by Anya Seton
Then there were some things like the fire-dogs, the letter, the house itself that went on and on even if people did. Things that didn’t draw away from you and leave you alone the way people did. Things that didn’t change from day to day. Miss Ellison at Sabbath school said God didn’t either. But you couldn’t touch and see God.
She frowned, struggling with a further concept. For had not Phebe and Mark, being dead, become as enduring as the andirons? Neither could they change now, and yet it was because of what they had been that Hesper, sitting by the hearth in the old house, was as she was.
Pa had said something like this when he read her the letter, but she had not understood. Now a great yearning came to her.
What were they like, Phebe and Mark? Why did they come here? What made the great lady write the letter?
She rested her head against the brick facing, and her eyelids drooped. But it seemed to her that on the flagstone hearth she saw the image of a ship, the size of the schooners in the harbor but of a strange and quaint rig, and it seemed to the child that on the deck of this ship she saw the figure of a girl in blue. She could not really see the girl’s face, and yet Hesper knew that there were tears on it. Frightened, anguished tears, and this seemed strange to her too for she knew the girl was Phebe, and did such brave people cry or shrink like that?
Hesper sighed, and the image on the hearthstone blurred and faded. Her head fell forward on her chest, and she slept. Outside, the nor’easter with its whistling blasts ripped up the harbor, piling the leaden waves against the wharves and causeway, but the house gathered around to protect the dreams of still another Honeywood.
CHAPTER 2
THE RISING WIND brought restlessness and a sense of danger. Already Phebe Honey wood had learned that. It brought the crudest physical misery as well. Phebe raised her swimming head above the wooden rim of their bunk and groped again for the tin basin.
The Jewell rolled and lurched and rolled once more, and Phebe, still retching, fell back on the straw pallet. Mark had risen long ago and gone off to the fo’c’sle with the crew. These shipboard days he was always eager and interested as she had never yet seen him in their six months of marriage, nor was he seasick.
From the bunk above Phebe, Mistress Brent gave a long groan, followed by a grunt from her husband and little Rob’s wail. There were three of them up there, wedged into a bunk like their own which, as Mark said cheerfully, was “sized exactly to a coffin.” But they had all been fortunate to get space in the only small cabin. The other fifty passengers slept as best they could on layers of rickety shelves in the Great Cabin, or in hammocks between decks.
This was Friday, the ninth of April, 1630. They had been twelve days at sea and not yet quitted England, still near the Isle of Wight. Dead calms and adverse winds had prevented. Twelve days of cold and bad food and seasickness, and the journey not begun. It seemed to Phebe that already twelve weeks had passed since she kissed her father farewell and boarded the Jewell at Southampton, where the vessel lay in the channel with the other three ships in this vanguard of Governor Winthrop’s fleet—the Talbot, the Ambrose, and their beautiful flagship, the Arbella.
Phebe raised her head again, then inched gingerly to a crouching position. The dark cabin swirled around her, and she leaned her head against the rough planking. She heard Mark’s laugh from the deck outside and he burst into the cabin.
“What, Phebe—” he cried between laughter and reproach, peering into their dark bunk, “not puking again!”
Over feeble protests from the sufferers in the top berth he flung open the wooden shutter of the deck window, to let wind and gray light rush through the noisesome cabin.
“Aye, you do look green, poor lass,” he said, examining his wife, “but you should cheer now. We’ve a fair wind at last. Come dress yourself—we’ll soon be passing Portland Bill.”
She tried to smile up at him, this great, swaggering handsome youth in his red leather doublet, so tall that he must keep his dark curly head bent low to stand in the cabin. She loved him dearly, but his words brought her lacerating pain which he would never understand. Portland Bill was but a few miles from Dorchester—from home.
If they must leave England, she thought, turning her face from him, why could it not be clean and sharp as they had thought in Southampton—instead of this long-drawn, ever-renewed parting.
