A Roll of the Bones

by Trudy J. Morgan-Cole

  “I’m off to chop wood for the fire.” Nancy gladly handed Kathryn the squalling infant, pulled a cloak on, and went outside. The calendar had turned over to June, but it was a wet, gray, foggy June month so far, with little hint of summer’s warmth save for the scattered day of sun. Since the last frosts, the settlers had hoed and planted cabbage, turnip, carrots, and parsnips, but the cold spring kept the plants from flourishing. Before he left for England, Governor Guy had declared they would plant no corn this season. Each of the past three summers, the settlers had tried different varieties of grains, but none had flourished. A waste of good seed, the governor had finally declared. Best to concentrate on growing the few things that grew well in this country, on raising livestock for milk and meat, on killing wild game and salting away the abundant codfish for winter.

  Truth be told, as little as she liked playing nursemaid, Nancy enjoyed some of the additional tasks she had taken on with the men away. Splitting firewood, in particular, gave her great satisfaction. Back in Bristol they had bought firewood, and the apprentices had taken turns to split it up into smaller pieces for the fire. Now Ned had taught her to split logs, and she thought that when he returned she could challenge him to a splitting contest, for she had the rhythm of it finally, and the strength in her arms. Whenever she felt peevish, as she often did, it was a great relief to take her anger out on the axe head and the wood.

  She was going to it with a will, cleaving clean junks of birch and enjoying the ring of the axe in the still air, when she looked up to see George Whittington leaning on the rail fence, smoking a pipe. “Sure you’re as good as any man with that axe,” Whittington called.

  “Am I now? And if you were as good as any man, you’d be down below working.”

  “I’m only catching a few minutes’ rest, feasting my eyes on your beauty.”

  “Go on with you, Whittington. You’ve a wife at last; high time you left other women alone.”

  “Oh, my Nelly’s a fine wife, indeed—pretty and sweet, and of a more biddable nature than some I could mention. She does as I tell her.” He vaulted to sit on the top rail of the fence. “You’ll be sorry one day that you turned me down—I’m going to be a great man in this colony.” He was well settled in to lecture her now, but fortunately between the wind and the sound of her axe she couldn’t much hear him. “’Tis the one good thing about this godforsaken place,” he yammered on, “how a man can rise. I’ll be master of my own plantation and captain of my own ship someday. Yes, a man can rise—and a woman can, too, if she got the good sense to hitch herself to the right man.”

  Nancy paused; her arms were throbbing and she needed a moment’s rest. “Aye, all kinds of things rise to the top in this land,” she said. “Only this morning I boiled the kettle and saw how all the hot air rose up. And you’d not believe what rises to the top of the chamber pot when I heave it out in the morning.”

  Whittington laughed. “You’ll have a sharp tongue in your head till the day someone cuts it out of you, Nan Ellis,” he said. “I said you’d regret refusing me—watch and see if that does not come true.” He leapt lightly off the fence rail, but landed hard. “Damn your eyes, look what you made me do!” he cried with a howl of pain.

  Nancy laughed. “Yes now—and did I make you come up here, or sit on the fence, or jump off it? What have you done, turned your ankle? Serves you right for pestering me at my work.”

  Whittington hobbled away, much less sanguine than he’d been when he arrived, and Nancy went back to her woodcutting with a lighter heart. Still, she had not forgotten the threat Whittington had made months ago. She was sure he had not forgotten either.

  She kept an eye to her mistress and Thomas Willoughby every time the two of them were in the same room. Surely, with her husband’s heir born now, Kathryn would not be such a fool as to risk a dalliance with that sullen young lordling. But Master Nicholas was away again. At nights, now, Nancy shared Kathryn’s bed, and with the curtains pulled about them she could raise the topic of Thomas Willoughby in private, warn her mistress of Willoughby’s boasts and George Whittington’s threats. But she had not done so. Out of fear, perhaps, that she might learn a truth she did not want to know.

