The Winthrop Woman

by Anya Seton

  Her hand shook suddenly, she made a blot and an erasure, then went on hurriedly:

  have not come to you to manifest my thankfulness and tender my service to yourself and my sister; the speedy going of my cousin prevented me therein; yet I shall ever remain yours in all unfeigned love and service.

  ELIZABETH HALLET.

  From aboard the vessel.

  "Hurry!" cried Will holding out his hand for the note. "It really doesn't matter, Bess, this isn't necessary."

  "It is! It is!" she cried. "How can you not see it?—Oh and all the things we borrowed from them, some in the house, but I put others in the yard—would you have Betty Winthrop think we're stealing them?"

  Hastily she wrote a postscript.

  I pray you remember my best respects to Mrs. Lake. We have left your table board and frame, and bellows boards upon the cow-house and the rake in the yard.

  At last Will got the note away from her, and gave it with threepence to a lounger on the landing for delivery.

  Toby hoisted anchor, the sails slowly filled; on an ebb tide now the Ben Palmer moved down the harbor mouth. And just in time. As the landing glided into distance, Will saw a stir on the waterfront, and the gleam of metal that must be Captain Mason's helmet.

  Poor Winthrop, he thought, wondering how Jack would deal with Mason's anger, and with Governor Haynes. He turned to tell Elizabeth a more connected story of the day's happenings, but saw that she was lying half asleep on Toby's bunk, with the baby Willie, and in her face was a bewildered and pathetic resignation.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  A WEEK after leaving Pequot, Toby again entered Long Island Sound and skimmed down the coast, passing the familiar settlements at some distance.

  Elizabeth, no longer in ignorance of their true goal and feeling much stronger, sat on the forward hatch and watched the little towns slip by. They had passed New Haven and were nearing Stamford when she spoke to Will, who was whittling new tholepins for Toby's longboat. "I find it curious," she said, raising her eyebrows, "that at none of these places could we land in safety. And that there seems to be no place in the world where we'd be welcome."

  Will glanced at her, relieved at this ironic tone which he knew showed improved health.

  "We might try New France," he said, jesting, yet half in earnest. "If—" He did not finish and she said nothing.

  While they were at Providence, waiting for Toby to exchange cargoes, Will had told her about the Hartford warrant for her arrest, since he did not want her to go ashore. There was no use risking new complications or making themselves known to Roger Williams, whose attitude was unpredictable. Williams gave asylum to religious exiles, but he did not shelter felons, and it was also possible that Captain Mason, guessing their destination, would send a messenger by land with extradition papers.

  Even Toby had been sufficiently impressed with their danger to hurry out of port.

  And Will, feeling that Elizabeth should now know the whole truth, had shown her Baxter's letter. It was brief and guarded.

  It said that if certain parties now residing with Mr. Winthrop, and who had vital interest in New Netherland, came at once to the Dutch capital, they might there find something to their benefit.

  Jack's fear of raising excessive hopes in Elizabeth were unfounded. She had no hope. "'Tis doubtless a trick," she said. "Oh, not of Baxter's probably, though I trust nobody anymore, but of Stuyvesant's. We'll no sooner land than we'll be arrested."

  "Not you," said Will. "They won't harm you there or Baxter wouldn't have written. It'll be I that's gaoled in New Netherland since my banishment is still in force." And he laughed.

  "Will!" she cried, staring at him. "But we can't go then! This is desperate folly. Make Toby take us to Virginia, as I thought—or the Indies."

  "No, hinnie," said Will. "We're going to New Amsterdam. We should have done it long ago. I no longer wish to live in pretense. You know what my admired Herbert says:

  "Dare to be true; nothing can need a lie;

  a fault which needs it most grows two thereby."

  It's time we heeded the old parson."

  "Even if it means imprisonment and torture?" she whispered.

  "Even so."

  Beneath her fears she felt a shock of relief, a clean and free sensation which she had not known since the day they had fled to Stamford over a year ago. It did not last. Her fears continued, but she hid them, and when they spoke of their situation now it was often with a sardonic humor which Toby thought demented.

  That afternoon, they passed Monakewaygo—Elizabeth's Neck. There was haze, and she could see little but the outline of the trees. She turned quickly and went down into the cabin, where she occupied herself with the baby.

