For more than a week, in the evenings, I watched Rigdale make a pine Bible box for Master Brewster. Rigdale carved beautiful embellishments; he taught me their names: rosettes, lunettes, vertical flutes. He gave the box to Brewster on a Tuesday evening, whilst Abigail was visiting us.
Master Brewster said, “I thank you, Mr. Rigdale. You have made me an Ark that is worthy of the Holy Bible that will repose within. What are these fanciful birds that you have carved on top?”
Rigdale said, “They are nightingales, sir, or rather what I imagine nightingales look like. I have never seen one, but I once heard its liquid song in the Southwark graveyard.”
I said, “Are there any nightingales in New England, Master Brewster?”
“Alas, we have none. Instead of their liquid song, as Mr. Rigdale so precisely describes it, we have the grievous cry of noisome beasts like the fox and the bear and the wolf.”
Abigail said. “And the demonical singing of savages.”
Brewster said, “Squanto is teaching me the language of the Pokanokets. We must be more perfectly acquainted with their language, and they with ours, that we may trade with them and press upon them spiritual things. The Pokanoket word for God is Manitu. We must council them in the worship of the true God.”
Abigail said, “Foxes, bears, wolves, and savages. This is a wild place that God hath given us for our refuge. Wild and strange.”
Abigail, Rigdale, Master Brewster, and I left Brewster’s house and walked into the bright moonlight.
Master Brewster said, “I was a stranger in Holland for twelve years. My youngest son, Reborn, died of the measles in Leyden. He was but five years of age. We lived in the Stink-steeg, which means Stench Lane. Its rancid odors were to me the smell of exile. I feared that my five surviving sons would grow up as Dutchman and lose the true religion and their language—our precious English tongue. Many children of my fellow exiles profaned the Sabbath. Some became soldiers, others sailors; others took to worse courses, to their parents’ grief, their souls’ danger, and the dishonor of God.”
The moon went behind a cloud. I could not see Abigail’s face. She cried out, “Son of God, shine on me in the dark. Save my soul!”
Brewster said, “Fear not, woman! Have faith, and God’s bowels will yearn toward you in your distress, and His grace will encompass you as one of His Saints.”
She said, “How shall I know that I am saved?”
He said, “You will feel separated from your present life, which is a pageant of foolish delight, a theatre of vanity, a labyrinth of error, and a gulf of grief.”
Rigdale said, “My life is a gulf of grief for my dead wife and daughter.”
• • •
Henry decided to build himself and Abigail a house. He said to Abigail, “It will belong to you when you are married.”
He cast lots and won a plot on the south side of the Street. Pratt, Rigdale, Captain Standish, Edward Stanton, and I helped with the work. Before we began, Rigdale recited the words from Psalm 127:1, “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.”
I had never built a house before. We started in the northern woods, where the inhabitants of Plymouth procure their timber. Stanton handed me a felling ax and said, “Use an up-and-down stroke. Try to keep the blade from turning to the side. Take care that it does not glance off the wood and cut you in the leg. Such a wound will most likely mortify, and you will surely die of it. Above all, cut only one side of the tree so it will fall in the opposite direction.”
Though I wore my gloves of kid, the ax handle raised bloody blisters on my sweaty hands. We felled four pine trees, sixty to eighty foot in length, and a tall oak. My education in the wilderness proceeded apace. Standish taught us how to make clapboards on the site from a balk of wood four foot in length. I learned to use a frow and beetle. We dragged the timber down the Street, where we set the large oaken posts into sills that rested upon level stones and tied them together by horizontal oaken beams that marked the space under the rafters.
I learned that the rafters rested on a pair of horizontal beams which were called plates; the floor of the space under the rafters was called the loft; each pair of vertical posts, spaced sixteen foot apart, made what is called a bay. Abigail and Henry’s house consisted of two bays—the hall and the parlor. The chimney was in the center.
One evening, I said to Abigail, “When you and I are married, we shall sleep together by the fire in this hall.”
She said, “I long for your embrace and long to embrace you.”