Mark, seeing her hesitant and thinking it the seasickness, scooped her from the bunk, stood her on the planks in her night shift, and held up his scarlet cloak to screen her from the inert Brents above.
Phebe clenched her teeth and hurried through her dressing. Mark teased her for her modesty, but she suffered deeply at the public nature of all private acts on board the ship. She put on her everyday gown of French serge, blue as the cornflowers in the meadow at home, and her white lawn falling collar, its points embellished with rows of tucks, in elaboration exactly suitable to a prosperous yoeman’s daughter. The collar was limp from the sea air and hung badly. Phebe sighed, thinking of the care her mother had lavished on fine linen for the journey. Mark impatiently wrapped her in her blue hooded cloak and hurried her out on deck.
The Easterly wind had not brought rain, nor was it cold this April day, as the little Jewell bounded across the waves, seeming as eager as Mark was to hurtle herself toward the Western sea and be quit of Old England forever.
There was scarce room to move on deck, since all the passengers who were well enough had come out to wedge themselves amongst the water barrels, the chicken coops, and the long boat, and they were heartily cursed by the harassed sailors. But there was no other place to take the air. Only Mark by dint of his exuberant interest and treats of strong water to the crew was allowed on the fore deck, and Captain Hurlston permitted no one but his officers on the poop.
Phebe leaned against the starboard rail, her eyes on the shadowy coastline. She was always quiet, even in their moments of passionate love, but Mark’s jubilance was checked by the expression of her face as they neared the headlands of Dorsetshire.
He put his arm around her. “Take heart—” he whispered, bending down, for she was small and her smooth brown head barely reached to his shoulder. “It’s a great venture, Phebe.”
Her indrawn breath dilated her nostrils. Her fingers twisted in the folds of her cloak. “I know.”
How well she knew, for him, the restlessness, the discontent at home, and the zest for the untried which had all compelled him to this venture. His nature was made for struggle. It had been so with their marriage. She had not loved as soon as he did, but her indifference had excited him as much as her father’s opposition had angered him.
Mark’s father was but a small Dorchester clothier, never prosperous, and of late oppressed by the new taxes, harried by imposts and restrictions to the verge of bankruptcy, while Phebe Edmunds was the child of a wealthy yoeman farmer, who was distantly connected with gentry and freeholder of the same Dorsetshire acres which had been granted to his ancestors after the Conquest.
But when Phebe’s love had at last grown strong as Mark’s, her indulgent father’s. opposition wore itself out. Six months ago on her eighteenth birthday they had married and found great joy in each other. Yet she had known Mark still unsatisfied.
He detested Dorchester, and the clothier’s trade to which he had never given but grudging attention anyway, preferring always the wharves and sea eight miles away at Weymouth. That she understood, but she long fought against another realization. Her own beloved home, the great sprawling half-timbered house set in gentle meadows and warm with the affection of a close-knit family—this he detested even worse.
“Yet what is it you want so much?” she had cried, as she began to see the extent of his unrest. “What can New England give us better than we have here? It’s not as though we were Separatists.”
Mark’s underlip had jutted out in the stubborn way she had come to dread. “No need to be Puritan to build new and free in a new land.” He had thrown a resentful glance around th
e Edmunds’ great Hall where they were sitting, at the sparkling casement windows newly curtained in a delicate rose sarcenet, at the carved oaken chairs, the gilded court cupboard, the polished floor cloth painted like a chequerboard and warmed by a Turkey rug.
“Soon, perhaps,” she suggested timidly, “we can build for ourselves.”
His face had blackened and he flung his head up like a spurred stallion. “Aye, on your father’s land! Where he’ll o’ersee all I do.” He jumped to his feet and began to pace the Turkey rug. “Look, Phebe. I mean to be my own master. Nor account for what I do to King or Bishop or Commissioner or father—yours or mine. I’ll never make a clothier nor—” he glanced contemptuously toward the window—“nor sheep farmer.”
