A Company of Rogues, page 2
“Ho-ho, what have we here? A water nymph in my pool?”
A man’s voice, light and mocking, cut into Kathryn’s perfect solitude. She spun around to see who was there. Her mind full of fairy folk as it was, she almost thought it was a river god into whose territory she had blundered, even as her mind told her it must be a human man, and that she was naked. She bent her knees so that her breasts were below the water.
Then she saw him—fully human, indeed, dressed in breeches but shirtless, as she had imagined herself earlier in the day. Not a creature of myth or magic but a creature from her own past: Thomas Willoughby, her one-time lover, leaning against a birch tree watching her bathe.
Two An Unexpected Reunion Occurs
Harbour Grace, July 1617
The men
That here inhabit do not entertain
With ready kindness strangers…
—Homer’s Odysseys, Book 7, 40–42
He had the decency to turn his back while Kathryn got out of the pool—feeling not at all sylph-like as she clambered over the muddy, moss-slippery rocks. Quickly, she pulled petticoat and kirtle over her damp skin. What was Thomas Willoughby doing wandering about the woods?
She had last seen him a month ago, when she visited Cupids Cove with her husband. Until then, she had believed Willoughby safely back in England, where he had returned four years ago. But his father, Sir Percival Willoughby, still owned large tracts of the New Found Land. Now that he was back in his father’s good graces, Thomas was once again in the New World pursuing the family interests. He had told her when they met in Cupids Cove that he had brought men over to clear land for a plantation, and had made the outrageous suggestion that she might leave her husband and come live as his mistress. The words were spoken in jest, of course—Kathryn was almost certain of that.
She fumbled with the hairpins scattered on the ground, finally laying them among the berries and leaves in her basket and leaving her wet hair loose. Thomas glanced over his shoulder. “May I look upon you now, Mistress Guy?”
“You may. How do you come to be here?”
“I should ask the same—you are on my land.” He had put his own shirt back on; likely he, too, had come to the pond intending to bathe.
“I lost my way,” Kathryn said. “Can you set me back on the right path to get home?”
“From here? ’Twill be a long walk. My house is but a quarter-hour’s walk from here, but ’tis a good hour or more through the woods back to your husband’s land. I can take you back by boat from my house.”
Kathryn did not like to be at the mercy of this man. He was as fair to look on as when she had first known him in Cupids Cove years ago: light hair falling in soft curls, ice-blue eyes, a tall and slender frame that still looked boyish. He was as cocksure in his manner, too, as he had been then. But there was something else in him now: he had a rich man’s assurance as well as a boy’s bravado. He had been sent to the New Found Land five years earlier in disgrace, in hopes that hardship would hone him into manhood. And perhaps, after all, it had.
The path was not wide enough for two to walk abreast, so she followed as he told her how he and his father’s agent, Master Crout, had brought a dozen labourers from England to help build a house and plantation in Harbour Grace. All but two of his labourers had given up within a fortnight, daunted by the challenges of life in the wilderness. “I tried to warn them,” Thomas said, “told them to expect hard work—and they are used to hard work back in England, you know. But once we left Cupids Cove and sailed up the shore, and they found their first task was to clear the forest, they balked. What did they think the colonies were like? I told them no lies.”
“What did they do?”
“Laid down tools and refused to work. Insisted on sailing back to Cupids Cove and taking the next ship to England. I told them they would owe my father for their passage, but what good is a crew of lazy louts? Master Crout is gone off exploring—he has taken some men to cut a trail through the woods, from Carbonear over to Trinity Bay. I am left with only two men, though I mean to bring over more. I have asked my father to send out an experienced carpenter to build me a proper house, though I am not yet certain if it should be built here in Harbour Grace, or at Carbonear.”
“Nicholas cleared our land and built our house with only himself and three other men,” Kathryn said. “It took a deal of work, but most of it was done by the summer’s end.” That had been their second summer on the land; she did not speak about the first summer, which had ended in tragedy. “Even now, we have a small household—one maid and two menservants. And we have Bess and Frank—Frank fishes with my husband, but he and Bess have their own little house near ours.”
