When John Guy was gone, Kathryn looked at her mother and Nancy. The letter still lay unopened in her lap. “Mother, can you leave me to myself to read this letter? I will read it to you afterwards, I promise—but leave me with just Nancy here while I look it over for the first time.”
As Mistress Gale left and Nancy sat down on the bench, Kathryn broke the letter’s seal. “Is it possible Governor John is entirely wrong about what is in this letter? I hoped Master Nicholas would send word he was coming home—even if not till next summer. But this…Nan, it seems as if he is talking about a lifetime.”
“Read the letter. His words may be quite different from what his cousin represents.”
Kathryn pulled out the letter and stared at it for a long time before starting to read aloud:
My deare Wife, I take my Quill in Hand on this, the first day of September, to write you this letter. Inclos’d with it you will find some letters I writ before, so that you will heare a little more of the storey of our Dayes here in Cupids Cove. I Praye you read thru them at your Leisuire for I would have you knowe the Truth of what it is like to live here, in my most fervent Hopes that when my cousin retournes again, you will come with him.
At present all the Men heere live in two large Dwelling-houses, and it is our Intention next year to begin upon the building of another House, so that when our Numbers have been swelt by the arrival of our Wives and sundry others, we will have places for all.
You will see in my earlier Letters, my great Grief And Sorrowe at the newes that our Childe was lost to you, and that I could not bee there to comfort you. Yett I have great Hopes our next Childe will be a son or daughter of the New Found Land, and that we will bee together again. For I have found this Land so riche and good, and so great the Opportunitys here, that I am minded to try it awhile longer, to see what Fortune can be made.
I finish this Letter with greetings to all my Household, and to my Sister and Father, and also to your Father and Mother and all in their Household. They will be Angrey, I know, at my plan to Steale their dearest Treasure, yet they should be Proude to have such a Daughter, that might be the Mother of a new English family in a New Land. To the household in your Father’s house please send allso the greetings of his former Apprentyce, Ned Perry, who does well for himself here in Cupids Cove and wishes to be Remember’d to all at home in Bristol. He bade me say in especial a greeting to your dear Nancy, and to tell her the New Found Lande has need of Women with a sharp Tongue and witty Spirite such as her’s.
And I will say the same for you, my good Wife, leaving aside the part of the Sharpe Tongue, for yours is not. But I dare say your spirit is as strong as Any, and would be a greate boone not only to Mee, but to all this colony.
Your loving Husbande,
Nicholas Guy
It took some time to read it. Kathryn had learned her letters at petty school when she was a child, and could even write a little, but she was no scholar. In the silence that followed, Nancy said, “So he truly means to stay over there.”
“So it seems.”
Nancy pulled her hand from Kathryn’s and put an arm around her shoulders. Kathryn relaxed into her embrace, and after a few moments, Nancy felt her shoulders shake with sobs. Had it really been less than two years ago that they had sat in St. Stephen’s church watching Kathryn exchange vows with Nicholas Guy, her future laid out rosy and secure? How quickly everything had fallen apart. What became of a woman whose husband had crossed the ocean to a new country and did not return for years? She was not a widow, could not marry again. She was, quite simply, an abandoned wife.
The two women sat in silence for a long time. They were interrupted at last by the arrival home of the rest of the family. Kathryn excused herself and went up to the sleeping chamber with the rest of her husband’s letters, meaning to read through them before nightfall.
She had finished them by the time Nancy brought her up a bowl of eel stew that the rest of the family had had for supper. “What else does he say?” Nancy asked.
“Much, and little. He does his best to make it sound as if it were a place I could be content.”
“So, what will you do now?” Stay here in my father’s house, Nancy hoped she would say. Though what she really wanted was the impossible: Turn back the clock. Go back to the way things had been before her marriage, before the child, before anyone thought of going to the New World. Make a different match, with a man who would not leave Bristol.
Kathryn sighed. “I suppose I will have to consider how it might be done. What will be involved in preparing. Governor John says he will not leave till next spring, so there will be plenty of time to plan.”