We dined well. Captain Standish went fowling at dawn every morning and returned with fat ducks and geese. Abigail dressed them and fetched us beer.
One morning, as I was cutting notches in the studs, I looked east on the Street at the crowd of men and women going about their daily business. I recognized Richard More with his servant, Edward Story, William Mullins, Peter Brown, John Goodman, and Master Brewster. I was sure that each of them was a Saint; each had been regenerated, born again into a new life, which they shared. Edward Story was carrying a bundle of faggots for his master, who clasped Brewster’s hand as they spake. How I envied them!
Rigdale made two pine bedsteads, three oaken stools, and a table for Abigail and Henry. Rigdale, Pratt, Henry, Standish, Stanton, and I finished building the house on the twenty-first of August, the day that everyone began harvesting the pot herbs, the salad herbs, and the physic herbs in his garden.
That selfsame day, Abigail and Henry lodged in their house. She said to her brother, “I shall keep house for you until one of us is married. I shall bake your bread, dress your meat, brew your beer, and mend your shirts and breeches. I shall wash your bedclothes and sweep the floors, for you are my only brother and protector, whom I have ever loved.”
God forgive me! I was jealous of Henry.
He and Abigail served dinner for eight people: themselves, Stanton, Rigdale and Pratt, Master Brewster, Captain Standish, and me. We ate three fat geese that Captain Standish had shot.
Stanton said to me, “I was once a printer. I have a library in my house of some two dozen books that I printed in London and Leyden. I was like a soldier who sees no fair weapon, but wishes for it. I could not see a good or rare book, but did covet to print it. Have you read Pelly’s Pilgrimage?”
“No,” I said.
“But you must! It is a revelation! I have a copy in my library. Come borrow it tonight. Its full title is Pelly, His Pilgrimage, or the Histories of Man, Relating the Wonders of His Regeneration, Vanities in His Degeneration, Necessity of His Regeneration.”
I borrowed it that night and read some twenty pages. I could not stomach its rhetorical style.
About this time, I made the acquaintance of Will Winslow, Edward’s brother, who was one of the five-and-thirty settlers who had arrived at Plymouth on the Fortune in November 1621.
Said he, “We are called ‘the Strangers’ by the members of the Plantation who came here on the Mayflower. Only five-and-twenty of us are Separatists. The rest are members of the Church of England.
“We were all gathered together in London by Thomas Weston. Our first glimpse of New England was Cape Cod, which is but a naked and barren place. When we were landed in Plymouth, there was not so much as biscuit-cake or any other victuals for us. Neither had we any bedding, nor pot, nor pan to dress any meat in, nor many clothes.
“We put up our huts made of clapboard and thatched roofs. The Mayflowers, as we call them, cut their daily provisions in half to feed us. But there is a division still between us. We are all lusty young men. Not many of us are married. The Mayflower husbands are jealous of us for befriending their wives. Worse than that, as I said, some of our men belong to the Church of England, and they are not allowed to pray or keep the Sabbath according to their papist customs. They wanted to send to London for a Church of England Minister to tend to their spiritual needs. But of cou
rse, Governor Bradford refused them permission. Methinks it will be a long while, if ever, that the two distinct communities inhabiting this place become as one.”
Thereafter, I tried to perceive whether a lusty young man I passed on the street was a Stranger or a Mayflower. They all looked the same to me.
By the tenth of September, the victuals in the common house were almost spent. The sky was empty of fowl. The bay and creeks near us were full of bass and other fish, yet for want of strong netting, we could not catch them. And though the sea swarmed with cod, we had neither tackling nor hawsers for the Plantation’s six shallops. (These small sailboats made Captain Standish violently sick, but he often sailed in them.) God in His mercy provided us with divers shellfish that could be taken by hand on the beach. Like the Indians, we ate them roasted and raw.
Late one afternoon, at low tide, I gathered two bushels of mussels, oysters, and clams. I shared them with Abigail and Henry.
She said, “Sea shells! Henry once said that the Indians flay their prisoners alive with sea shells like these. How long do you suppose it would take a flayed man to die?”
