by Anya Seton
It had not occurred to Mark that she might be short of food during his absence, since they had brought barrels of pickled meat, flour, and pease, but already Phebe had seen enough of the conditions to realize the vital importance of conserving supplies as long as possible—in case they stayed long. Always that reservation whispered in her heart.
But there were wild strawberries in the woods, and mussels and clams at low tide for the picking.
“You’ll not be frightened to be alone, Phebe?” said Mark suddenly, seeing her pensive. “I’ll be back soon. You know how little I wish to leave you—but I must.”
“I know dear—” she said gendy, for she saw that he was shaken from the bustle of novelty and action which had made him thoughtless, and that there was anxious awareness of her in his eyes. “No, I won’t be frightened. Why, I can see the ships from our doorway, and then there are all the other folk—so near.”
“The Lady Arbella—” he said with a curt laugh. “I vow you dote upon her noble ladyship. I never thought to find you so fawning—God’s blood, Phebe—it’s to be rid of such as her, I quitted England!”
She had been sitting beside him in the bed-roll, and now she rose and walked away from him to the doorway. “It has nothing to do with her rank, Mark.” She spoke with coldness and dignity.
“What is it then?” he asked in a quieter tone, standing up beside her.
She could not answer. Never had she found it easy to speak of the secret things in her mind. The Lady Arbella was like a shining silken banner for the humble heart to follow. She was beauty, she was courage, and she was England here on this alien and unfriendly soil. Mark would never understand that, nor need to. He needed no symbol to strengthen him.
She shook her head. “I cannot say.”
But Mark was no longer attending; he had forgotten his question in watching the curve of her rosy cheek, and the roundness of her neck and bosom. He picked her up and sat down with her on his knee, where he held her fast, pulled off her cap and tossed it in the corner, rumpled and loosened her smooth brown hair.
“Not so solemn, sweetheart—” he whispered. “We must be merry in our fine new home.”
She resisted at first, being still grieved by their difference. But he began to caress her playfully, teasing her with mock anger, kissing away her protests until at last he had her laughing too and as eagerly amorous as he.
The Arbella and Governor Winthrop came back in a few days, he having decided to gather up his company and establish a temporary settlement at Charlestown. It was not an ideal site since the peninsula was small and the water supply very scanty, but it would serve as a base for further exploration.
Phebe had been bitterly disappointed that Mark had not also returned to Salem. He had however sent her a letter which was delivered to her wigwam by a friendly sailor.
She carried the letter inside her dwelling and stared at it with a mixture of apprehension, embarrassment, and pride. Mark knew—or had he forgotten—that she could not read—that was an accomplishment deemed useless to a yeoman’s daughter. She turned the half-sheet of folded paper, admiring the red seal stamped with a small signet, and guessed that he, never backward in fulfilling his impulses, had borrowed all from one of the great folk on board.
At last she broke the seal and stared at the lines of cramped and blotted writing:
“Swete wife be not vext I linger too finde us setlment. Ther is muche to see but the peple are not so as we ded expect. Ther is good stor of feishe but harde to come bye and not enuf provisseyenes.
Bee stout harted.
Thy lovinge husband
M. Hunywood.”
She followed each word with her finger, her brows drawn together. Almost she got the sense of it, but she was not sure. A certainty born of love told her that here was no particular bad news, and that he had written the letter so that she might have an immediate token of him, and for this she bent her head and kissed the paper. But it was exasperating not to know precisely the meaning.
She considered a while, then nodded her head with decision. There was but one person in Salem who could read the letter, yet who would not smile at it or Phebe’s ignorance, one person to whose delicacy of understanding one would not shrink from exposing intimacy.
Phebe took the hearth shovel, dug into the earth in the corner of the wigwam, and pulled from its hiding place the key of her bride chest. This and Mark’s oaken chest stood in the wigwam with the precious provisions.
