The Maidenhead

by Parris Afton Bonds

  “I’ll take care of it," Modesty said, coming forward.

  He started toward Modesty but brushed too close to Clarissa, causing her to drop her gloves. “Here, let me,” she said, thinking of his injured hand, and stooped to collect her gloves at the same time as he did. They bumped again, each laughing.

  It was the first time she could remember laughing in months, maybe years. Behind that peasant facade she wanted to believe there existed something fine, noble, and dignified.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Having finished the midday meal, Jack took part of his hour’s respite on his bed of hay in the barn’s loft and admired the ruby brooch he had pilfered. His dexterity, he reflected with wry amusement, might be said to be inborn. His mother had been a prostitute who had taught him to rob guests with whom she had just lain.

  He had tried to give up thieving. Run off to sea, he had. But even as a deckhand, he tended to fancy valuables other than his own. A delight in the captain's gold sword hilt inlaid with rubies had resulted in a forced flight through the back streets of Santo Domingo.

  "Jack Holloway!"

  He looked over at the ladder just in time to see Modesty emerge from the loft’s trapdoor and charge toward him. "Scurvy thief! Unscrupulous scoundrel! Shifty cur! I could wrap a horseshoe around yewr neck!”

  He got up his arms just in time to ward off a blow from her fist. “Whoa there! Modesty. My love. Wait. Give me a ch—”

  A left punch walloped his cheekbone, and his head snapped to one side. “I saw yew cop the brooch.”

  “My hand, you’re hurting—”

  "Afore I’m finished with yew," she panted, "that hand is going to be the only thing that feels good on yewr miserable body, Jack Holloway.” Blindly, he grabbed at her flailing fists. He latched onto one and jerked her down beside him. Her knee shot up, and he dodged so that it just barely missed its target. It took several seconds of tussling before he could pin her beneath him. "Since when did you qualify for sainthood?”

  Those marvelously mismatched eyes glared up at him. He could almost hear her teeth grinding. "Is yewr noggin filled with pea soup? Wot do yew think will happen when Clarissa finds her brooch is missing? A hue and cry will be sent up—and, wot with the felony charge, I'll be the likely suspect!"

  "Now, now, Modesty." He flashed her one of his appealing smiles. “For all Clarissa will know, the brooch could have fallen off during the trip here or back.”

  "Lady Clarissa to yew." Her eyes narrowed. “Or have yew already copped a familiar feel from her?”

  “She’s too hoity-toity to bugger, for my taste."

  “Jack Holloway, yewr taste in women is most catholic. Any of them and all of them.”

  He had to chuckle. "That is one of the things I find fascinating about you. You are not only clever, but not likely to be shocked even by the most outrageous sallies."

  He was slightly surprised to realize that he really meant what he was saying. Modesty was not a regular beauty, not even really pretty. Her looks caught a man off guard because they depended on wit and expression rather than on bone structure. A painter could never truly capture her sparkle and vitality that came from her confidence and determination.

  With a celerity of movement, she rolled from beneath him and sat up. “Yew be a bloody fool.” She began plucking bits of straw from her calico gown. "Yew laugh when others fret. Yew remain at ease when most men shout out their rage. Yew’ll swing from the gallows sure as a leper has lesions."

  “I intend to sell me life dearly.”

  “Count yewrself lucky Mad Dog bought your indenture papers. Most planters want to get all the work they can from their bondservants, since they can keep them but a few years."

  "Lucky? With luck I can put away enough booty, such as this brooch here, to get me passage to Hispaniola and rig up my own brig and buccaneers.”

  "So the sea calls yew back once more. Yew’ll never settle down, will yew, Jack?”

  "Never. And neither will you." With his poor bandaged hand, he took her hand and held it against his heart.

  Her mouth crimped. “Cut the drama, Jack. But 'tis true, I have no plans to settle down, either. Not here, at least. Not alone with a man so skilled with the knife as Mad Dog.”

  He abandoned his effort. "Freebooting, Modesty, living off only your next heartbeat and a song in your soul, that is what gives a dull life flavor."

