“Hiram, you bring me a chevalier.”
“Is that what he is?”
“Clearly, we have much to discuss. Much!”
* * *
Which they did, over a restorative dinner of lobsters and oysters and commendable wine. Out of respect for Thankful, Huncks didn’t tell the Pells her story but confined his narrative to the hunt for the regicide judges: the events at the cliff, their rescue by Bartholomew but not the rest. The Pells listened, rapt. They knew the terrain and the players well.
After Pell was forced to leave the court of Charles I as a result of his unwise pursuit of one of Queen Marie-Henrietta’s ladies-in-waiting, he went off to campaign in the Netherlands during what was now being called the Thirty Years War. It was the fashion at the time among young men of good birth. Pell served under Baron Vere of Tilbury and was present at the siege and capture of Bois-le-Duc.
In 1635, after surgical training, he enlisted for service in New England, at Fort Saybrook, as lieutenant and surgeon. He was at nearby Fort Mystick in 1637 for the final engagement of the Pequot War, when Captains Mason and Underhill surrounded the Pequot village there and killed seven hundred Pequot men, women, and children with musket, sword, and fire.
Underhill denounced Pell for lingering aboard ship before coming ashore to see to the wounded. Pell countered that this was unfair. He’d waited to debark until the beach was secured and then did everything he could. Even now, almost thirty years on, he still had nightmares of the carnage, the piles of amputated limbs, the stench of hundreds of Indians broiled to death.
He left military service and migrated down the Connecticut coast, settling in the new colony at New Haven founded by Eaton and Davenport. He made a good living as a surgeon, but his irrepressible cheer and ardent royalism set him apart from the dour saints. He in turn grew to despair of their long, drawn faces and implacable grimness. In all his years there, he said, he could count on a single hand the number of times he had heard laughter. He scoffed at their credo that the New England Indians were the remnant of the Lost Tribe of Israel. This tenet was central to Puritan cosmology, for if the Indians themselves were descendants of immigrants, then the English were merely more recent immigrants, with equal—if not superior—rights to the land. Pell held in equal contempt the other Puritan belief that God had sent a plague to clear the land for English settlement. These contrarian views did not endear him to the New Haveners. He and Davenport finally fell out in 1650 when Pell refused to take an oath of loyalty to Oliver Cromwell. His already strained relations with the saints were exacerbated when he married Lucy Brewster, a formidable, peppery-tongued widow of a wealthy merchant. Lucy despised Puritans and defiantly refused to pay New Haven death taxes on her deceased husband.
“Good, my hen,” Pell applauded. “Spend it on me, not the saints!” Iron willed and unyielding, they fought constantly and adored each other.
They left New Haven without regret and moved twenty miles down the coast, settling in the place named for its fair field. Pell had first been here during the Pequot War, accompanying Underhill’s men as they ran fleeing Pequots to earth. Few of that tribe remained now. Those captured were put in chains and shipped to Barbadoes as plantation slaves. Sachem’s Head, a promontory on the shore, was named for a Pequot chieftain killed and decapitated there, his head mounted in a tree.
Financed by Lucy’s widow money, Pell prospered, not from doctoring but land speculation. He purchased the fifty thousand problematic acres between Connecticut and New Netherland from Wampage, chieftain of the Siwanoy. The land became known as No-Man’s-Land. The label amused Pell, who took to calling himself “Dr. No Man.”
But it was a buyer’s market. Between murderous Indians and skirmishing Dutch and English, the marsh and woodland weren’t especially congenial to settlement. The Restoration, along with increased religious tolerance in England, had curtailed emigration. As one pamphlet noted sardonically, “New England is Old Newes, and Old England New Newes.”
Rumor was, Dr. Pell’s real purpose in buying the land from Wampage was to provoke the war between England and Holland that everyone knew must come sooner or later. This in turn fueled speculation that Pell, a conspicuous royalist for having served in the household of the present king’s father, was an agent of the Crown. His private militia, headquartered on City Island, enjoyed a robust enrollment. It was well armed, trained regularly, and maintained a vigilant patrol of Pell’s acres.
