A Company of Rogues, page 14
“Ah, but I thought ’twas me you wanted to return to,” Ned said, gently tracing her lips with a fingertip, smiling at her in the darkness. “Was it Cupids Cove that drew you back, or the thought of getting back to me? There was a time I thought I’d gladly live in any little tilt on any shore along the Atlantic, if only I could find you and have you there with me.”
He thought Nancy might laugh. Time and love had softened the edges of those hard years’ memories, so sometimes they could almost laugh now, about some of what they had gone through. But she was serious, frowning a little, and he traced the frown, too, with his fingers.
“’Tis true. I knew if we found each other, we could make a home anywhere. I was safe and comfortable in Virginia, but I did not want to settle there. I wanted to be with people I felt were my own. And yet… oh, I cannot explain it; you know how I am with words.”
“Try,” he urged gently. “I know talking with Tisquantum tonight touched on some memory for you. I could see it as we were talking.”
“He makes me think of Matachanna, and of Pocahontas, and the rest of them,” she said. “They had this longing for Virginia—Tsenacommacah, as they called it. In England they were…like flowers cut from their stems and put in a jug of water. They might look as if they were flourishing, but they were dying, all of them, cut off from their own place. They feel a—a tie, I suppose, to their land. I do not feel that for Bristol, though I was born there. I am sorry. I told you ’twas hard to put into words.”
“Some folk feel a stronger tie to home than others, ’tis true,” Ned said, “and perhaps all the native people of these parts are like that. So it might be easy for us, and easy for Daisy, to think that the solution is for Tisquantum to stay here. But you think he would never flourish, cut off from his homeland.”
“That is how it seems to me,” Nancy said. “In tales of romance, true love overmasters every other thing, but I do not think ’tis always so in the real world.”
“As long as true love is always the most important thing to you. That is all I ask,” he said, claiming her with a kiss.
In the first months after Lizzie was born, they had taken some time to find their way back to lovemaking, for even after Nancy was healed from birthing, she was so often sore and tired from a day and a night of caring for and nursing the child. And those were the summer days when Ned rose before dawn to work at the fish all day, and often fell into bed exhausted, with bed-sport the last thing on his mind.
But now they had begun to find not just tenderness but pleasure again, and as Ned took his wife in his arms, he found he was looking forward to the long, dark winter nights ahead.
Morning came with the baby’s cry waking them before the light did. As Nancy fed Lizzie, Ned built up the hearth fire, then went out to the privy. The morning was crisp and cold, with a light skimming of snow on the ground. Soon winter would be here in earnest. He hoped their little house was ready for it. He had already hammered sailcloth over the window, which made the house gloomier inside, but a good deal warmer. “Someday,” he told Nancy as they ate their morning meal, “we’ll get ourselves a glass window.”
“Oh, and how are we to do that?”
“The same way Master Nicholas and Kathryn got theirs. On a ship from England.”
“How would we pay for it?”
“Aye, that’s the sticking point, to be sure.” As long as Ned fished all summer they would have their share of whatever Nicholas Guy’s plantation earned in trade from the Bristol merchants, to supplement what they could raise and grow and harvest and hunt. Luxuries like glass windows—well, there was no easy way to get those. Ned was grateful he’d not married a woman with a taste for fine things, but he wanted to give them to her all the same. “If Kathryn Guy and Elsie Holworthy can have glass windows, Nancy Perry should have them too.”
“Aye well, maybe we’ll get one as the Holworthys did. By moving into someone else’s house and taking it over,” Nancy said with a laugh.
The big house at Harbour Grace, a match for the Guys’ house at Musketto Cove, had been built by Thomas Willoughby the year before as his own home, but when Governor Hayman had arrived, everyone had agreed he ought to board with Willoughby and his servants in that fine big house. Willoughby’s man Higgs had cooked for them, as he had done before the governor arrived. Then, when Willoughby and some of his men—Higgs among them—had unexpectedly disappeared a month ago, the governor was left alone in the big house with two fishing servants.
