by Anya Seton
"Leave Bess be," said Will. "Why don't you sail up the cove and see what changes have been made? I'm content here with my book and pipe."
"I might," said Toby, more graciously. "We left an iron kettle behind. Anneke's always fretting for it. I'll see if it's still there."
Elizabeth stood a moment by the water's edge. She saw the bayberry bushes and smelled the wild grapes that were tangled amongst the saplings in the thicket. To the right, there was a giant tulip tree, and then a stand of locusts. She began to walk, and plunged into the forest through the red leaves and the flaunting ruby spears of sumac. The birds had not all left for the South. As always in this forest they swooped from branch to branch, and cawed or warbled or chirped without restraint, almost heedless of her passage.
Her feet crunched on fallen leaves, lemon-yellow or brown, except where one of the maples had released a drift of crimson through the glades.
The way was longer than she remembered, but she felt no weariness, nor was troubled with a want of breath. Her heart beat slow and strong. The earlier misgivings had vanished. A delicate excitement tingled through her body. She scrambled on through brambles, the dying meshes of jewelweed and the red-tinged creepers. She saw the three hemlocks first, towering black-green against the sky. She pushed through the last of the underbrush, and came suddenly upon the pool beneath the hemlocks and the one gray overhanging rock. The pool was smaller than she had remembered, but in the mysterious brown waters she saw the same tranquillity.
Her feet sank into the cool moss amongst the autumn-browned ferns. She leaned against the rock, waiting, watching for Sprite, the crippled white-tailed doe.
But there was no motion near the pool, except the birds. A flock of wild pigeons flew overhead while she stood there, momentarily darkening the sky. The doe was gone, was dead of course, by this time.
Bewilderment washed over her, was it the doe that she had come to find? What had compelled her against all reason, and drawn her back to this long-forgotten solitary place? She felt something brush her hand as a woolly caterpillar inched along the rock. She snatched her hand away.
There's nothing here for me, she thought, I must go back to the men, not keep them waiting. Yet still expectancy entwined with disappointment.
A chilly little wind stirred the hemlock needles and rustled the dead leaves. She could not see the sun, it was screened by the hemlock boughs.
She wrapped the cloak around her and sat down on a rotting tree stump. Suddenly she caught the sound of movement in the bushes. She turned quickly, hopeful, relieved. Was it the doe come after all?
The bushes parted and a woman glided out and stopped beside the rock.
A woman with an empty eye socket, purple scars and long black hair. "Greeting, Missis," she said in a calm passionless voice. Her left eye narrowed and the left corner of her mouth lifted in a smile.
"Telaka...?" whispered Elizabeth. A ghost—a vision, bringing little fear, but rather release, and a fulfillment.
"I wait for you," said Telaka complacently. "Today you come." She had a basket of nuts in one hand, a clay pot in the other. She walked to the pool, dipped up water in the pot and drank thirstily.
Elizabeth rose and moved forward. She touched the brown arm. It was warm, not very clean, there was a mosquito bite on it. Elizabeth drew a deep breath. "Telaka—what are you doing here? I thought you were slaughtered with the rest."
"No," said Telaka. "Six escape. Keofferam and I—four others. They go to Corchaugs, I come here—to Monakewaygo."
"Here? You've been here, all these years, alone. I never saw you.
"Saw you," said Telaka. "I keep away. Manitoo not want we meet, till now."
Elizabeth sat down again upon the stump. Telaka put her pot and basket on the moss, squatted down beside them companionably.
"Keofferam wanted to kill me—did you know?" said Elizabeth after a moment. "Instead he killed Nawthorne."
"Ah—" said the squaw with satisfaction. "Keofferam stupid. Not listen when I say Nawthorne is with Hobbomock, Nawthorne betray our people. Keofferam think always that you did it."
"Then—" said Elizabeth, "Why didn't he kill me? He stopped."
Telaka's eye conveyed surprise. In the slightly impatient tone which explains the obvious, she said, "Keofferam not kill because you heal his leg that time."
Elizabeth stared at the squaw. "One small unconsidered act of kindness...!"