* * *
Thankful, grieving over the Cobbs, barely spoke a word at dinner. Mrs. Pell noticed her distress and fussed over her like a mother, gently scolding, urging her to eat for strength and asking questions to draw her away from the increasingly loud, wine-fueled talk among the men about the regicide judges.
When Balty described Dr. DeVrootje, the Dutch surgeon of Milford, Pell let out a groan and declared that DeVrootje was the worst bandit in all New England and, into the bargain, incompetent—like all Dutch surgeons, he added, who knew nothing of medicine other than how to cut off limbs, along with their owners’ purse strings.
Balty told about DeVrootje’s odd prescription of clam chowder. But instead of letting loose a fresh torrent of ridicule, Pell fell silent. He sat pensively, then said that this in fact was his experience, too. Shore dwellers seemed to recover from what he called “traumatic paralysis” at a greater rate than inlanders.
Pell shrugged off his epiphany and poured another round of wine, eager to resume the evening’s conviviality and disparagement of Dutch surgeons.
How much did DeVrootje charge? A half sovereign? Larcenous! Did Balty and Huncks know why Dutch doctors charged so much? he asked. They’re saving money to buy tulip bulbs. Bulbs! One bulb—one single bulb—had sold in Amsterdam for 4,200 florins—the price of a fine house. Tipsy now, Pell muttered that perhaps God should send a plague to cause a “Great Dying” of Dutch in the New World.
This brought a sharp rebuke from Mrs. Pell, who pointed out that the Dutch tulip craze had ended years ago—about the time, she said acidulously, “that you and Underhill were causing a ‘Great Dying’ of natives.”
Pell fell into a sulk.
“Come, pet,” Mrs. Pell said, taking Thankful by the hand and tugging her off into the kitchen. “There’s no conversation fit for listening at this table.”
Alone with Balty and Huncks, Pell said, “Tell me the rest of it.”
Balty told of Repent’s murder of Thankful’s husband, her attempt to get justice, her naked protest, and flogging. Huncks told what befell the Cobbs and the constables sent by Jones and Davenport to arrest Thankful for Repent’s crime.
Pell listened without expression. Balty thought him indifferent. Perhaps he’d witnessed too much cruelty and misery here himself. Then he saw the tear leak from his eye, which Pell brushed away with annoyance, as he might a mosquito, and poured another round.
– CHAPTER 30 –
Underhill Is Critical
Next morning Balty awoke with a throbbing head and gummy eyes. Huncks’s bed was empty. Balty shuffled into the kitchen and found Mrs. Pell rolling pastry.
“Where is everyone?”
“Thankful’s in the garden. The others are in the surgery. And how are we feeling this morning, Mr. Balty?”
“Bit baggy, actually.”
Mrs. Pell wiped her hands on her apron. She went to a cupboard, took down a small bottle, and poured some dreadful-looking thick, dark liquid into a small glass and gave it to him. “Drink it all down in one gulp.”
Balty stared at it. “Does it contain gunpowder?”
“Gunpowder? I should say not. Go on. It won’t kill you. Hippocrates and Hiram have already had theirs.”
Balty closed his eyes, uttered a quick prayer, and tossed it back. It was tarry and vile. Indeed, he had never tasted anything so tarry and vile. His esophagus constricted like a boa. He gasped and squeaked, thinking he might suffocate. Then the boa unconstricted and he could breathe and suddenly all was well. Quite well, considering.
&nb
sp; “I won’t ask what’s in it,” he said, handing her back the glass.
“No, don’t.” She went back to her pastry. Not looking up, she said, “She told me everything.”
“I rather hoped she would.”
“I don’t like to think evil thoughts, Mr. Balty. Evil makes evil. But I’ll say, with God listening: if the earth opened and swallowed all New Haven and all its saints, I wouldn’t cheer, but neither would I weep.”
She stopped rolling and tucked an errant lock of hair back into her cap. “She’s a darling. She can stay here as long she wants. And if Jones or the Reverend Davenport’s Indian godson comes looking for her, I’ll shoot them myself.”
“They think we’ve gone to Hartford.”
