturb them. If the smoke rose in healthy billows, they were up and about. If it was only a wisp, it meant the fire was still banked and the house quiet.
Ezra saw no smoke. As he considered whether he would wait or return later, when others might interrupt private conversation, he heard Alice’s voice come sleepily through the open window.
“Ooh, la, good master, such greetin’ to wake me.”
“My rod and my staff, they comfort thee.”
There came a sound of laughter, more intimate and personal than anything Ezra Bigelow had ever heard, at least from his friend Bradford. There then came the sounds of man and woman taking their pleasure. The ropes beneath the mattress creaked and the headboard thumped against the wall of the house. And out of respect, Ezra moved off.
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