Telaka shrugged. "Was enough." She pulled her basket onto her lap. Her long brown fingers sifted through the nuts, hickory and sweet chestnut. She pinched and weighed them, discarding some which rolled into the leaves. Suddenly she looked up at Elizabeth, examined her, appraising, thoughtful.
"You die pretty soon, Missis," Telaka said judicially. "Few months maybe."
Elizabeth winced and stiffened. The instinctive human panic gripped her, and then it passed. "Aye, I believe I knew it," she said. "I'm not afraid."
"I die soon too," said Telaka returning to her basket. "Will be glad."
"Glad—" Elizabeth repeated. "Ah, yes, for you, perhaps, you've nobody to leave behind, and it must be lonely here—"
Telaka put down the basket and raised her head, she turned and looked toward the west where the sunlight had begun to gild the green leaves.
"You have children," said Telaka. "They will have children, soon all this land will be theirs—no more Indians. Here on Monakewaygo will be many many white men—run all over."
"Oh no!" Elizabeth cried. "Not here, Telaka! This belonged to your people and to you—and it was mine for a little time—but—"
The squaw shook her head and interrupted sternly. "Can't keep it! Nobody can keep things long. Chekefuana tell me so."
A faint amusement rippled over Elizabeth's surface mind. But from the deeper part she spoke without volition. "And what of love, Telaka, can one keep that...?"
The squaw did not answer. It was as though she did not hear. She rose slowly and walked over to Elizabeth. She took her hand. "Look—" she said, "and be quiet."
At the touch of the slim brown hand, a thrill ran up Elizabeth's arm. The pool, the rock, the hemlock trees shifted and changed focus. Each one stood out distinct and seemed to shimmer. The wind blew stronger, she heard it whispering and rushing by. A ray of sunlight slanted down between the tree trunks, it touched the pool with liquid gold.
The pool became transparent to its golden depths, and her self was plunging in those depths and yet upraised with joy upon the rushing wind. The light grew stronger and turned white. In this crystal whiteness there was ecstasy. Against the light she saw a wren fly by; the wren was made of rhythm, it flew with meaning, with a radiant meaning. There was the same meaning in the caterpillar as it inched along the rock, and the moss, and the little nuts which had rolled across the leaves.
And still the apperception grew, and the significance. The significance was bliss, it made a created whole of everything she watched and touched and heard—and the essence of this created whole was love. She felt love pouring from the light, it bathed her with music and with perfume, the love was far off at the source of light, and yet it drenched her through. And the source and she were one.
The minutes passed. The light moved softly down, and faded from the pool. The ecstasy diminished, it quietened, but in its stead came a serenity and sureness she had never known.
She felt again Telaka's hand. It was trembling. She looked at the squaw's face and no longer saw the mutilation. She saw it whole, and still touched by the afterglow.
"It's come before but not like this..." Elizabeth whispered. "Glimpses through a tinted Papist window, when I was a child—with Anne Hutchinson—perhaps even with a little Baptist cobbler—in my gardens—and now with Telaka..."
She was not talking to the squaw, but Telaka listened and nodded solemnly. "All same light," she said. "Come different ways, but from same place."
"Ah, Telaka—" Elizabeth cried. She took the squaw into her arms and kissed her twisted mouth. "Come home with me, let
me take care of you for the time that's left to us. Don't stay here alone!"
There was an instant when Telaka's body softened, and she leaned against Elizabeth, but then she drew away. "I stay here, Missis," she said. "Better so." She reached down quickly for the basket of nuts and put it in Elizabeth's hand. "For the children—" she said. And she was gone, gliding off into the forest as she had come.
Elizabeth turned and left the pool. She walked back through the tangled underbrush, and when she reached the little beach, Will came running to her. "Hinnie, hinnie—I was worried. I tried to find you—" He checked himself, staring at the face she turned up to him. Radiance. A transfiguration the like of which he'd never seen.
"What's happened to you?" he whispered, staring. "My God, you're beautiful! What happened in there?"
She tried to answer but she could not. She put the basket of nuts down and held her hands out to him, smiling. "I would tell you, Will darling, but I can't, except—except that all is changed and now I know."
