The Winthrop Woman

by Anya Seton

  I can manage to avoid him on the ship, Elizabeth thought, and once over there I shall be free. She had no idea how, but she vaguely envisioned herself and Joan alone in a pretty little forest cottage surrounded by a flower garden, far from interference, or temptation.

  The bo'sun piped them on board and Captain Peirce greeted them on the Lyon's deck as they climbed the wooden ladder.

  "Welcome! Welcome!" he cried bowing. "'Tis honor to carry the Gov'nor's family! I've 'ad cabins built for ye next my quarters in the poop. I 'ope they'll serve."

  A wise tough cockney was the famous master mariner, who had been born in a tenement on London Bridge and raised on the docks. He had had schooling before he took to sea, read for pleasure when he could and had shrewd knowledge of life besides. He was a broad powerful man, just forty, and sun-squint lines had begun to show, the tiny red veins to burst, in his black-bearded cheeks. He maintained a fierce discipline on his ship, but was not lacking in humor, and after greeting the Winthrops a rueful twinkle appeared in his sharp eyes.

  "We've a passenger, ma'am—" he said to Margaret, "I didn't expect, and find a bit awkward, though I couldn't refuse 'er."

  "Her?" said Margaret, casting anxious glances at the decks which seemed very small and crowded under some fifty milling passengers, bundles, chests and shouting sailors.

  "'Tis Lady Gardiner," said Peirce. "Leastways one of 'em. The French one." Seeing that Margaret did not understand, he turned to Jack. "'Ave ye not heard, sir, about the rogue in Massachusetts called Sir Christopher Gardiner? A mort o' trouble 'e's made for your honored father!"

  "Aye," said Jack, frowning, "I have. Gardiner's conspired against our colony, he plots with Sir Ferdinando Gorges to seize us and destroy our independence. He lives with a wench not his wife and yet has two wives in England."

  "Just so," said the Captain. "And this is one of 'em. Coming 'ot-foot to fetch 'im back. She 'ad the passage money, and letters from 'igh places, so I couldn't say 'er nay, but I misdoubt she'll fit well wi' your God-fearing company, sir." He chuckled, then looked apologetic.

  "I thought my father had put Gardiner in gaol to await deportation to England," said Jack, still frowning. He too had spent a sleepless night.

  The Captain shrugged. "'E was in gaol. No telling where 'e be now."

  Elizabeth heard, but was not much interested, being in a fever to explore the ship and see where they would lodge for the voyage. This turned out to be a tiny cabin in the poop, with an upper and lower bunk no larger than coffins, and scarce room enough to stand beside them. This cabin she was to share with Mary, and, of course, Joan. The next cabin contained Margaret, Sammy and the baby; the third Jack and Martha.

  Though these cabins were remarkably cramped, they repre sented luxury compared to the rest of the passengers' hammocks or pallets in the hold. Each Winthrop cabin had a minute square porthole and a bucket dangling on a rope beneath it for the disposal of excreta. The common folk had no privacy at all.

  "Hush thee, poppet—hush thee—" Elizabeth crooned to Joan as she snuggled the protesting baby down on the straw sacking of their bunk. "This'll be our home for many a long day, we'd best like it!" Elizabeth raised her head sharply listening to strange sounds that were to become as familiar as the noise of London traffic or of cawing rooks at Groton.

  She heard the Captain shout, "Heave away-y-yy!" and the clanking of chain, then the squeak of the windlass as the great anchor rose from the water. She heard the straining chant of the sailors and the bo'sun's whistle. She heard the unintelligible orders to "Man the royals" and "the topgallants," the answering hubbub of "Aye, aye, sirs!" followed by the squealing of blocks and swish of unfurling sails. She rushed out eagerly to the quarter-deck, and felt the gentle rocking give way to a thrill and thrust beneath her feet, as though the ship had wakened. The ten square sails and one lateen bellied out taut against a blue-and-mare's-tail sky. The Lyon quivered and plunged southward to the Straits of Dover, on a brisk north wind.

  Captain Peirce stood by his helmsman watching narrowly till they should be past Goodwin Sands, but he threw Elizabeth a word of reproof. "Ye're not wanted on the steerage, Mistress, ye can take leave o' England from the stern gallery if ye wish—but 'twill be tears wasted, for ye'll 'ave sight o' English coast a long time yet."

