A Roll of the Bones

by Trudy J. Morgan-Cole

  On the Sunday following Mistress Kathryn’s wedding, after Ned had described the bride’s dress as best he could for his mother and sisters, talk turned to John Guy’s New World venture. “’Tis a mad scheme,” said his brother Francis, but Dickon said, “I don’t know that I’d call it mad. Everyone swears ’tis good country over there. A man can live and die in Bristol and never own the house he sleeps in. Over there, anyone who goes with Master Guy might live like a prince.”

  “Live like a prince, or die like a savage,” Francis countered. “I’ve talked to many a fisherman who’s summered over there. Even the summers can be bleak and cold, bound in by fogs and lashed by rain. None can imagine what the winter is like. ’Tis not a land like Jamaica or Virginia, endless sunshine and balmy breezes.”

  “As long as the soil is good and there are forests full of trees, and plenty of fish in the ocean, what harm if the winters are cold?” Dickon replied. “’Tis no colder than Scotland, and the Scots flourish even in the Highlands.”

  “The Scots may flourish up there, but they’re keen enough to come flooding down here on the king’s coattails and seek land and honours for themselves in England,” Francis said sharply. “Even the Scots won’t live in Scotland if they’ve any other choice.”

  “You’re aping complaints you’ve heard your betters make,” Dickon countered. “We are not talking of Scotland, but of the New Found Land. You’d build yourself a sturdy dwelling to keep out the cold there, plant your garden and catch fish in the summer, and have enough food to keep you through the winter. Trap for furs in the winter, I suppose—good money in fur if you can ship and sell it back here.”

  “Well, ’tis not likely you’ll find out,” Dickon’s wife, Bess, said. She seemed alarmed by her husband’s interest in the New World. “Master Guy’s hardly going to be looking for bakers to found his new colony.”

  “No, a trade like Dickon’s needs a town around it to thrive,” said the elder Master Perry. “John Guy is looking for carpenters and masons, though. ’Twill be hard work, but what a grand thing—to make a town sprout from the ground up, where there’s naught but open land now. No one who lived out his life in England would ever have such an opportunity.”

  His wife clicked her tongue in disapproval. “Faith, Michael, you sound almost as if you’d go yourself, were you a younger man.”

  “I can’t promise I would not, though I’d have to think long and hard if I had a wife and family already.” His eyes met Ned’s across the table. “A young fellow like yourself, Ned, with a mason’s skills and no ties, and a connection already to the Guy family—you’d be well set up to go with him.”

  “Don’t say such a thing!” Ned’s mother protested. “We’d never see the lad again, and he might be drowned at sea or eaten by wild beasts!”

  Ned himself had remained quiet throughout the conversation. “Not all who go over there will live out their lives and die there,” he said now. “Some will go for a season or two, then come back home wealthy men.”

  “Things are different, for men of means,” said Francis. “I’m sure rich merchants like the Guys will spend a few seasons over there and then come home with gold in their pockets. But ’tis not so for poor folks. A working man who goes across the ocean to settle in a colony will likely only make that journey once in his life.”

  “But for such an opportunity—” Ned’s father began, and let his words trail off.

  Walking home from his parents’ house, Ned took a long way around. He went by way of the quay, where the river was filled with ships. On any day other than a Sunday the docks would be busy with men unloading silks and oranges, wine and salt cod—cargo from every part of the globe. Today, the docks were quiet; the ships moored with their sails furled. When he turned from the river back into the cobbled lanes, lined with houses and shops so close their upper stories almost touched overhead, he thought again of the image that had come to him when he first talked with George Whittington. Narrow lanes, narrow paths for a man’s feet to follow.

  His parents had done the best they could with the cards dealt them in life. All his mother wanted was for their sons and daughters to do just as well. Francis thought the same way: most of the family did. But his father saw something else, something Ned and Dickon glimpsed too. And only Ned was in a position to take advantage of it.