Nancy stared at her, the meaning of her words taking a moment to sink in. “You mean...you are considering going over there?”
“Marry, what else can I do?”
A thousand things, Nancy wanted to say. “You could go back to his house, keep his household until he comes to his senses and returns. If he ever does. You could stay here with your parents, if you preferred.”
“To what end? If he does not come back, what life is there for me here?”
“But—to go to the ends of the earth, to live where no English woman has ever lived? You said yourself, you cannot bear a child in a place without midwives or doctors. ’Tis all madness!”
“It is, for certain. But it is a madness to which my husband seems to have pledged his life. And as I am pledged to him, what else can I do but join him?” Kathryn had been staring down at her bowl as she picked at her food. Now she looked up. “I would dare to hope I would not go alone. You and I did vow to each other that we would never be apart. And that vow is as true to me as my vow to my husband. Could you abandon me, Nan, if you knew I was determined to join my husband in Cupids Cove?”
It was on Nancy’s lips to say No, of course not, I will never leave you. She had always believed her life and Kathryn’s were tied together, more truly than if they were joined by blood. But it seemed there might, after all, be a limit to their bond. There might be a place Kathryn was willing to go where Nancy could not, or would not, follow her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Preparations are Made for a Journey
This holy hopeful work you have half done,
For best of an , you have well begun.
If you give over what hath so well sped,
Your solid wisdom will be questioned.
BRISTOL
SPRING 1612
“IS MY BLUE KERSEY GOWN HERE? IS’T PACKED ALREADY?”
“No, it must be downstairs.”
“Well, go and fetch it! I refuse to wear nothing but blacks, browns, and greys for the rest of my natural life, even in the colony.”
Kathryn paced the sleeping chamber in her father’s house, looking into four trunks that stood open in various stages of packing. She put things in, pulled them out, tossed orders over her shoulder to Nancy. The lethargy that had fallen on her after the loss of her child, the fear that gripped her when her husband asked her to come to the New Found Land with him—all had melted like morning dew as soon as she made the decision to go. Kathryn’s usual energy blazed again like the midday sun.
She had needed that energy, first and foremost for the confrontation with her parents. It was the outcome Mistress Gale had most devoutly feared ever since Nicholas Guy first went to his cousin’s colony. Her son-in-law abandoning her daughter to go adventuring across the sea was bad enough. But luring Kathryn over there? That was unforgiveable.
Mistress Gale had raged, begged, and pleaded with her daughter to reconsider. Master Gale was, as ever, more temperate than his wife, but he had a long and serious talk warning Kathryn of the dangers of life in the New World. Wild beasts, unknown plagues, attacks by brutal savages or marauding pirates—anything might happen.
But there was no changing Kathryn’s mind; every objection was mown down like grass before the sickle. Eventually even Mistress Gale had to accept the inevitable and turn her attention to helping her daughter prepar
e for the journey.
The few items Kathryn had left at her husband’s house had been packed up and brought here to the Gale household. Nicholas Guy’s business would remain in the hands of his father and sister, with Robin Piper managing the shoemaking shop. “The house will be cared for and the business thriving while we are in the colony,” Kathryn told her parents. “When we make our fortune in the New World and come back to Bristol, Master Nicholas will be well set up to go into trade as a merchant.”
Nancy joined her on visits to the shops: they bought fabric and sewed new petticoats, skirts, aprons, and gowns, stocked up on buttons and needles and thimbles and thread. Kathryn asked John Guy the names of the other women who were considering going out to Cupids Cove and met with them, discussing what they would need to bring to a land where there was no such thing as a shop or market. She took the pewter plates from her husband’s house and sorted through them, deciding what was fit to take and then wrapping them carefully.
