A Company of Rogues, page 4
He took a few steps towards her.
She had never been afraid of Nicholas. Seven years ago, when she was a girl in Bristol and they were first married, he had been a solemn stranger, but never a cruel one. He had never raised a hand to her. Over the years she had grown fond of him, been glad for his protection and company. Now he was that stern stranger again, his face closed and suspicious.
“I do not think well of Master Willoughby,” Nicholas said. “Sir Percival is a good man, but his son is a fool, and not to be trusted with another man’s wife.”
“Surely, sir, the question is not whether Willoughby can be trusted with a man’s wife, but whether a man can trust his own wife?” Kathryn’s voice trembled a little, but she forced herself to look into his eyes. “You know I would never play you false.”
Lies, lies—and yet, the truth. She had not been unfaithful—this time.
“You are a good woman,” he said, moving closer still. “But women’s virtue is frail, and Willoughby is a handsome devil. He would be quick to take advantage of any weakness.”
“I only thanked him for his hospitality and told him I wanted to go home to my husband. I knew you were worried about me.”
Nicholas’s face softened. He stroked her loose dark hair. “Aye, that I was,” he admitted. “I was frantic at the thought of you lost or injured, alone in the forest.”
“God preserved me, and sent me help,” she said. “And I promise I will never wander so far into the woods again.” If he thought her only reckless and a trifle foolish, that was so much better than thinking her faithless.
He sighed heavily and drew her into his arms. “’Tis glad I am that you are safe. I will not lecture you about how it looks for you to have been alone at Willoughby’s place, for I know you received a great fright, and you are sorry, and will not wander off again.”
“I will not—I swear it.”
“Ah, Kathryn, my little wife.” She relaxed; anytime he called her his little wife, he was in a kindly mood, and sometimes an amorous one. But his voice was sober when he said, “I love this land, and I believe you love it too. But yesterday when I searched the woods for you, I thought of how it was here after the pirates attacked, how all was burned and ruined, how Tom was killed and Nancy taken. I could not help but think that perhaps this land is cursed, after all, and we should not be here.”
Five An Ocean is Crossed
At Sea, September 1617
Nought is more wretched in a human race,
Than country’s want, and shift from place to place.
—Homer’s Odysseys, Book 15, 444–45
On the dock, men loosed the ship’s lines from their moorings. Ned stood at the ship’s rail beside Nancy, waving at the little party of friends and family gathered below to bid them farewell.
“When I first left Bristol, I never thought to make this voyage again,” Nancy said as they pulled away from the dock, the faces of the people onshore fading into distance.
“Nor I,” said Ned.
His mother had died in August. Ned was glad they had stayed through the summer, glad he had been able to sit by her side and see her laid to rest, as he had not been able to do for his father. When they heard of a ship sailing to Cupids Cove with a small group of colonists, making port at Bristol before crossing to the New World, Ned had arranged their passage. He and Nancy both had a little store of coins from their last employment and could afford to travel as passengers.
They had agreed it was time to go, and yet he was not entirely surprised to see Nancy quickly wipe a tear with the back of her hand. He passed her his handkerchief and said, “Have you any regrets? I can ask the captain to give us a little boat to row ashore.”
She smiled. “Nay. I am sad to say goodbye to Tibby, but I am content to leave.”
“I am glad to leave also. England is a hard place,” said the man standing beside them at the rail. He was sturdily built, taller than Ned and broader across the shoulders, with black hair and light-brown skin. He was dressed like an English workingman, in tunic and breeches, and spoke good English, but with an accent that was hard to place.
“It is that, indeed,” Ned said. “You would be Tisquantum, then? I am Ned Perry, and this is my wife Nancy.”
He knew of their fellow traveller—a native of the New World who had been living in John Slany’s household for the past year. Slany was the treasurer of the Newfoundland Company, and one of his men who was also going out to the colony had told Ned that the native man would be travelling with them.