  "An interesting philosophy,” drawled a male voice.

  Both he and Modesty jumped. At the sight of Mad Dog, his crossed arms propped atop the ladder’s top rung, Modesty jerked her hand from Jack's grasp. "I—I came up to—to rebandage Jack’s hand." She drew a roll of linen strips from her skirt’s placket hole.

  How much had Mad Dog overheard? Jack wondered.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Modesty dipped her homemade brush into the tin cup of turpentine, then dabbed the bristles into the dollop of blue-green paint on the rotten piece of hickory plank. She had to make short, rapid strokes just below the crock’s stoneware rim, because her self-made paint tended to dry too quickly.

  Then, too, her strokes were hurried because there was yet the lard to be rendered and soap to be made from it. Fortunately, old Juana had appeared yesterday like some leprechaun to shuck the com, and just as mysteriously vanished. Like the river, she carried gossip gleaned from her roamings up and down the valley.

  This was the best time of day for Modesty to desert drudgery and escape into enchantment for an hour. Mad Dog and Jack had eaten their midday meal after Clarissa and her husband had departed, so she did not have to worry about the two men returning until late from the fields they were clearing of stumps.

  If Jack returned at all. Her vivid imagination could just envision his handsome body, now tanned by the hot summer sun and muscle-honed by the strenuous labor, hewn into quarters by Mad Dog's axe. After finding her today with Jack in the barn loft. Mad Dog could have easily gone on another killing spree. However, he had merely informed Jack that work was waiting.

  But that fulminating glance . . . She could well imagine what fate awaited her when Mad Dog returned this evening.

  No, she didn’t want to. She knew all too well that her husband hadn’t come by his name because his mother had experienced a flight of fancy at his birth.

  She attributed her bizarre fascination with him to his rich, melodious voice. At night, it made it all too easy for her to forget the wild man she lay with. It caressed her, beguiled her, excited her. And then his body took over, and she was lost. At least, her body was. Her mind— well, she was still in possession of it.

  And it was busy formulating plans for leaving this pisshole of a country come General Assembly time next July. Reverend Dartmouth’s suggestion had provided the means for her to get to Jamestown. Now, she just had to find a way to buy passage back to England.

  By the time she set foot on English soil, more than a year would have passed. If she were careful, used an alias, she could avoid apprehension. Alas, her circumstances would not be as lucrative as when Jack had been her employer. Still, with her skill with the brush and pen, she could find a way to make ends meet.

  She brushed another stroke onto the butter chum. A shadow fell across her improvised pallet. Her scalp prickled. Indians occasionally appeared without warning, padding across the open field like gray wolves in single file. Sometimes they even strolled into the cabin, uninvited. They would dip a finger into Mad Dog’s inkwell, give the grinding mill an experimental turn, or peer into the wavy looking glass.

  Once, Arahathee had entered the cabin without warning. Like today, she had been furtively painting and had jumped more from guilt than surprise. She knew Mad Dog considered the Monacans valuable allies. As a peace offering, she had quickly sketched a rough character of the half-naked top-knotted warrior. He had seemed genuinely pleased.

  As she glanced over her shoulder now, she almost wished that this latest visitor were an Indian. Musket in hand, Mad Dog had entered the room as silently as the deer from whose ski
n his moccasins were made. His eyes were as chilly and gray as the Thames in winter.

  He stood so close, she could smell his woodsy scent. He reached toward her, and she shrank from his powerful hand, but he merely plucked a piece of straw stuck in her coif.

  She stared at the straw, then up at his unyielding expression. “’Twas not wot yew think."

  "How do you know what I think?"

  She swallowed. "Jack and me, we go back a long time."

  "Partners in crime?" He crossed to the hearth to take up the scourer for cleaning his musket barrel and screwed it into its ramrod. “As long as both of you understand your prior partnership is not to continue. In any form. Have I made myself clear?"

  The way he rammed the rod in and out of his musket barrel made her nervous. He never took his eyes off her. How could anyone withstand that unwavering glare? It snared people.

