The Winthrop Woman

by Anya Seton

  "Both," she said with dreamy content. "I ne'er knew poetry before, except my lute songs. Now I lie here with these two books, and they picture England, as I think she never really was, except in my brightest fancies. They help me see all beauty, the springtime and the sorrow, and the yearning which is part of something I have never known except with my gardens or at Monakewaygo—and now in your love."

  "Oh, Bess," he said gruffly. "Fair words you speak yourself."

  Inviolate she was, imbued with a transparent simplicity which could not long endure. Far more than Anneke he dreaded the day when she would no longer be sheltered in this quiet bedroom, and the period of serene drifting must end.

  "Read to me, Will," said Elizabeth, languidly crossing her thin white arms behind her head. Looking from his face to the crackling fire, she snuggled deeper into her feather bed and gave a contented sigh.

  Will laughed. "Indeed, Madam, I am yours to command. The poetry, I suppose ... which shall it be?"

  He had brought her two books of poetry, one a collection by John Milton, which Digby had given him on the day they parted, and had suitably inscribed. Except for the inscription, Will would not have earned it across the ocean since it had not the appeal for him of his other books, especially The Temple by the Reverend George Herbert. Herbert's spiritual poems epitomised for Will all the religious wisdom for which he occasionally strove. They combined with Montaigne's Essays to voice his own philosophy. But he was not surprised that Elizabeth, more sensuously aware of image than he, preferred Milton.

  "Start, 'To hear the lark begin his flight,' prithee," she said smiling.

  "What, again?" he cried in mock dismay. "Let's try 'Lycidas' for a change. For sure you like the flowers in it!"

  "Aye," she said acquiescing. "I see them all as they were on a May Day morning in Groton."

  "And think how to turn them into simples for the cure of sickly folk ... I hope," he said teasing her and as a criticism of Milton's floral catalogue, which he considered somewhat sugary, and was unable to visualize except as a pasture in great need of mowing.

  "Nay," she said seriously. "I see all the flowers glistening like jewels in a golden light, they remind me of something in my childhood, I can't quite remember, a tinted glass window, I think. Read please—Will."

  He pulled the candle closer, and began—

  "Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,

  The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine

  The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet

  The glowing violet,

  The musk-rose, and the well attired woodbine,

  With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head...."

  "Hist!" she said suddenly putting her hand on his arm. "What's ado downstairs?" She sat up clutching her chamber robe around her.

  He closed the book and they listened, hearing light footsteps hurrying up the stairs. Lisbet burst in, her flaxen hair flying, her blue eyes wide with dismay. "Father's back!" she cried, twisting her hands. "He's fled from someone, he's been running. He wants to see you. But he's pulling stuff out of his chest in the lean-to, packing a sack. I don't know what to do with him!"

  Will put the book on the table by the candle and stood up. Elizabeth pushed hard against the pillows, and waited until the sickly hammering of her heart eased. "Well, tell Father to come up here then, dear," she said as quietly as she could. "How does he seem?"

  "I don't know," said the girl. "I was afraid when he ran in. Hannah's with him, and the boys."

  As Lisbet went out, Will bent over Elizabeth. "I'm going to stay here," he said. "Don't be afraid, hinnie, there's no need." He glanced at the poker by the hearth, and slid near it, his wary gaze on the door.

  He relaxed as Robert rushed into the chamber carrying a knapsack and looking both frightened and triumphant. He was breathing hard, his shirt was torn, and he was sweating, but no stranger would have thought him mad. He stood on the threshold looking at Hallet.

  "Thanks be to Almighty God that I find you here!" said Robert. "'Tis what I wanted before I leave. They're after me to stop me. They had me locked in Mr. Bishop's house. I got out the window. 'Twas not truly Christian of them, when I had told them what God said."

  Could this be her husband, Elizabeth thought—husband for sixteen years, father of her children? This little middle-aged man, stout, bald, disheveled, gazing up at Will with an intense and pathetic determination. This man whom she had pitied and feared and despised. Her head swam and her lids drooped. It was Will who questioned in a steady voice.

  "Who's after you, Feake?"

