The Winthrop Woman

by Anya Seton

  "Has she been bled?" whispered Elizabeth.

  "Nay," said the midwife. "I was afeared. I've ne'er seen 'em like this wi' the dropsy and fits, and she's not passed water since I come here yester mom, neither."

  Elizabeth too was afraid. Nor had she seen anyone like this. But she took her lancet, and while the midwife held the pewter bleeding basin she opened a vein in Margaret's arm from which dark blood oozed. Gould the trouble be the stoppage of urine? Elizabeth thought, and wished passionately that she had brought the dandelions, and that Jack were here to give advice. Yet if they could only make Margaret sweat, so the watery humors would pass out that way. Elizabeth said to the maids, "Bring hot bricks and blankets!"

  "But surely not!" said Mr. Wilson, who had ceased praying and was dubiously watching. "It's so warm in here now."

  "I know," she said, "But I think it's right—I feel it—and if I can get this down her—" She uncorked the flask of mithridate which she knew was diuretic since it contained quicksilver.

  Mr. Wilson shook his bullet head. "I doubt anything'll help, and I've some knowledge of chirurgery. But there was one remedy oft used in Sudbury for extraordinary travail. You must take a lock of virgin's hair, the virgin exactly half the age of the parturient woman, and make a powder of it with twelve ant's eggs, and a quarter pint of Red Cow's milk, then if God be willing—"

  Elizabeth had listened with half an ear while she tried to spoon the mithridate between Margaret's flaccid lips. "I know not where we'd find the ingredients here—" she said distractedly, and went on speaking to Margaret in a low urgent voice. "Please, my dearest mother, please try to swallow!" But Margaret could not.

  "Too true," said Wilson gravely. "I fear the proper age virgin might be impossible to find, and I know of no red cows in Boston."

  The maids ran in with hot bricks wrapped in cloths. They put them next to Margaret and piled blankets on her; her stertorous breathing quickened a little and she moaned. Under the blankets Elizabeth massaged the flabby, still distended belly, and then as though a voice spoke in her head, she thought, A clyster. The anodyne clyster! And saw the instructions clear in her father's crabbed Latin script. She ordered the astonished Wilson from the room, then sent the maids for Jack's surgery chest, and the family clyster pipe. In the chest she found the little glass bottle marked Laudanum. She emptied half the bottle into a jug with the mithridate and the basil water Martha had brought. With the midwife's help they turned Margaret on her side, and Elizabeth, inserting the clyster, dribbled the mixture through the pipe.

  They waited in the fetid stifling room, and heard the Governor's wall clock strike four, when Margaret gave a choking gasp, opened her swollen lids and broke out into a drenching sweat. "Bess—" she croaked, looking up at Elizabeth. "Where's John? Has God let me live?"

  "Yes, dear, yes!" cried Elizabeth with a great sob of relief. "You'll live!"

  The other women drew around murmuring and not yet com forted, but Elizabeth was sure. An intuition that had never failed her when it came to healing told her that Margaret would recover.

  By the time John Winthrop came in to kneel and weep thanksgivings by his wife's bedside, they all knew that Elizabeth was right.

  Two days later on August 26 Mr. Wilson baptized the infant, which was a boy, and the Governor in an excess of humble gratitude named it William which signified a common man. There were no sponsors, since that Papist custom too had been abolished, but Winthrop, who was for many days upset and gentle, said to Elizabeth that if the colony still observed the old ways, he would have asked her to be godmother, and he thanked her with deep emotion for her help. "God has given you this skill, Bess, never forget to bless Him for it, and use it in His service."

  Ah yes, she thought, now I see why some do love him, when he looks upon them kindly, and she forbore to sadden him by saying that no skill of any kind could long save the baby. They found a wet nurse for it, but it had not the strength to suckle; puny and blue as a newborn kitten to start with, each day it dwindled, and by the weekend died. John and Margaret bore this sorrow with fortitude, and if John ever repined that he had lost four children within two years, no one knew of it, and after all he had five sons left—and Mary.