Jem Holworthy, who had been living with his wife and children in a partly finished house, had announced to all that he and his wife would be honoured to serve the governor, and moved themselves into Willoughby’s house. Everyone had begun calling it “the Governor’s House”; the Holworthys had made themselves quite at home and everyone concerned seemed happy with the situation.
Ned was on his own roof, repairing a leak, when he saw two men approaching on the trail that connected Musketto Cove to Harbour Grace. It was John Crowder and William Spencer, well bundled up against the cold of the day. Now that Ned and Nancy were on the south side of the cove, theirs was the first place anyone passed by when coming by the woods trail from Harbour Grace. The two men, seeing Ned on the roof, stopped to greet him.
“What brings you through the woods today?” Ned wondered aloud.
“We wanted to talk with Master Guy. But ’twould be good if you came along as well, if you can spare a few minutes. We should gather all the men. Governor Hayman said ’twas best we warn you all,” Crowder said.
“Warn us? That sounds like a serious enough matter to get off the roof for,” Ned said, moving towards the ladder. What, he wondered, could be worth a warning? Once the fishing fleet had left in the autumn, pirates left as well, and the small harbour at Musketto Cove was already partly filled with ice: there was no danger by sea. Danger by land, perhaps? Had wild beasts, or the elusive native people, launched an attack on the Harbour Grace settlers?
The men of Musketto Cove gathered in the fish store down on the wharf, the room still smelling of the salt cod that had been stored there all summer. Perched on boxes and barrels, they listened as John Crowder told his tale.
“These last weeks—since the fishing was over—things have gone missing. Nothing of great value—some rope, a few knives and axes, some nails. We never knew when or how it happened, for ’twas the sort of stuff you’d not notice till you went looking for it. Then Mistress Holworthy went to the stores t’other day and found that a whole barrel of flour was gone.”
“Swiping tools and the like? That’s Indians,” Frank said with some confidence. “I’ve heard tales from the summer fishermen. Anything left behind in a fishing station over winter, cooking pots and tools and the like, is gone when they come back in the spring. The natives come and take it.” He glanced, half-apologetically, at Tisquantum, who sat on the edge of the group.
Several of the men agreed that they had heard similar stories, but Nicholas Guy said, “I can well believe that might happen when a fishing station is left unguarded over the winter. But to come into a community where people are living? I am not sure the men of the forest would do that.”
“There’s more than that,” Spencer said. “We’ve six pigs at Harbour Grace, and this morning when Crowder’s missus went out to feed them, there was only five. Someone came by night and stole a pig. We never saw no strange boats anytime, but last night there was ice in the harbour, so for certain we know ’twas not done by anyone who came by sea. Someone came overland, brazen as brass, and stole one of our pigs.”
“Still sounds like Indians to me,” Frank said. “They’d come by land, and they know the country.”
“We have another reason to think it may not be the native folk,” Crowder said. “The governor has taken a chill since the weather turned cold, else he’d have come himself today,” he added. “but he is of the opinion this was done by Christian men, perhaps even Englishmen.”
“There was some fair brazen pirates around this autumn,” Rafe said. “There was that attack on the Susan Mary, and the tales we heard of fishing stations down by Port de Grave that were raided. But pirates don’t stay the winter, nor come by land.”
“What if they do, though?” Ned found himself saying aloud. “We thought Thomas Willoughby might have turned pirate. And he may well think he has a right to some of what’s at Harbour Grace.”
Nicholas Guy nodded. “And if he is at Carbonear and has made common cause with Gilbert Pike, why then, there are trails through the woods that he and his men could take. But you said you had other reasons for thinking ’twas done by Christian men?”
“Aye,” said Crowder. “With the smaller thefts, there was no sign of who might have come or gone. But this morning, on the wall of the pigsty, something was carved. Not words, nor a name, but like an engraving of a crown. As if ’twas done with the point of a dagger.”
“A crown?” echoed Nicholas Guy.
“’Twas no great work of art—done in haste, of course—but ’twas clear ’twas meant to be a crown. Is that something a native would carve? Or would they leave a message for us at all?”
