Philip Guy looked at Catchmaid, who nodded. “I agree,” Guy said, “that the case against her is weak. Yet it was our duty to examine such a severe accusation. Reverend Leat, are you settled in your mind that she is innocent?”
The minister, who had still been pacing the room, sat down. “I have wrestled with this in prayer,” he said. “The Lord told me that if one more witness came forth to confirm that accusations against this woman, we must take the testimony of three witnesses and condemn her as a witch. But we have heard testimony, and it seems there is no third accuser.”
There was a terrifying moment of silence in which Nancy tried to think who else she might ever have offended, who might hate her enough to seal her doom. Or was this the moment Whittington would hurl his second accusation and brand Kathryn an adulteress?
But nobody spoke, and the minister said, “I agree with Master Crout’s judgement, and Master Guy’s, that there is no basis to condemn her as a witch. Therefore, let her go. She is innocent.”
Innocent. No dunking in the cold pond water then, no hot pokers, no rope around her neck. Nancy felt as if she could slide to the floor. Both Kathryn and Ned took her arms, leading her back to the bench. “Come, let us go back to the house,” Kathryn said, but Kathryn’s husband’s voice cut across the clamour.
“Wait. There is one more thing that must be said here.”
Everyone settled; Nancy collapsed onto the bench between Ned and Kathryn. Nicholas Guy strode to the centre of the room, his hands clasped behind him, and addressed his comments to his cousin Philip. “You all know I have been absent for a month, clearing the forest on my land up the shore. My intention was to spend this summer and autumn building a house and outbuildings there, and move my family and servants to that site next spring. Instead, my work was interrupted by a messenger who came overland from the colony to tell me that my wife was in great distress over this business with her maid, and had need of me. As this message came while Master Crout’s men were breaking their journey at my site, we all returned home together to find this shameful mockery in progress.”
Philip Guy opened his mouth to speak, but Master Nicholas gave him no opportunity. “I must tell you now, Cousin, that I cannot leave my wife, child, and servants in a place where such an injustice can be done to an innocent girl. Though the shelter I have built on my new plantation is rude as yet, ’tis better than leaving them here. By the end of this fortnight, I plan to take my household from this place and remove to Mosquito Cove.”
“This is hardly the time—” began Philip Guy.
“We spoke of this,” Nicholas Guy reminded him. “The governor gave me his permission.”
“Yes—at some future time. But right now, when we have lost so many people, we need all to stay here, to work together for the common good! The colony cannot thrive if men go off into the wilderness to clear their own land, catch and cure their own fish, make themselves little princes on their own patch of ground!”
Now Henry Crout stepped forward. “’Tis a dream to think we can all survive in this place! Instead of trying to scrape a living from the land, we should turn our attention to the bounty of the sea. Your brother has gone back to England and I will be surprised if we ever see him return. My master’s apprentices, and his own son, have declared their intention to return to England, and I mean to do the same. If Nicholas Guy or any man wishes to try to make a success of it as a planter in this country, God go with him. ’Tis folly to force men to stay in Cupids Cove—this place cannot sustain a large population. If this New Found Land is to be peopled, we must spread out, found new plantations, and turn to the sea—exactly as Nicholas Guy intends to do. More men should do the same!”
Then the whole room went mad, men—it was all the men, the women sat as if stunned by this sudden turn of events—on their feet, shouting and arguing. Nancy turned to Kathryn, who was trying to soothe the baby. It was in her mind to ask if Kathryn knew who could have sent a message to Master Nicholas on her behalf, for surely Kathryn must have had a hand in that, but the answer would have to wait. Half an hour ago she had been on trial for her life and now, within breaths of her acquittal, the whole affair seemed forgotten, swallowed up in this greater quarrel among men.
“I should take you back to the house,” Kathryn said, “and my young master here, too. Whatever comes of this, you need rest and food and your own bed, after all that has happened.”
