A Company of Rogues, page 6
“Always glad to hear my good wife quoting my wise words,” Ned said, appearing at the bottom of the narrow stairs. He was the vanguard: now the rest of the upstairs sleepers were waking. Along with Kathryn and Master Nicholas and the three small children came the men who had been sleeping in the storeroom, stretching and yawning as they headed out of doors towards the privy.
Kathryn was last downstairs, with her youngest, Jemmy, in her arms. “Forgive me—I should have been down in time to help,” she said to Nancy and Daisy. “’Tis so hard to get up, these dark, cold mornings.” She gave a heavy sigh and put Jemmy down onto the floor by the hearth with Jonathan and Alice, and looked about as if she had been gone a long time and needed to reacquaint herself with the familiar things about her. “What should I…?”
“We’ve not fetched ale yet,” Nancy said, and noted the relief on Kathryn’s face when her servant gave her a simple task to do.
“Has she been like this a long time?” Nancy asked Daisy later, when the two of them went to feed the pigs and goats. “I knew she would be sad at the news of her mother and brothers, but I had not thought to find her so—so broken in spirit.”
Daisy sighed. “I’ faith, she has been weighed down with grief since the word came from Bristol about her family. But if you want to know my thinking, there was a trouble that started even before she heard that news. Did she tell you of the time she got lost in the woods, back in the summer?”
“No, she has said naught of it.” Kathryn had wept with joy at Nancy’s return, but the flood of words Nancy had expected—all Kathryn’s pent-up tales of the last four years—had not been spoken. Kathryn had been oddly quiet and subdued, and Nancy had wondered if this was simply the way she was now, an older and sadder version of the friend she had known from childhood. But Daisy assured her the change was more recent.
“Well, she went off in the woods one day to gather spruce bark and juniper berries and the like—for making cures, you know,” said Daisy, throwing a handful of vegetable peelings into the sty as the pigs rooted eagerly. “A storm blew up, and we was all frantic with worry. Then she shows up the next morning in a boat with Master Willoughby and one of his men—they had found her and taken her in for the night. After that she was—well, I don’t know quite how to say it. Quieter. Like she was lost in herself, you might say. My thought was—though I hate to say it…”
Nancy waited. She had her own thoughts about this story. In the old days in Cupids Cove, Thomas Willoughby had been a good deal too forward in flirting with Kathryn. Had the young nobleman, newly returned to this country, made improper advances to Kathryn?
But Daisy’s thoughts ran in another direction. “I fear she might have been fairy-led. Alone so long in the forest—’tis what they say of changelings, is it not? That they are taken to the fairy kingdom, and they come back different.”
“I only ever heard tell of children being fairy-led, not grown men or women.”
“Oh no, the fairies will take anyone—you got to be mindful when you go in the woods. My granny told me tales of them, and I am sure they’re here, as well as back in England. Mistress Kathryn was ever so quiet after she got lost in the woods, and ’twas but a few weeks after that she got the letter from home that told of her poor mother and the boys. That was the final blow. I thought perhaps, now that you’re back—that might bring her back to her old self. That is, s’posin’ ’tis not the fairies.”
Kathryn’s dark mood had clouded the joy of Nancy and Ned’s homecoming. Indeed, Kathryn had suffered a great blow, learning that half her family was dead and knowing nothing of it until months after the fact. But she had suffered greatly before now, and the only time Nancy had seen her give in to despair was after she lost her first baby, back in Bristol. Then Kathryn had taken to her bed for weeks, shrouded in a gloom that seemed impossible to penetrate.
There was no possibility of Kathryn taking to her bed now—the mistress of a busy plantation had no such luxury. But she went about her work mostly in silence, her laughter and chatter stilled. Nancy felt the weight of all the unspoken words, the untold stories, lying on her tongue, but she had no idea how to break that silence.
But there was little time to give much thought to Kathryn’s feelings, or her own. Nancy was learning the rhythm of life on a fishing plantation in the New Found Land: with the fish sold and the garden harvested, there was a brief window of time for other tasks before cold weather closed in. Today the men were working on the fences and outbuildings. “First winter we were here, we had to bring the animals inside in the coldest part of winter,” Daisy told her. “Two goats and two pigs, we had then. I grew up in the country and I’ve shared quarters with livestock before, but I don’t mind saying I’m glad we’ve a byre now.”
Meanwhile, the women made preserves from whatever of the summer’s bounty could be saved for winter: today it was the tart red berries that grew in the marshes, combined with sugar they had obtained when the merchant ships came to take their fish to market. A little sweetness, and a hope of staving off scurvy, for the long winter ahead. Bess came to join them, bringing her two little boys to play on the floor alongside Jonathan, Alice, and Jemmy as the four women worked.
