A Roll of the Bones

by Trudy J. Morgan-Cole

  “She has two sisters, sir, as pretty as herself,” Grigg assured him. “If neither of them is married or promised yet, they might all come. The fellows can have their pick of the other two as long as I can have my Daisy.”

  “And for the married men among you,” Nicholas Guy put in, raising his voice above the murmurs of the men, “if your wives wish to come out—and if you want them—the governor will provide passage for any of them, and your children as well, to join you here. My own wife has, God willing, given birth to our child a few months past. I may not be the only one here who has a child he has never yet seen, but I hope they will join us next year, and my son will take his first steps here on the soil of the New World.”

  Ned was struck by a sudden picture of Nicholas Guy standing on the wharf here in Cupids Cove, greeting Kathryn with a small child at her hip. It could happen within a year—she could be here, walking on these stony paths, taking her meals at the cooking-fire. She would once again be as close, and as inaccessible to Ned, as she had been all the years he worked in her father’s house.

  “God’s teeth, will all of you cease your clatter!” George Whittington’s voice came sharply from the hatch that led up to the sleeping quarters. “We’ve a sick man here, in case you’ve all forgotten.”

  Governor Guy frowned and looked about to speak, but his brother Philip interrupted. “Is there any improvement to his condition, Whittington?”

  “I see none.” George came down the ladder and joined the men by the fire. “The fever rages as ever.”

  “I might try bleeding him again,” offered Reynolds, “but I do not know if he be strong enough to stand it.”

  George shook his head and fixed his gaze on the governor. “When you go back to England, Master, are any of us who want to leave this place free to go with you? We’re not indentured servants, to be bound over for a term of years, are we? I never signed no such articles when I came over.”

  “Now, steady lad,” William Colston said. “We know you’re concerned for your brother—”

  “Damned right I am concerned, and if he survives this fever I mean to take him back to England. This country’s too harsh for a lad in delicate health. Are we bringing folks over, only to die here?”

  “That is hardly fair, Whittington,” said Governor Guy. He had been sitting on a bench alongside the other men, but now he stood up. “You men all came of your own free will, and anyone who wishes to return may sail back when I do. Indeed, I mean to send back any who have proved unprofitable, not fit for this life.”

  “Unprofitable! You’d dare shame my brother for falling ill, and me for tending to him?” Whittington lunged forward at the same moment as Ned moved to one side and Matt Grigg to the other. Each grabbed an arm to restrain him.

  “Do I need to remind you who is governor of this colony, Whittington?” Governor Guy asked. After a moment’s silence, George said, “No, sir. That you do not,” in a voice as cold and hard as iron. Shaking loose the grip of the men on either arm, he turned back towards the sleeping loft.

  “What insolence, sirrah!” fumed the governor after George’s retreating back, and lifted his hand as if he were about to order him to return. But this time it was he who was restrained, by Master Philip.

  “Let the lad go, John. He is sore afeared for his brother’s life and would not have spoken so if he were not deeply troubled.”

  “I doubt that,” Governor Guy said, subsiding back onto the bench. “He has ever been too pert and forward for a man of his station. But now is not the time to call him to account.”

  The brief encounter broke up the easy mood that the men had enjoyed by the hearth, and they began moving away in twos and threes to prepare their evening tasks and make ready for sleep as the late-winter sunset drew on. In his own bed, a few hours later, Ned tried to banish thoughts of Kathryn Gale—or Kathryn Guy, as she now was. It was hard to imagine her here. She was a creature of Bristol, of streets and shops, of that civilized world they had all left behind. But so were all women—pretty girls like Kathryn, and hard-working maids like her girl Nancy, plump motherly housewives like Mistress Gale and his own mother. In a land where no Englishwoman had ever set foot, it was hard to picture one as part of the landscape.