“Then I’ve half a mind to go to Hartford and shoot them there. And don’t think I wouldn’t.” She had the rolling pin by the handle, shaking it like a club. She went back to her rolling. “Go on. They’re in the surgery.”
Balty went to the door.
“Mr. Balty?”
“Yes, Mrs. Pell?”
“What you and Hiram done for her. It was good of you.”
“Well . . .”
“She’s sweet on you.”
“Oh?”
“Come, Mr. Balty.” Mrs. Pell laughed. “Surely you can do better than ‘Oh?’ ”
“She is . . . a fine person.”
Mrs. Pell shook her head. “You can’t be half French.”
“I only meant . . .”
“Do you love her or not?”
“Mrs. Pell. Really. This is most awkward.”
“Life’s short, Mr. Balty. Why waste time? You can stay here with her, if you like.”
“Colonel Huncks and I have pressing business in New Amsterdam. Which I really must discuss with him. If you’ll excuse me.”
“Then come back after you’re done pressing in New Amsterdam.”
Balty made his way to Pell’s surgery through a passageway between the buildings. There was a window. He saw Thankful outside, in Mrs. Pell’s flower garden. He paused, watching. The sunlight made her hair radiantly golden. She was examining flowers, sniffing them. Balty reflected it was the first time, since he’d seen her that day in church, that he’d seen her at peace—not defying a courtroom of furious Puritans, or lurking in fear of the Indian who’d murdered her husband and violated her, or tending to wounded Huncks, or weeping at graves, or preparing the bodies of loved ones for burial, or hiding from constables.
He watched. The scene was of such loveliness and placidity it might be a rendering of Eden, divinely ordained. Any minute now, a lion and lamb would appear and lie down together. Vines would sprout from the earth and climb Thankful’s legs, entwining. A pair of doves would alight, one on each shoulder, and coo. Balty sighed and leaned against the wall. He felt light-headed.
Voices from the surgery on the other side of the door jerked him back into the present. He paused to compose himself, hand on the doorknob. From the other side he heard Huncks, emphatic: “No. Underhill is critical. Critical.”
Balty opened the door.
“Am I interrupting?”
“Ah, you’re alive,” Huncks said.
“Barely. What’s going on?”
“Dr. Pell and I were just . . . discussing.”
“I heard. Why is Captain Underhill critical? Will we be slaughtering an Indian tribe?”
“You misheard,” Huncks said. “Underhill is critical. Of Stuyvesant.”
“Oh? Why?”
“He disapproves of his administration of New Netherland.”
“I see that I did interrupt,” Balty said huffily. “So why don’t I just bugger off and leave you two to discuss Captain Underhill’s critique of Dutch administration? God forbid you should share confidential matters with the King’s own commissioner. I’d only blurt it out to everyone at the nearest tavern. Indeed, I think I shall repair to a tavern. Tell me, Doctor, does Fair-field possess such an establishment?”
“If it’s drink you’re wanting, you’re more than welcome to my cellar, Monsieur Balty.”
“Trop gentil. Mais ce n’est pas une question de boire, mais de compaignie.” You are too kind. It’s not a question of drinking, but the company. “Never mind, I shall find it myself. Good day, gentlemen. I leave you to your hatchings.”
Balty left by the door onto the main street, the King’s Highway, giving it a good slam behind him. He looked up and down the street.
Fairfield wasn’t very big. He walked toward what seemed to be the center of town and indeed, a block later, arrived at it. The village green was bisected by the King’s Highway. Here were the four pillars of a New England village: courthouse, schoolhouse, meetinghouse, and whipping post. Where was the fifth—the tavern?
A passing Fairfielder informed Balty that the public house was on Concord Street, by Burial Hill, adding that it was closed, the hour being somewhat early for spirituous refreshment. Balty plunked himself down on a bench by the whipping post. Thoughtful of Fairfield to provide seats for the entertainment.
He pondered, stewing: Why did Huncks persist in being so damned secretive? Hadn’t he demonstrated his mettle? It was insulting. But at least it had taken his mind off Thankful. Thankful. He thought of her, standing there amidst the flowers, looking so . . .