  "Why, Thomas Lyon, to be sure, and others. You see they don't want me to give you the property. The Reverend Bishop doesn't either. For days they've argued with me. They treat me like a child. Which I am not." Robert looked up into Will's face with a certain dignity. "I know what is right to do now, though I have done so much terrible wrong. And I shall do it, no matter what they say."

  Will swallowed, startled like Elizabeth into a new recognition of Robert, wondering if they had really locked him up, or was this a delusion. "You're safe enough now, Feake," he said gently. "And you can talk to me, but not in here. Bess isn't strong enough, she's been very ill."

  "Has she?" said Robert not looking at her. "Aye, she suffered on my account, did she not? And would again if I stayed. I had begun to hate her, but God says I must not hate her. You don't hate her, do you, Will, you wouldn't harm her?"

  "No," said Will, color rushing up his face. "Come downstairs, Robert. You can't talk like this here."

  "But, they may be coming and you've not got the paper!" Robert cried. "Here, wait—'tis here." He fumbled in his torn shirt and brought out a scrap of paper, heavily inked with muddy cramped writing. "The maidservant brought me the materials, while I was locked in Bishop's house." He tendered the paper to Hallet who glanced down expecting to see some raving written there.

  But there was not. It was a simple document giving to Elizabeth Feake the ownership of all Robert's landed property and half his cash which was hid in a chest by the lean-to fireplace; moreover, William Hallet was to be co-administrator of this property, and dispose of it as he thought best for the benefit of Elizabeth Feake, her children and himself. The paper was signed "Robert Feake, Stamford, March 1647."

  Will read it twice with stupefaction. "But great God, Robert," he said finally, speaking without restraint and as to a man in full possession of his wits. "This is fair enough to Bess if you mean to go away—in fact, generous, but there's no reason to include me in there, let's strike that out."

  "Nay," Robert shook his head in the stubborn mulish way of his saner years. "'Tis the way I want it. I know what's right to do. Farewell—my friend," he said hurriedly to Will. "I've taken my share o' the money from the lean-to chest, and I'll be off. You'll see to the rest for me, won't you?"

  "Rob—!" cried Elizabeth, who had been watching in an anguish of indecision. She did not know what was in the paper, but she saw by a dozen signs that Robert was nearer to his normal self than he had been in years. "Rob, you can't be off like that! Where are you going?"

  At last he looked at her. Into his pale blinking eyes there came a mist, as though she were someone long dead whose memory brought dim sorrow. "Why, I'm going back to England to see how God will deal with me there!" he said. "'According to this judgment shall it be done unto him,' saith the Lord."

  "What judgment?" she whispered. "Rob, what is it that has darkened all your life, has driven you even to distraction, whatever it is, poor Rob, there's no need to go. You're not well enough for that hard journey."

  The poignancy of her voice struck to Will's heart, and even penetrated Robert's obsession.

  "For sure I'm well enough," he said slowly. "God gives me strength to suffer what I must. It was Ralph you know, Bess, that I must suffer for. I've not forgot you and the children, I showed that on the paper, but that's over, don't you see? I've nothing left for you or them, 'tis only with effort I can believe you exist."

 
"You feel so now," she said very low, "but perhaps it will change again. Robert—what is it that happened with Ralph?"

  For a moment Will thought Feake would answer her, and he knew that she from decency was making a last effort to help her husband, despite all she had suffered, careless even of himself and their love.

  Robert hesitated; he raised his hands, still long and thin, though the rest of his body had thickened. lie glanced down at them quickly, staring at them in a puzzled way. Then he put them beneath the folds of bis doublet. "Nay, woman," he said with sudden anger. "You ask too much. Always now you obscure the Voice of God. Let me be! You're naught to me!—Hark!" he cried whirling towards the window. "There are voices outside!"

  "Aye—" said Will who could see through the shutters a streak of lantern light. "There's no need to fear, Robert. They can't harm you."

  But Robert had gone, running down the stairs and out the door to the cove, while the front passage door opened below and they heard Thomas Lyon's voice.

  "I'll fetch him back, Bess," said Will. "He can't get far."