"Changed..." he repeated, very nearly dismayed. She seemed far from him, untouchable, shining with a young and mysterious loveliness. Was that a trick of the gathering twilight? But he knew it was not, and her voice had altered too, it held the startling lilt of joy.
"But you must be able to tell me something!" he said, taking her hands in his. "I'm at a loss. You look as though a candle had been lighted inside you."
She understood his urgency and she clasped his hands tight, and searched for words. Then she said, "Perhaps I can put it this way, as you did once. I've found at last that 'Religion is not a melancholy. The Spirit of God is not a dampe.'"
He swallowed. "Have you, Bess?" he said humbly. "Have you?"
"Aye." She sat down on the bank, and after a moment he sat beside her.
"How else have you changed?" he asked anxiously. "Not towards me, I hope, not your love?"
"Aye," she said again, looking at him with a tender smile. "For now there is nothing but love for you. The jealousies and the fears are gone. I am in you and you in me. We are all one."
He did not understand, but far below reason he felt a melting and an awareness. He put his arm around her, and she rested against his shoulder, quickly responsive as she had always been. As their bodies had always been to each other. He felt a stirring of passion, and the desire to kiss her, but he did not. The closeness between them was too sweet for interruption.
They sat for some time looking at the waters of the Cove. Then Elizabeth said, "Will, where's Toby?"
"Why, down there..." he said rousing himself and pointing. "Do you see his riding lights? He's sailing back here. He'll be in a hurry to get home."
"Poor Toby," she said laughing. "And yet I think we cannot permit him to sail home tonight."
"Whyever not?" Will asked astonished "Is there some other place you want to go, hinnie?"
"Aye," she said. "Where I should have gone long ago. To see Thomas and my grandchild."
He made a sharp sound. "Not Thomas Lyon! Why, Bess, you vowed to hate him unto death."
"I know," she said. "It was a stupid vow. I no longer feel the hurtful thing that prompted it. It's vanished in the light. And I do feel that my Joan's little girl has need of me; at least I must find out." He looked so stunned that she laughed again softly. "If Keofferam showed mercy, do you not think that I might?"
Will was silent, awed by the change in her, almost envious of whatever it was that had happened to her back there by the pool, yet deriving from it and from her love his own renewal of courage and acceptance.
She shivered in the increasingly cold wind, and he drew his arm tighter around her. They sat quietly on the bank watching the lanterns bob on the shallop as Toby steered it down the cove towards Monakewaygo.
HISTORICAL AFTERWORD
THE LAST direct documentary reference to Elizabeth is her purchase of land in Flushing and Newtown, Long Island, from Edward Griffin, October first, 1655, though there is an interesting item in the Journal of Captain Brian Newton of New Amsterdam in which he tells of a trip through Hell Gate, "Where William Hallet's house and plantation formerly stood, which was laid waste by the Indians, about September of the year 1655."
William Hallet became "Schout" or chief official of Flushing in 1656, and was shortly thereafter temporarily imprisoned and banished by Stuyvesant for allowing William Wickenden to hold Baptist conventicles in Hallet's house. Hallet was released but deprived of office. Toby (Tobias) Feake replaced him as Schout. William eventually married again, and he died, prosperous, at the age of ninety-four.
Lisbet (Elizabeth Feake) married Captain John Underhill after his wife's death, in 1661. Hannah Feake and her John Bowne were duly married in 1656, and both became famous and persecuted Quakers. Their biographies are readily accessible, but a reminder should be given here about the "Flushing Remonstrance" of 1657, which demanded tolerance for all the sects gathered at Flushing. This Remonstrance played a considerable part in the eventual establishment of religious freedom in this country.
Elizabeth's daughters had many estimable descendants; so did young John Feake (including Robert Feke the painter) and her two Hallet sons, William, Jr., and Samuel.
Robert Feake, the elder, died, unimproved, at Watertown, Mass., in Samuel Thatcher's home, 1661.
John Winthrop, Jr., became Governor of Connecticut Colony, and, at the English Restoration, personally procured a charter from Charles II, returned home with it, and thereafter governed the entire state of Connecticut until his death in 1676.