  Ned tried the experiment as he fell into a fitful sleep: Kathryn weeding the young plants in the garden at Cupids Cove. His sisters feeding the chickens. Tibby ladling up stew around the fire. But the only picture that came really clear in his head was Nancy Ellis, her auburn hair tucked up sensibly under her coif, scrubbing out washing on the rocks by the stream as he himself had been doing a few days ago. His imagination moved seamlessly into dream; he was crossing the stream on rocks as she squatted there on the bank, scrubbing away like a washerwoman. “Watch your step, Ned Perry,” she called to him. “Lose your footing and you’ll be swept downstream and out to sea.”

  “I’ve survived worse,” he told her in his dream, jumping from the last stepping stone to the bank. “I’ve lived a winter in this place. I’m tougher than you think.”

  “So am I,” she said, and stood up to face him, her eyes nearly level with his. Then she leaned forward, brazen as a whore, and kissed him full on the lips, and he gathered her into his arms. She was not soft and yielding like her mistress, whom he’d kissed and tumbled in many a dream before. She was taught as a bowstring, vibrating with energy and passion. In the heat of their kiss she bit his lip and he tasted blood, and he was wild to have her out of her clothes and beneath him on the riverbank.

  He awoke suddenly, his cock standing at attention, the snores of the other men filling the chilly air around him. Blinking in surprise at his own dream, Ned got up and quietly made his way outside in the darkness to take a piss. While they waited for women to arrive, men were bound to have dreams.

  The night was bitterly cold; there were hours still till dawn. Ned hitched up his breeches and laced them again, and went back into the dwelling-house. With the fire smoored for the night, it was scarcely warmer inside than out.

  Instead of returning to his own bed, he stopped to see Marmaduke and found George pressing a damp cloth to his brother’s brow. “The fever’s not broke, then?” Ned asked.

  “He’s no better. Mayhap a bit worse. I cannot tell.”

  “You’re exhausted. Go to your own bed and get some rest. I’ll sit by him—I’ll not leave him alone.”

  Protesting, George stumbled off to his bed. Ned, still stirred and troubled by his dream, did not find it hard to stay awake, though it was hard to watch the boy shift and turn on his mattress, to hear him murmur in pain. He was relieved when the murmurs subsided and the troubled breathing stilled. It took him perhaps a quarter of an hour to realize that the stillness was too deep.

  He pressed his hand against Duke’s brow. Cooling, cooling at last. He ought to wake George, or perhaps the surgeon. But no, what good could any of them do now? His vigil continued; now it was a deathwatch, till morning lightened the skies.

  When Ned told him, George knelt by the body, stricken into unaccustomed silence. “I should never have brought him,” he said at last. “And if that fool John Guy dares to say how well we are doing with only four men dead, I swear I’ll strike him, Ned—governor or no, I will.”

  “Hush now, hush,” Ned cautioned, as others began to gather by the bed. But even as the news spread through the chilly gray dawn, a shout went up from outside. “A ship! A ship!”

  Poor Marmaduke Whittington: his death would be only the second most important thing to happen this day in Cupids Cove. For a ship was coming into the harbour, and if it were a Bristol ship it would bring supplies and letters from home. Spring had come, and the outside world had found them again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Letter is Read

  Sweet Creatures did ou trul understand

  The pleasant life you’d live in Newfound-land,

  You would with tears desire to be brought thither.

  I wish you, when you go, fair wind, fair weather.


  BRISTOL

  AUTUMN 1611

  NOW, THIS MIGHT ONLY BE GOSSIP, BUT I’VE HEARD there’s good bread flour for sale at today’s market, and if ’tis at any price we can afford, I intend to have it. You’re the quickest on your feet, Nancy, so you take yourself to market and see if there’s any to be found,” Mistress Gale instructed, counting out coins. “Tibby, you and I will stay here and see to the wash. Perhaps you can convince Kathryn to go to the market with you, Nancy?”

  “If you want me to be quick, I’ll be faster going and coming on my own,” Nancy said, and Mistress Gale nodded. She was always looking for ways to get her daughter out of the house, to rouse Kathryn from the low spirits that had gripped her ever since the loss of her child. But the possibility of being able to procure flour at the market took precedence even over the hope of Kathryn’s recovery. With last year’s drought continuing into this summer, harvests had been poor all around, and when any sort of flour was available, the prices were high and supplies quickly gone. Stews and jellies had become the preferred meals, with bread, cakes, and pastries reserved for those times when flour could be obtained.