  They anchored off Long Island shore that night, since Toby would not ran Hell Gate in darkness. When, at sunrise, they had shot through the rapids and the eddies, Will gazed long up at the eastern shore, and the round point of land for which he once had owned a grant. The point was pink beneath the huge sun that hung like a scarlet plate over the gray horizon.

  "'Twill be a dirty day," said Toby also looking at the sun. "Good thing we're near to port."

  Neither Will nor Elizabeth said anything. They sailed on down the East River. As they passed Corlear's Hook, some recognition of the anxiety his passengers might be feeling penetrated Toby's stolidity. "Ye better have a good swig o' ram," he said, and he veiled to the Finch lad who acted as cabin boy. "Isaac, fetch the keg!"

  Will and Elizabeth each drank some of the fiery "kill devil," Will a watered mugful, Elizabeth only a swallow, for it seemed rather to increase than quell the sickly feeling in her stomach.

  Soon they saw the silhouette of the Fort, the windmill and the weathervane on the high-peaked church.

  "Fewer ships in than when we were last here," observed Will casually.

  "Aye," said Toby. "Stuyvesant's ruining foreign trade with his fierce customs duties and confiscations. There's a mort o' complaints. Very high-handed he is."

  Elizabeth moistened her dry lips. Will put his hand over hers and gave it a hard clasp.

  "He can't be worse than Kieft," she said faintly.

  "Harsher," said Toby. "And a shocking temper—lays about him with his stick and screams and stamps that peg-leg when angered. He thought Kieft too easygoing, lax—him and the Pastor Bogardus. They say Stuyvesant believes that's why they were drowned on the Princess those two. Judgment of the Lord."

  "Aye," said Will quickly to divert Toby from Stuyvesant's character. "It was a strange thing that Kieft and his mortal enemy, Bogardus, should both be drowned on the way home for questioning. But life is unpredictable—and not all its surprises are bad, hinnie."

  "To be sure," she said as steadily as she could.

  There was a clear berth by the great wooden dock Stuyvesant had recently erected. Toby made fast alongside of it. "Ye can sleep aboard if you like," he said gruffly, as Elizabeth started down the gangplank with the baby in her arms. "Save you money at the Tavern."

  If we don't sleep in gaol, she thought.

  It began to rain as Will and Elizabeth walked down the wooden wharf, then past the crane and the gibbet to the customhouse. Under Kieft's regime they had never been questioned upon arrival in New Amsterdam, but now an armed guard dashed out of the customhouse and stopped them with a flow of Dutch.

  Will repeated Baxter's name several times, and said, "He expects us."

  The guard hesitated. He understood what Will meant, but thought it unlikely that so shabbily dressed a pair really had an appointment with the Governor's secretary. Also he sensed something queer about these two and his suspicions were aroused. Finally he motioned them on and stalked behind through the little streets, his musket on his shoulder. The people stopped and stared, one little boy cocked a snoot at Will, threw a pebble at Elizabeth, and ran off jeering.

  As they approached the Fort it rained harder. Elizabeth covered the baby with a fold of her worn cloak, and he began to whimper.

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p; They were challenged by a sentry' at the entrance to the Fort, but their guard said something and they passed through, heading at once for Baxter's house.

  Baxter's door was opened by a liveried slave, who gaped at the trio—the tall man, the woman in rumpled homespun clothing, and the guard frowning behind them.

  "Mr. Baxter," said Will. "We wish to see him at once."

  The slave shook his head. "Master gone. Not here. Gone to Bruecklin."

  The customs guard made a sharp derisive sound. "Kom!" he said laying his hand roughly on Will's shoulder.

  "Are we already arrested?" said Elizabeth. "'Tis sooner than I thought for."

  "No, by God!" Will cried, shaking off the guard's hand. "We're going to Stuyvesant. 'Directeur-Generaal'!" he shouted into the guard's startled, resistant face. Will took Elizabeth's arm and they sloshed through the increasing rain across the Ford towards the Governor's mansion. The guard followed angrily, his musket ready cocked.