“Quite the lady of the manor, are you not?”
“I do not give myself airs. I know I am no lady.”
“But every man can be lord of his own manor in this land. A cobbler like your husband might rule an estate as large as my father’s in Nottinghamshire.”
They topped a small rise of land and stood looking down the slope of a hill that stretched towards a pebbled beach. Along this slope, trees had been cleared, and a simple wooden building stood in the centre of the cleared area. On the shore was a small wharf with a shallop tied to it.
“Next year, I will hire fishing servants and some men to work the soil, so the place can sustain itself,” Thomas said, leading her towards the house. “Some of the Cupids Cove settlers mean to join me here—John Crowder and Jem Holworthy both are eager to become planters, rather than dancing to the tune of the London merchants. We must fish to survive, but my father is convinced the true wealth in this country lies beneath the earth, not out in the water.”
“You mean in growing crops?” Kathryn said, amazed at his foolishness. “I have heard men talk of the crops that make great profit on plantations to the south—sugar and tobacco. This is not the climate for such things. Sure, we can hardly grow enough food to live on! A man can feed his family on carrots, turnips, cabbage and the like—if he buys grain from English ships—but there’s no wealth to be found in this soil.”
As she spoke, she looked at the sweep of land around them: the rocky ground, the trees, the dark grey water beyond the beach. Harbour Grace was much larger than her little Musketto Cove; further out in the bay she saw scores of masts, for this was a busy place in summer, where ships of many nations came to carry out the summer fishery. Thomas had chosen for himself a stretch of land on the north shore of the harbour, well away from the fishing vessels.
“Not in the soil,” he answered her. “Under it.”
“Gold?”
“Gold, silver, copper, iron. That is what will make us rich. We will have a plantation, but our greater purpose will be to search for ore so that mines can be dug.”
“That will not be the work of a year or two,” she said, following him down the path. “You mean to stay some time.”
“Aye, I will have men here for several years, and come back and forth from England as I please. I do not intend to bring my wife out, nor to raise our children here.”
My wife. Kathryn was about to say, “You are married now?” but she kept her lips sealed. If she responded with surprise, he would take it as proof that she still cared for him. Of course, back in England, he had made some appropriate match with a young lady of his own class.
“I am sure she is accustomed to a gentler life,” was all that Kathryn said. Then she added, “’Tis clouding over—and after such a fine day.”
“I’ll not delay long, then, in taking you home. Only—are you hungry? I have no fine table to invite you to, but I can offer you a simple meal before we depart.”
She was, in fact, very hungry. “I will take something to eat, but we must not linger long,” she said as he led her into the small house. The ringing sound of axes told her that Thomas’s servants were at work somewhere on the property.
The house was crude indeed—little better than a tilt or a labourer’s cottage, with a door and one window to let in some light, a table, a bench and a small bed in the corner. The men must sleep outside, Kathryn thought, and cook there too, as Kathryn and Nicholas and their servants had done before their house was finished.
“’Tis but poor fare,” Thomas said, “though if you can wait awhile longer, my man Higgs will roast a bird or make a stew that is almost fit to eat. He is the only one of us who can cook, so the duty falls to him. We make what shift we can.” As he spoke, he handed her some tough, dry bread—not as hard as ship’s biscuit, but not far off it—and a little cheese he had wrapped in a cloth.
“You would get a better meal at my table. Perhaps we had best sail for Musketto Cove now, and I can invite you to supper.” She took a bite of the cheese; it was very old and sharp to the tongue.
“You call your place Musketto Cove?”
“We did not name it. When we settled there first, we thought the place had no name, and that we might call it Guy’s Cove, or some such thing. But then some fishermen who had been coming here for years told my husband that they had always called it Muskets Cove or Musketto Cove—something to do with shooting off guns there, I think.”