  She had to go down to the storehouse that afternoon to replenish their supply of flour and hoped she would not encounter Whittington again. Walking down the rocky paths that connected the colony’s buildings felt far different this summer than it had when she had arrived almost a year ago. Every turn and stone in the path was familiar to her now, familiar as only a landscape could be when she had seen nothing else for eleven months. But the settlement itself had changed. Last summer Cupids Cove had been bustling: the old colonists and the new ones, and a goodly number of summer fishermen as well. Well over a hundred souls in all; it had felt like a village, though one composed mainly of men.

  Now the place felt hollow as an empty bowl. So many people had returned to England, including the governor himself. Those who had died of the sickness in winter left empty beds behind, and now that Master Crout had taken a boatload of men on another expedition, there were fewer than fifty souls left in Cupids Cove.

  She passed some of them on her walk: Maggie and Liza feeding chickens, with help from little James Guy; Jennet helping two of the lads tote a bundle of barley down to the mill. In the big house she found Elizabeth Guy, Jane Catchmaid, and Sal Butler making tallow candles. “Have you come to lend a hand, Nan?” Mistress Guy greeted her as she came in. “Every house is running low on candles, and when this is done we have soap to make as well.”

  “I came to fetch flour, and I need to bring it up to the house so Bess can begin the pies. But if I can spare an hour afterwards, I’ll come back down to help.”

  As she passed into the storehouse, she heard Sal Butler’s sharp tones. “’Tis no good asking that one for help, she serves her own mistress and no one else. Some folks here cannot see that all must work for the good of everyone.”

  “That will not be true for long, if everyone goes off on their own plot of land and looks only to their own needs,” Mistress Guy replied. Which confirmed, as Nancy had suspected, that there was a division between Philip and Nicholas Guy, that the former was not best pleased with his cousin’s plan to leave Cupids Cove. “This place cannot thrive if everyone looks only to their own ends.”

  Her flour sack filled, she had now to pass back through the main room, where the three women were still talking about the selfishness of folk who would not work for the good of all. Nancy lifted her chin a little as she passed through, and meant to say nothing at all, but when Mistress Catchmaid said, “So, Nan, will you be able to spare us an hour for candlemaking?” Nancy could not bite back a reply.

  “I think it best if Daisy, Bess, and I help Mistress Kathryn to make our own candles. ’Twill be less labour for the rest of you. Every man for himself, is that not how the tune goes?”

  She had the pleasure, as she had had with Whittington earlier, of getting in a smart jab, and she closed the door behind herself so they had no time to reply. But her own words, and those of the women, gnawed at her as she walked through the quiet grassy paths of the cove under the lowering grey sky. Those gossiping housewives were right: the reason the colony had thrived last summer was that all were working together for the common good. Now that hearty spirit had gone out of the cove. Something different was growing in its place: she did not know what to call it, but she heard it in Sal Butler’s sniping tongue, in George Whittington’s empty boasts, even in her own tart replies. Something loomed over them like these rain clouds did, dark and heavy.

  As she reached the door of their dwelling-house, the first drops of rain fell.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A Temptation is Presented

  When you do see an idle, lewd, oung man,

  You say he’s fit for our Plantation.

  Knowing your self to be rich, sober, wise,

  You set your own worth at an higher price.

  CUPIDS COVE

  JUNE 1
613

  KATHRYN WAS NURSING THE BABY WHEN NANCY CAME through the door hefting a bag of flour. Kathryn shifted him from one breast to the other, and after a moment’s fumbling, he latched on and sucked strongly. There were moments when feeding him, thus, made Kathryn feel powerful. She loved thinking of herself as a mother, like an old painting of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, giving life to her son from her own body.

  Other times, it simply hurt, and her nipples were sore. This was one of the latter times.

  At the table, Daisy and Bess were boning and gutting two wild ducks that Frank had brought down that morning. “Ah, that’s grand, I can get on to making the pie crust now,” Bess said as Nancy dumped the flour into their barrel.