With everything discussed, from hairbrushes to chamber pots, there was only one subject rarely touched upon, and that was the vexing question of whether Kathryn would go alone. She would, of course, go on a ship commanded by Master John Guy in the company of at least a dozen other women. These women included Philip Guy’s wife with her two small boys, and the wives of two other merchant colonists: Willian Colston and William Catchmaid. Colston’s wife was bringing her unmarried sister. There was a dairymaid named Daisy who was promised to marry a man in Cupids Cove; she also had two unwed sisters coming with her. They were used to hard work and wanted to see the world, and said they would marry any man in the colony who’d have them, as long as he wasn’t too old, too ugly, or too cruel.
What was not clear, as yet, was whether this tally of breeding stock that John Guy was importing to his colony would include Nancy Ellis. Kathryn brought it up almost daily, as she made her lists and plans. She spoke about “when we get to the New Found Land” and “when we are settled in Cupids Cove.” Sometimes in bed at night, Kat would turn to her and say, “You will come with me, will you not?”
“I cannot do it,” Nancy said. “I simply cannot.”
And why not? That was the question, now. Once Kathryn’s decision was made, it had gone from How could you possibly consider going over there, Kathryn? to How could you let her go alone, Nancy? Mistress Gale begged Nancy to go. “I can’t bear to think of her all alone in that strange land, without any of us—without you! Why, you girls have never been separated!”
Nobody viewed Nancy’s life as anything but a piece of Kathryn’s, like an extra bit of fabric sewn into a gown to make it fit more comfortably. It was the life she had lived since she was four years old and had been put into Kathryn’s bed to sleep with her at night, play with her by day, and eventually serve her. She tried to imagine standing on the quay waving goodbye to Kathryn, knowing she was going where Nancy would likely never see her again.
But the thought of standing on the ship’s deck herself, sailing down the river towards the open sea, was even more terrifying.
Aunt Tib, plucking and gutting a capon for supper, listened when Nancy sought her out to confide in her. “’Tis a shocking thing, I’ve always said, this business of going off to them places. What do people want over there that they can’t have right here in Bristol? A fine, well-set-up young man like young Master Guy, now—he got a good business, a house and a wife here. Or our Ned, poor little fellow, doing fine in his apprenticeship, best kind of prospects ahead of him. His poor mother, you know, she cries herself to sleep every night. And our mistress will be doing the same, no doubt, when young Mistress Kathryn goes.”
“And what of me?” Nancy brushed up the feathers into a basket. “Who’ll cry themselves to sleep at night if I go to the New World?”
Aunt Tib glanced up from her task. “If you’re fishing for sympathy, I’ll not give you the satisfaction of saying I would,” she said firmly. “You know I’m not one to cry over what can’t be helped. I hate to think of you over there. But one thing I will tell you—if you don’t go with the young mistress, she’s the one will be crying every night. She’ll be lost without you.”
“And that is all that matters.” Nancy opened her palm and blew a little gust of breath at the feathers, and they drifted on the air for a moment. “What is good for Kathryn.”
“What if you don’t go with her? She will give you a good character, I suppose. Then you go to work in somebody else’s house, do what I’ve done all my life. Help some other woman keep her house and cook her meals and raise her brats. Mayhap amid all that you’ll find a husband of your own, and then you’ll clean your own house, cook your own meals, raise your own brats.” She looked up from the plucked chicken. “Either way, ’twill be a hard life—what woman’s life is not?—but you’ll turn your hand to the task at hand. Like I’ve taught you to do.”
Turn your hand to the task at hand. Nancy turned the phrase—a favourite of Aunt Tib’s—over in her mind all that day as she worked beside Tib and then helped Kathryn with her packing. She had not Kathryn’s gift for making up pictures in her head of what might be, for imagining her life like a scene put on by players. Kathryn had a hundred images of what life in this New World might be like; Nancy could see only ships sailing away from the quay out to the ocean and off the edge of the world. It was a great void of nothingness in her mind. So was the life she would lead here in Bristol, if Kathryn went away without her. Neither was possible to imagine. But if she sailed off the end of the world, at least she and Kathryn would be together. In the end, what else had she to hold onto?