  It was while they were crossing the slippery paving stones that Elizabeth plummeted, between one step and the next, into despair. The thunder and pound of effort ceased, she was alone in a silent black cell—in a dungeon, where shadow upon shadow wavered around the implacable stones. No one to call to, no one to help. "From the ends of the earth will I cry unto thee when my heart is overwhelmed—for thou hast been a shelter for me. I will trust in the covert of thy wings." What shelter? What wings? Pious lies to be finally surrendered along with these puny strivings—along with pitiable hope.

  They reached the Governor's house, Will mounted the stoop, and banged the great bronze door knocker, while the guard protested angrily, but after a stare at Will's expression did not interfere. Elizabeth looked at Will's back—a stranger—as alien to her as all the people she had once loved, love slain by the God of Wrath who neither solaced nor forgave.

  She stood on the paving stones, the rain dripping off her hood, and running down onto the baby who began to wail with the full strength of his healthy lungs.

  A woman appeared at an upstairs window and looked down at the group in the courtyard. She noted the scowling guard, and a big man whose attitude showed strain and fierce determination; puzzled, she looked at Elizabeth who was mechanically trying to soothe the howling squirming baby and protect it from the rain, and she had a glimpse of Elizabeth's face. A face like marble; mute, white; a mask of desolation.

  The woman left the window and ran downstairs.

  The Governor's servant had already opened the door a crack, and begun to deny entrance in a blustering voice. Judith Stuyvesant pushed him aside and flung wide her door. "Kom in!" she said to the bedraggled couple.

  The guard rushed forward and spoke to her in rapid but respectful Dutch, telling her that these were but disreputable English folk, unworthy of her attention, that they had no credentials, and had asserted Mr. Baxter expected them—which was not true.

  Mrs. Stuyvesant, whose warm heart sometimes led her into difficulties, paused, and inspected again the two who now stood on her threshold. Elizabeth's somber eyes gazed back, seeing as through fog a pretty woman of her own age, exquisitely gowned in rose taffeta with a huge fluted ruff, and with pearl earrings dangling beneath elaborate puffs of honey-colored hair. A woman of fashion, she thought vaguely, from the world that I once knew. She turned to leave, anticipating the dismissal which would soon come.

  "We would like to explain ourselves, Madam," said Will harshly, "but we speak no Dutch."

  "I can some English," said Mrs. Stuyvesant. Abruptly she waved her hand at the guard. "Ga weg!" He bowed and went off muttering.

  "Rest, Mevrouw," she said to Elizabeth, and led her into a small salon, elaborately furnished. Will followed uncomfortably.

  Elizabeth sat down on a caned stool by the fire, while Mrs. Stuyvesant put her hand on the baby's head. "How old?" she asked.

  "Eight months," said Elizabeth, in a dragging voice.

  "The same as my Nicolaes!" cried Mrs. Stuyvesant. "I thought so when I saw you stand so sad, in the rain." She bent down over the baby, "Zuigeling, zuigeling—" she crooned to him. "Thou shalt be dry and warm now, and Mama feed thee..." The baby quietened. Elizabeth looked up into the lady's compassionate eyes, and her own were lightened by a faint wonder.

  Mrs. Stuyvesant rushed out, and came back with an armful of infant clothes and diapers. She tidied and warmed the baby, dressing him in the elaborate robes of the Governor's own son. Then Mrs. Stuyvesant motioned briskly, and Elizabeth obeyed the gesture, unfastening her bodice and giving suck. "Now—" said Judith in gentle command. "Speak slow, and tell me why you are so sad—and your man so—so wild."

  Haltingly, a few words at a time, and in a voice which seemed I ot to be her own, Elizabeth complied.

  Will stood by the window, staring out at the blinding rain, with thoughts as miserable as Elizabeth's had been. He was glad of respite for her, and that his son was warmed and fed, but he thought of these feminine rites as only that—respite or delay, and of no consequence to their black situation. In this he was mistaken.

  Judith Stuyvesant had been born a Bayard, of French extraction, and of a gallantry like the famous Chevalier. She had charm, learning and quick sympathy. She loved her own two baby boys better than anything in the world, but she had managed to find something lovable in the irascible, autocratic, one-legged old General whom she had wed. Of all the people who surrounded him, she was the only one who never feared him, though she could not always sway him.