  “You can get at that; I’ll finish those birds,” Nancy said. “Oh, and I beg pardon, but I’ve sentenced us to making our own candles and soap, all because I could not hold my tongue and was saucy to Sally Butler.”

  Daisy and Bess groaned: making soap and candles were both onerous tasks, made lighter if all the women worked together. “’Tis hard to blame you though, that one got some mouth on her,” Daisy said.

  “I fear I’m as bad as she is,” Nancy admitted. “I doubt not I’d make fewer enemies if I held my peace. But it seems Mistress Elizabeth Guy does not think much of our master’s plan to take us away to a plantation of his own, which likely means Master Philip likes it not.”

  The baby squirmed away, the nipple slipping from his mouth, and Kathryn put him over her shoulder, patting his back till she heard a tiny belch. “’Tis true, there was dissension between them over it, but ’tis not as if Master Philip rules my husband.”

  “He is governor in his brother’s place.”

  “He is, but Master Nicholas is no indentured servant. He has given three years to this colony, more than he originally agreed to, and the governor agreed to him clearing his own land. Master Philip cannot overrule that, though he fears every man of substance will abandon Cupids Cove. But he cannot force folk to stay.”

  “Well, I for one will be glad to be out of here,” said Nancy, “there’s too many gossiping tongues in this settlement.”

  “But off in the wilderness, all by ourselves?” Bess darted an apologetic look towards Kathryn. “Forgive me, Mistress—I know the master means well, but I can’t help but fear at the thought of going off by ourselves in the forest with the animals and the savages and all.”

  “We shall be as safe on our own land as we are here in Cupids Cove,” Kathryn said, trying to sound sure. The baby had settled now, and Kathryn tucked him into the cradle and crossed to the table where the three maids were all at work. “My husband will be back before long and will tell us his plans for the new plantation. Until then, we all stick close and hush any foolish talk.”

  She felt very wise and grown-up uttering those words, though a moment later she looked around and it all seemed incredible—that she was the mistress of this house, her babe lying in the cradle, these three young women relying on her to lead and guide them. She felt like a little girl dressing in a woman’s clothes, betimes.

  It was early afternoon when the pies were done and all four women turned to their own tasks. Nancy went out again—she had been roaming out of doors a great deal these days, despite the poor weather, as if she felt caged inside the house. This time she took her little pet goat, Petal, still too small and frail to be put in the pen with the other goats; the kid trotted at Nancy’s heels as she went off to feed the livestock. Bess and Daisy turned to mending clothes, and Kathryn thought she might go down to the main house and offer to help with the candles and soap, to smooth over whatever trouble had been caused by the disagreement between Nancy and Mistress Butler.

  “Keep an eye to the young master while he sleeps,” she told Bess and Daisy, as the baby still snored in his cradle.

  In the big house she found the women had dispersed; the candlemaking was done, and Jane Catchmaid told her they had put off the soapmaking for another day, for that was better done out of doors. “And to-morrow may be warmer,” Mistress Catchmaid said.

  “Surely we’ll have some spring weather soon.”

  “In England we’d be going about with no cloaks on by this time.”

  Kathryn did not linger long talking to her: Mistress Catchmaid was gentle and sweet natured, but there was a hunger in her eyes whenever she looked at Kathryn, even when the baby was not there. The fact that one babe had been lost and the other born hale and hearty stood between them. “Sal went down to the mill to get more flour, and I believe some of the maids are down at the brewhouse,” Mistress Catchmaid said. Kathryn went that way, past the yard where the men who remained in the settlement were working on building a fishing boat and a new storage barn. George Whittington stood in their midst leaning on a stick and complaining loudly about something: likely he had injured his fool self in some way. Kathryn told herself she was not looking to see if Thomas Willoughby was there, but she glimpsed him in the circle of men, and their eyes met for a moment before she continued on her way.

  The brewhouse made her think of him: she remembered the moment they had shared there, when he said what ought never to have been put into words. Was that what drew her down there? Surely not—she would offer to help with the brewing, if any help was needed.