She drew out her best dress, a soft crimson gown with slashed sleeves, made of a silk-and-wool fabric newly fashionable in England, called farandine. She put on her wedding ruff and cuffs made of cobweb lawn trimmed with Mechlin lace, and she rejoiced that the day being so mild, she might dispense with the heavy hooded serge cloak which had done hard duty on the ship and was her only outer garment. Before donning her best lace-trimmed cap, she pulled her hair forward into loose ringlets about her ears and examined the effect in a small steel looking glass.
Then she set forth up the road toward the common, happy in the feminine consciousness of being suitably dressed for her visit. Not so elegant as to affront the gentry, nor in coarse sad-colored clothes like the goodwives and maid servants.
The weather was very hot, warmer than it ever was in England, and the lane was dusty. Soon she came to the village “green,” no green now but a square of trodden earth and brownish stubble. Some women clustered as usual around the well, gossiping while they drew water for their households. At the other end near the stocks—unoccupied today—three young men played at stool ball, ceasing frequently for thirst-quenching at the Ordinary near by. Idleness like this was naturally frowned upon by the magistrates, but the return of the Arbella and Governor Winthrop’s intent to remove all his settlers had relaxed supervision.
Phebe continued past the two-room houses belonging to Mr. Higginson and Mr. Skelton, past the Governor’s larger frame house, where there was much bustle of coming and going, for Winthrop was inside and holding conference, and on a little way up the lane to the next house which was that of the Lady Arbella.
She knocked timidly and waited. There was a scuffle within and suppressed giggles. At last the door was opened by a frowsy maid, her cap awry, her holland apron stained with the claret she had evidently been sampling. She stared sullenly at Phebe, impudence just held in check by Phebe’s clothing and dignity.
“Might I have a word with the Lady Arbella, if it’s convenient?” said Phebe.
“ ’er Ladyship’s resting,” answered the girl in her flat Lincolnshire twang. “She wants no company,” and she made to shut the door, staying her hand at the sound of a clear firm voice calling, “Who’s at the door, Molly?”
“Mistress Honeywood,” supplied Phebe. The maid shrugged, and walking two steps to the shut door on the right, imparted this information.
“Let her enter,” called Arbella. Molly stood aside long enough for Phebe to pass, then darted back to the house’s other room, the hall or kitchen where she rejoined her two companions by the wine cask.
Phebe entered the other room which was also the bed-chamber. The servants slept above the kitchen in the unfinished loft.
Arbella lay on a feather bed raised a foot from the planks by a rough pine frame. She wore only a bedrobe of transparent blue tiffany, but her pale face was bedewed. Her golden hair as it branched from her forehead was dark with sweat, and there were bistre shadows beneath the large blue eyes. But her smile as she greeted Phebe had its usual gallant sweetness.
“Welcome, mistress, it’s kind that you come to visit me. How comely you look.”
“To do you honor, my lady—” said Phebe, accepting the ladderback chair indicated by Arbella. “ ’Tis most good of you to receive me.”
Arbella shook her head. “Nay, I’m much alone. My husband still at Charlestown, and my friends who returned, the Governor and Sir Richard, so much occupied. And my servants—” She shook her head again. “But you saw Molly, how she was. And the others worse. I
t’s hard to believe a new country or a sea voyage could so change them. And I’ve not—not yet—the strength to rule them properly. I must save my strength.”
As she said this a light came into her eyes, and her lips lifted in a joyous and secret smile. She looked at Phebe and saw in the younger woman’s face the eager admiration which had been there from their first meeting in Yarmouth, and the need to speak overcame Arbella’s reticence.
“I’m with child—” she said very low. “At last. Wed seven years and I had lost all hope. Our dear Lord has rewarded me for braving the new land.”
Phebe swallowed. For an instant she could not properly answer the lady’s confidence. It pierced through the foolish barrier Phebe had built against her own realization. And through the rent, like the mounting sound of tempest waves, she heard the rushing of fear.
And again Arbella had shamed her, by the radiance in her thin face, and thrill in the low voice.
“I’m happy for you, milady,” Phebe said gently. She hesitated. “I think I too am with child.”
