The Honorable Imposter (House of Winslow Book #1)

by Gilbert, Morris

  “They will go back to England under arrest, Mr. Winslow.” Captain Jones had been brought up in a hard school, and he was not about to gamble his ship or his reputation for the sake of two fanatics.

  Winslow saw the folly of forcing the argument, so he merely smiled and said, “I hope you will see things differently before the voyage is over, Captain Jones.”

  He bowed, left the Great Cabin and proceeded along the deck to where Gilbert stood at the rail, staring glumly at the waves.

  “Well, here you are!” Gilbert turned to face his brother, and grudgingly admitted that Edward’s face was open, without a trace of the accusation he half expected to see there.

  “Hello, Edward.”

  “Leg is doing very well, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Much better.”

  “Good! Good! Expect this fresh air and exercise will work miracles for you, Gilbert. But we Winslows are a tough breed, eh?”

  Gilbert smiled briefly, appreciating that Edward was doing his best to restore brotherly feelings. “By the time Captain Jones gets me back to England, I’ll be in excellent health—just right for the hanging.”

  Edward stared at him, then laughed shortly. “Nonsense! You’re not going to hang.”

  “No? I hadn’t heard that King James had stopped executing those convicted of treason.” Gilbert despised himself for unleashing on the one person who did have an affection for him, but the confinement had soured him, and he seemed to have no control over his tongue. He slapped the rail with his hands, then, saying sheepishly, “Your pardon, Edward. I’m not fit company for anyone.”

  Edward’s face relaxed and he clamped his large hand on Gilbert’s shoulder. As the two stood there, the family resemblance was very evident. Both were tall, and though Edward was heavier, there was a natural grace and athletic air about them both. The cornflower blue eyes were common to all the Winslow men, and the auburn hair of both glowed like burnished gold in the sun. Both had strong features, defiant cheekbones rising to broad foreheads, and both had the wedge-shaped face, and a slightly jutting jaw which suggested a deep and stubborn will.

  Edward, the more intellectual of the two, was quick to reply, “No reason why you shouldn’t be pretty tightly strung, I’d say. You must be out of your mind, being tied to that bunk so long.”

  “Well, it is getting pretty boring, Edward.”

  “Been catching up on your reading, I expect?”

  “No. Nothing to read.”

  “What? Why, that’s a crime, Gilbert! I have plenty of books. What’ll you have?” He allowed a glint of humor to crease his broad lips, and suggested gently, “A good book of sermons?”

  Gilbert laughed despite himself, “I’d read tombstones, Edward!”

  “Well, some of the sermons I’ve heard aren’t as interesting as a good stone,” Edward laughed. “What would you say to a folio of Master Shakespeare’s work, eh?”

  “Now, that’s business!” Gilbert smiled. “Thank you.”

  Edward turned to go and said, “I’ll get it for you . . .” He paused, then said in a hesitating manner, unlike his usual forceful speech, “I say, Gilbert, don’t—well, don’t expect too much of us.” He pulled at the lace on the front of his shirt, embarrassed, and added, “I mean to say, it may take a little time before people forget . . .”

  Seeing Edward bog down, Gilbert gave a tight smile and finished the statement, “. . . forget that I sold Mr. Brewster for thirty pieces of silver?”

  “Well . . .” Edward still could not find what to say, so he shrugged and murmured, “I know. It’s hard, Gilbert. But you have to remember that all of us are flesh and blood. If you cut us, do we not bleed? But it’s in your favor that when the time came, you put your life in jeopardy to save William and Humility. That will sink into people’s minds after a time. Give them a chance, man!”

  “Of course,” Gilbert said; Edward gave him a good smile and left to get the book.

  Gilbert found a place to sit down and spent the next hour reading a play about two “star-crossed lovers.” The confusion that brought the youthful Romeo and Juliet to such a disastrous end caught at his mind, and from time to time he would lift his gaze to follow the drifting clouds. Once he murmured softly, “Mr. Shakespeare, you know the heart—at least the confusion of it!”

