The Winthrop Woman

by Anya Seton

  "Jonah had to be thrown into the sea because he was wicked, didn't he?" asked Martha in a quick breathless voice.

  Jack assented, relieved that she spoke and looked brighter. Elizabeth was not relieved. She heard a note in Martha's voice that escaped the others, but had no time to think of it, for the lull abruptly ceased. The wind swooped down with a roar more violent than before, and fear returned.

  The poundings and crashings and terrifying lurches resumed. Though protected by horn frames, the candles guttered wildly and went out. In darkness and silence now their bodies were rolled or pitched about in the saloon. Sea and rain water deluged them through a dozen leaks. Time blurred and stopped. In Elizabeth's mind ran strange fancies. She thought of her packets of seeds lying patiently in the hold wishful of turning into bright flowers in the new land. She saw them blooming as they would have been, the hollyhocks, the marigolds, the violets and wallflowers. How sad for them that they must lie forever barren at the bottom of the sea. She thought of Harry, and saw his golden laughing face, his reckless swagger. She saw his finger lift as though he beckoned, and she cried to him, "Nay, Harry, nay. We are not ready yet, your child and I!" Harry dissolved and in her head she heard music. The singing of many voices very pure and low, not as the Puritans twanged through their noses, but as she had once heard St. Paul's choir in London long ago. Yet it was a psalm the voices sang. "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me..." The voices sang like chiming bells that ended in a jangle, when her outer ears caught a new sound. She started, and stiffened as her mind cleared. It was the sound of shouting outside the door Jack had bolted against the waves.

  "Ahoy! Ahoy! Are ye all right in there?"

  Jack threw open the door, and the Captain staggered in holding a lantern. His face was glistening and haggard, but he smiled at them. "Thanks be to God, it's passed over," he shouted. "I believe we've weathered it. Can ye leave the women?" he asked Jack. "I need every man on deck. "Half the mainmast's gone, the longboat's stove in, and part o' the fo'castle, and the main 'atch is jammed, but we're still afloat!"

  "We're all right," cried Elizabeth, and rushed to light their candles at the Captain's lantern. Margaret began to cry softly. Martha was curled in a corner of the benches with her head in her arms and did not look up as Jack went off with the Captain.

  The sea dropped rapidly, and the stars came out brilliant in a chilly sky. Presently Jack came back and said they had unjammed the hatch and released those below decks, all of whom had survived. The carpenters were at work and there was no more to be done till daylight. They had better go to bed.

  The women obeyed. Elizabeth tumbled into her bunk with Joan, and after one great sob of thanksgiving fell instantly asleep. She was shaken awake an hour later in the dawn light to see Jack standing by the bunk and more fear in his face than there had been through the tempest.

  "Bess—" he said, "Bess—Martha's gone. I can't find her. She went while I slept, but her going roused me. I've searched the poop."

  Elizabeth gasped and jumped to her feet. They rushed together through the companionway and down to the quarter-deck, where the helmsman stared. They looked down on the main deck and saw figures, two carpenters hammering on the longboat, and near them, also working, Elizabeth recognized the lad William Hallet. She clutched Jack's arm and cried, "Look!"

  They saw a little figure, in gray, slip along the deck from behind the broken mainmast. It paused an instant by Hallet who was next the starboard rail, and seemed to speak to him. Then, as Jack shouted "Martha!" the girl turned and waved, throwing her arms above her head, and darting through the partly shattered rail, plunged into the sea.

  Jack flew down the stairs with Elizabeth after him. He dashed across the deck, but young Hallet was quicker. He dove in almost as Martha hit the water and grabbed her floating hair as she came up. "Throw me a rope—" he yelled. The carpenters came running with the boat hook and its attached line. Jack seized it and heaved it out. The lad caught it, they pulled him in, and Jack, held by the men. clambered down the side until he could grab his wife from the boy's clutch and haul her up and onto the deck, where she lay in a swoon, breathing heavily. Hallet climbed up and vaulted onto the deck. He stood panting and looking down at Martha. "She spoke to me, just before she—she did it," he whispered. "Said she was a Jonah. Everyone'd be happy when she'd gone. Poor little thing."

  Jack took the lad's hand and shook it. "Thanks be to God you were there and can swim," he cried. "Get some dry things on."