“I’ll go back to the house, and gladly, but I don’t say there’ll be much time for rest.” Nancy stood up, though her legs trembled under her. “I’d wager as soon as Sunday’s gone, we’ll need to begin packing our goods.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A New Journey is Begun
Great Alexander wept, and made sad moan,
Because there was but one World to be won.
It joys my heart, when such wise men as you,
Conquer new Worlds which that Youth never knew.
CARBONEAR AND MOSQUITO COVE
JULY 1613
ON THAT DAY—A DAY THAT WOULD SCATTER ALL THEIR lives in different directions like a handful of stones tossed into the sea—Kathryn Guy was, for once, the first to awake.
Her small son cried in the bed beside her, rooting for the breast as he whimpered both himself and his mother awake. Kathryn settled herself on the pillow and took out her breast to nurse him. On the other side of the mattress, Nancy opened her eyes. Kathryn saw in her dear friend’s face the same confusion she had felt herself a moment ago: opening her eyes in a strange bed, trying to remember where she was and how she had come there.
They were no longer in Cupids Cove. They had sailed, only a few days ago, up the coast, to the stretch of land where Nicholas Guy was clearing his ground and building his house in a cove the fishermen called Mosquito. After showing her the site and leaving Ned, Frank, and Tom Taylor there to continue the work, Master Nicholas had sailed the borrowed shallop a little further up the coast, to the house of a planter called Gilbert Pike, who lived with his wife, infant son, and two servants on a plantation of his own.
“I’d no idea there was another Englishman living nearby when I chose the site,” Nicholas had told Kathryn on the short voyage, “but the Pikes have kept apart from us at Cupids Cove. I suspect it is because they have been trading with the pirates. I judge this Pike to be a pirate himself, perhaps one who sailed with Easton, who has decided to give up life at sea and settle here on this coast. Like as not he still has ties to the trade. He has two manservants, but no woman on the place save his wife, and he says she is anxious for some female company. So ’tis in my mind to leave you, Nancy, Bess, and Daisy with her for a time, until we have built a better shelter for you.”
And here they were, the four women from Cupids Cove, in the household of three men who were most certainly pirates, and a haughty Irishwoman with an infant about the same age as Jonathan. Despite Mistress Pike’s husband having said she missed female company, Kathryn did not find the woman overly welcoming. But she was housing and feeding them, which was generous.
Kathryn saw the memory of all this flicker across Nancy’s face in the moments between sleep and waking. “Do you know what I was thinking of?” she said to Nancy as she settled the baby, trying to get him into a more comfortable position.
“Were you thinking that Mistress Pike is going to challenge you to a duel over which of your babies was born first? She mislikes the idea that someone else might lay claim to bearing the first English child in this land.”
“Hush!” Kathryn said, stifling a giggle. Oh, but it felt good to laugh with Nancy again. How good to be free, to begin again!
“I was thinking how long it is since we came to this land,” she said. “A year, is’t not?”
“More than a year. It was June when we came.”
They were both silent a moment, thinking of that journey across the ocean last summer. “What fine hopes we had,” Nancy said at last.
“’Twas mostly I who had the fine hopes,” Kathryn admitted. �
��You only came out of loyalty—and look what trouble I landed you in! If things had gone another way—”
“Hush—no talk of that now. We are both safe, and all that is behind us.”
“Yes.” Safe, in so many ways. Nancy safe from the awful charge of witchcraft, and Kathryn safe from the fear that someone would charge her with adultery. Not to mention, safe from the temptation to commit that sin again.
Give Thomas Willoughby credit: he had kept his word. He had stood up for Nancy to the masters and insisted they wait for Nicholas to return before trying her. He had sent a man with a message for Nicholas to return at once. He had sworn to defend Kathryn against the entirely true charge of adultery if Whittington raised it, though that had proved unnecessary.
All that, Thomas had done in return for seven nights in Kathryn’s bed. While she had worn herself almost sick with worry over Nancy’s fate during those awful days, she had paid her debt to Thomas Willoughby at night. And she had found greater pleasure in those seven nights than in all the nights of her marriage bed.