  "I'm sorry," she said. "'Twas not to say farewell I trespassed here—it was because—Oh, the ship is so beautiful, so splendid!"

  The Captain snorted. "I 'ope ye think so a month from now when we get the line storms, 'stead o' puking in your bunk as ye'll surely be!"

  "No, I won't," she retorted, and went back through the tiny companionway. Peirce laughed. "A fair saucy wench," he said to the helmsman. "She and that Frenchy Lady Gardiner'll spice this v'yage—'ard over to larboard, ye damn fool!" he added in a bellow.

  The north wind held, the Dover Straits were as rough as usual, and the Captain's expectation as to his unseasoned passengers was justified by suppertime, for which nobody appeared in the officer's saloon but Elizabeth, an unknown man and a startling young woman.

  The Captain made hurried introductions though he did not stay with them to eat. "Mistress 'enry Winthrop, widow. This is the Reverend John Eliot, boarded at Gravesend. 'Is Worship the Gov'nor'll be pleased to get another minister." Elizabeth inclined her head, and the short curly-haired young man bowed with a peculiarly sweet smile. He doesn't look like a minister, she thought. He looks almost jolly.

  "Lady Gardiner, Mistress Winthrop," went on the Captain, with a wink at Elizabeth, who curtseyed and stared, seeing in that first instant only an improbable mass of violet-red hair, brocaded green taffeta, scarlet lips in a pointed face and nearly naked bosom with a black beauty patch on the curve of the right breast.

  "Enchantée," said Lady Gardiner in a husky drawl. She extended her hand, which released a wave of musk. "Charming that you are not seeck like the others, Madame. Oh my dear love of a capitaine, you must not leave us? Mr. Eliot will find it hard to entertain two young ladies alone. You must stay, Monsieur, you promised Mirabelle she would have a gay voyage!"

  "And so no doubt ye will, my lady!" said the Captain chuckling. "But 'twill be gayer if the Lyon stays on course and above the waves, so I ask ye to excuse me." He bowed and walked to the door.

  "So agreeable a captain!" cried Lady Gardiner in loud cooing tones. "So virile, how you say? Manly. And you too, sir." She turned to Mr. Eliot. "When I see you embark at that terrible Gravesend—what macabre names you English give places!—I say to myself, 'Mirabelle, we shall be dear friends, thees young minister and I'—You have so sympathetic a face!"

  "You do me too much honor, my lady," said John Eliot, retreating slightly along the seat, and flushing. "We'll all be friends before journey's end, I'm sure, and you ladies'll help me endure the heartache I feel at leaving my betrothed to wait in England."

  "Aha?" cried Mirabelle with warm interest. "So you have a fiancée? You must tell us about her, mustn't he, Madame? Do you like to kiss her very much?"

  She's incredible, thought Elizabeth, fascinated, while John Eliot laughed. "I do, my lady, or did rather, and hope to again before very long." It was impossible to be angry with Mirabelle, though by the time the Lyon had reached the Isle of Wight, Elizabeth knew that she should disapprove of her. Mirabelle dyed her hair with henna powder she had brought from Paris. Mirabelle painted her face, she swung her hips when she walked. She blandished every man she saw, not excepting the sailors, and she laughed at all the virtues Elizabeth had been taught to consider sacred. Particularly chastity.

  "That is because I am an aristocrat," Mirabelle explained to Elizabeth one calm bright day while she sat on a stool in the open stern gallery carefully plucking her eyebrows. "My father was a marquis, and considered chastity vulgar. True, I was born on the wrong side of the blanket, as you say, but no matter. I inherit the trait. Love-making is agreeable. Why not enjoy it?"

  Elizabeth gulped and laughed. Mirabelle constantly said things Elizabeth had chided herself for thin
king, and had even voiced in moments of rebellion, though she later repented. But Mirabelle seemed unaware of sin or guilt, and it was extraordinary that she seemed to have escaped all righteous punishment. She was gay and charming and titled; half the men on the ship were in love with her, while even the minister John Eliot did not censure her. It was puzzling.

  "You are too serious, ma petite," said Mirabelle squinting into her hand glass and rouging her wide voluptuous mouth. "Much too pretty to be so serious. You must please yourself while you can."

  "I'd like to," said Elizabeth slowly. "I did once—" she thought of the Mulberry Garden and that ecstatic Palm Sunday, "but it was wrong—and I was punished for it."