  He picked Martha up and carried her across the deck to the poop stairs. Elizabeth, who was trembling so she could hardly stand, cried, "Jack, shall I change her clothes and heat her some sack?"

  "No," he answered grimly. "I will deal with her myself. Don't interfere with me, Bess, and don't leave your cabin, no matter what you hear!" He mounted the stairs and stalked back to the saloon with his burden. He forced brandy through Martha's lips until she sighed and opened her eyes. She gazed up at his grim face with a remote wonder.

  "My love—" she said. "My love. I thought never to see you again."

  "Why did you do it, Martha? Why did you do it?"

  "Because you don't love me, and because I am guilty—guilty—"

  "Hush!" he said. "I do love you, and we are all guilty. We have each one been saved from death this terrible night. I don't know what for, unless it is to learn the meaning of life." He downed a mugful of brandy, gave her some. He carried her to their cabin, where he ripped off her wet clothes, dried her with the blanket, and lay clown with her in her bunk. He pulled her roughly into his arms.

  PART TWO: Massachusetts Bay Colony

  1631-1640

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ON THE LYON, the next morning after the tempest, the sun shone, and a light northerly breeze gave the ship steerage way, but permitted most of the crew to join in the repairs. Mr. Eliot held a solemn Thanksgiving on deck, then went to bed exhausted. Most of the passengers slept all day, including Martha, but when Elizabeth went to her sister's cabin at twilight, the girl was awake, and greeted Elizabeth with a smile.

  "Bess," she said softly, "I've been living in black shadows a long time, haven't I? I don't remember much."

  "Don't try." Elizabeth kissed the thin cheek, rejoicing that all strain and wildness had left Martha's face.

  "I know what I tried to do," said the girl quickly taking Elizabeth's hand, "but now I don't know why, or remember all that happened last night, except the tempest and I had much brandy—and Jack—Jack—" She colored and stopped. "He does love me."

  "Yes," said Elizabeth steadily. "I think you are at last truly his wife. I'm very glad. Now why don't you get up and make yourself pretty? We're to sup soon and the Captain's ordered a boiled suet pudding stuffed with raisins to celebrate our safety!" Still she spoke to Martha as a child, for still she so appeared and had always acted.

  But Martha gave her a long grave look that was not childish, and said, "You're good to me, Bess. You've all had patience with me. I hope there is not talk about—about what happened on the deck. I wouldn't have you shamed."

  "There'll be no talk," said Elizabeth. "Jack's spoken to the carpenters, the helmsman and the young lad who—" She paused, wondering if Martha remembered the boy who had saved her, and knew instinctively that she did not. "A lad who was also there," she continued. "Jack told them you were distracted by the tempest. It was a night of extraordinary happenings which everyone wants to forget."

  "Aye," said Martha quickly. She swung her thin legs over the bunk. "Do you suppose Lady Gardiner would help me dress my hair like hers? It's so becoming."

  Elizabeth laughed. "I'm sure she'd be delighted. And lend you rouge and beauty patches too if you'd be so brazen."

  The supper was festive. The breeze continuing light, and all repairs going forward rapidly, Captain Peirce honored them with his presence. Martha was transformed, not only by Mirabelle's handiwork bu
t by a soft glow as she sat beside Jack, who kept looking at her with open tenderness. Only Elizabeth knew and Margaret guessed that this was the true beginning of their honeymoon, yet all were conscious of manifold dangers passed and the richness of their escape. They drank some of the Captain's excellent sack. Elizabeth longed for her lute, but Jack had a jew's-harp to set the pitch, and they sang together—ballads, love songs and country songs in which the young minister joined heartily.

  Elizabeth was deeply grateful for her sister's recovery, and the assuaged look in Jack's eyes, and she went to bed happy. Yet in the middle of the night she awoke to find that she was weeping, and knew that she had been crying in her dreams. "I am a simpleton," she said aloud, but softly so as not to wake Mary who was snoring in the upper bunk. She put her arms around Joan and drew the baby's head onto her breast. Joan snuggled down, and presently they both slept.