Arbella gave a little cry and stretched out her hand until Phebe came to the bedside and took it in hers. “We have then that great bond between us—” said Arbella. Her pale cheeks flushed, and she sat up, her long braids of wheat-colored hair falling back across her thin shoulders. “Tell me—” and she asked eager questions, and as they talked together, she seemed the younger of the two women.
Both babies would be born in the winter they decided, Arbella’s the earlier, in January, for she had reason to guess it had been conceived in England before the sailing. “And you will stay near me, Phebe—won’t you,” Arbella said—“that our babies may know each other and grow together in the new land?”
“Indeed I hope so, milady.” Now Phebe’s eyes too were shining, Arbella’s courage and Arbella’s pride had become hers too. “But I don’t know where Mark will decide our settlement. He—he wrote me a letter, I brought it—” Phebe stopped and blushed. “I hoped—” She stared down at the letter in her hand.
Arbella was briefly puzzled. She had been talking to this girl as she would have talked to her own sister, Lady Susan, and had forgotten that there was difference between them. Nor did the rigid class distinction seem to matter much in the wilderness. She covered Phebe’s embarrassment at once by taking the letter and calmly reading it aloud.
“'Tis evident he takes thought of you and loves you,” she commented smiling.
Phebe smiled back, unable to suppress the leap of hope again. If Mark continued to be disappointed in conditions as he found them—perhaps after a few months of roving and striving...
“I too had a letter this morning from my husband—” said Arbella. “He favors a place called Shawmut—it’s across a river from Charlestown—and is starting to prepare for me. You must bear on your Mark to settle there too.”
Phebe was silent for a moment, glad that the lady did not guess her unbecoming hope, and considering this new idea.
“Why, is there fish at this Shawmut, your ladyship?” she asked with her sudden quiet twinkle.
Arbella laughed. “There must be. Is he still set on fishing?”
“More than ever. He is most apt.” But he might fish from Weymouth at home, she thought, it was scarcely farther to the great fishing banks from there than it was from any part of this unwelcoming wilderness.
“I shall speak to Mr. Johnson,” said Arbella with decision. She said nothing more but she was thinking. She would use her influence to settle the Honeywoods in Shawmut, or Boston as Isaac proposed to call it from their own shire town.
“When the Governor leaves again,” she said, “he’ll bear a letter to my husband. I shall request that he find your Mark and take interest in him.”
Phebe gratefully acquiesced, nor voiced her doubts of Mark’s reception of this affectionate and natural patronage.
That was the first of many visits. As the days passed and the heat wave lessened, Arbella grew stronger, and together Phebe and she stood on the bank by the landing place and watched the ship Arbella sail down the river, bound southward to the new plantations with two hundred aboard her.
Except for the few like Phebe and Arbella who remained to wait for their men to fetch them, and the very few who desired to settle there, Salem reverted to its earlier population. In the North Village there lived a handful of the first planters who had not followed Roger Conant across the river to Beverley; and in the south or main village, lived those who still survived from the companies which had come with Endicott or the two ministers. True, throughout June and July many ships touched at Salem, as the rest of Winthrop’s fleet straggled into port. But the passengers were not disembarked. All sailed again at once for Charlestown to join the others.
On July 3, Phebe, asleep in her wigwam, was wakened by the now familiar shouts and creakings and bustle which meant the arrival of another ship. She dressed hastily and opening her door was delighted to see that it was the Hopewell which had in England been destined for freight. Mooings and cracklings and bleatings echoed in the early morning air, and the inhabitants of Salem crowding down to the dock let out a cheer. Most of them were disappointed. The livestock must go on to Charlestown, where already there was famine. But Phebe, finding courage to board and seek out the master herself, discovered that her milch-cow had survived the trip, and demanded that it be landed.
In this she would not have succeeded, between the Captain’s haste to be on to Charlestown and finish this tedious trip, and her lack of the necessary papers, had not Arbella, hastily summoned by Phebe, come down to the boat and straightened the matter.
