A Roll of the Bones

by Trudy J. Morgan-Cole

  They were almost at the fish market. She took Nancy’s hand and gripped it tight. “Wish me luck, Nan.”

  LUCK HAS LITTLE ENOUGH TO DO WITH IT, NANCY THOUGHT. SHE had a busy afternoon of it—they all did, scrubbing down the stone floor, boiling the capons, roasting the goose, making mutton pies and fish pies. Aunt Tibby made a quince tart as well, and Mistress Gale baked ginger-cakes, while Kathryn made a trifle before luring Nancy away to help her dress and fix her hair.

  Master Gale and the lads returned from work late in the afternoon, and not long afterwards came the guests: Master Nicholas Guy with his father and his unmarried sister, Mistress Joanna. Nancy and Tib were kept busy bringing dishes back and forth from the hearth to the table, where family, guests, children, and apprentices all crowded around the board. It was a far more elaborate meal than the Gale family customarily ate, and rather than the usual family chatter, the conversation centred on the guests. Talk turned from the Guys’ shoemaking business to their cousin John, the wealthy merchant.

  “Is this a serious business, this plan of Master John’s to go to the New Found Land?” Master Gale wanted to know. His wife added, “’Tis a most dangerous venture, is it not?”

  “There is danger in it, yet the opportunity for profit is great,” said Nicholas Guy. “John and his brother Philip are petitioning the king for a royal charter, and are full of preparations. John has chosen a fair site for a settlement, and means to gather a company of men to go with him next summer, if the funds can be raised.”

  “And if they find settlers willing to take on the risk,” put in his father.

  Aunt Tib thrust two fish pies into Nancy’s hands. They had been keeping warm on the hearth and the pans were still a little too hot. “Don’t dare drop those,” she said, as if Nancy were still eight years old. “When you’ve put them out, fetch some more wine.” She rolled her eyes and darted a glance at Joanna Guy as she said more; it was clear she was troubled at how quickly the guests were going through the food and drink. It had seemed like such a bountiful feast when it was being prepared earlier in the day.

  When the last of the ginger-cakes was eaten and the dishes cleared from the table, Nancy looked forward to having time to sit down by the hearth with Aunt Tib and enjoy her own meal; she had eaten little and was half-starved. Master Gale and Nicholas Guy went outside, walking in the work yard. Nancy brought wine to Kathryn and her mother, Joanna Guy and the elder Master Guy, who all sat near the fire talking. The apprentices and the younger Gale children had been pressed into service to clean the pots and platters, a job that was being accomplished with a good deal of squealing and splashing.

  Nancy met Kathryn’s eyes as she filled her cup. Outside, Kathryn’s father and her future husband were negotiating the terms of her marriage, while she sat here making idle chat about embroidery patterns with Joanna Guy. And ’tis not her future alone they are deciding, Nancy thought. She hoped, of course, that her young mistress, her dearest companion, would be happy in wedded life. But she could not think beyond that wedding day, to imagine what might become of herself.

  Kathryn’s promises to bring Nancy into her new household were all very well, but the decision would not rest with Kathryn. If there were no place for her either in Nicholas Guy’s household or here in the house where she had grown up, Nancy well knew she would be in service in some stranger’s house. Any future she tried to imagine seemed cold compared to the warmth of this house, the life she had always known.

  Master Gale stepped back into the room and called Kathryn out to talk with him and Master Guy. The rest of the little group around the fire grew quiet then, until the men came back in with Kathryn between them, her hand tucked into the crook of Nicholas Guy’s arm, and stood by the hearth. Master Gale clapped his hands for attention and announced he had accepted Nicholas Guy’s offer for his daughter’s hand, and they would marry at Christmas.

  Nancy could count on her fingers the number of times Kathryn had talked to Nicholas Guy before today. The shoemaker had made excuses to strike up conversation when Kathryn and Nancy went into his shop to be fitted for new boots, had spoken a few passing words to her in the market. But, little as she knew the man, Kathryn looked happy, holding onto his arm as the betrothal was announced. For tonight I will think only of that, of her happiness, Nancy promised herself.