Now Tisquantum greeted them both, and asked, “Are you going out to settle in this New Found Land?”
“We are going back there,” Ned said. “We went out with Governor John Guy when he first settled Cupids Cove a few years since, but we have been away for some time.”
“Ah, yes. I too have been a long time from my home.”
Nancy, who likely knew more about the natives of the New World than any Englishman aboard the ship, asked, “And where is your home? In Virginia?”
“No,” Tisquantum said. “The land the English call Virginia is called Tsenacommacah in the tongue of those who live there. My people are the Wampanoag. My home is called Patuxet, well to the north of Tsenacommacah, but south of your Newly Found Land. The English think my homeland is new-found, also.” He gave a wry smile, then said, “You were in Virginia?”
“I was,” Nancy said, “for two years. I served the lady Pocahontas there.”
“Ah,” said Tisquantum. “I saw her in London—from a distance; I did not chance to meet her. We could have spoken, though their tongue is a little different from mine. Perhaps we would have spoken in English—I have had some time, now, to learn your speech.”
“You speak it well indeed,” Ned said. “But you are coming to the New Found Land with us, and hoping to make your way from there to your own country? You know the New Found Land is an island, surely.”
“I do,” said Tisquantum. Ned wondered if he had insulted the man by hinting that he might not have learned everything needful to know about the place he was going. “Master Slany said that the English governor in your colony wants one of our people as a translator, in hope he might treat with the people of the land. And that from there I might find a ship taking me back to my own country, in time.”
As the long weeks of the voyage passed, Ned found Tisquantum an easy fellow to talk to. In a strange way he felt that both he and Nancy had more in common with Tisquantum than with the other Englishmen, all London or Bristol fellows who had never been out of England before. With Tisquantum, Ned and Nancy could trade tales of the far places they had been to and the strange things they had seen.
Tisquantum told them of the papist friars who had taken him in and cared for him in Spain, and how he made his way from there to England. He did not, however, talk of how he came to leave his own country, and Ned did not press him for that tale.
They had smooth sailing; good weather and good company made the trip almost merry. The ship did not stop at St. John’s, the busiest fishing station on the island, but sailed around Cape St. Francis and into Conception Bay. Ned stood at the rail with Tisquantum and a couple of men who were coming out to settle, Stephen Butler and Hal Henshaw. Ned pointed out the fishing stations along the way.
“That’s Carbonear that we just passed—you can see there’s a good few ships fishing out of there for the summer. Just south of it is the cove where my old master was building his plantation when we were attacked, and his house burned.”
“By Indians, or Frenchmen?” Butler asked.
“Neither. ’Twas a bunch of English pirates.”
“What does this English word mean, pirate?” Tisquantum asked, though surely he had heard the word before. “Why do you call a man by that name?”
“Pirate ships and captains break the King’s laws,” Stephen Butler said. “Pirates steal what is not theirs by right, and take folks captive, and make an unjust profit.”
“Ah,” said Tisquantum. “It is true then—there are many English pirates.”
All four men fell silent. Ned strained to see what was happening on the shore of the small cove, but he could see no more than the fishing boats out on the water. The Gale family had received letters saying that Nicholas and Kathryn Guy had gone back to this same cove and rebuilt their house, and that things were going well. How long ago, Ned wondered, had that last letter been written? A year or more, surely.
“’Tis strange to think,” he told Nancy later as they bundled up the few clothes and belongings they had unpacked during the voyage, “how little we know of what has passed here since we have been away.”
“I know. Four years—’tis a long time. I want to see Kathryn again, but for all I know, she may be—”
“Hush, now. We’ll not tempt fate by saying ill things aloud. Things will be as we find them, and we’ll make the best of it.”
He smiled at her, and wanted her to smile back. But now, on the very edge of coming to the home she had tried for four years to return to, he saw fear mingled with hope in Nancy’s eyes.