  "No," she said with a weary motion of her hand. "Of what use? Let him go. I believe he has sane plans. And he must follow whatever fate it is he thinks is calling him. He can find no rest here."

  She closed her eyes and tears slipped down her cheeks.

  The weighty footsteps of her son-in-law stamped up the stairs and an angry voice called out, "Father Feake, Father Feake, what a chase you've led us!" Thomas walked into the room, and scanning it quickly, said, "Lisbet said he was up here!"

  "He is not," said Will, standing in the center of the floor.

  Thomas, who had been certain of locating Feake at last, rearranged his thoughts with difficulty. He stared at Elizabeth in the bed, and back to Hallet, whereupon he started, and scowled. "What the devil are you doing in here?" Thomas shouted.

  Elizabeth's days of sheltered peace were over.

  The next month was one of constant discord. Thomas spared no opportunity to upbraid Elizabeth, especially after they heard that Robert had indeed been sane enough to lay sensible plans for his escape. The servant in the Bishop house had helped him. Robert, having taken nearly a hundred pounds from the lean-to chest, had bribed the maid with a few shillings and she in turn had hired her sweetheart and his rowboat to convey Robert along the coast to Fairfield, where a Boston-bound ship had given him passage. And he had reached Boston. The master of the ship touched at Stamford upon his return, and the story all came out. The Bishops' maidservant was hauled before the Stamford court, questioned, and severely rebuked. She was also put in the stocks for an hour, but there was nothing else that the Reverend Mr. Bishop, or Thomas Lyon could do about it.

  The servant, weeping, averred that poor Mr. Feake's wits were as clear as anybody's, and it was a mortal shame to lock him up as her master had done. The ship's captain agreed, saying the gentleman was quiet and gave no trouble, and had gone straight to Governor Winthrop upon arrival in Boston. This last news incensed Thomas more than anything else, since he had not yet had a reply from Winthrop, and now had little hope of controlling the situation except by reversing himself on the subject of Robert's sanity, especially in view of the signed transfer of property Will showed him during the violent quarrel which took place in Elizabeth's bedroom on the evening Robert escaped.

  The quarrel would have come to blows had it not been for Elizabeth, and the frightened Joan who clutched at her husband's arm, and went into a kind of hysteria as she wavered between her mother's and her husband's claims.

  Will refused to give up the paper, and Thomas finally had to content himself with forbidding him ever to enter the Feake house again.

  This order Will obeyed out of consideration for Elizabeth. He stayed on his place at Totomack, keeping himself doggedly occupied with the spring sowing and improvements on his one-room cabin. His only news of Elizabeth during that period came from a visit he made to Anneke, who received him kindly, told him that Elizabeth was nearly well, and had resumed most of her household duties; but Anneke was otherwise starkly discouraging.

  "You do her no good here, Villiam," said Anneke. "You must sell and go avay. You vill forget each other in time."

  "Has Bess said that?" Will asked, his jaw tightening.

  Anneke shook her head. "Ve do not speak alone. Thomas, Joan or the children are alvays there, but believe me it is best. She and Thomas vill manage better together some day, if you are not here."

  "Anneke!" said Will violently. "Have you ever really loved anyone? Loved so much that it's a desperate hunger night and day, and calm, sensible advice about forgetting and managing better are as meaningless as the droning of a fly? Have you loved like that with your whole body, heart, and mind?"

  Anneke looked a little frightened. "But, vat could you do?" she said. "You vould not make a whore of my Bess, surely?"

  "No," said Will, his eyes hardening. "But I'll not give her up either, unless she wishes it. I've got to see her. Anneke, will you give her this note?"

  She showed distress. Under the snowy fichu Anneke's bosom heaved, but she backed off, leaving his hand extended in mid-air with the note. "I cannot," Anneke said. "Leave her alone! Go avay! She has had enough vithout you bothering her—And don't go to the house either!" she added sternly. "It only makes trouble for her."