Phebe’s family, after the first dismay, had accepted Mark’s plan. For was there not fear and insecurity everywhere, now that the King had rid himself of parliament and given ear to his Papist Queen who might yet force back the terrible days of Bloody Mary?
“Aye, times are mortal bad,” Phebe’s father agreed, wagging his grizzled head. “Were I younger, Phebe sweeting, I mought come with ’ee.” Yet even as he spoke he cast a complacent look about his comfortable house and through the window to the rolling downs dotted with his sheep. And she knew that come what might her parents would never leave home. They would bend a little here and there under necessity, and conform to any order, secure in the hundreds of years which had rooted them to these acres and this life.
And I too, she thought, as she had thought many times during the weeks of preparation, though once the decision had been taken she had never troubled Mark with her doubts. Her love for him deepened as they became isolated together by their shared enterprise. She listened anxiously while he spelled out the Planter’s list of requisites suggested by the Massachusetts Bay Company; bellows, scoop, pail, shovels, spades, axes, nails, fish hooks, and lines. All these were Mark’s concern; for their purchase, and the passage money of six pounds each, and the freightage costs, he used most of the hundred pounds left him by his mother. To buy the remaining requisites, warm clothes, household gear, and provisions, Phebe used her dowry, since Mark stubbornly refused any help proffered by his father-in-law.
In only one thing had she combated her husband’s will. She had insisted upon bringing her wedding andirons. They had been made for her by a master blacksmith of more than local fame. They were tall and sturdy, fit to hold the greatest logs, yet graceful too in the deceptively slender shafts and the crowning black balls.
Fire-dogs were not on the Planter’s list.
“But I want them, Mark,” she insisted, near tears. “I want them in our first hearth wherever it may be.”
He had given in at last, though he had not understood. Only her mother had understood, that the andirons ordered in love for her byher parents to grace a new hearth would always be a link with home, the twin guardians of the precious flame; like man and wife, English-born, transplanted and yet enduring with steady purpose. But indeed those were womanish thoughts, unfitting to a man, and standing now on the Jewell deck beside Mark, she shifted her weight and pressed against him, glorying in his strength and bigness, waiting for the quick response of his arm to the pressure of her body.
But Mark was not thinking of love. He made a sharp movement, swinging on his heel, and stretching his hand above his head. “God blast, the bloody wind is slacking off again!”
She followed his scowling gaze up to the sails that now were flapping fitfully, where they had been taut-bellied before. She turned and looked again toward the land and saw, jagged and sharp against the sky, the crenelations of Portland Castle where she and her sisters had so often played, gathering moss roses around the ruined walls, then galloping over the strip of shingle on their little moor ponies. Behind the castle and over that rounded ridge of hills—lay home. Mother would be in the stillroom at this hour, sugaring the new cowslips for her famous wine, or maybe helping the dairy maids skim the cream. And painted clear against the sky, Phebe saw the sweet comely face, rosy as an apple beneath the graying hair, heard the loving admonishments and the ready laughter. She’d had a bad cough when they left home a fortnight back, what if it had worsened and gone down into the lungs, what if...
Phebe clutched at the wooden rail, and shut her eyes.
“Satan himself must be in it—” said Mark morosely, staring across the league of water to the North. “Back where we started. One might lower the long boat, row ashore and be at your father’s in a couple of hours.”
“Oh, don’t!” cried Phebe, so loud and sharp that Mark started and gaped at her. She held her head rigidly turned from him, her small brown hands clenched on the rail, but beneath her cloak he saw her shoulders shaking.
He leaned over her with clumsy and puzzled tenderness. “Phebe—what ails you, sweetheart?”
She gathered herself tighter and whispered through her teeth. “Let me be. Let me be awhile.”
He patted her shoulder, and left her, heading forward to the fo’c’sle.
After a few minutes the capricious wind returned, the sails filled and the Jewell gained headway. Phebe moved her body, so that she might no longer see the diminishing shore, and stared ahead doggedly towards the other three ships of their company, all drifting still becalmed almost within hailing distance. She had no interest in the Ambrose and the Talbot, her brooding gaze rested on their flagship the Arbella, and gradually as she fixed her thoughts on it she felt solace.