What struck Ned first when they landed at Cupids Cove was that he did not recognize anyone. New men had come and settled since he had gone away, and old ones had left. And of course many of the men here would not be year-round settlers of Cupids Cove, but summer fishermen.
Then he heard a voice call out, “Is that you, Ned Perry?” and turned to see Jem Holworthy, with George Lane nearby—men he had known for years, since they’d first come out together.
Lane’s wife Jennet darted towards Nancy, crying out and putting her hands to her mouth. “Nancy Ellis! ’Tis yourself—alive!”
They all came then, those who were left from those early days, amazed to see Ned and Nancy again. Even George Whittington greeted Ned with careful formality, though Nancy would not speak to him. The bad blood between them went back many years, to a time when Whittington’s malicious accusation had almost cost Nancy her life.
Jem and Elsie Holworthy offered Ned and Nancy a bed by their hearth. Holworthy said that on Sunday he would take a shallop and bring them to Musketto Cove.
Ned did not know the place by that name, but he recognized it by description as the same spot the Guys had attempted to settle in the summer of 1613. “So they are all still there, then—Master Nicholas and Mistress Kathryn, their children and the rest of the household?” he heard Nancy ask Jennet Lane.
“Aye, ’twas but a few weeks ago Master Guy was here on some business with Governor Mason. They are all well—did you know she has two boys and a girl now?” The chatty Jennet Lane and the quiet Elsie Holworthy led Nancy away between them as Ned followed with the menfolk.
In honour of the new arrivals, all the colonists and many of the fishermen gathered on the beach after the evening meal. Fires were lit and some brandy passed around, as well as ale from the Cupids Cove brewhouse. The colonists were eager to hear all the news from England.
“Did ye hear Sir Walter Raleigh came back to England in disgrace? They say he will be sentenced to death—again,” the ship’s captain was saying to Governor Mason.
“I had not heard! What is the charge against him?” the governor asked. Ned did not catch the answer, for a voice near him said, “Very bad fortune—sentenced to death twice! How many times can an Englishman die?”
Ned turned to see Tisquantum standing beside him, half a smile on his face. For all the hardships he had suffered, Tisquantum sometimes seemed more amused by the English than anything.
“I thought you were still surrounded,” Ned said. “When I saw you before there was a crowd of young ones around you—the women and children as well as the men.”
Tisquantum shrugged. “The same in London. They are all…” he paused, searching for the word, “…all curious, to see the native man from far over the seas. They want to touch my hair and my skin, to ask questions. The governor’s wife asked me if the monks in Spain baptized me as a Catholic, and told me it would be better to be baptized again in the Church of England. But I told her I had just come from the sea, and needed no more water put over my head.”
Ned laughed, and Tisquantum went on, “The governor wants me to go with his men to look for the people of the land, to see if I can speak with them.”
“Do you know anything of them?”
“No Wampanoag has traded this far north, but we have dealings with the Mi’kmaq, who go back and forth across the waters from this island that they call K’Taqmkuk, to the greater land. The Mi’kmaq have no camps near this part of K’Taqmkuk, but they have traded with another people who live here—I have heard that the Mi’kmaq call them Osa’yan’a, but I do not know what they call themselves. This is as much as I know; it is far from my land of Patuxet. Still, I will go, to see if I may be of use.”
“You must come to Musketto Cove too, to meet Master and Mistress Guy, and see myself and Nancy again. I know you will be welcome.”
“Perhaps. It may be so.”
Three small children hovered nearby, whispering at each other and darting glances at Tisquantum. “They are daring each other to talk to you,” Ned said.
“I know. Our children in Patuxet did the same when Englishmen and Dutchmen came to our shores. I should make the growl like a bear and scare them away?” But instead Tisquantum squatted down on his heels, to bring himself to the children’s level, and spoke softly. Ned did not hear what he said, though, for someone else was making a growl like a bear—John Crowder, another of the first colonists, who was arguing with Governor Mason.