Now Tisquantum spoke up. “In my lands, the people will take things that English or French or Dutch sailors leave behind, when they are gone. Then it is for anyone to take that needs. But to come in like a thief when men are sleeping in their beds? I do not say that Wampanoag would do that. I do not know the people of this land, but it would seem strange to me.”
“And would they even know the symbol of a crown, or what it meant?”
“Come to that, even if ’twas carved by an Englishman, what would it mean? If I saw someone leave behind no word save a sketch of a crown,” Nicholas Guy said, “I would think that person was trying to say he was acting in the King’s name. But who’d steal a pig in the name of King James?”
The conversation went on, ’round and ’round in circles, and then the Harbour Grace men went home and the men of Musketto Cove had to tell the tale to their womenfolk so it could be discussed again. Everyone had a guess, but there was nothing to be had beyond speculation, other than a suggestion that they better secure their outbuildings at night.
Later that evening, back in their own house, Ned asked Nancy what she thought. Could Thomas Willoughby not only turn to piracy, but attack his own former plantation?
“I’d not put it past him, the scoundrel.”
“You do not like him, do you? And yet if I remember aright, ’twas he who came to your defense when you were falsely accused all those years ago.”
Nancy finished nursing Lizzie and put her down in her cradle. Only a few weeks ago, Lizzie would have lain on her back in the cradle and settled herself to sleep, but now she pulled herself to sit up and look around. She’d be getting herself up on her two feet and trying to toddle about before long, Ned thought with pride.
“Willoughby had his own reasons for defending me,” Nancy said. “He was a conceited coxcomb who thought he was too good to work with his hands, and light in his ways with the women. Like the blackguard George Whittington, but with something added. That cocky way that men who are rich and well-born have, of thinking every woman owes them. The way he carried on with Kathryn, I feared ’twould damage her reputation.”
“But she’d have had more sense, surely, than to allow him any liberties,” Ned said. He was as fond of Kathryn in his way as Nancy was; when they were all young in Bristol and he was an apprentice in Kathryn’s father’s house, he had fancied himself in love with the master’s daughter. That hopeless romance had faded, but the warmth he felt towards her lingered. He could not imagine that she would ever have been foolish enough to encourage Thomas Willoughby.
Nancy laid the bowls back on their shelf, wiped her hands on her apron, and went to the hearth to throw on another log. The bright shower of sparks made Lizzie look up and cry “Ba!”—her only word so far. “Fire!” Nancy said; she and Ned had fallen into the habit that all parents of small children seemed to do, of repeating simple words in response to the nonsense babblings.
Nancy sat down by the hearth and took up her work basket; she was fashioning a blanket from strips of worn-out clothes.
“I do not know that Kathryn would have confessed it to me, if anything improper had passed between them. She would have been ashamed. Indeed, I’d have been best not to speak of it, even to you.” She shot Ned a sharp look that told him he needed to keep quiet.
“Surely now, there should be no secrets between husband and wife,” Ned said, stooping to kiss her cheek.
“I’ve none, I know that much,” Nancy said. “And I know not whether Thomas Willoughby has anything to do with these thefts at Harbour Grace, but I’d not be one bit surprised if he does.”
Seventeen A Winter Journey is Begun
Musketto Cove And Harbour Grace, January 1619
Unspeakable in length now are the nights.
Those that affect sleep yet, to sleep have leave,
Those that affect to hear, their hearers give.
—Homer’s Odysseys, Book 15, 518–20
The New Year was rung in, the Twelfth Night feast done, and the harbour at Musketto Cove was frozen solid with a layer of snow on top. Everyone on the Guy plantation had gone over to Harbour Grace for Twelfth Night; that had been a clear, bright day and the snow was packed hard, making it relatively easy to travel through the woods. But snow had fallen every day since then, no single storm but a gentle, relentless veil of snowflakes blown about by the wind, and the little cove was cut off from its neighbours in Harbour Grace. By mid-January even the three houses at Musketto Cove seemed to be three separate islands, and the easy traffic back and forth between them that prevailed in spring, summer and autumn had slowed to a trickle.