  The infant was scarce laid in the burying ground before the quiet Mary thunder-struck her family and diverted all the colony by riding off one morning to Roxbury and marrying Samuel Dudley before a magistrate there. Amidst the ensuing uproar, Mary stated calmly that she and Sam loathed a fuss, and knew there would be one since both fathers were at loggerheads and agreed on nothing; that nobody could justly call unsuitable a marriage between the two principal families of the Bay, especially since Mary had her own jointure from her mother, Mary Forth; and anyway the thing was done and could not be annulled since she and Samuel had prudently lain together several times before they announced the marriage.

  Reasonable as these views were, they did not placate the two outraged fathers, who were drawn by the unfilial behavior of their offspring into a kind of truce. The young Dudleys, unperturbed, withdrew into a cabin Sam had built on land he owned at Newtown and ignored the storm which soon blew out, for in the meantime there were worse Indian troubles.

  Elizabeth remained in Boston for some time, nursing Margaret, and was there on the early September night of the Great Alarm.

  In the morning, Governor Winthrop received John Underhill who came in looking gloomy, declined soft cider with a shudder, and stood waiting by Winthrop's desk.

  "What is it, Captain?" said Winthrop pushing aside a difficult letter he was writing to Governor Bradford at Plymouth. There seemed no end to little jealousies and misunderstandings between the colonies; perhaps the best way to settle them would be to undertake a return visit and talk to Bradford in person.

  "There's been an Englishman murdered by an Indian, up above Piscataqua," said Underhill brusquely. "Jenkins, late of Dorchester. Chopped to bits while he slept in Passaconamy's wigwam, just after the peace pipe had been smoked."

  "Treachery, eh?" said Winthrop frowning. "That's bad. But those are Mohawks up there, aren't they?"

  Underhill shrugged. An Indian was an Indian and he disliked them all. "I don't fancy these Narragansetts still lurking around us here, they've got our Massachusetts lot excited. Ye can see it, powwows in the forests, canoes darting up and down the riven then vanishing when ye try to challenge 'em. James Sagamore says, and that Miantonomo backs him up, they're planning some kind o' war on the Nipmucks who've pinched their western hunting grounds. But last month it was the Pequots they were out to fight."

  Winthrop looked anxiously at his captain whom he knew to be able and courageous, though his private morals were suspect. "Miantonomo seems a good man, ate at table with me, and behaved nearly like a Christian."

  Underhill brushed this aside impatiently. "There's not been an Indian in Boston for days, which is peculiar. And one of Chickatabot's braves, or sannops, whatever ye call 'em, I gave him an old rusty helmet once and he's that proud of it, he keeps an ear to the ground for me—he says the whole boiling lot of them are plotting to surprise us. They want our victuals and our guns."

  Winthrop swallowed. "Well, we'll have to take precautions. Double the guard, alert every household—"

  "Nay, sir. Not like that. I've been training and alerting these draggletails ever since we landed, so has Patrick. Lot o' peagoose farmers and tradesmen who still don't know one end of a musket from t'other, and they won't listen neither when I say there's danger. Only thing to do is show 'em for themselves. I want to sound the general alarm tonight, and see how they behave. Captain Patrick agrees."

  "I see," said Winthrop after a moment. "It'll frighten many. We'd better privily warn those who are ill if we can, but it's not a bad idea. If the Indians are plotting, it'll mystify them."

  "Aye," said Underhill, his brown eyes sparkling, for he found Boston very dull, and the sloppy military ignorance of the Bay exasperating. "Tonight then, sir, about nine o' the clock."

  Underhill had a
lready laid his plans and he moved fast. He gathered together the few professional guards, and the halberdiers, and he sent horsemen to summon his lieutenants and the most likely of his train band. He pitched a tent on Boston Common and received them all with a long face and dark talk of Indian raids that night.

  On the other side of the river Patrick did the same for his territory of Charlestown, Newtown, and Watertown.

  At nine o'clock Underhill fired an enormous bonfire on the Sentry crest of Trimount to act as a warning beacon. When the flames were leaping twenty feet in the air, and could certainly be seen by all the villages, he began to set off cannon in series of three blasts, the long-arranged signal for imminent danger, when all settlers in Roxbury and Dorchester were supposed to rush into Boston whose narrow neck could easily be barricaded and defended.

  On Patrick's side the same procedure was carried out, but there the settlers were to go to the palisade at Newtown.