The Arbella was by far the largest ship of them all, near four hundred tons burden; she had been newly painted for the voyage in gay reds and whites and shining black, and her figurehead, the flying gilded eagle on her prow, glinted proudly in the uncertain sunlight. There were great folk aboard; Governor John Winthrop who was to head their colony, Sir Richard Saltonstall and his children. These were gentry indeed, but she knew little of them except a glimpse in the distance when they embarked at Southampton. In the most noble passenger of all, however, Phebe felt vivid interest, because she had talked with her.
Three days ago while they still awaited favorable winds off the Isle of Wight, many from all four ships had put ashore at Yarmouth, that they might walk about and refresh themselves. Mark had been away at once, eager to explore the little town, but Phebe found no such energy. She was content to walk along the beach, relieved by the feeling of earth beneath her feet. She had wandered a short distance around the bend and up the mouth of the Yar when she came upon a low bank covered with beach grass and shaded by the ruin of an ancient lookout. She prepared to sit down on a block of fallen masonry, when she saw a young woman standing near by. The woman was richly dressed in garnet-colored paragon, somewhat stained with sea water, and beneath the fur-lined walking hood, her shadowed blue eyes gazed out to sea with an expression of both yearning and resolution which touched immediate understanding in Phebe. She was too shy to accost a lady, obviously high-born and still further protected by intense preoccupation with her own thoughts. But the lady heard, and giving a slight start, turned. Seeing a girl some years younger than herself, staring with admiration, she smiled, and made a gentle gesture of welcome. “You are on one of the ships, mistress?”
Phebe smiled too, and curtsied. “Yes, your ladyship. From the Jewell.”
“You know who I am?” asked the lady in some surprise.
“I guessed,” said Phebe gently. “For I’ve heard that the Lady Arbella is tall, has golden hair, and is fair as the mayflower.”
Arbella withdrew a little. The words touched a memory of many venal flatteries. But she examined the quiet young face upturned to hers, saw that the brown eyes were honest and clear as brook water, and she smiled again.
“Sit down, mistress, and tell me of yourself, since we are fellow travelers.”
Phebe hesitated. “I intrude, I fear. A moment alone is so precious now. Already I’ve learned that.”
Arbella nodded and sighed, but checked herself. “Our gracious Lord has harder lessons than that in store for us, but with His M
ercy we’ll conquer.”
Why, she is homesick as I am, thought Phebe with sharp sympathy. “It means much to us all to have you venture with us, your ladyship,” said Phebe earnestly. “It gives us courage.”
“Ah, child—only God can give you that.” But Phebe saw that her words had pleased. Arbella took the girl’s hand and drew her down on the stone beside her. “Are you with your husband, mistress? You’re not truly of our Puritan congregation since you wear a wedding ring.”
“No,” said Phebe glancing at the gold band on her finger then at the lady’s ringless hands. “Forgive me, but I can’t think it wrong.”
“Nor I,” said Arbella faintly, “but it’s a Papist symbol for all that and we must purify our church. My beloved husband thinks it very wrong,” she added, half to herself, thinking of Isaac and his burning zeal to cleanse their form of worship from corruption. He had denied himself even this hour’s respite from the ship, and was now as usual closeted with Governor Winthrop planning and praying for the success of their colony in the New World.
She turned to Phebe. “But tell me of yourself, mistress.” She was much interested in this girl who obviously came from a class she hardly knew. Neither gentry nor of the lower orders.
Phebe, always self-possessed, willingly answered Arbella’s questions, and when she spoke of Mark, Arbella smiled, accurately building an image of a handsome impetuous youth, eager for adventure, but well knowing how to hold a woman’s love.
“But if it’s not for conscience’ sake he emigrates, what is it he hopes to find in the New England?” she asked at last, and Phebe, who had herself often been troubled by this question, found the answer promptly.