“Too long,” said I.
At that time, a messenger from the Narraganset sachem, Conanacus, arrived in Plymouth with a bundle of new arrows wrapped in a rattlesnake’s skin, which he gave to Governor Bradford. Squanto told the Governor that it was an Indian message that imported enmity. Squanto then translated a long insulting speech that the messenger cast forth at Bradford, glorying in the weakness of the Englishmen of Plymouth and saying how easy it would be to slaughter all of us.
The Governor stuffed the skin with powder and shot and returned it to the messenger, saying, “My answer speaks for itself.”
Now also Massasoit, the sachem of the Pokanokets, frowned on us and did not come to Plymouth as before. We feared that our supposed friend would join with our enemy Conanacus in a confederation against the colony.
Governor Bradford put all of us men to work on the fort, hoping that when it was finished and a continual guard kept there, it would discourage the savages from rising against us. But this drew us away from weeding the Indian corn, and the crop suffered.
• • •
The Swan returned to Plymouth on Wednesday, the eleventh of September. Andrew Weston reported that he had enjoyed a favorable tide and a fair wind. He turned the point of the harbor called the Gurnet, then sailed ten leagues north around the north end of Nantasket. Then he turned west into the Bay of Massachusetts and south to a landing.
Weston told us he had exchanged presents with Wittuwamat, the sachem of the local Massachusetts who had survived the pestilence. Weston chose for our settlement a site known by the Indians as Wessagusset, meaning “the place wherein the North River flows,” which was near the mouth of a little stream, called the Monatiquot, that empties into the Bay. He chose the place because it lies south of all the principal streams that separate the surviving Massachusetts from the Plymouth territory, thus making intercourse between the settlements comparatively easy.
One day, Abigail said to me, “I’m always hungry.”
I borrowed Captain Standish’s fowling piece and shot down two wild pigeons, which I gave to Abigail.
She said, “Thank you, Charles.”
“I would do anything for you.”
“Would you kill an Indian to protect me?”
I said, “Gladly.”
“God forgive me, that delights me.”
On the night before I left Plymouth on the Swan, Abigail, Henry, and I supped with the Winslows in their little clapboard house on the south side of the Street. After supper, Susanna Winslow nursed her babe on the bench beside me.
She said, “Come, my sweet Peregrine. Take my breast and taste that the Lord is good.”
Abigail said to me, “Oh, Charles, we shall be parted for a year. A whole year! I shall miss your little rhymes and your pitted face. With God’s grace, we shall one day have a son of our own like little Peregrine. May we name him Thomas Arthur for my father?”
I said, “Thomas Arthur, it will be.”
When we were alone, she asked, “Will our love endure our separation?”
I sang,
Hey down a-down, down-derry,
Among the leaves so green, o!
In love we are, in love we’ll stay,
Among the leaves so green, o!
The Swan set sail from the Plymouth Plantation at dawn on Monday, the twenty-third of September in the year of Christ 1622. I bade Abigail farewell on the beach. She gave me her white kerchief to wear about my neck.
Then she said, “It was so late ere I fell asleep last night that I can scarce open my eyes. Nay, sweetheart, do not look at them. They are red and swelled from weeping.”
I next took my leave of Governor Bradford, Master Brewster, Henry and Edward Winslow, and Captain Standish.
Governor Bradford said, “I’m sorry that you did not have the chance to read my book, Exercises in Hebrew Grammar. I should particularly like your opinion of my chapter on the passive voices of verbs.”
Then he said, “I learned Hebrew in Leyden.”
“You told me. Why did you do so?”
He said, “Hebrew is the language of revelation. God revealed Himself to Moses in Hebrew upon Mount Sinai, and Jesus revealed Himself to Saul in Hebrew upon the road to Damascus. He said in Hebrew, ‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?’ Did you know that the Hebrew verb for persecute is tirefuni? And Saul said, ‘Who are thou, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.’