  "Bah!" said Mirabelle, smiling at the girl. "You think that because you are a Puritan. Always examining conscience."

  "But I'm not! I'm not truly religious at all. Not like the others!"

  "You cannot help it, chérie." Mirabelle's small greenish eyes fixed themselves kindly on Elizabeth. She nodded and shrugged. "You cannot help acting from what you were taught in childhood, even though you don't want to. Above all this is true for a woman."

  "Have you no religion, my lady?" said Elizabetn, disliking the other's calm certainty, and finding that an image of a frowning John Winthrop had risen in her mind.

  The Frenchwoman laughed. "I was baptized a catholique. I shall die one, sans doute. In between I don't concern myself. Time enough to worry about my soul when my body no longer gives pleasure."

  They were silent, Elizabeth gazing back across the water towards the dim line of the Devon coast, while Mirabelle affixed a tiny black star beneath her collarbone to emphasize the whiteness of her skin and draw the eye lower towards the charm of her décolletage. Elizabeth watched and said timidly, "Forgive me, but why do you make this voyage to find a man who deserted you?"

  "But I desert heem!" cried Mirabelle, showing all her beautiful teeth in a hearty laugh. "I disappeared one day to Anjou with a so handsome colonel, you can't imagine! My poor Christophe consoled himself by going to London and marrying a very rich English lady. I did not blame him. But soon I tire of my colonel, and it appears Christophe tires of his new wife—she is quite ugly, poor thing, and thin, it must be like sleeping with a rake—so he goes off to your colonies, and I go to London to find him."

  "You found his English wife? But weren't you angry?"

  "Ah ça, non," said Mirabelle laughing harder. "She was. But I am the first—'la légitime.' I still feel tendresse for Christophe, and say I'll go to fetch him back—if I want him. Or maybe I'll send him back to her, or it may be he's happier with the doxy he has now. How do I know until I see? En fin, I like to voyage, and certain complaisant gentlemen in London made me presents, so I can do as I please."

  "I see," said Elizabeth, wondering what such a life could possibly feel like, envying it, even while aware of more shock than she wished to admit. She gazed hard at Lady Gardiner, thinking that without the paint and powder and hair dye her looks would not be remarkable at all, and yet she gave the impression of assured beauty.

  "Chérie," said Mirabelle gently, shaking out her taffeta skirts and standing up. "I've noticed something. I'm older than you—how many years I don't tell—and I like you very much—so you must not mind what I say. You are not happy, your brother-in-law, Monsieur Jack Winthrop, is unhappy, and your little sister—she is sick in her cabin all the time, so she is unhappy too."

  "Well?" said Elizabeth sharply, turning away and clenching her hands on the railing. "There's naught to be done about it."

  "Quelle folie!" Mirabelle sighed. "When it is so simple. You two desire each other, and pretend you don't, so you suffer. Je suis pratique, moi. Satisfy this desire—oh very discreetly—and soon you won't have it. The little sister will be none the wiser, and you will all be happier!"

  Elizabeth drew a rough breath, and her eyes blazed. "That's wicked! It's disgusting! How dare you say such a thing!"

  "Voilà," said Mirabelle sadly shaking her head. "The little Puritan indeed. Why can I not say what you have often thought? I give you good advice. I am very experienced."

  Elizabeth's hands relaxed, and her anger died, quenched by her inherent honesty. She stared at the white board planking with its lines of oozing tar, and said in a low voice, "How did you guess? It frightens me that anyone should have guessed—surely nobody else..."

  "No. No one else." Mirabelle put her scented hand on the other girl's shoulder. "But I can tell by the way you and Monsieur Winthrop avoid each other, by the way you look at him when he does not know. I can tell because he is the only man on the ship who has no awareness of me. Tiens, chérie, do not be a stupid little provincial. All could arrange itself. My cabin behind the roundhouse is most fortunately placed for privacy, this I have proven. You may use it any time."

  Elizabeth felt her cheeks turn hot. She glanced at Mirabelle and saw in the seductive face only genuine sympathy and some amusement. She understood that to Mirabelle this was all a game, that to her the bars of guilt and rigid prohibition actually did not exist.

  "I could not," said Elizabeth quietly. "But even if I could—Jack would not, so please never speak like this again. It pains me."