  * * *

  The Mayflower was a little world, sailing through the rolling, trackless water much as a single star cleaves through the ebony blackness of space. There was a difference, however: the star had fellows (invisible though they were to the eyes), while the ship was solitary.

  Bobbing like a cork on the tossing waves, she was smaller than the leviathan that sometimes surfaced close enough for the passengers to see the waterspouts. But though dwarfed by the miles that lay beneath her keel, by the sky that unscrolled blankly over her mainmast, and by the mighty ocean stretching in every direction, she kept a life and order running through the ship—an image of the macrocosm of the planet.

  Captain Christopher Jones was the archtype ruler: master, potentate, king, prince, emperor, congress, parliament, court. He ruled the little world with the power of an absolute despot, the Great Cabin no less the seat of authority than the Vatican or Buckingham Palace.

  The ship was its own cathedral, chapel, monastery, nunnery; there were as many divergent views among the inhabitants of the bobbing little world as the babble of tongues in the larger one. From the dim, superstitious thought of Richard Salterne—common sailor, little better than a half-wit, who thought of God only as a sort of murky stew engulfing the earth—to the profound meditations of William Brewster, philosophies of God were as diverse on the little ship as were the staggering varieties of life that teemed beneath her keel.

  Sam Fuller, sitting on the edge of the poop deck with his feet dangling, felt godlike as he watched the teeming quality of the deck. He was a man not given to idealism, and was constantly amazed to find himself on such a preposterous voyage. In truth, Fuller was an incurable romantic—and terribly ashamed of it! He covered the soft streak with a hard shell that fooled all but a few who knew him best.

  Now as his eyes swept the deck, he saw half a dozen dramas unfolding, and his wise old eyes took them in—weighing, balancing, judging.

  He saw Edward Winslow approach his brother Gilbert, and it was clear from his face that he was trying to cheer up the younger man. Then, after Edward left, young Tinker, who had been watching the pair from behind the mizzenmast, edged out, and Fuller saw the fear and grief in his pale face turn to joy as Winslow apparently made something right with the lad.

  A smooth talker! Fuller thought grimly. He put it over all of us—even me! But he won’t do it again! Not likely! There was a hard streak in the burly man’s makeup, and he was especially sensitive since he took pride in his knowledge of men. He had taken to the young fellow as he had to few, and it had hit him hard when his faith had proved to be misplaced.

  He saw William Mullins, his wife Alice, and his daughter Priscilla in a tight group over on the starboard side. And he saw husky John Alden leave his seat on the forecastle and amble along toward them, whistling, apparently quite aimless.

  Fuller smiled, thinking: Young Alden ain’t so simple as he seems! Looky there how he was all surprised to see that pretty Miss Mullins sitting there—as if he didn’t have the foggiest idea she was on the ship at all! Why, I’ve seen the young buck mooning over her since the day she come on board, and now, look at that! She’s just as surprised to see him! And poor old William Mullins and Alice—why, they’re so fuddled by this journey they ain’t got the sight to see that pair being drawn to each other like magnets! Well, they’d better keep their eyes on that young woman! She ain’t bad, but she ain’t above usin’ her eyes on a man, either!

  He grinned at the thought, a ribald streak running through his spirit.

  Then he saw a group knotted beside the mainmast, and he frowned. The physician knew men, and the men who were engaging in a meeting were objects of scorn. Hopkins’ pale blue e
yes were darting constantly toward where Bradford and Carver sat in the bow, and it was obvious that Hopkins’ companions—Martin and Billington—were speaking of them.

  As eminent a set of ditch dogs as I’ve seen! Fuller thought. They’ll bring this ship to grief if they’re not stomped on—and soon. I’ve warned Bradford, but he’s so full of theology he can’t see a mutiny when it’s taking place under his nose. Winslow can, though!

  Sam Fuller shook his head wearily and pulled himself up to leave the poop deck.

  He encountered Captain Jones who was scanning the horizon with a glass, and would have passed by, but the captain glanced at him and said, “Would you like to take a look, Mr. Fuller?”

  Fuller shook his head. “Nothing to see, I know that.”