  “I feel sure if only I could make her some nice wheaten bread, it would tempt her appetite—it always used to do, when she was a little girl,” Mistress Gale was saying to Aunt Tibby as Nancy left the house.

  In Nancy’s opinion, all the manchet bread in the world would not tempt Kathryn, for what ailed her could not be cured either with the most nourishing of food or the most cunning of possets. Her mother had tried plenty of those, too, and in the process of helping her prepare them Nancy had added a good deal to her own knowledge of herbals and medicines. Red sage and vinegar had worked to dry up Kathryn’s milk, and poultice of violet leaves had eased the pain in her sore breasts, but the acedia and melancholy that weighed her down would not be cured by anything in her mother’s chest of herbs and remedies. She was not a mother as she had expected to be; she was not a wife in any real sense while Master Nicholas was so far away; she was not mistress of his house nor did she manage his business.

  Instead of returning to her husband’s house, Kathryn had languished in her parents’ house for the last several months. As spring had turned to summer and now summer to autumn, there had been no lifting of her mood. The only advice anyone could offer a woman who had lost a babe was to try for another, and there was no chance of that in Kathryn’s case.

  In July a ship had come into port with word of the colony. It carried a letter from Governor Guy listing the names of the men still with him—two or three had died over the winter, but no one Nancy knew—and saying that all these men sent greetings to their families. So Kathryn knew her husband had been alive and well in the early spring when the letter was written.

  Nancy enjoyed the walk in the warm air and the chance to be free of her mistress’s oppressive sadness. She was thwarted in her search for wheat flour, but she did find a little rye flour. Despite the shortages, there was still plenty of buying and selling going on in the busy stalls huddled near the High Cross. All around, housewives complained about the food they could not buy. It had recently rained for the first time in months, but it was October now, and the rain had come far too late to save this season’s crops. It would be a long, hungry winter, especially for the poor. Already there seemed to be twice the usual number of beggars on the streets.

  At the fishmonger’s stall she met Jenny Piper, who was a trifle more courteous to her now that they were no longer living under the same roof. Jenny reported that Mistress Joanna was well, but old Master Guy was rheumy and tired easily. They, too, were eager for news from Master Nicholas.

  Nancy parted company with Jenny and walked home by way of Broad Quay before returning to the house. She often went by the docks when she was out, hoping to see a ship that might have news from John Guy’s colony. This day she was rewarded: a fishing vessel just back in port had brought word that a ship out of the New Found Land was coming not far behind them, with John Guy himself on board.

  She hurried home to bring the news, first to Mistress Gale and Aunt Tib in the kitchen, then to Kathryn. “I got a little rye, and some lovely Somerset cheese, and there’s going to be codfish for our dinner, but best of all, John Guy is on his way home! The word on the docks is that he may be back in port within a week.”

  Kathryn lifted dull eyes from her needlework. Her contribution to the household these long months had been to take over the sewing and mending, which she could do without having to be up and about much. “Do you think Nicholas will be with him?” she asked, something like hope brightening her face for a moment.

  “There’s no way to tell who might or might not come with him,” Nancy said. “At least, for sure, he will bring letters and a bit more news than he sent in the spring.”

  When the Comfort docked in Bristol with John Guy and a handful of other colonists aboard, there was no sign of Nicholas Guy, but there were, as promised, letters. Though the governor’s time was much taken up meeting with his company of merchants, he sent word that he had a letter for Nicholas Guy’s wife, and wished to deliver it by his own hand.

  So it was that John Guy, governor of the New Found Land colony, came to the house of John Gale the stonemason, and was seated in the best chair in the house, next to the hearth. “Your husband sends his kindest greetings, mistress,” the governor said, and drew out a letter that Kathryn reached for hungrily, but did not open. Nancy waited by the hearth along with Mistress Gale; Tibby had taken the younger children out with her to get eggs from the farmer’s stall, so as to allow for some peace and quiet in the house.