  For most men, in most times and places, there was little chance, if any, to change that path, break out of those narrow lanes. But here in Bristol, in the year of our Lord 1610, there would be such a chance—for any man brave enough to throw over a good apprenticeship and a safe path. Shuffle the cards, cast the dice, roll the bones: take a chance. A chance that might end, as his mother warned, in a lonely death far from home. But it could end otherwise. A man might change his fortune, if all things fell in his favour.

  THREE

  A Journey is Purposed

  Great Sheba’s wise Queen travelled far to see,

  Whether the truth did with report agree.

  Then wisely came to see, if it were such.

  You, by report persuaded, laid out much,

  BRISTOL

  MARCH 1610

  KATHRYN CAME DOWNSTAIRS AS DAWN LIGHT SPILLED through the diamond-shaped windowpanes, to find Jenny Piper sweeping the floor, Nancy stirring pottage over the fire, and Joanna Guy kneading loaves of bread; all busy at work already. In the other room, she heard her husband and his workmen setting out their tools. Try as she might, Kathryn had not, in three months of marriage, rid herself of the habit of being the last one in the household to wake.

  How different it was, waking up here than in her parents’ house! The two houses were similar, except that the large main floor of Nicholas Guy’s house was divided into two rooms: a hall and a workroom. The upstairs was like her father’s house: one sleeping chamber she shared with her husband, and a larger one where the rest of the household slept. It still felt odd to wake in the morning next to this man who was still half a stranger to her, instead of beside Nancy.

  After the marriage, Nancy had tried, for a few days, to continue her practice of bringing breakfast to Kathryn in bed. But the scorn that had drawn from Joanna Guy and her servant Jenny had quickly ended the habit. Kathryn knew by now she would never earn the respect of her sister-in-law or of Jenny, who had helped Joanna run the household for years. But she was learning to avoid things that would make Joanna’s contempt any worse.

  Now, as Kathryn came into the kitchen and took a bowl to the hearth to fill with pottage, Jenny took the bowl from her hands. “No, you sit down, Mistress. Let me serve you,” she said, every word sharp as a knife.

  “Thank you, I’ll serve myself. Don’t let me keep you from your work.” Kathryn took the bowl back, filled it, and sat at the table. “Nancy, I want you to come with me to market today. I’ve a mind to look for a goodly chine of beef for to-morrow’s dinner, along with a few other things. We could look to find some greens for sallats, and such, if any are about.”

  “Ah, yes—as to to-morrow’s dinner.” Joanna drew herself up to her full height—she was a tall woman—and folded her hands at her waist. “I’ve already made arrangements with the butcher for some venison—Jenny and I will make a stew of it, along with the capons for pie and the goose. With all that, I hardly think we’ll have need of beef as well, will we?”

  Fighting down the slow burn of rage in her stomach, Kathryn kept her voice as pleasant as she could. “I had thought we had agreed to a chine of beef with the other dishes. We spoke of it only yesterday morning.”

  “We did, but the price of the venison was so good, I thought it would make a nice change. We rarely get game this time of year.”

  “Well, best to be up and doing. There’s a deal of work to be done if we’re to have a stew and pies and a roast goose all prepared.” Kathryn abandoned her plans for the beef. The next day was Sunday, and Master Nicholas’s cousins and their wives were coming to dine after church. Nicholas was anxious to make a good showing for his more prosperous kins
men.

  “Oh, sister, you need not trouble yourself—Jenny and I have all well to hand. You and Nan might go out to look for greens for sallats, as you proposed—though ’tis hardly likely there’ll be much, this time of year. We can as well do without. You’ll need do nothing but play the hostess to-morrow.”

  Kathryn caught Nancy’s glance, and the slight shake of her head. “We’ll go to market, indeed,” she said. “It’s you who need not trouble yourself. If you need anything, only tell me, and we’ll bring it home.” She picked up her bowl and spoon, but Jenny was there almost before she had risen to take them away to scrub.

  “Of course they have it all well in hand, as ever they do,” Kathryn fumed a half-hour later, when she and Nancy made their way down to the market through the chill of the March morning. “What can I do, when neither of them ever says a word I can fault them for, yet they cross me at every turn? If I complain to my husband I’ll only look petty.”