  When everyone had drunk more wine, and cheered and congratulated the couple, the guests went home and the last remnants of the feast were cleared away. Tibby lit rushlights around the hall as the sun slipped towards the horizon and shadows filled the room. Mistress Gale hurried the little ones up the steps to the sleeping chamber, and Nancy went out with a pail of slops to empty in the yard. Ned Perry stood by the woodpile splitting logs, and moved closer when she pulled the door closed behind her.

  “So ’tis all settled, then,” he said. “Mistress Kathryn and Master Guy.”

  “It seems so.” Nancy could feel all the things she had vowed not to think of tonight rolling back in, like fog settling over the river.

  “That’s good, then. Good for Mistress Kathryn, I mean.” Ned dragged his toe through the dirt, turning over a few small stones.

  “Good for everyone,” said Nancy. “The Guys are a rising family. Did you not hear him going on tonight about his cousins and their trading charter to the New World? They’ll be among the city’s foremost merchants soon, and I doubt Master Nicholas himself will stop at making shoes. ’Tis an excellent match for the Gales.”

  “Aye, and that’s all that matters, is it not?”

  “What do you mean?”

  There was a sullen set to Ned’s mouth, which was usually quirked up in a foolish grin. “Marriage. Making a good match, bettering one’s family, rising in the world. That’s all the reason anyone gets wedded.”

  “Why else should they? Are we living in a romance?”

  “Of course not.” He bent to gather up an armload of wood. “You’ll think me a fool, I know.”

  “I already think you a fool, so whatever is nattering at you, it won’t lower my opinion.”

  Now he did grin, the crooked half smile she was used to seeing on him. “’Tis only that—well, my brother Dickon, he apprenticed with the baker in our street, and it ended with him marrying the baker’s daughter, and now he’s in a fair way to inherit a bakeshop when her father dies, d’you see?”

  “Ned.” She did see, all too well. He was a feckless lad, but she had never thought him entirely brainless. “You’ve not been apprentice here four years with the fool idea in your head that you might marry the master’s daughter?”

  “No, of course not!” He looked full at her now, and she saw that he was sorry he’d spoken at all. She was not used to having to look up at him: they two had always been of a height, and as Nancy was tall for a girl, she’d stayed at eye level with him till last year, when suddenly he’d shot up by a hand-span. Now his green eyes looked down at her, glittering with something that might be shame. “Only—why not? I know ’twould be reaching too high for me, but—why?”

  “Lord, you silly knave, a dozen reasons. None of the apprentices is going to marry into this shop. Peele the baker had no sons living. Master Gale has John and Edward to inherit it all. He has always meant for Mistress Kathryn, and Lily too, when her time comes, to marry well. Kathryn’s beauty is the best coin he has to bargain with. He’d never give either of his girls to an apprentice. Never mind the fact that you can’t take a wife till you’ve served your time as a journeyman, and that will be years from now. You couldn’t have been such a goose as to think —”

  “Of course I wasn’t! You needn’t chide me. I’ve been told all my life that any man with ideas above his station is a fool. It was—a dream, only. And if you ever speak a word of it to—well, to anyone, but especially—to anyone, I’ll...” He looked down at the bundle of wood he carried and his grip tightened on it. Nancy remembered that she had pulled the tail of his hair and given him a good punch on the jaw when they were both fourteen, and when Ned pushe
d her away he was the one got beaten, for hitting a girl. Now they were no longer children, and he was at a loss. Nancy saw his shame; no childish threats would change that.

  She saw, too, that there was more to this than the hope of marrying into Master Gale’s trade: it was Kathryn herself Ned had dreamed of, and who could blame him? Kathryn was beautiful and merry and sweet-natured, and she was kind to him. She was kind to everyone. And all this time Ned had cherished foolish romantic notions about her. His misery was stamped plain on his face.