  From the two captains' pessimistic point of view the alarm was a great success. The people panicked and most of them forgot their instructions. The few who came into the camps milled around in wild excitement, weeping, wringing their hands and refusing to obey orders. Some dashed off in boats for one of the Bay islands, some fled into the forests, but most stayed cowering in their homes, many cursing their carelessness in not having seen to a low stock of powder, or a jammed matchlock. The rumors flew apparently through the air. It was King Charles's fleet come to punish them for leaving England. It was the French come to claim Massachusetts. It was pirates. It was Spaniards. Very few thought of the Indians, whom they all saw daily and were accustomed to.

  "Well, sir," said Underhill triumphantly to Winthrop next day when the Governor walked to the Common to see how things were going. "Was I not right? They scattered like fowl, 'stead o' banding together in strength, and they cackled and fluttered like hens too."

  "Aye," Winthrop nodded gravely. "We'll appoint new officers, Captain, strengthen the train bands, and keep watch day and night. I pray the people will profit by this lesson, which God inspired you to teach them."

  Elizabeth and Margaret had of course been forewarned of the alarm, and stayed quietly indoors during the excitement, so that when Elizabeth finally left the nearly recovered Margaret two days later, she was startled to find that people outside Boston had not settled down yet. She rode pillion behind Tom French again, and noted as they passed through Charlestown that folk were still gathered in knots anxiously whispering, and that there was a crowd before the Newtown Meetinghouse where those who could read were explaining a reassuring placard put up on the door by Patrick.

  She arrived at her home in the late afternoon, and hastened to inquire from Sally how things had gone in her absence.

  The girl was evasive, her squint-eyes shifted. Now and thai she cast a nervous glance over her shoulder towards the door.

  "Was the alarm very scary?" asked Elizabeth sympathetically. "There was no danger, you know, it was sham."

  "Aye, ma'am. Oi know." Sally began to pound corn in a mortar, and seemed to be reluctant to say more, while Elizabeth watched her puzzled.

  "Joan and Mr. Feake weren't very upset, were they?" she persisted.

  Sally shook her head. "Captain Patrick warned us ahead. 'Twasn't that."

  "What then, Sally? Something's troubling you."

  Sally's hand dropped from the pestle. "'Tis Marster," she whispered. "He's not been roight since directly after ye went."

  "What do you mean, Sally? Surely he hasn't been ill. He could have sent for me."

  The girl shook her head. "Not wot ye'd call ill, only he'd shut hisself up i' the chamber, day in day out. Oncet Oi heard him talking as if someone was in there—then he took to straying in the woods all day, our men said they didn't know where ... Oh, ma'am—" Sally gave a gasp and put her hands to her mouth. "D'ye think he's bewitched?"

  "Fiddle!" said Elizabeth with more firmness than she felt. "Where is he now?"

  Sally hunched her shoulders. "Oi don't know, ma'am. He went out afore sunrise."

  Much disturbed, Elizabeth walked back along the path towards Newtown and the Patrick house. If anyone knew what had been happening, Daniel would, and she prayed he was there. He was. Anneke came to the double door, her rosy face beaming when she saw her visitor, and the women exchanged a kiss. "'Tis good you're home," said Anneke, hospitably ushering Elizabeth into her shining, scrubbed kitchen. "Ve have missed you."

  Patrick too welcomed her warmly, but she wasted no time in greetings. "Sally tells me Robert has been acting strange. Do you know anything about it?"

  The Captain's smiling face sobered. "Aye. He was a little odd, wanting to be alone. I kept an eye on him when I could. Some fit o' the bile perhaps, but I wouldn't fret, I think he's out of it. I appointed him me lieutenant, and he acted as though I'd dubbed him a knight."

  "He was pleased?" she said, trying to imagine Robert in a military role.

  Patrick nodded. He had no intention of telling her how very peculiar he had thought Feake's looks and actions for a few days, and that they had culminated on the night of the alarm when he had gone into a kind of frenzy, partly it seemed from fear for Elizabeth, and partly that the booming of the cannons, the bonfires and general panic seemed to touch off some private fear in him, and this even though he had been told that the alarm was not real. Feake had clung to Patrick at that time, following him about, seeming lost and dazed. Patrick had had to speak to him roughly, and order him to shoulder a gun and drill with the others who had come to the Common.