  “Joanna has been mistress in that house since her mother died, and she has no intention of moving aside for her brother’s wife,” Nancy said. It was a conversation that already felt old between them. In the first weeks after the wedding, Kathryn had been all for making a scene—putting her sister-in-law in her place, asserting her rights as mistress of the house. She had even thought to dismiss Jenny Piper and leave Nancy as the sole woman servant.

  But Jenny had been with them for years, and was married to Robin Piper, the journeyman cobbler who worked with Master Nicholas and his father. It was a tight-knit little crew until the new bride and her maid had arrived.

  By now, she and Nancy had given up trying to solve the problem: they only cared to escape the house when they could. “It will all change when I have a child,” Kathryn said now. “Surely nobody can deny, then, that I am mistress—and you can be the nursemaid, with no need for Jenny to think you are taking her job.”

  “She and Mistress Joanna will think you’ve ideas above your station if you have a nursemaid for your baby,” Nancy pointed out. “It is true, though, your own status will be clearer when the babe is born. As for mine…I’m afraid ’tis not so simple. Would it not be better if—.”

  “No! I’ll hear no talk of you leaving me. Not alone with the two of them all day! ’Tis not to be thought of.” Kathryn threaded her arm through Nancy’s and pulled her friend closer. She had said it so lightly, so many times: No one will ever separate us. Yet she had not truly thought through how much more difficult it would make her already-difficult position, to bring along her own maid, another mouth for her husband’s household to feed. But lacking her dearest friend and only ally, how could she survive?

  Her husband, of course, ought to be her ally. But she would not draw him into the fray. We must all put on polite faces, Kathryn thought, so the master thinks everything is running smoothly.

  The thought of putting on a polite face reminded her of when she had accompanied her father, years ago, to the big house of Sir John Young, to collect payment for work Master Gale had done there. The walls were adorned with paintings—Kathryn had never seen the like. She had been awed by the beauty of the pictures, even more than the grandeur of the house in which they were hung. She had stood a long time staring at a portrait of a plump, dark-haired lady in a shining blue gown, wishing she could be that woman in that dress. Kathryn knew she would never be a noble lady and wear such a gown, but she felt, sometimes, as if she were sitting for her portrait now. Mistress Guy, Wife of Nicholas Guy. Sit still and compose herself, and try to look the part. If she sat long enough, the picture might come to life.

  “At any rate, if we wait for me to bear a child before I can be mistress, we will wait awhile yet, for my flowers have come again,” she said. “And Joanna will know that, of course, with Jenny taking the linens out to the washer woman.”

  “You’ve been wed but three months. Your mother was married a year before she quickened with child.”

  “As she is fond of telling me.” They had reached the market, back in the old neighbourhood. Her husband’s house was near the almshouse above Christmas Street, outside the old city walls that had been the boundary of her world in childhood.

  Joanna had been right, of course, about finding few greens for sale at the end of winter. But regardless of what they bought, Kathryn enjoyed a visit to the market, which bustled with housewives and servants doing their shopping. Blood from the butchers’ stalls mingled with the dung in the streets to create a foul-smelling slurry at their feet as Kathryn lifted her petticoat and overskirt clear of the ground, but the pleasant aroma of cakes and savoury pies from the bakers’ stalls almost balanced it out.

  On a busy day such as this, it might be mid-day before Kathryn had any chance to talk to her husband. Which was as well: she was still a little unsure what to say to him when they were alone together. He was kind enough, and never harsh, but his mind was filled up with business. At noon she brought him a slice of pork pie and a mug of ale and asked him to tell her all about the gentleman he had just served.

  “’Twill be a grand order, if I can get it—if he’s satisfied with the first pair, he means to order for his whole household. Ladies’ shoes for his wife and daughters—the finest calfskin. With an order like that I should be able to take on another apprentice.”

  Kathryn perched on a stool near his worktable as he ate; the other men had gone into the hall to get their noon meal, so the steady tap-tap of hammers was quiet for once. She admired her husband’s ambition. She knew already that his real love was not shoe leather itself; he did not take pleasure in it the way her father did with stone, for its own sake. Rather, he aspired to his cousins’ station in life: to be a merchant; to have a fine new house; to feel the clink of coins in his hands instead of hammers.