  One time when she had been picking huckleberries, she had espied him through the trees. He was standing still as a rock. Curious, she had crept closer through the underbrush. Motionless, he had let squirrels mistake him for a stump and play about his feet. Ten or fifteen minutes later, he had snared one of them for dinner that evening. He was a man of frighteningly infinite patience.

  "Aye," she said at last, grudgingly. "Yew have made yewrself clear.”

  He settled a heavily muscled thigh on the board table’s edge and laid his musket and ramrod on the bench. He tapped a knuckle against the empty crock, making a hollow thudding sound. "You were preparing to make butter?"

  "Yew’re bearbaiting me." She jammed her brush into the mug she used to hold her other brushes and palette knife. “Go ahead. Strap me to the dunking stool for neglecting me duties. Or better, mayhap, slit me throat."

  He picked up one of her brushes and ran a testing finger through its bristly tip. "You made these?"

  "Aye. From bristles from our hogs.”

  He put the brush down. "And the paint?”

  "I crushed the green clay along the riverbank and mixed it with the oil from our ground flax seeds."

  "Innovative, are you not?” He picked up the butter crock to examine her work. "You have a steady hand. But what in God’s name is this design?

  "A fairy ring.” She compressed her lips, awaiting the next sharp sting of his words.

  Instead, his voice seemed filled with sincere interest. “Tell me about it.”

  She eyed him warily. Surely he was baiting her again. “About wot?”

  He looked as if he had lost his patience. "About the fairy ring. Why the faces, wench?"

  "Modesty.” This time, she was the one without patience. "A fairy ring is a circle found in fields where fairies have been dancing. I happen to like to paint their faces into the ring." Elves, gnomes, brownies, pixies, nymphs, leprechauns and banshees, trolls, even Beelzebub himself. Hadn’t she married him incarnate?

  “I believe I am well acquainted with the legend," he said drily, "that fairies sometimes become visible to a person who has stepped inside the ring. I suppose you have stepped inside one?"

  She placed one foot on her bench in a truly brazen manner, braced her elbow on her knee with her chin propped on her fist, and smiled broadly. "Nay. I am a fairy meself."

  “Oh, are you now? I suppose you are Titania?”

  “Titania?"

  “The fairy queen. More lovely, more innocent than any other. She almost lost all, but for the protection of the gentle and powerful strength of the fairies who saved her by their love."

  There he went again, needling her about her innocence and her past. But with that transfixing voice, as smooth as fresh cream and as potent as Trinidad rum, one was almost willing to disregard any insults.

  "In faith, master, I am but one of yewr ordinary fairies—angels forced to leave heaven because of a wrongdoing.”

  "A former angel?” One black brow climbed. “Now, somehow I find that difficult to—"

  "Aye, I am. But a human being came to fairyland and married me, he did. Then brought me to his home. Yew do know ’ow the fairy tale goes, don't yew now?”

  He put her churn down, planted a forearm on his thigh, and leaned toward her with a positively wicked smile. “No. Do tell me."

  “Why," she said quite earnestly, “the human being must follow strict rules in order to remain married to a fairy. For example, a human husband must never scold or strike his fairy wife or refer to her being a fairy. If he does, the fairy immediately returns to fairyland.”

  “I should be so lucky." He collected his musket and rose to leave but at the door paused and looked over his shoulder. “Do not get any ideas in that scheming head of yours about going with me to Jamestown for General Assembly. I have no desire to have my good wife arrested for further nefarious deeds. You have already cost me dear enough."

  She was gripped by a terrifying sensation that he understood her better than she understood herself, and that it was the unsympathetic understanding of an antagonist.

  Chapter Ten

  Modesty pulled on Betsy’s warm teats, one after the other, with rhythmic movements. Often, the milking could be tedious and monotonous, but sometimes pleasantly soothing. A rhythm of life, it was. The steam rising off the milk in the crisp, early morning frost. The rooster tiptoeing along the fence. The husky rustling of the com tassels.

  The pumpkins yet to be harvested lolled lazily in the garden, as large and orange as last night’s full moon. A hunter’s moon, Mad Dog had called it.