  "Pauvre chou," said Mirabelle, tucking her cosmetic box beneath her arm. "As you wish. But then you must find another man soon. A husband you can manage. A husband who adores you blindly. Yes, a man like that would make you happy." She kissed Elizabeth on the cheek and went in through the companionway to her cabin, where she was not surprised to find the second mate—a lusty young Scot—awaiting her impatiently.

  The voyage continued. Two days later they passed Land's End on a stiff breeze and the passengers crowded the decks to watch granite cliffs and the lighthouse slide past and fade into the sky behind them. All the passengers were very quiet—the ordinary folk crowded in the waist of the ship, and the privileged ones on the poop. Of the former only Goody Knapp from Suffolk wailed convulsively, and one elderly tanner who was going to join his son in Boston cried out in a high quavering voice, "God Save the King, and God bless Our Old England!"

  The Winthrops stood close together. Margaret's eyes were wet, and there was a lump in Elizabeth's throat, but these Cornish cliffs were not their England and two weeks on shipboard had dulled homesickness.

  "I shall be back again someday," said Jack confidently. "I'll not say adieu." He knew that his father would need an emissary to the Old World, and that there would be business for the Colony to transact there. He had no feeling of exile, nor fear of the journey, having spent so long at sea on his trip to the Levant and being at heart a voyager.

  "I shall never go home again," said Martha in a small wooden voice. "Never." She turned quickly from sight of the water, and leaned her head against Elizabeth's shoulder.

  "Nonsense," said Elizabeth, putting her arm around her sister. "If Jack returns, doubtless you will, and anyway the new country will soon be 'home.'"

  Martha said nothing. She had nearly recovered from seasickness but had grown very thin; her blue wool dress hung limp as rags, and her little bones jutted through the pallid skin. She looked at Jack, a dark veiled look, but he did not see it. He was talking with John Eliot by the rail. The two young men found each other congenial and were full of eager speculation on what they would find. Eliot was particularly interested in the Indians and made plans for their conversion. He had read everything he could about them, and even memorized the names of some of the tribes. At Jesus College in Cambridge he had become a linguist and exceptional scholar. In the ship's saloon he and Jack passed many an hour together discussing their specialties. Eliot expounded the Bible and the liberal Puritan views of Mr. Thomas Hooker with whom he had studied in Essex, while Jack drew sketches of fortifications, of windmills and saltworks. Jack's mind teemed with ideas for establishing the new country, and making it profitable. While he was occupied with these things he forgot his troubled marriage, and the dark disturbances produced by Elizabeth.

  Captain Peirce came out to them on th
e poop, swept them all with a rather sardonic eye and said, "Well, we're fairly off at last into the open sea. Glad to see ye're not sobbing." Nor praying either, he thought. This shipload was the least canting and psalm-singing of all he'd carried to Massachusetts. Even Eliot, the minister, minded his own business, and only preached on Sundays.

  "Where's Lady Gardiner?" Peirce asked, though he suspected the answer.

  "Why, she went in some time ago," said Elizabeth. "Said she was tired of staring at the English coast."

  "Aha," said the Captain. MacDuff, the second mate, was missing too. Still, the Scot was off duty now, and Peirce was far too canny a Master to concern himself with anything which did not prejudice the ship or passengers' safety.

  "How is your babe today, ma'am?" he asked Margaret, who tried to smile and did not answer. Each day little Ann grew more listless, and could scarcely be roused to drink the goat's milk a servant brought up from the hold where the beasts were kept.

  "May I go below, Captain?" said Elizabeth quickly. "To wherever my chest of herbs is stored. I've some dried valerian I think would help the baby, and I can best find it myself."

  The Captain gave ready consent, though he did not permit female passengers to run about the ship at will, getting in the sailors' way and hurting themselves in heavy weather. "Since ye've knowledge of physick, Mistress, will ye 'ave a look at the Beamsley boy while ye're down below. They tell me 'e sickens." And the Lord grant it's neither measles, plague nor smallpox, thought the Captain grimly. Any of those killers could halve a shipload in a fortnight.

  Elizabeth was given a sailor as guide, and followed him down the stairs to the main deck. Several children were crouched by the windlass playing at Hot Cockles, while a large lad of about fifteen sat on the windlass, whittling and good-humoredly umpiring the game. The wind was veering, and the sea roughened. The Lyon gave a lurch as Elizabeth passed the group. She caught at the lad's shoulder, and landed almost in his lap. "Forgive me!" she cried laughing. "I thought I'd better sea legs."