Then Nicholas Guy had returned, and Willoughby had joined him, and persuaded Crout to join him too, in putting the whole mockery of a witch trial to rest. Thomas had not troubled her again once her husband was back in the colony. She had caught him alone only for a moment, to thank him, but he shrugged off her thanks. “You owe me nothing,” he said. “All debts are paid.” He had given her only a hint of a smile with the words, nothing more.
She saw a change in him. It came from his having stood up among the masters of the colony at Nancy’s trial, from having spoken with authority, from his own declaration that he would return home and the way Crout had accepted that decision. Thomas Willoughby was something more, it seemed, than the troublesome son banished by a righteous father. He was going home a man instead of a boy, and Kathryn did not know what part, if any, she had played in that change. Perhaps none at all. It was flattering herself, to think so. What mattered was that he was leaving the New Found Land, and the affair was over. Done. It had flared into life, one bright flame that must be enough to warm her for a lifetime.
She had left Thomas behind, along with Cupids Cove and its tangled web of troubles. The canvas was clean, the stage swept bare for a new play. She had had her turn at playing the heroine of romance; from henceforth she would be the good wife. She would think no more of a lord’s son with ice-blue eyes and hands that could waken her body to delights she’d not guessed at.
“’Tis a new beginning,” she said aloud now. “My husband will build a grand new house for us, far grander than—” she dropped her voice, “grander than the Pikes have here, and we will make our own fortune right here on this coast. The first year was only to test us: this is our true venture, beginning now.”
Her small son, sated with milk, squirmed away from the nipple and braced his little feet against her stomach, pushing himself back with a mighty cry. Another answered it: on the far side of the sleeping loft, the young Master Pike was awakened. Nancy took baby Jonathan from Kathryn’s arms. “This one needs his clouts changed,” she said. “Let me do it, and you try to sleep a little more, before we begin this grand new venture of ours.”
NED AND FRANK ROWED THE TWO-MAN PUNT UP TO GILBERT Pike’s wharf late in the morning. Taking the punt and their own labour from the plantation had cost them a morning’s fishing and an afternoon’s work on the house and barn, but Nicholas Guy had decreed that if his wife and her maids were to remain at the Pike house, he ought to send some of his own food stores to the Pikes, to repay them for their kindness.
After an hour in the Pikes’ house, Ned was not sure “kindness” was the right word. They arrived in time for the midday meal and sat down at table with Master Pike and his wife, their two menservants, and Kathryn Guy. Nancy, Daisy, and Bess were put to work serving the meal, then had to take their own food at the hearth instead of sitting to the table with the others. Mistress Pike’s longing for female company seemed to be mostly a longing for female servants.
Sheila Pike was a striking-looking woman with mass of shining dark hair piled atop her head. By way of introducing herself and her husband to Ned and Frank, she told the story of how the ship on which she travelled from Ireland to her convent school in France had been attacked by the Dutch and she taken captive, and how the Dutch ship had in turn been captured by Peter Easton. “My father is a king in Ireland,” she managed to say at least three times during her story, which ended with her marrying one of her captors and settling down on the shores of the New Found Land with him.
Frank’s eyes widened with a touch of awe at Mistress Pike’s revelation of her parentage. But Ned had heard this tale before from Nicholas Guy, who had also told him that rather than having one king over all as the English had, the Irish had dozens of petty chieftains who all called themselves kings. Perhaps Mistress Pike was the daughter of such a chief, but if so, would not the entire point of capturing such a prize be the riches that could be earned by ransoming her back to her father? The part of the story where she married the pirate and settled down on the other side of the world with him made no sense, but that was the one part that was indubitably true, for here they all were around her table.