  “I wouldn’t say a word of it—not to her, nor to anyone,” Nancy promised. And to show she had not guessed what truly troubled him, she added, “You’ll be a journeyman and then a master mason in your own right in a few years, I don’t doubt—Master Gale says you’ve a great gift for the work. You need not marry into a shop in order to succeed. I am sorry for calling you a fool—anyone may have dreams.”

  “Can they?” She had already started to walk down to the end of the yard, wanting to hurry away from the strange intimacy of this moment. She was embarrassed both by him and for him. “Do you?” she heard him ask as she walked away, but she did not turn to answer him.

  TWO

  A Marriage is Solemnized

  Thou talk’st of men of Judgement. Who are they?

  Those, whose conceits success doth still obey.

  Wise men’s wise counsel is but their conceits;

  If they speed ill, they are sad wise deceits.

  BRISTOL

  DECEMBER 1609

  SHE STOOD AT THE FRONT OF THE CHURCH IN A GOWN THE colour of wine, made of some rich-looking stuff and trimmed with a white ruff that stood out against the gown and the black curls of her hair. He wasn’t one to notice women’s clothing; couldn’t have told what any of the women of the house was wearing at the end of dinner, but this was different. Kathryn Gale was up there on display, like a ruby in a polished silver setting. Standing up in church pledging to love, honour, and obey Nicholas Guy. Ned Perry sat in the pew with the rest of the apprentices and servants and a good few of the neighbours, and felt his heart like a stone inside him.

  He could not remember a time when he was not in love with Kathryn Gale. He had known her even before he took up his apprenticeship with her father; the pretty little girl with the black curls was half the reason he was eager to leave home and start his apprenticeship. He had been a child then, had fancied himself in love because she was pretty and lively and mischievous. He had known nothing of desire, but in a year or two, when he had learned about it as all boys do, Kathryn was there, her young body budding and desirable, ready-made to step into his dreams at night.

  He had never breathed a word or given a careless glance that might betray his feelings—until, in a moment of folly, he’d spoken to Nancy Ellis on the night Mistress Kathryn’s betrothal was announced. And Nancy had laughed in his face. Thank God she only thought he had dreamed of inheriting Master Gale’s business, not that he fancied himself in love with Kathryn. Then, truly, he would have deserved her mockery.

  In his worst moments he had looked at the two young lads, John and Edward Gale, and remembered that Mistress Gale had already lost two babies to childhood fevers. They could yet be left childless, in need of an heir, he had caught himself thinking. Then was immediately horrified. Had he really—not wished, exactly, but imagined the deaths of two children as his own stepping stones to becoming a master mason and marrying a beautiful girl?

  Regardless of what murky stuff lurked in the depths of Ned Perry’s mind, all the members of the Gale family continued healthy, and preparations for Mistress Kathryn’s marriage to Nicholas Guy went forward. Now they were all gathered in St. Stephen’s church on St. Stephen’s Day—doubly auspicious, as the older men said Stephen was the patron saint of stonemasons, though nobody prayed to saints nowadays. After their troth was plighted, everyone went to Small Street, to the house of Nicholas Guy’s cousin John, for the wedding feast.

  John Guy’s home was grand enough that the family and guests dined in the hall while servants and apprentices ate at a separate table in the kitchen, rather than all at the one board. While tucking into a roast of beef, Ned made conversation with one of John Guy’s manservants, George Whittington, a hearty fellow a few years older than Ned himself. It was another mark of John Guy’s standing in the town that he could afford to employ two manservants, and this Whittington basked in the glory of his master’s station. He had a loud voice and rollicking laugh, and he flirted shamelessly with all the maids.

  “So you’ll be nearly finished your apprenticeship, then?” George asked Ned as they ate.

  “No, I’ve three years yet to go.”

  “And will you go on working for Mason Gale, when you finish?”

  “I doubt it. Walter there,” Ned nodded across the table at his fellow apprentice, “is finished next year, and will serve as journeyman, for Master Gale has none now. There’s not enough work for two journeymen, so I’ll likely go farther afield to seek work. Master Gale says ’tis not as it used to be in his father’s time, before the monasteries were broken up. Back then the great churches and abbeys were always hiring stonemasons. But there’s still work to be had on rich men’s estates, and the guild will likely help me to find a place.”