  “There’s a school of dolphin—see?”

  Fuller took the glass and watched the creatures come racing by the ship, plunging and diving in something of a marine minuet, and said grudgingly, “That’s pretty, ain’t it now?”

  “Never get tired of watching the beasts of the sea,” Jones said. He looked down at the thick knots of passengers on the waist deck and sighed. “It would be nice if people were as regular as dolphins. You always know what a dolphin’s going to do, every time. Can’t say as much for people, can you, Mr. Fuller?”

  “No.”

  “On the other hand, maybe one way you can count on them.”

  Fuller saw that he was watching Humility Cooper washing some clothes in seawater, and the captain added, “You can count on there being trouble when a pretty woman is on ship—never fails!”

  “She’s a good girl!”

  “Don’t doubt it, but look at that,” Jones pointed to where Daggot and some of his mates were lolling on the forecastle deck. “Daggot is a fool. He’s after that girl, and he’ll keep it up until there’s trouble.”

  “Keelhaul the swine!” Fuller snapped.

  The captain shrugged, his gray eyes taking in the scene. “Can’t keelhaul a man for what he’s going to do—or for what wrong things he wants to do.” He smiled suddenly at Fuller. “Guess we’d all be keelhauled if that happened, wouldn’t we, Mr. Fuller?”

  Sam Fuller felt weary. He looked out over the crowd below and said, “I thought we were going to the New World to work for God. Now it looks like we may never get there with a principle left intact.”

  “You’ve lost your faith?” Jones asked instantly. He was highly skeptical of the Separatists—indeed, of religion in general—and he would not have been displeased to find one of the pillars of the church beginning to crumble; it would confirm his belief that it was all humbug.

  Fuller pulled himself up, looked at the people, then said, “No, Captain Jones, I’ve not lost faith—not in God.”

  He turned to leave, but said with a shrug of his heavy shoulders, “But I wish sometimes God would speak to me a little louder so I could get a better idea what He’s up to!”

  Jones watched the big man lumber below deck, and there was a strange smile on his lips as he looked down at his passengers, then up toward heaven. He said in a quiet voice, “Amen.” Then he laughed at himself and went back to studying the dolphins.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CAPTAIN SHRIMP

  A driving wind scoured the deck as Captain Miles Standish looked with disgust at the ragged line made by the settlers along the waist deck, waiting impatiently for Mr. John Carver to finish his speech.

  The snow-white hair of the man chosen as governor two days earlier blew over his face, and several times he had to pause to brush it away from his mouth. He was small and thin, but there was an erectness in his figure and a clear light in his brown eyes.

  “We must be prepared to defend ourselves as soon as we land,” he said in a clear, thin voice, “and we are very fortunate to have Captain Standish as our military advisor. He has served in the wars against the papists.”

  “Don’t need no man to teach me how to fight!” John Billington rapped out sullenly. “Besides, I thought we was a Christian settlement!”

  “David was a man of war, Mr. Billington,” Carver said. “We will hope that we shall make a quick peace with the savages—but we must know the use of our weapons. And you must remember that we will have need of skill with weapons to bring down game for food.”

  Gilbert had joined the group at the urging of Edward, though he had no hope that would gain the good graces of the settlers by such an action. But his leg was improved, and he was bored with reading and staring at the empty horizon, so he agreed.

  Now looking at the old, rusty matchlocks leaning against the rail, he thought with a quick grin: I think I’d rather be in front of one of those relics than doing the firing!

  He did like the looks of Standish, though. The captain was a small, sinewy man with bright red hair and a florid complexion, wearing seasoned leather breeches and a leather-lined jacket belted and buckled. A burnished steel helmet sat on his head, decorated with a crimson band. He looks like what he is, Gilbert thought, a seasoned veteran.

  Standish waited until Carver had finished, then picked up one of the matchlocks. Holding it up, he said, “You will learn to use this weapon. This is a matchlock, the most simple made. It is touched off with a wick or a match cord. There are no wheels, flints, or steel to misfire. Treat it well, and it will not fail you—unlike human beings.”