“Those few words from God, in Hebrew, converted Paul, the Hebrew-speaking Jew who brought the world to Christ. I sometimes pray in Hebrew. It maketh me to feel closer to God. I prayed in Hebrew after my wife, Dorothy, died. I am anxious to learn your opinion of my book of Hebrew grammar.”
I said, “I shall be pleased to provide it when, with God’s grace, I return to Plymouth in a year. It is here that, with your permission, I intend to spend the rest of my life.”
He said, “I heard as much from Mistress Abigail. You shall be most welcome.”
“I thank you, sir, with all my heart.”
“And how can that be? For I also heard that you have lost your heart to Mistress Abigail.”
“I have, sir.”
He laughed and said, “You have a big heart.”
Master Brewster said to me, “Above all, remember to sanctify the Sabbath. Mark me! Your colony will stand or fall on whether you keep or profane the Sabbath.”
I said, “I will remember, sir.”
Henry gave me his dagger in its green velvet scabbard, which I wore hanging from my belt. Edward Winslow gave me a copy of the Astrological Almanac, The Nature and Disposition of the Moon, that he had printed in Leyden.
The twenty-third of September was the ninth day of the moon. The Almanac said, “Whatever thing thou wilt do on the ninth day of the moon, shall come to good effect. Get married, go on a journey.” Then, one after the other, my friends gave me to put into my knapsack a flint and steel, a burning glass, a needle and thread, an awl, a compass, and a horn cup. Above all, I treasured Abigail’s white kerchief, which I wore about my neck. In the days to come, I fancied that it still gave off the sweet aroma of her skin.
Part IV
The Swan, with sixty members of Weston’s company and thirty-three sailors aboard, made land at Wessagusset on the afternoon of Friday, the sixth of September in the year of Christ 1622. Rigdale said to me, “Be of good courage, dear friend. The Lord hath lured us into this dark forest to speak to our hearts.”
That night, we lighted fires along the beach. Weston charged ten armed sentinels to watch over the rest of us while we supped on oatmeal porridge and boiled pease and guzzled Aqua Vitae.
One of the drunken sentinels discharged his musket into the sand at his feet. He cried out, “God forgive me, I have mur
dered a clam. ’Twas an accident. I did it not for any malice.”
I wrote Abigail the following:
Sweetheart, I will send you this as soon as I am able. I commend myself unto you for life. And so, kissing your kerchief, I rest yours in true love,
Charles
Wessagusset, the seventh of September
P.S. Weston says the Indians told him that “Wessagusset” means “the place wherein the North River runs.”
About midnight, we heard a prolonged, doleful howl from the woods. It was answered by another howl further off. Then the first resounded again, followed by the other. Our sentinels called, “Arm! Arm!” and shot off two muskets. The howling ceased. We concluded it was a company of wolves and returned to the Swan for the duration of the night.
The next day, Weston and six men explored the forest near the shore. A quarter of a mile to the south, they discovered a large glade wherein there ran a small brook. Weston decided to establish our settlement in the glade on the brook’s right bank. He charged Pratt to oversee building our habitations there, surrounded by a stockade. Pratt walked up and down in the glade, measuring out the ground and making notes in a little leathern bound book.
The next morning, under his direction, the whole company set to work. We first cut down all the trees growing for twenty rods about the glade. The space was cleared to prevent a surprise assault by savages lurking behind the pines. Then we cut and trimmed three hundred and ninety timbers from the young white pines we found growing in a burned-over part of the forest. Each was one foot in diameter and from ten to thirteen foot in length.
It took us a week to finish the work. It took another three days to drag and carry the timber into the glade. We then digged a three-foot-deep trench in the shape of a rectangle that was seventy-four-foot long and forty-five-foot wide in which we buried the butt ends of the sharpened stakes. That took another day. We then erected the sharpened stakes, which were eight foot in height. They comprised our stockade for which we fashioned four gates hung on hinge posts hard by the four corners of the rectangle. We built a big shed, with open sides, in the middle of the stockade in which we stored our victuals and drink from the Swan’s hold and all of our trade goods.
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