  Will went home, sunk in despondency. Anneke's certainty had shaken him, and surely Bess might somehow have sent word to him in these weeks. Could it be that her love had after all been a transient thing, born of her miserable relationship with Robert and her physical weaknesses? Freed of both now, was she also freed of her need for him? Will reached his home, fed the horse and started sharpening poles for a fence to enclose the barnyard. But his hatchet slipped repeatedly, he swore and gave it up. He began to pace up and down along the path he had made to the water, his unheeding steps crunched on broken oyster shells the Indians had left. He did not feel the soft April sunlight, or notice the first green tips of the early wheat he had experimentally sown on the Tomac camp site. As he paced he tried to reason with himself, forcing himself backward in memory to the attitude he had had towards Elizabeth before the day he found her on Monakewaygo. He rehearsed all the drawbacks she presented. She was older, six, seven years—he wasn't sure how much. She had a husband, five children and a son-in-law. True she had a fair bodv, charm, and strength of character, but plenty of unencumbered women possessed these. And more. He thought of Lady Alice, Digby's sister, who had looked very sweetly on him, and made it clear that she might talk her father into a marriage if Will should ask her. Lord Bristol himself had hinted that the times were so troubled, and the leveling forces typified by Cromwell were so much in the ascendancy, that a match with fine yeoman stock, with a man, moreover, who had proved himself of such loyal worth to the Bristols, would not be inconceivable.

  I might have had Alice, Will thought. A handsome virgin, an Earl's daughter, why didn't I take her? Why not go back now, and see if she is still unwed?

  He turned on his heel, angrily kicking a stone out of the way. These were futile questions since his inherent honesty answered them as soon as asked. He hadn't wanted Lady Alice, and he hadn't wanted to continue at the beck and call of the Digbys. He did want Elizabeth, without discovering any logic in it. More remarkably, however, he also wanted her happiness above his own, which seemed to produce a painful state of deadlock quite contrary to all pious teaching.

  Montaigne might have helped, or George Herbert, but Elizabeth still had his books, unless indeed Thomas Lyon had thrown them into the cove. God blast and damn it all! Will thought, and striding into his house, drank a tankard of beer and flung logs on the fire with which to roast a wild duck for his supper.

  Will had slept an hour that night, twisting and tossing on his hay mattress, when he was awakened by a knock on his door. He jumped from bed, naked except for his breeches, and called out, "Who's there?"

  There was a murmur and another knock. He lifted the wooden latch and peered out, expecting to
hear that Angell's cow had jumped the fence again and must be found.

  The night was dark and he did not at first recognize the hooded and cloaked figure on his doorstep.

  "Can I not come in, Will..." whispered Elizabeth. "Don't you want me?"

  "Aye—" he said on a long breath. "I want thee."

  He pulled her into his room, shut and bolted the door. He took her in his arms and kissed her with such violence that he hurt her, and she gasped, though not in protest.

  He released her and poked at the fire until it gave light enough to see by. "You've made me glad, Bess," he said coming back to her and taking off her cloak. "In these weeks of waiting I began to doubt—"

  "Nay, love—" she said. "How could you doubt? I didn't. But Thomas has kept constant watch on me, and until the last few days I've not had strength to walk so far."

  "Could you not have sent me some message, hinnie-sweet?" He smoothed back her hair and looked down into her face, which was yet thin and pale from her illness, but seemed to him lovelier than he had remembered.

  "I nearly did by Hannah, and then I thought it was not right to make her keep a secret. And too, I had many things to think out myself."

  "And having thought?" he asked, sitting on his bench and pulling her down to his knees, where she rested her cheek against his bare shoulder.

  "Why, I came to you," she said shyly, smiling up at him. "And will stay the night if you wish it. Thomas is in bed with an attack of dysentery, too weak to move. I locked my chamber door, and can slip in again without their knowing."

  "Oh Bess—Bess—" he said, half laughing, yet with roughness in his throat. "You offer yourself to me like this, so simply, so quietly—"

  "But I love thee," she said in surprise. "And I need no longer think of Robert."

  He set her on her feet and stood up, walking towards the fire. "Then I must," he said. "Of Robert and many other factors. You cannot sneak back and forth like this, nor start a shoddy intrigue. Our love is no longer like that, whatever I may once have thought. And you are not like that. Soon you would hate yourself and me."