At least, with the harbour frozen and the woods choked with snow, there was little danger from outside the community. Since the theft of the pig at Harbour Grace, there had been no further mysterious thefts there, and none at Musketto Cove.
Nancy lit rushlights around her house, trying to coax a little more light from the shadows. The sailcloth over the window kept out the worst of the wind but let in little daylight. It ought to have been gloomy, this dark, enclosed winter life, yet she found a kind of pleasure in it. Life was so busy in the other seasons, a constant round of work. There was little time for herself, Ned, and Lizzie to be together in their own house. Now, as winter settled around them, Nancy pulled her little family and their house around her like a blanket for warmth.
This morning, she was mending worn clothes and letting down hems for Lizzie, while Ned worked at carving a wooden headboard for the little bed he was building—a bed that would be Lizzie’s when she outgrew the cradle. Lizzie sat on the floor in front of the fire, attempting to bite the head off a rag doll Nancy had sewn for her out of scraps, trying out her four new teeth. She reached forward to grab at her other toy, a cloth ball, fell on her face when it proved to be just out of reach, and howled in frustration. Then she set about figuring out how to get herself upright again.
As Nancy helped her daughter sit up, the door opened with a rush of cold air and flurries. “Mercy, ’tis nice and warm in here,” said Kathryn, bursting into the room. “I do think in this weather, a smaller house is better. You’ve less space to heat.”
“And no upper chamber for the heat to escape into,” Nancy agreed. “Come warm yourself by our fire; ’tis bitter cold out there.”
But Kathryn had something more serious than the weather on her mind. “One of the servants came over from Harbour Grace. Elsie Holworthy’s pains have started. Only faint they were this morning, but of course more than an hour would have passed since he left their plantation, and ’twill take me some time to gather my things. I came to ask…”
She hesitated, her eyes dropping to Lizzie. “I should not ask,” Kathryn corrected herself. “You cannot leave Lizzie, and come all the way to Harbour Grace just to assist me. Sallie Crowder is over there, and she will be a good enough help. Or I might take Daisy, I suppose.”
“Either of them is capable, but I think Daisy is not eager to help in a birthing chamber again, not so soon after Bess lost her baby,” Nancy said. “And if there be any trouble, you’ll need an extra woman. Sallie has her own work to do, and Elsie’s young ones to look to as well. If we bundle her up well, there is no reason I cannot take Lizzie. Ned could come with us in case we run into difficulty on the trail.”
“Yes indeed!” Ned stood up and put down his carving knife with such alacrity that Nancy was struck by the quick, unsettling realization that he was eager to be up and doing, perhaps less contented in their safe little winter nest than she was.
James Marshall, one of the Harbour Grace fishing servants, led the way through the woods. Ned, who had rigged up a carrier to put Lizzie on his back, brought up the rear, with the two women in between. The snow was deep, and they made slow progress.
In his first winter at Musketto Cove, Nicholas Guy had discovered a rare opportunity to practise his trade as a cobbler. Some of the settlers had gone out on the ice at the end of winter to hunt and kill the seals that came in close to shore at that season. The meat was welcome, but the seal pelts were even more useful: a warm, sturdy skin covered with fur. Nicholas crafted winter boots for himself and Kathryn out of the first seal pelt he got; they were warmer and drier than any leather boots sent out from England, and since then he had made a few more pairs after every winter’s seal hunt. Every man and woman at Musketto Cove now had a pair of sealskin boots, and today Nancy was grateful for hers.
When they passed underneath a fir tree whose boughs were laden with snow, a branch knocked against Nancy’s hat and dislodged its cold, wet burden all over her, snow getting even inside the collar of her cloak. “Ugh, this snow is better to look upon than to wear,” she said, shaking off the worst of it.
“To think, you might have stayed in Bermuda, or in Virginia,” Kathryn said. “No such winter weather there.”