Balty rebuked himself. He must write a letter to Esther. Yes. Telling her . . . well, something. How much he missed her. How much he loved her. He would certainly write perfidious Brother Sam and give him a large piece of his mind. He’d write that letter first.
How should he begin it? My very dear Brother Sam.
No.
Pepys, you treacherous ———.
He went on, mentally composing his J’accuse as the traffic came and went. Rather busy, the road. But it was the King’s Highway, connecting Boston and New Amsterdam; England and Holland.
In the distance, on the eastern edge of town, Balty spotted a pair of riders approaching. His gaze settled on them as he went on composing his letter to Brother Sam, enumerating the countless indignities he had condemned him to in this awful land.
The two riders drew closer.
Balty leapt from the bench and ran to a nearby alley between two houses. He poked his head out from behind the corner and peered.
Repent and Jones dismounted by the pond on the green and stood while their horses watered.
Balty’s heart pounded. He reached for his absent pistol.
Presently, Repent and Jones remounted and continued west on the highway through the town. Balty followed at a distance, leaping like an ungainly frog from house to house and tree to tree. At the western edge of town he ran out of things to hide behind as they continued out of sight. He ran to Dr. Pell’s and breathlessly told what he’d seen.
“Balty,” Huncks said, “we have more urgent business.”
“But they’ll lead us to the regicides.”
“The regicides are not the mission. Nicholls is.”
Balty threw up his hands. “What, making sure some colonel gets a nice welcome from Old Dildo? How’s that more important than settling up with him who buried the Cobbs alive? Or have you already forgotten about them?”
Huncks’s eyes narrowed.
Pell spoke up. “For God’s sake, Hiram, tell him.”
“Nicholls isn’t paying a courtesy call on Stuyvesant. He’s seizing his colony.”
Balty stared. “Oh.”
“Yes, ‘Oh.’ And try to keep it to yourself when they pull out your fingernails.”
– CHAPTER 31 –
August 2nd. Grievous days.
Returning to my house after dining on a veal choppe with my brother at the Black Spread Eagle in Bride Lane, found two men of coarse aspect awaiting.
One identified himself as Mr. Whelk, saying he was on “business pertaining to his majesty’s exchequer” and I must show him where I kept my money box.
I replied hotly that this was d——d irregular, cheek of the highest sort, and under no circumstances would I shew h
im where I kept my house money. And begone.
He said in that case they must make a search of the house.
I demanded by what presumed authority he should accost me, Clerk of the Acts of the Navy. Whereat he waved at me a document purporting to authorize the search “of such places as are of interest to his majesty.”
I told him this would not do at all. Moreover, that I took grave exception to being harassed so bumptiously in my own home.
Upon which he said to his fellow ruffian, “Place Mr. Pipes under arrest that I may conduct our business.” Whereat his fellow caitiff produced hand shackles and made as if to put me into irons.
Perceiving that further protest would bring only diminishing returns, I yielded, saying, “If you would only tell me what you seek, I will tell you if I have it.”
But no, this would not do. They must needs see my money box.
In greatest agitation, and now suspecting they were enterprizing varlets come to rob me, I shewed them, expecting to be clubbed or have my throat slit.
Whelk reached in and raked up the topmost layer of coins. He held one gold piece to the light, examining it, asking how was it I should be in possession of Dutch specie.
Not desiring to explain the provenance of the ducat he beheld—or its thirty-nine brethren ducats in my money box—namely, that they were a gift from one of the Navy’s timber suppliers—I temporized, saying it amused me to keep coins from various countries, as curio items. And such.
This did not satisfy Whelk. Stroking his chin like a schoolmaster prior to wielding the cane, he said I must needs now accompany him and “explain the matter more fully in a less congenial setting.”
I riposted, “Explain what? To whom? And in what less congenial setting, pray?” To which he replied, “As to the first, possessing a quantity of enemy coinage. As to the second, Lord Downing. As to the third, the Tower, which as it happens is convenient, being not more than one furlong from here.”
At this, an evil feeling overcame me and I was violently ill upon the persons of Whelk and his manacle bearer, which did nothing to improve their temper.
The Judge Hunter Page 16