  “Ho, now, hear how the soldier boy talks!”

  Gilbert looked up to see half a dozen of the crew gathered on the forecastle deck, grinning down at the little group. Daggot was in the center, flanked by his mates Salterne and Bart O’Neal—a stubby Dubliner with a fierce black beard and one eye milky. The pilot, Coffin, was there, standing to one side with a sardonic look in his muddy eyes.

  Standish ignored the crew, and proceeded to give a stiff lecture in a crisp voice. “The first rule is to carry your length of wick in your left hand, your gun under your right arm, or on your right shoulder. You will never touch your weapon off by accident if you do this.” He gave detailed instructions on how to take care of the weapon, washing out the barrel with boiling water, keeping the powder dry in rainy weather, how to form lead into shot with a ball mold, how to measure a charge. He illustrated the use of a ram, with dire warnings on the danger of putting home second and third measures of powder on previous, unexploded charges and the risk to life and limb occasioned by carrying gunpowder carelessly near the fire.

  Finally, he sent John Howland below to light the slow match, and when he returned with end aglow, Standish poured a charge of powder down the muzzle of a gun, slid in the ramrod and patted it gently home and dropped in a ball. He shook a few grains of black powder over the touchhole, put some more in the flashpan by its side, and slid the flashpan cover while he screwed the glowing end of the slow match into the movable arm, which would jerk it down and dab the spark in the primed pan.

  “Get below deck, mates!” Salterne shouted. “The soldier boy is likely to blow us all to kingdom come!” He was a slow-witted young man of twenty with the vilest vocabulary on board, and he loosed a few choice specimens of lower-deck language as Standish stared up at him.

  Standish turned his back to the wind, holding the gun above his right hip and pointing upward, to port. Deftly he cupped his powder-blackened hand around the flashpan, protecting the powder from the wind as he slid back the cover; and all in one movement changed his position, gripped the gun with both hands and squeezed the trigger. The serpentine and wick jabbed down, a little puffing explosion of muffled fire and black smoke hissed up out of the flashpan, followed by a red belch of flame and sooty smoke from the muzzle. The heavy weapon buckled back under his arm alarmingly. A cloud of soot and sulphur fumes drifted across the deck and some of the group applauded the feat.

  “Gor! ’E done me in!” Salterne shouted and fell back, clasping his heart as one with a deadly wound. His mates rocked with laughter, and Standish looked up to see Captain Jones standing on the poop deck, arms folded and wearing an amused smile on his lips.

/>   “Captain Jones,” Standish called. “Can you not find work for these men?”

  “They are on their own time, Captain Standish.”

  “They are disturbing the drill!”

  “The ship is small. Where would you have them go? Besides, you would not begrudge them a little amusement, surely.”

  Standish stared at Jones, his face dusky with anger. But he understood military law, and the captain of the Mayflower was the iron law of discipline.

  Ducking his head, he bit his lip and said, “Very well. Now, who will be first to practice?”

  Billington stepped forward, his eyes ugly. He towered over the small, neat form of Captain Standish, and there was a bullying light in his closely spaced eyes. “You got no right to rule over us, Captain Shrimp!” He used the term some of Standish’s enemies used to deride the small man, but it brought instant retribution to Billington.

  Quick as flash, Standish reached out, and grabbing the larger man by the arm, he whirled him about as if he weighed nothing. Avoiding with ease a ponderous blow that Billington made toward his head, the little captain with a smile on his face gave a hard shove with his hands and at the same time drove his boot upward in a hard kick that caught Billington in the haunches. The force of those twin blows shot the bulky form of the settler toward the longboat, and he crashed into it with his arms cartwheeling helplessly. His big belly took the force of the collision, and there was an audible whoosh as the air was driven from his lungs. He flopped over, sliding to the deck, and he looked like a huge sick frog as he sat there with his wide mouth open trying to draw air into his lungs.

  There was a dead silence on the deck as Captain Standish ambled across the deck, with one motion grabbing Billington by the collar and jerking him to his feet. “Now, sir, you load that gun!”