“Candles,” Kathryn said later that afternoon, packing yet another box inside one of the large trunks. “I’ll take six. I’m sure we’ll be able to make tallow candles over there as well as we can here, but I doubt we’ll have beeswax.”
Tallow candles or rushlights, made at home, were for the few tasks that had to be done between dusk and bedtime; beeswax candles, purchased from the chandler, were saved for holidays and special guests. Would there be any such special occasions in Cupids Cove? Would the clean, pure light of the wax candles be a painful reminder of living in a civilized town?
Nancy gestured at the little pile of candles. “How long will half a dozen candles last? If we save them, perhaps, for a fine dinner when your husband entertains the governor, when you eat off your wedding plates and you wear the red mockado gown from your wedding-day—what then? Sooner or later, the last of the beeswax candles is burned. The gown is worn out and you can’t buy another bolt of mockado. What then? No matter how we prepare for this journey, in the end everything we bring over will be gone, and we’ll have to live off what we can grow or raise or kill. In five years, we will be living like beasts.” She was horrified to realize her voice was breaking; when she said the words “five years” tears sprang to her eyes, and she pressed her hand against her mouth and bit it, hard, to stop from crying.
Kathryn turned from the candles, flew across the room and put her arm around Nancy. “My poor Nan! But—you said we. Have you decided?”
Wordless, Nancy nodded, still fighting not to break down in tears. When the urge to weep passed, she shrugged away from Kathryn’s embrace. “I still think we’ll likely die in the wilderness if we don’t drown on the way there. But if you are going, I see no profit in staying behind. And I’m better at making candles than you are.”
Now it was a joint enterprise: the two women planning together; Nancy often overruling Kathryn’s opinion about what or how much to pack. Then John Guy came for a visit, briefly back in Bristol from his business in London, looked at their trunks, and said there would never be room for all four. He poked through the things they had packed, shook his head, told them what must be tossed aside. The beeswax candles could not make the crossing.
“We’ll have beekeepers before long,” he said, “and then someone will set themselves up as a chandler and make candles as good as any in England. The whole point of the place is that it must eventually be self-sufficie
nt—we will have to trade with ships from England, of course, but we must learn to produce all we can. Buttons? Why need you so many buttons?”
“Spoken like a man,” Kathryn said. “You’ve no idea how many buttons are needed to make and repair clothing, year in and year out. As well as all metal goods; knives and needles and kettles and such.”
“We’ve a forge over there already where our smith can make most metal goods. Buttons, when you need them, you can buy from traders on the sack ships—we’ll not be entirely cut off from the world, for ships come and go from England from spring to autumn. Only take as much as you and your husband and your maid will need—a plate, a bowl, a cup, a knife and spoon for each person. There’s no need for a dining set for grand dinners. We must be thrifty, must reuse and repair and never, never let anything go to waste.”
Master Guy limited them to a single trunk. He had recruited a total of sixteen women, he said, including Kathryn and Nancy. Half a dozen were already married or promised in marriage to men in the New Found Land. The rest were young, unmarried, and willing to consider wedding a colonist. “Women such as yourself, Nancy,” he said, speaking directly to her for the first time. “I am glad you have decided to throw in your lot with us.”
Nancy opened her mouth to say she had no intention of marrying anyone, least of all some poor fool who had signed his life away in the New World. But John Guy’s attention had already moved on from her.
When they went to visit William Colston’s wife and her sister, Mistress Tyler, the women talked about the difficulties they would face, the jobs they would have to learn to do, the things that would have to be made by hand. It was a daunting prospect, but they seemed to look forward to the challenge. Mistress Tyler clearly had hopes of finding a husband in Cupids Cove, where the selection of possible wives was so limited that she might look like an attractive choice. She was a thin, stringy woman in her early thirties, but drop her down in the barren fields of Cupids Cove and the men out there, who would have been without sight of a woman for two years, might view her very differently.
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