  Five days later the Lyon arrived at the Grand Banks which were swathed in the usual fog, and the Captain hove to so that the sailors might fish for the cod of which they stood in great need. Provisions were growing scanty, and even the Captain's mess was reduced to half rations of salt beef and pease for every meal. There were several cases of scurvy in the hold, and much coughing and sniffles, for the weather had turned bitter, and there was no way to get warm but lie in sour, verminous bedding, or to fight for place near the cooking hearth.

  Peirce relaxed rules during the fishing, and Elizabeth profited by this to wander over the ship. She was tired of confinement, anxious to forget hunger pangs, and wishful of finding William Hallet.

  The catch was good, and she picked her way amongst fishing lines and a mass of flopping silvery bodies. Finally she spied Hallet near the fo'castle. He was fishing too. He had hooked a large cod, his young face was intent, his big body leaned far out as he dextrously played his fish, and jerked it over the rail to land with a watery smack at her feet. He cried, "Careful, wench! You'll get hooked yourself if you stand so near!" Then he saw who it was, and said, "Pardon, Mistress Winthrop."

  "Good day," she said, smiling. "What a big fish ... I wanted ... I've been wanting to ... to thank you ... for the ... what you did ... that night..." She knew that she was stammering, and that her constraint came from more than embarrassment at referring to Martha's near tragedy. He was years younger than she, only a common lad, and yet somehow he made her feel like a green girl.

  "I don't want thanks, Mistress," he said coolly, while he cut oft his fish's head with his knife. "Mr. Winthrop's loaded me with thanks, and five pounds too, which I wouldn't have."

  "Why not?" she cried. "You deserve it. And surely five pounds would help you get settled in New England."

  "I wouldn't take money for a thing like that." He spoke with anger. "You're like all the gentry, think you can buy a man body and soul for silver. I'll make my own way and work for what I earn."

  She was discomfited. The gay intimacy which had sprung between them the first time was gone.

  "Will," she said after a moment of watching him bait his hook, "why do you speak so sharp? Isn't it natural that I should thank you for saving my little sister's life?"

  He looked at her slowly as she stood beside him in her thick crimson wool cloak, her dark curls wet with fog beneath the hood, her nose red from cold, her long hazel eyes troubled.

  "The sharpness wasn't for you," he said casting his line out. His tawny hair, salt-crusted, and uncombed, swung forward to hide his face as he peered down into the water.

  "For what then?" she persisted. "Won't you tell me? You're overyoung to be so grim."

  "By God, Mistress—" he said suddenly turning on her. "Grimness has naught to do with years. You speak like the sheltered ninny, no doubt you are!"

  "And you—" she cried, stiffening, "speak like the boorish rustic, no doubt you are!"

  At this he laughed suddenly, a boyish peal, not quite steady. "Touché," he said, to her amazement. "A neat thrust. I see I must make amends."

  "The best amends you can make is to tell me how you come to speak in fencing terms, and use words like 'amends' which fit strangely with your clothes and general carriage. Are you perchance some young lord in disguise?"

  "Far from it!" he snorted. "I'm a yeoman, at least I come of yeoman stock. We Hallets've farmed Dorset lands back to Domesday, and the Devil take me if I'd be anything else!" He peered over the side at his line floating limply on the waves, and said with a mixture of gentleness and impatience, "Look, ma'am. There's no mystery. You'll have my tale in a trice. I spent six years as page in the household of the Earl of Bristol at Sherborne Castle. I lived with his children, the young Digbys. I was tutored by their tutor, and befriended—for a time—by Lord George, the heir."

  "Ah...." she said staring at him. "I see now." That explained his speech, and flashes of a manner which had reminded her of the few noblemen she had met. "But was that not an unusual honor for a yeoman?"

  "Very." He folded his arms and leaned against the bulwark. His face darkened. "The way it came about was not so unusual. While the Earl of Bristol was in Spain, chaffering for that Infanta King Charles thought he wanted, my father one black day did ride to Sherborne Fair on his blooded bay stallion. A bay stallion just like it was missing from the castle stables. The Earl's steward spied my father, convinced himself and Sherborne town that my father had stolen the Earl's horse. Father was hanged in the marketplace that night."

  At her gasp he nodded ironically. "The Earl's stallion was found some days later, peacefully grazing in a pasture whither it had escaped, and the Earl came home, heard the story and was shocked. He dismissed the steward and set out to find my mother and make restitution. My older brother had the farm, and Mother, poor woman, could think of nothing better to ask than that I should be raised a fine gentleman. And so I was, from my eighth to my fourteenth year."