  “How fares my husband? Is he well?”

  “He is very well—or at least, he was when I left the colony a few weeks ago. Hard at work in tending crops and building boats. He has not had much occasion to pursue a shoemaker’s trade in Cupids Cove, but you would be surprised how skilled your husband has become at boatbuilding. We have all had to learn many new skills—a man must be a bit of a jack-of-all-trades to survive in the New World.”

  “It is hard to imagine,” Kathryn said, “but he knew he would not be making ladies’ fine leather shoes over there.”

  “Still, his skills come in handy for such things as repairing boots and sewing up bags and such—we make do with everything, for until we send a ship back with more supplies, the colonists must get by on what they have.”

  “And when will such a ship go back? Can I write a letter in reply to this?” Kathryn looked almost eager.

  John Guy frowned. “I hope that another ship will make the journey soon, and you may certainly write a letter to send on it. I myself will spend the winter here in England, raising further money for the colony. When I return next year, I hope to carry more than letters.” He let the comment hang in the air, as if daring Kathryn to ask what else he intended to take.

  “You mean to bring over more colonists?”

  “I do indeed. Thirty-five men cannot people the New World by themselves. When I come back I will bring cattle, and more working men, but the most important thing I will bring is womenfolk. Without women, there can be no permanent settlement.”

  “Well, that is certainly true enough,” Kathryn said with a tiny flare of her old spirit. “God did not put two men in the Garden of Eden, despite how much work he could have got from them. But will you find women willing to make such a treacherous journey?”

  The room grew quiet. Mistress Gale let out a stifled gasp, and Nancy reached out to put a hand on the older woman’s arm. After a moment John Guy said, “I’m sure there will be some young women of the servant class willing to try such an adventure, who will come out and marry our labourers and apprentices. But it is our great hope that some of the wives of the men who are already settled there will choose to join their husbands also.”

  Kathryn looked down at the unopened letter in her hand. “You think that…that women such as I should go out there?”

  “It is very much our hope—not mine only, but the hope of many of the marrie
d men there—that their wives will do so.”

  Kathryn lifted her eyes. “Will your own wife go to Cupids Cove, Master Guy?”

  John Guy cleared his throat. “Well, now. My Anne would be reluctant to undertake such a journey. We have young children, you know, of an age where their health and safety is most precarious. And of course, I have substantial business holdings here, that she must manage for me in my absence. Philip is hoping to persuade his wife Elizabeth to come back to the colony with him. We are thinking of…of young couples like yourself and my cousin Nicholas, who might begin their families in the New World.”

  “It is a terrible thing to ask of a woman!” Mistress Gale could keep silent no longer; the words burst out of her. But even as Kathryn said, “Mother—” in a tone of warning, John Guy cut her off.

  “I know it is.” He looked from daughter to mother and back again; his eyes slid past Nancy, presumably not even registering the presence of a servant. “It is a great deal to ask, and any of the women who do make the journey will have to have great courage. This past winter has not been easy, even for the menfolk; still less easy will winters be for the women who will come. But come they must, if England is to have a colony there.”

  Kathryn played with the letter, turning it over and over in her hands. “My husband meant to keep his home and business and wife here in Bristol, even as you are doing, and return after a season in the New World. ’Twas never intended to be a permanent move.”

  “But it must be permanent, if we are to have an English colony. And the women—not just servant girls—” here his eyes flickered, for the first time, in Nancy’s direction, “but respectable married women, guildsmen’s wives, must come with their husbands. I know women are unlike men; they are bred for home and hearth, not for the open seas and adventure. But in these times, when we are creating a whole New World across the sea, there must be women who are willing to move to new homes and new hearths.” He stirred in his seat. “Mistress, I must excuse myself. I have meetings to attend and many people to visit. Read your husband’s letter, and think over what I have said.”