Phebe coaxed and tugged the terrified cow down the gangplank; and when her prize was safely on shore could not resist kissing the soft fawn-colored muzzle. Betsey was living link with home. Phebe had last seen her standing in the Edmunds’ barn, her new calf beside her and placidly munching while the younger children decorated her with a wreath of early primroses, “because Betsey was a cow princess and going to America with sister Phebe.”
Phebe soothed the cow with soft whispers—“So-o-o-o, Betsey—Hush, Betsey, it’s on land again you are. Ah poor beast, you’re nearly dry. Didn’t they milk you right or was it the seasickness?”
The cow looked at her mournfully, and Phebe threw her arm around the warm furry neck.
The Lady Arbella had been watching with some amusement. “Aren’t you afraid of its horns?” she asked. “I’ve never seen a cow so close before.”
Phebe looked from the cow to her friend. Friend, yes, the only one in Salem, and they seemed to share much together. But in truth they did not. The lady’s fine white hands had never labored with anything rougher than the embroidery needle. A spasm of homesickness overpowered Phebe. For her father’s hearty laugh and broad speech, for her mother’s kindly bustle. “Phebe, child, do you finish the milking, the dairy maids are at the churns.” For the fresh voices of the younger children singing “Oh Lavendar’s green, dilly, dilly—” and tumbling about the grassy courtyard, while the doves cooed accompaniment from their cote.
“I’ve milked Betsey many times, milady,” she said very low, and pulling on the halter, she began to lead the cow up the path from the dock to her wigwam.
Arbella followed. “Will the animal not be a great care?” she asked gently. “And how will you feed it?”
Phebe considered. “I’ll arrange with little Benjy, the herd, to take her each day to the common to graze with the other stock. At night I can tether her by my door. ’Twill be well worth it, if I can coax her milk back.”
“For butter?”
Phebe nodded, “If I can borrow a churn, but mostly for milk. That will do us good. You too, my lady.”
Arbella looked so astounded that Phebe smiled. She knew that except on farms neither milk nor plain water were considered wholesome. Arbella like all the gentry drank wines, often diluted. The lower classes drank strong liquor, beer or cider or mead. But milk was considered valuable only for its ability to produce cheese and butte
r.
Nor did she ever persuade Arbella to try it. By the time the cow had adjusted herself to her new home and the coarse pasture land on the common so that Phebe’s persuasive handling would fill a night and morning pail, Arbella was confined to her bed again with a mysterious illness. And the Arbella's physician Mr. Gager was in attendance.
Those were grim days that set in after the middle of July. Many were sick besides the Lady Arbella, some with the ship fever which swelled mouths, loosened teeth, and sent cruel pains through the body. Others like the Lady herself were afflicted by excessive languor, headache and colic, and these though often able to get about seemed to grow burning hot towards evening, and day by day to lose strength. The weather too ceased to be pleasant. There was much heavy rain. The lanes turned to quagmires. The reed thatching on Phebe’s wigwam leaked in a dozen places, and when there was no rain, the mosquitoes swarmed through the new-made crannies and attacked voraciously. Phebe set her teeth and settled to day by day endurance as she had on the boat. The friendly Naumkeag Indians came and went in town. She had quickly become accustomed to their nakedness and dark painted faces, and she learned to barter with them as did the others. A little of her meal she had exchanged for corn and pompions, the great golden fruit which might be baked or stewed into good food.
Sometimes she dug clams or made a hasty pudding from the corn, but mostly she lived on corn cakes baked on a shovel over the flames—and Betsey’s milk. She grew very thin, and sometimes felt light-headed, and that the wigwam and the rain and the mosquitoes, the heavy-eyed people in the village, the close pressing forest—and even Arbella lying white and silent in her house, were all painted on smoke. Shifting figures without reality that a strong breath might blow away. Still Phebe had few pains. She even found a way of lessening the surface discomfort from the mosquitoes. On the lane to the common she had spied a small herb, pennyroyal, much like that which grew at home. Well instructed by her mother in the making of simples, she had gathered a horde of it, and distilled it over boiling water. The pungent mint odor, when rubbed on the skin, repelled fleas at home, and did discourage the mosquitoes here.