“All I say, sir, is that Slany sends out more of his own men, London men, and you are a London man yourself, sir! It seems to me the rights due to us Bristol men is being forgotten in all this!”
“Quiet yourself, man!” George Whittington said. “You cannot speak so to the governor!”
“You’re a Bristol man yourself, Whittington, but you’ve never had an eye to anything but your own advancement,” Crowder shot back. “If this colony goes all to the rule of London men, you’ll be tripping along behind them, begging to empty their chamber pots!”
Ned had seen little of this Governor Mason so far, but he seemed a calm and commanding fellow—he had been a ship’s captain before coming to Cupids Cove—and he was not much troubled by Crowder’s outburst. “You know ’tis naught to do with me, Crowder. I enforce the King’s law here, but the dispute is between your Bristol merchants and the London merchants.”
“’Tis folly that the Bristol merchants go on tolerating this!” That was the usually quiet Jem Holworthy. “Begging your pardon, Governor, I know you try to be even-handed to all, but there is no profit in this company for Bristol men anymore.”
“And that is why you are cutting ties, and going to Harbour Grace, then, is it?” a man Ned did not know called out—a recent arrival from London, guessing by his accent.
“Aye, for all the good ’twill do me,” said Holworthy. “All this shore is ruled by the Newfoundland Company, and the company is ruled by London merchants.”
“’Tis true!” Crowder put in. “When we came out here with Governor Guy, we were told we could build a thriving colony here. I’ll not say we were promised we would all be wealthy men; that is folly and false promises. But we were promised more than we’ve ever got!”
“One colony, one company for all, is no good to anyone!” Jem Holworthy declared. “We need a second colony—a colony at Harbour Grace, settled by Bristol men and funded by Bristol merchants. And begging your pardon, Master Mason, but we need our own governor as well!”
As night dropped down, Ned slipped away from the group of arguing men to find Nancy sitting by a fire with several women quizzing her about her travels. She looked up gratefully and rose to join him, bidding the women good night.
“Are you weary?” he asked as they climbed the path to the big dwelling house that the Holworthys shared with several other colonists. It was the same house where they had both lived during Nancy’s first year in Cupids Cove; this place was soaked in memory like a Christmas cake soaked in brandy.
“Aye, so tired.” She paused by the door and looked out at the broad expanse of the ocean under the twilight sky. “Do you remember asking me to marry you, just here?”
“The time you said no? I’m not like to forget it.”
“Ah, well. You weren’t one to give up easily, I’ll grant you that.”
“And aren’t you glad of it?” Ned said, and they went inside.
Six Bad News and Good Arrive Together
Musketto Cove, September 1617
This news dissolv’d to her both knees and heart,
Long silence held her ere one word would part…
—Homer’s Odysseys, Book 4, 937–38
“Willoughby has a crew of twelve men working on his site now, and his house is closed in,” Nicholas told Kathryn as she cleared away the morning meal.
“He’ll want something better than a tilt before winter comes,” Kathryn said, trying to keep her tone light. Six weeks had passed since her unexpected stay at Thomas Willoughby’s property, and she tried to speak of it quite naturally, without any shame. “He had only the two men before—the first ones he brought over turned around and went back to England when they saw what the land was like, and the work they were expected to do.”
“Not everyone is cut out for this country,” Nicholas said. “Holworthy has gone back to Cupids Cove after clearing his stretch of land alongside Willoughby’s. He means to return in the spring to build his house. But Willoughby is wintering in Harbour Grace. I intend to take Frank with me today and go visit Willoughby. I’ve no great liking for the man, as you know, but with his father owning such a stretch of the country, ’tis best to stay on his good side.”
“Are you going in the boat? Take me with you, Papa!” Jonathan, who had been playing outside, ran into the house and jumped into his father’s outstretched arms.
“Nay, my lad, this is no journey for little boys. Mayhap on Sunday I will take you and Will out for a little sailing trip. And if your mother and Auntie Bess will come, then the little ones may come along as well.”