After the meal, Pike took Ned and Frank outside to show them around his property, commenting on the outbuildings he had built and how each had survived the winter. “Ye’ll know some of this as it is, having been three winters here,” he observed, “but ’tis a different matter, one man and his wife and servants on their own plantation, different altogether from a colony. I don’t mind saying there was times last winter I thought we were mad for building here instead of down in Virginia where ’tis warmer, but I was determined to tame a land Englishmen have never tamed, and by God, we’re doing it. And ye will do the same, for your Master Guy is a canny fellow.”
Ned was leaning over the wall of Pike’s pig-run, wondering if the plump animals rooting in the straw were the same pigs the pirates had taken as bribes from the Renews colony, when Nancy came up behind him. Leaning in close to speak softly, she said, “Find a way to get me out of here, back to Master Guy’s plantation. Tell Mistress Pike some of us womenfolk are needed to help with the work back there.”
He felt a quick rush of pleasure, that she wanted to return rather than staying here. “Frank won’t have Bess come back yet,” he said. “He wants her here for her confinement, thinking she and the babe will be safer.”
“She thinks so as well. Mistress Kathryn will stay with her, to care for her own babe and look to Bess. But you can get me and Daisy out, anyway, by saying we’re needed to work.”
“Indeed I can, and with pleasure,” Ned said. “The punt won’t hold four of us, so we’d have to make more than one trip.”
“There is a footpath along the coast, is there not? Mistress Pike spoke of it.”
“There is, but ’tis rough, and not cleared all the way.”
“You know I’m strong. Frank could row Daisy back in the punt, and you and I go overland.”
So it was that less than two hours later, Ned found himself hiking ahead of Nancy, breaking aside branches for her on the rough-hewn woods trail that followed the coast from Gilbert Pike’s plantation down to Nicholas Guy’s. As long as they kept in sight of the sea, it would be hard to get lost, however rough the path.
Master Guy had told him it was a couple of hours’ walk, but Ned added an extra hour to allow for his own uncertainty of the way and Nancy’s womanly frailty—though, in truth, with her skirts kilted up above her ankles and a sturdy pair of boots on, she was keeping pace well and he had not needed to slow down at all. She even had breath to complain about Mistress Pike.
“I have my doubts she really is the princess she claims to be, but ’tis true enough she acts as though she’s used to having a dozen servants to wait on her. I’m glad enough to serve my own mistress, but I’ve no wish to be My Lady Pike’s skivvy.”
“I don’t blame you. It makes all the difference in the world, working for someone who—ah
! Watch your footing there!” Ned pulled his boot free of a sucking pool of mud that had been disguised by innocent-looking grass. “’Tis like a swamp all along here—we’ll have to pick our footing carefully.” When the marshy ground turned to a stream bed, he reached a hand back to help Nancy cross it on stones. He devoutly hoped neither of them would lose their footing; with wet, soaked clothing this walk would take them till nightfall.
“Thank you—you’ve rescued me yet again,” she said when they both scrambled back onto dry ground. “I should be more gracious.” After a pause she added, “Gratitude comes hard to me.”
“And so it means all the more, when you do say thank you.” Still marching ahead of her, not looking back, he added, “When I truly wanted to rescue you, I had no power to do it. Thank God that Master Nicholas had the authority to take your part. I don’t know what foolishness I would have tried if those dolts back in Cupids Cove had condemned you.”
He paused for a moment to catch his breath; they had just climbed up a little slope from the stream, and the pine trees parted to reveal a stunning sweep of sea and sky under the late-afternoon sun. Nancy stopped beside him.
“I know I sound an ungrateful minx,” she said. “Not long ago I was locked in a storeroom in fear of my life, and now I dare complain about scrubbing Mistress Pike’s floor for her. I ought to be as grateful every moment as I was when that trial was over and I knew my life was spared.”
“I remember on the crossing from England, how afeared I was and how I thought a dozen times I was like to die of seasickness. When my boots touched ground, I swore I’d give thanks to God every minute I had solid earth under me—but I forget, too, from time to time. Not that ’tis the same thing,” he added, fearing he might have belittled the ordeal she had endured.
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