  “Aye, the rich will always be building palaces for themselves. ’Tis a grand thing to have a trade, and you might well be master yourself someday.” A serving maid passed with a pitcher of ale, and Whittington pinched her bottom as she filled his mug.

  It was a fine thing to be apprenticed in a trade, and Ned knew he was more fortunate than the young man beside him. For all his good looks and easy charm, and the fine house he served in, Whittington was likely the son of a servant and could never aspire to more than a life in service. The random chance of his birth meant he would never be his own master, while Ned had at least some small chance of becoming a master mason. So narrow were the paths of life, and so high the walls around you, keeping you on that path.

  “I hope I will be,” he said aloud. “’Tis not easy to change one’s lot in life.”

  “Not here in Bristol, at any rate. Not in England at all, maybe. But there’s more to the world than Bristol.”

  “As your master is keen to remind us.” Since the match between the Gale and Guy households had been announced, everyone in the Gale family had been aware of the business dealings of John Guy and his Newfoundland Company. “You don’t mean to go with him to the New Found Land, do you?”

  “That I do,” said George, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “’Twill be a grand adventure, and where’s a man to see the likes of that if he stays his whole life in Bristol? Sure, if I like it, I might well live out my life over there.”

  “Marry a native woman and live in a tent made of animal skins?” Ned laughed.

  “I’d not say no to rolling around in a tent with a fair brown maiden. Think how wild those women must be, living as free as the beasts of the field.” He paused as if fixing the awesome spectacle in his mind. Then he shook his head. “But as to finding a wife, Master Guy says there will be folks settling down there permanent. He wants to build a proper settlement like James Fort in Virginia. Cultivate the land as well as fish the seas—Master Guy wants adventurers, men who’ll build a new world.”

  “And you truly would go?”

  “If he’ll have me. He is looking for skilled men mostly, not servants, but I’ve been with the family since I was eleven, and I’m a hard worker. I mean to bring my younger brother as well—we both want the chance. You ought to think of it, for he’ll be looking for stonemasons.”

  “Do you have family, besides the one brother?” Ned asked. “What would they make of you going over there?”

  “I’ve an older brother who’s been fishing off the New Found Land every summer since he was fifteen. He says ’tis a grand place over there. Not just the sea teeming with codfish, but miles of land for anyone who wants to clear it and plant it.”

  Ned didn’t press the question of whet
her George had any family beyond the two brothers—a mother, perhaps, who might weep at the thought of her sons going off to a land beyond the edge of the world, never to return? A fishing voyage was one thing; fishermen returned home in autumn with coin in their pockets. Ships might be lost at sea, but the voyage back and forth across the ocean to the cod-fishing grounds was a familiar one for many men. The idea of actually living, wintering over in that wild and alien place, was another thing altogether. The tale of the lost settlers on Roanoke, though they’d disappeared before Ned was born, was still told whenever men spoke about settling new lands. And the Englishmen now in Virginia were having a hard time of it, according to the tales told on the Bristol docks.

  With the wedding feast done, Ned went back to his work. His days went on much as they always had, though the household was not the same without Mistress Kathryn’s pretty face at the table. He was surprised, too, by how much he missed Nancy’s keen glance and sharp tongue. Mistress Gale, though as busy as ever, sighed a great deal and fussed over the younger children more than was common.

  On Sundays after church, Ned did not go back to the Gale house, but walked the few streets over to his parents’ home in Tower Lane to dine with his own family. The table was crowded for dinner: Ned’s parents, the younger children who lived at home, two sisters out in service, and two of his married brothers with their wives and babes.

  Ned knew his parents were proud of how well they had done by their family. His father was a journeyman carpenter who earned enough to rent this small house. Ned’s mother had borne twelve children, of whom eight had lived, the oldest ones married and giving her grandchildren already. All the older boys had been apprenticed to good trades. By any standards, the Perry family was a success for people of their station.