  The picture seemed idyllic, until her thoughts stopped drifting and she remembered that she was married to a man who was likely to cut her throat with his whittling knife if the whim took him. Didn’t he brand his cattle by a personalized notching of their ears?

  Next thing she might know, he would be notching hers. She had indeed jumped from the frying pan into the fire. She could choose between the risk of roasting in Jamestown or having her throat split at Ant Hill. London, with its hazard of Fleet Prison leering at her, seemed infinitely preferable.

  On the surface, she and Mad Dog had taken on a rhythm of life in their relationship. Rising early by candlelight, they ate a silent breakfast, then off to their own chores. At midday she would carry lunch to him and Jack if their work took them far afield.

  Lately, though, both men had been working furiously in the tannery. The salted meats and tallow that Mad Dog exported went neglected. At sunset the men were back for dinner and after the meal would return once more to the tannery for a few hours more of concentrated work.

  In spare words, Mad Dog had told her that it took a full year to turn a new hide into good leather: removing the hair, scraping the inside, soaking and turning the hides in vats of tannic acid and the bark of sumac and chestnut. Lastly, there was the currying of the hide to smoothness and softness. It was a smelly process. Only Juana smelled worse.

  Some evenings, she would show up in her usual will-o’-the-wisp way and teach Modesty how to spin the flax tow she had combed into yarn, or help dip candles in the candle wheel.

  Once, the spry old Spanish woman even climbed on the cabin roof to drop a live chicken down the chimney—her method of cleaning a chimney that wasn’t likely to put chimney sweeps out of work.

  But after the candles were snuffed and Modesty and Mad Dog were at last alone, the nights were something else. No rhythm to them at all. She never knew if Mad Dog’s passion would be wild and tempestuous, like the storm-tossed God Sent, or gentle and sweet, like a lamb nibbling carrot tops from her palm.

  "Had I udders as large as yewrs, Betsy, then yewr owner would sit up and take notice, verily." She chuckled at the image.

  It was almost as if she were indeed an invisible fairy, so little note did he take of her. Discounting the nights, naturally.

  Compared to someone of Lady Clarissa’s station, she was lacking in appeal. Not that his opinion mattered a whit to her, except for his permitting her to accompany him to Jamestown.

  She had to find another way to get there— safely. The colony’s capital was litt
le more than a living cemetery, but at least she would have the opportunity to buy passage for England before the good citizens decided to serve her up as skewered chicken.

  At the sound of a clanking bell, she ceased her milking. Through the haze of the Indian summer morning, she sighted the square sails of a sloop. Betsy turned those round, long-lashed eyes on her as if to inquire what the holdup was. "Not now, Betsy. We’ve visitors!"

  She pushed back the stool and collected her half-filled pail. Sloshing the milk, she set off in a quick pace for the cabin. Why would a merchant ship be upriver this late in the year? Mad Dog had made it clear that by this time, before the arrival of the gale season, most of the trading vessels had already set sail for their respective countries.

  She left the pail on the table, smoothed her skirts, and tucked into her coif the errant wisps of her newly grown hair. Duck curls she derisively called them. She hurried back outside. The sloop was already putting in at Mad Dog’s long pier. Juana came trotting out of the woods to investigate also.

  Ant Hill had not had visitors from the outside world since Clarissa and her husband had called to visit almost three months before. Anticipation of having contact with other people, and finding out the latest news, filled Modesty with excitement. Her feet fairly flew down the oystershell path, while the reclusive Juana hung back.

  Modesty’s life on the Thames, England’s major trade route, had taught her much about ships. This one was an old, rotting three-masted merchant caravel, barely serviceable. But to Modesty the Röter Lowe, bronze cannons and all, was a beautiful sight floating upon the James. By the time she reached the dock, the East Indiaman’s gangplank had been lowered.

  A blubberous, red-cheeked man who could have easily been rolled down the gangplank was followed by a lanky, hard-eyed man in a sailor’s Monmouth cap. Aboard deck, a score or more hands scurried to secure the ship’s rigging.