  Certainly nobody would think Feake promising material for a lieutenant after that, and yet Patrick, who instinctively understood men's quirks and recognized self-distrust and misery when he saw it, was sorry for the man. Even sorrier for Elizabeth in whom he took a strong protective interest. So he had decided to risk the appointment as a temporary measure. Patrick's hopes were justified. The honor and confidence the Captain bestowed jerked Feake out of his queemess. He was conscientious and pleasant-voiced. The men liked him well enough, and his relationship to the Governor precluded jealousy at the appointment.

  "Well, I wish I knew where he was," said Elizabeth disconsolately after a moment. "I don't understand where he's been roaming."

  "He's not roaming now —" said Patrick, stuffing one of Anneke's Dutch honey cakes in his mouth and washing it down with brown ale, "He's drilling Watertown train band on the Common."

  "Ah—" breathed Elizabeth, deeply relieved and proud too.

  Obviously that foolish Sally had exaggerated her tale. She walked home again in a happy mood, and was further reassured when Robert came running in later and very nearly wept with delight at seeing her back.

  In his cuirass, high boots and red sword-sash of office he looked more manly than she had ever seen him, and she responded with warmth to his embrace. She never questioned him about the period of her absence, and he never referred to it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ON WEDNESDAY, May 14, 1634, Boston held a meeting of the General Court and an election by ballot which resulted in shock and humiliation for John Winthrop. He had been under a constant fire of criticism lately. Watertown continued to clamor for a direct voice in the government. The other towns followed suit, particularly Newtown, where Dudley's disapproval of Winthrop now gained backing from the newly arrived minister, Thomas Hooker.

  John Winthrop himself had a new partisan in the Reverend John Cotton who had arrived last year from Boston in Old England, to share new Boston's church pulpit with Wilson. Cotton was a dramatic preacher and a striking man with his fresh rosy face and fluffy white hair. He believed as thoroughly as Winthrop did in the Bible Commonwealth and in the divine right of vested authority. And he preached a sermon informing the people that those set over them to rule must never be deprived of power and "turned into private men" except for extraordinary wickedness. The people listened, but fear had been growing. They had fled Old England to avoid the tyranny of kings, and many thought that someone as entrenched and a
rbitrary as a king was rapidly developing in their midst. Also it was pointed out that sinister meaning might well lurk in the Winthrop family motto "Spes vincit thronum."

  Many too pondered uncertainly over Winthrop's pronouncement that "If we should change from a mixt aristocratie to a mere Democratic, first we should have no warrant in Scripture for it—there was no such government in Israel, and a Democratic is, amongst nations, accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government." On the whole they agreed with him, yet some wondered uneasily whether the Bay Colony was never to be permitted any form of government except that used by Hebrews many thousands of years ago.

  The unrest grew and in April a delegation of freemen from each town waited on Winthrop and demanding a look at the Charter, crowed with triumph at finding it stating that they should take part in the General Court and all law-making. The Governor, who did not so interpret the clause, kept his temper with difficulty, and finally conceded as a favor that he would allow each town to select three men to appear at the court as representatives for the other church members. Those not so sanctified had naturally no hope of legislative voice. The delegation accepted this concession with only temperate enthusiasm, and when John told Margaret about it his voice shook.

  "The ingrates," he said. "I gave them all that they could want—and more. They've not the wits to rule, or meddle with the laws. The best part of a community is always the least, and of that best part the wiser ones are fewer yet. As the excellent Mr. Cotton said, 'If the people be Governor who shall be governed?' Consider, Margaret, if Groton Manor had been ruled by tenants, what a sorry botch they would have made!"

  Margaret agreed anxiously, not understanding all this very well except that John was harassed, and as usual exhausting himself trying to govern people many of whom were unappreciative, and inexplicably hostile. Besides she was near to term in another pregnancy, and though in better health than last time, had no thought for public worries.

  The towns hastened to avail themselves of their new privilege and each chose three deputies to go to Boston and the General Court on May 14. Watertown picked its three largest landowners: Richard Browne, John Oldham, the Indian trader, and Robert Feake.