“I will save the joys of dining at Musketto for another day,” he said. “I’ve some dried beef about somewhere—and here’s ale.”
Kathryn took the ale gratefully—she was quite thirsty—but waved away the offer of meat. She did not trust the condition it was likely to be in, and she wanted to delay her departure no longer. The wind was rising, and the light through the small window had changed: the earlier sunshine had turned to a dull grey. She thought there were yet a few hours till sunset, but the sky was darkening for a storm.
“You must bide awhile. The breeze is coming up, and ’tis blowing the wrong way—I cannot sail north in this wind.”
For the first time, Kathryn felt a touch of fear. Until now there had been the sense that she was having an adventure that was a little bit daring, a trifle foolish. Now it seemed possible that she might not, after all, get back safely to her husband and children today. “You must find a way to take me home!”
Thomas Willoughby spread his hands wide. “I am not the Lord himself, to command the winds and the waves.”
“Then I will go back alone through the forest.” She stood up and moved towards the door, but he put a hand on her arm.
“Do not be a fool, Kathryn. You were lost before I found you—what hope have you now of finding home before dark, in the rain?”
“This is your fault! You ought to have led me straight home, not here to this—this miserable hovel you live in. I thought you were in jest when you asked me to come away with you. Do you mean to hold me prisoner?”
He laughed. “Still the little spitfire underneath that proper matron, eh? Come now, Kat, would it be such a bad fate to live here with me? You can see the place needs a woman’s touch.”
“Live here, and be your cook and maid as well as your doxy? Thank you for the kind offer, but no. I want to return to my husband and children.”
“I am sure you do. Just as sure as I am that some small part of you wants to remain with me—though perhaps in a better house and softer bed than this one.”
A booming crash of thunder cut across his words, followed seconds later by a flash of lightning. Kathryn stared out at the storm clouds as rain began to pelt the trees. She was as angry as if Thomas really did have the power to conjure up a storm.
He moved closer, picked up a strand of her hair and twined it around his fingers. “Perhaps you will confess that you like being here with me?”
He was so close, his breath against her face. She pulled away as she heard, mingled with the sounds of the storm, men’s voices approaching. Thomas’s servants were coming to take shelter in the tilt.
The first man through the door, a burly young fellow with a yellow beard, stumbled on the doorstep in his shock at seeing Kathryn.
“Mistress Guy, these are my men, Higgs and Barry,” Thomas said, as smoothly as if he had never touched her hair. To the men he said, “Mistress Guy’s husband owns land in the cove north of here. I found her lost in the woods, and she is taking shelter here until I can bring her home.”
With the men inside, the mood changed. The four of them crowded into the small room, ale was passed around, and Kathryn drew the men into conversation, asking about their lives before leaving England.
Higgs, especially, was glad to talk about his wife and three little ones on the Willoughby family estate, and how he hoped he could earn a better life for them, perhaps bring them out to the New Found Land to join him someday. “She’s a fine brawny lass, my Liza, and I daresay she’d do well out here.”
“Aye, I’m sure she would if she’s not afraid of hard work,” Kathryn said, and told them of the summer five years ago when she and her maid Nancy and all the other young women had come out on a ship from Bristol. While Kathryn had been going to join her husband, most of the others had been single women. “But all were matched and mated soon. A good many of them are still in Cupids Cove, and two of them are with me on my husband’s plantation. I’ll not say it has been easy, but you and your good wife could do far worse than to make your home here.”
Thomas was quiet throughout this conversation, sitting back and sipping his ale as Kathryn talked with the labourers. He had drawn the shutters and lit a candle, so it was almost cozy in the small, close-smelling room. Every few minutes their talk was interrupted by another clap of thunder, and rain beat in through the cracks in the rough wooden walls and the gaps between the shutters. Higgs shared around the bread and cheese and dried meat; this time, Kathryn took some of everything. Outside, the sky was growing dark not just from the clouds, but from the lateness of the hour.