  "But then? What then?" Elizabeth cried as he peered over at his fishing line and seemed to have finished. "Surely you're not fourteen now!"

  "I'll be sixteen come Christmastide." He paused, and went on reluctantly. "Why, then I overheard the Countess talking to her cousin. My lady said she had enough of me, that I made too free with her daughters—which was a lie—and had forgot my station—which might be true. She said that since I should take up a trade and showed a peasant skill with my hands, she'd 'prentice me to a joiner in Dorchester. I thought in my folly that Lord George would speak for me, he and I'd been good friends, but he was roistering merrily at Magdalen College, and never answered my letter. So I went to be a joiner, as I told you, and I liked it not. After a year I ran from my master to my brother at our homefarm."

  "Then your mother helped you?" Elizabeth asked eagerly.

  "My mother was frightened, and ashamed of the way things turned out—and my brother told me roundly I'd become neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring, which when I cooled off I saw the sense of. Our farms were prospering, and he gave me a share of my inheritance, forty pounds, and said I'd best be off quietly before my master caught me, then make my way as I liked in the world. And so I am."

  Elizabeth was silent. She understood now his truculence and touchy pride. She saw that in the end the noble Bristols had done injustice twice over, not only in killing his father, but in dislocating William's life to no purpose, and wounding his confidence and self-esteem. But he was strong, intelligent and able, he might well find fulfillment in the new country.

  "Thank you," she said, "for telling me, Will. I see why it was painful." His big chilblained dirty hand rested on the bulwark, and without thinking she put her gloved hand over his. "I hope to see you again after we land."

  He grew scarlet, staring at her hand, and she thought he would snatch his away. Instead he turned it and carried her hand to his lips. "I think not, Mistress," he said gruffly. "I'll not tarry in Boston." He tucked her hand inside her cloak, a strangely tender little gesture. "I see we're setting sail. You'd best return to the poop." He gathered up his line and went into the fo'castle. She did not see him to speak to aga
in.

  After they left the Banks, northeast gales began to blow, but the passengers were all so accustomed to storms that these gave only satisfaction, for they hastened the interminable voyage. In the tenth week of it, Elizabeth was roused one morning by a pandemonium of shouts and the clear voice of the watch calling above the racket, "Land Ho! Land Ho!"

  She threw on her cloak and rushed to the stern gallery where she saw some leagues to the west a dark wooded mound, which the Captain presently explained was an island named Mount Desert by a French explorer.

  From then on they were in distant sight of land, and taking soundings every half hour, as the Lyon slipped down the coast past places Peirce called Agamenticus and Piscataqua; uncouth Indian names which interested Elizabeth and John Eliot particularly, though there was nothing to be seen but forest. On Halloween they rounded Cape Ann, and Goody Knapp took to prophesying again in honor of the day. She said she saw goblins with fiery heads bouncing amongst the rocks on shore, and heard the shriek of specters on the night wind. This was reported to the Captain who replied that the goblin lights were lanterns on fishing shallops near Gloucester, and as for spectral shrieks, he wished he could hear some himself for they might be a useful warning of reefs.

  The next day they sailed past Salem, though too far out to see anything, and Elizabeth thought of Harry's death there. Her heart was heavy, for she found that she could no longer recall his face clearly.

  On the following evening, Wednesday, November 2 of that year 1631, the Lyon being unable to enter Boston Harbor against a strong west wind dropped anchor in the Nantasket Roads, and lowered the longboat. At dawn of the next day Jack clambered down the rope ladder into the boat and was rowed the six miles to Boston to give news of their arrival.

  It was a dazzling blue and gold morning. The air felt crisper and seemed thinner than it did in England. The passengers, all but those too sick with scurvy, were crowded on deck, mostly silent as they stared at the multitude of little islands. Captain Peirce showed the poop passengers a desolate stony beach to the east which he said was a peninsula called Nantasket. He pointed south to the mainland where he said there were villages, Wessagussett or Weymouth, and the deserted remains of Mount Wollaston where the lewd, raffish Thomas Morton had shocked Plymouth Colony with May Day revels at his home, Merrymount.