  The brewhouse was empty and still, save for the bubble of the copper keeler on the fire. The other maids had gone. The wort needed to boil for several hours before the yeast could be added, and someone would come every little while to check it and stir the mixture. The women would be about other tasks now. There were always other tasks to do; Kathryn could think of a dozen she could be doing, including returning to care for her child. Yet she lingered in the empty brewhouse, until she heard a footstep outside—one that was not the light step of any of the maids.

  He came through the door, late-afternoon light spilling in around him. The sun had broken through the clouds at last. He was sweating, his curling hair tousled and damp from his labour, and he did not smile.

  “I’ve hardly seen you these last weeks,” he said.

  “You know why that is.”

  “Yes, you are much taken up with your husband’s brat, nursing him like a farmer’s wife.” He crossed the floor and stood close enough to touch her.

  “What, do you think I ought to have hired a wet nurse? We are all farmers and farmers’ wives out here, no matter what our station might be back in England.”

  He shook his head. “I know what I am. Time will come when I am back in England and have my rights again, and I will never pick up hammer nor hoe nor fishing line till the day I die. But for now …” He reached out and touched her face with one finger, a light pulling motion as if drawing her towards him, though neither of them moved besides that single touch.

  “For now, what? We all have our roles to play. And I am a wife and mother, as well you know.” She had tried so hard to play that role, to paint pretty pictures in her mind of herself as a good mother, a good colonist, a true housewife. Yet this other picture kept showing through from behind, this other role she might play. Heroine of a romance, as doomed as poor Juliet or Thisbe.

  “Wife to a husband who has gone off and left you. Again.”

  “That is the way of men. If you had a wife, you’d leave her too.”

  “If I had a wife like you, dark lady, I’d not let her out of my sight for fear another man would take what was mine.”

  “Flatterer.” She meant to tell him to stop, that he ought not to speak so. She meant to leave the brewhouse before the maids came back. Instead she let him draw her face towards his. Her breath came hard and fast. She had lain with her husband night after night, conceived two children in his bed, and nothing Nicholas Guy had ever said or done had made her feel as Thomas Willoughby’s one finger on her cheek made her feel.

  He stepped away for a moment, but only to bar the door. “No!” she said. “They will come back—the maids—what if we are here, and the door barred?”

  He glanced at the covered
copper pot. A spark snapped in the low fire underneath it. “They have not long gone—’twill be some time before they return to see to it. What I have in mind will take but little time.”

  “You are a fool.”

  “Then I am your fool.”

  His hands were on her now, at her waist, drawing her close, and while her mind still chattered away about all the reasons it was wrong, her body wanted his. This body, so lately torn by childbirth, with milk still leaking from its breasts, this body that was no longer that of a maiden but of a wife—it wanted to be touched, and kissed, and entered by this arrogant, beautiful youth.

  “I have wanted this ever since I stepped off that damned ship last summer and saw you for the first time,” he said. Her breasts were bared as he pulled away her waistcoat and the petticoat beneath it. He laughed when he saw the milk running from her breasts, and licked it with his tongue like a kitten. Then he put his mouth on hers.

  Pleasure thundered through her body like the hard pulse of water on the rocks outside. She wanted Tom Willoughby’s hands all over her, wanted him inside her—

  Outside, the high chatter of women’s voices. Kathryn pulled away, rearranged her clothing over her bosom. “They are coming—the maids coming back to see to the ale,” she said. “I must not be alone here with you—what will we say?”

  He shrugged. “Say what you will. Who cares what the likes of them think?” Arranging his own disheveled garments, he looked like a young lord of the manor who had been about to tumble a farmer’s wife. He looked, then, like what he was.

  The voices went on past; the girls were going on to the mill, likely to check the brewhouse on their return. Thomas left alone, stealing one more kiss before he went. Then Kathryn, a few minutes later, lifted the lid on the keeler and stirred the wort with a bit of broom straw. The flush on her face would surely be from the rising heat of the fire. She left and went the other way from Thomas, down to the mill to tell the maids that she had checked on the ale, and all was well.