  “All is well for to-morrow, is it?” he asked. “You women folk seem busy in the kitchen.”

  “Everything is well in hand.”

  “Good, good. Now, what do you have planned for the banqueting course—a pudding, a trifle?”

  Kathryn had thought a trifle, something she had a good bit of practice making at home, would be nice, but, to no one’s surprise, Joanna had already started cherry and plum tarts. Kathryn told her husband as much, wondering at his sudden interest in the details of the menu.

  “I need you to help me with a little matter,” he said. “I went to Peele the baker last week to order something special. ’Twill cost a bit, for it is a marchpane subtlety. I thought to celebrate the plans for the New World voyage in fine style. You must tell no one of this, but go and get the subtlety from him to-morrow before church, and store it somewhere where none will see it before dinner is over. I wish to surprise everyone, even our own household.”

  She was pleased beyond measure that he had chosen her, rather than his sister, to help him plan this. Pleased, too, to see this small trace of whimsy in him. For if she had found a fault in her husband, it was only that she sometimes thought him a little dull—kind and hard-working, to be sure, but a little lacking in both imagination and humour. She did not think he would like to go see the players with her, and it was hard to make him laugh at a jest. That he had thought of something as frivolous as a confectionary to celebrate his cousins’ venture made him seem a bit less serious and remote. She went to the bakeshop as promised and locked the confection away in a chest before the family went to church the next day.

  When they sat around the table after church, Kathryn took pride in her place as mistress. What did it matter, after all, that Joanna and Jenny had done all the cooking and planning? Joanna was relegated to sitting by her elderly father’s side; Kathryn sat at the head of the table with Nicholas and greeted his lofty cousins, while Jenny and Nancy glided back and forth silently, putting one dish after another on the table.

  The talk was all of the New World; no one in the Guy family spoke of much else these days. John had recently returned from London; Philip had engaged a ship, the Fleming, to carry them across the ocean. “We hope to be ready to set sail sometime in
June,” he announced.

  “Only three months! Surely there is a great deal to be done before then,” said old Master Guy.

  “More than you might guess. We are working all hours of the day to draw up our lists of stores we will need and find the best suppliers. We want enough in store to keep forty men for a year, for there will be little we can grow or raise ourselves in the first year, though we will catch and salt codfish for our own provisions, as well as to ship back to England for sale.”

  As the maids cleared away the trenchers, Nicholas Guy rose, a cup in his hand. Kathryn stood too, and quietly slipped from the table. Nancy, her only confidante, had already taken the confectionary from its chest and had it on a platter, ready for Kathryn to bring to the table.

  “It is a great honour, my kinsmen,” Nicholas Guy said, “for my wife and I to host you here in our own house, and indeed I am honoured to have so good and honest a help-mate as my Kathryn to welcome you to our table. Our hearts are full of joy tonight at the news that Cousin John’s great endeavour is about to go forward.” On the word forward Kathryn moved to the table, holding aloft the platter for everyone to see. “Gentlemen, in celebration of this great new venture, we drink to your success, and I give you—the New Found Land!”

  It could not have been timed better: Kathryn laid the pewter plate with the subtlety on the table before them just as he said the New Found Land, and everyone applauded. The moment was all they had planned for, and Kathryn exchanged a quick glance and smile with Nancy before turning all her attention to her husband and guests.

  The sculpture itself was a cunning thing, though a little smaller than she had imagined it. Somehow in her mind, despite knowing what they had paid for—more than they could afford—Kathryn had pictured a giant sailing ship made all of pure sugar, taking up half the table, evoking gasps of wonder from the guests. That sort of thing might appear on a nobleman’s table—she had heard tales of such. Marchpane was more affordable, if less magical in appearance. Peele the baker had produced a modest little marchpane barque about the size of a well-fed house cat, and the sails looked a little heavy—it must be hard to create from almond paste the illusion of canvas sheets filled with air. The figurehead on the prow, cunningly carved, was beginning to melt a little bit, drooping into the bow of the ship. But everyone clapped nonetheless and said how fine it was.