  Elizabeth had not spoken much before Judith arose with decision. "You stay here," she said. "I find my husband. If he's in Council with his Nine Men, I don't disturb him, for then he always bad-humor. I find out."

  As she left the room Will walked over and stood by Elizabeth. "'Tis the Governor's lady..." he said.

  "It would seem so," Elizabeth answered in the dragging faraway voice. "Strange that she did not shrink from me, when I told her, yet perhaps she didn't understand."

  Will said nothing. They waited, while the baby went to sleep, and the rain slashed like knives at the glistening diamond panes.

  The Governor was not in Council, he was in his office dictating to his Dutch secretary. He looked up in surprise, but not annoyance as his wife entered. She explained her errand, and Stuyvesant began to laugh—dry grating chuckles, so unusual that the secretary looked alarmed, and Judith astonished.

  "Och, Juutje!" The Governor said suddenly sobering. "So the Winthrop woman has now turned up here in your own salon, and has got you for advocate!"

  "She is terribly unhappy, Petrus," said his wife softly. "They seem good people to me. And the baby—the same age as our little Claes."

  "The baby!" said the Governor sharply. "One born in sin, of adultery. Do you forget that?"

  "No, dear husband, f don't," said Judith, laying her hand on his arm. "Yet as she is divorced, it would be so easy for you to make this little one legitimate. Mr. Baxter already once told me something of their story, these two."

  "Oh, he did, did he!" growled the Governor. "Baxter talks too much. Cackle, cackle, cackle like an old hen." But there was a veiled twinkle beneath the heavy hooded lids. "This woman—Winthrop, Feake, Hallet, whatever she's called. I'm sick of her. So many letters from her family, and now they begin from Greenwich too. The inhabitants, my own subjects, write in her favor, and the property, her lands they say are going to ruin. I think—" said the Governor, rubbing his beaked nose and slyly watching Judith, "I'll give the Feake-Hallet land to Pieter Cock, who pesters me for it. This Greenwich is the most troublesome town in New Netherlands—No, no, wife—" he added as he saw that she was about to speak, "Enough of this wicked pair! They have broken the law, they were warned what would happen if they came back here. They must be imprisoned ... eh?"

  "Petrus!" she cried, shaking his arm. "You will not be so cruel, not when I beg you!" She stopped, uncertainly, for the little grating chuckles had begun again.

  "Bring me the Winthrop file," said the Governor to his secretary.

 
The man walked to a huge Dutch kas, filled with shelves and stacks of paper. He brought out a small packet tied together with a red thread. The Governor picked the top sheet off the pile and held it out to his wife. "You see, my dear, all your pretty begging is quite wasted breath."

  Judith looked down at the document in her hand, and saw her husband's official seal at the bottom, and she read the opening. "'Whereas, Elizabeth Feake erstwhile of Greenwich in our jurisdiction, has been legally separated from her husband, Robert Feake—'" Judith skipped several lines, then with a gasp of pleasure, she read out loud "'therefore, for particular reasons known to us, they are both reinstated in full possession of their lands, and Elizabeth Feake is given permission to remarry, provided that she wed the above-named William Hallet'—Oh, Petrus, you had already written it!"

  "A week ago," said the Governor dryly. "And not for the sweetly sentimental reasons you give, but because England now has a Puritan Commonwealth, I am directed to placate the Puritan colonies as much as I can with honor, and I think it expedient to confer a favor on a woman connected with so influential a family as the Winthrops. This John Winthrop, Jr., I've heard much about him, and think his friendship of greater value than his enmity. Now take this paper to your protégés, and I trust I'll not be bothered with them any more."

  The Governor's hope was not quite fulfilled since Elizabeth and Will lay that night at his house in two separate guest bedrooms. This was Judith's doing.

  When she returned to her salon with the marriage license, she had been deeply moved by their reception of her news. The numbness of shock, the sudden blaze of joy in William Hallet's eyes, the way he kissed his woman, and looked down at his baby. While she—Mrs. Feake—had continued for some time dazed and incredulous, fearing a malicious jest, asking tremulous questions, and upon having the document translated for her the third time, suddenly bursting into sobs and laughter so heartrending that Judith had wept with her, and presently dared intrude again upon her husband.