When Thomas said aloud, “I am afraid you will have to stop here with us tonight, Mistress Guy,” she said, “No! I must go home.” But her voice broke on the word home—a simple glance outside would tell anyone it was hopeless.
“Nonsense. You may sleep in my bed,” said Thomas, giving her a sly, sideways grin before continuing. “I will join Higgs and Barry on the floor—we’ve little comfort to offer the fairer sex, but you shall have the one mattress in the place.”
“I cannot—there must be a way that I can get home. What will my husband think?” She hated the shrill, frantic tone of her voice.
When the serving-men went outside to the privy, Thomas put a hand on her arm. “You must not be so distrait, sweet Kat. Even a man of such limited imagination as your husband will surely see you had no other choice but to stay here until the storm passed.”
“You know what a fragile thing a woman’s good name is. How can I spend the night in a tilt with three men?”
“You were bolder, once upon a time. Once you spent seven nights with another man in your husband’s bed.”
“That was hardly the same.”
“How was it different? This is far the lesser sin—I will not lay a hand on you.” He took his hand off her arm, as if to prove his words.
The heavy stamping feet outside saved her from having to answer. She retreated to the bed, which had some rough sacking hung around it in a poor imitation of proper bed-hangings. Though Higgs and Barry commonly slept outside, on stormy nights like this all would shelter indoors. Behind her makeshift curtains Kathryn heard the three men settling down to sleep.
She lay on the straw-stuffed mattress, thinking of her own down-filled bed and the simple hangings that seemed luxurious by comparison to these. Nicholas always made sure she had the best of everything, as far as was possible in the colony. Nicholas—who trusted her, who had never guessed at her unfaithfulness. True, his touch did not awaken her passion as Thomas’s had once done. But now she lay in a room only a few feet away from Thomas and trembled with fear.
Surely he would not dare come to her, approach her, with his two servants asleep in the same room? Even Thomas Willoughby would not be so reckless, so foolhardy.
This is far the lesser sin, he had said, to take shelter under his roof. That she had once shared a bed and given up her virtue to him was a great sin in the eyes of God, but only God knew of it. Thomas was not thinking how he would view the thing if it were his own wife, that pretty and pampered young lady in England. The greater sin was always the sin that was known.
If she were to come home in the morning, in a boat rowed by Thomas Willoughby, and have her husband and all the servants know how she had passed the night—that could never be kept secret. And what will Nicholas do then? she wondered.
The rain beat down upon, and in some places through, the boards of the roof. The night had no answer for her.
Three A Marriage is Celebrated
Bristol, July 1617
The bride and bridegroom having ceas’d to keep
Observéd love-joys, from their fit delight
They turn’d to talk.
—Homer’s Odysseys, Book 23, 448–50
The bells of St. Stephen’s rang out as Ned and Nancy left the church hand in hand. Ned’s family gathered in the churchyard: brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, his mother, beaming. “I never dreamed I would see my Ned’s wedding day,” she said, her soft voice little more than a whisper as Nancy bent down for the older woman’s embrace. “I know you will make him happy—indeed, you already have.”
“Thank you,” Nancy said. She said it over and over, to the gathered family and neighbours. Words of thanks seemed so small against the great tide of joy she felt, but she had not the gift of a honeyed tongue. So she said thank you, thank you—to Ned’s family, to the minister, to the woman who lived next door to Ned’s brother, and to the people she thought of as her own family—Aunt Tibby, Master Gale, Lily.
They stood apart, a smaller and more sober group than Ned’s family. Lily was hand in hand with Walter, her betrothed, no doubt thinking of her own wedding which would take place at the end of summer. Already Lily was beginning to move out from the grief surrounding the death of her mother and brothers, to think about the future. But her father was still bowed down by loss. When Nancy came to him, he took her hand in both of his, but did not smile. “I wish you every blessing. Ned is a good lad,” was all he said.