“Did they have to go through all this same work down in Virginia?” Bess asked Nancy.
“We made preserves there also,” Nancy said, “and when the tobacco crop was sold, ’twas much like when the fish is in here—time for the men to turn their hands to other tasks. But they’ve not got the same long winter to prepare for.”
“I’m sure you’ll not be looking forward to another New Found Land winter,” Daisy said. “Last January we had snowdrifts as high as the roof.”
“I am sure Nancy would find a little cold and snow a small price to pay for being home, and safe,” said Kathryn, wiping her hands clean as she bent to pick up Jemmy.
“Of course, I never meant—”
“No matter,” Nancy said. “Look to the pot, that’s near boiling over. ’Tis good to be back here, even if the winters are kinder in Virginia. The summers there are too hot.”
“The strangest thing to me is that you served an Indian woman,” Daisy said as Bess moved to the hearth to see to the bubbling pot. “I cannot fathom it—a native woman married to an Englishman!”
“There’s a good many strange things in this world,” Nancy said. “I’m going out to the privy.”
She did need to relieve herself, but more than that she needed to be out of the warm, busy room, away from Bess’s and Daisy’s questions and, worse, Kathryn’s lack of questions. Outside, the sky was a brilliant blue. The birch trees, whose leaves had flamed golden a few weeks ago when she had arrived, were all bare. The sound of hammers rang out: Nicholas Guy was on the roof of the byre with Hal Henshaw. Not far from there, Rafe and Stephen were hacking at the hard ground with spades, enlarging the root cellar. Closer to the house she saw Ned working alongside Isaac Bell, the other manservant, laying stones in a circle atop each other.
“You’ve not built anything of stone for a long time,” Nancy said to her husband.
“Not since I helped build the wall at Cupids, years ago now,” Ned said. “But Master Guy thinks we ought to have a baking oven, with the place growing as it is.”
“That’s good sense.” Nancy thought of her mild tiff with Daisy about how much bread to bake; it would certainly be easier if, as back in Bristol, there were a communal oven to which Kathryn’s household, Bess’s, and eventually her own, could bring their bread. Ned looked happy to be working with stone again; it was the trade he had trained for. While rocks were more plentiful than almost anything else in the colony, most building here was done with wood.
“D’ye think ’tis close enough to the big house?” Isaac asked.
“’Twill be fine,” Ned said. “Next year, Nancy and I will build our house on the other end of the beach, but ’tis not too far to come to bake bread. And,” he added, “close enough to your own place, should you take a wife and settle down here.”
“Oh, no, no hope of that for me,” Isaac muttered into his beard. He was a quiet and nervous-seeming young man; Nancy had observed him trotting after Daisy like a well-trained spaniel, while Daisy paid him no mind at all. “This has been going on for two years,” Bess had told Nancy, “but our Daisy swears she’ll not marry again.”
Nancy had already heard this declaration from Daisy’s own lips. “I lost one good man to the scurvy and another to pirates; I’ll not risk a third, no matter how much Isaac fancies his chances. You may laugh, but ’tis a curse I have upon me. Two husbands be enough for any woman.”
Nancy wondered, looking now at Isaac, how truly Daisy believed in the curse. Isaac was a scraggly fellow, wiry but thin, with a sallow, pitted skin and eyes of a watery blue. Did Daisy honestly believe she would curse him by marrying him, or was that belief merely convenient?
“Who’s that, now?” Ned said, looking out into the cove.
A shallop under sail was coming towards their wharf; as it drew closer they could see three men aboard. By the time it had lowered the sail, most of the inhabitants of Musketto Cove had left their work and gathered on the beach, for the arrival of any boat was noteworthy. When the three men aboard were close enough to see, Master Nicholas said, “I believe that is John Crowder, is’t not? And Master Willoughby? But who is the swarthy fellow?”
Nancy glanced at Kathryn as Thomas Willoughby’s name was mentioned, and thought she saw Kathryn flinch. But she looked back at the men in the boat when she heard Ned say, “Why, that is Tisquantum! I told you, sir, I had asked him to come visit us here—you will be interested to meet him, for he has many tales to tell.”
The men moved to the wharf to help tie up the shallop; the four women held back with the children. “Is that fellow really one of the native folks?” Daisy wanted to know as Tisquantum came ashore.
“Aye, Ned and I crossed over from England with him, along with Hal and Stephen,” Nancy said. “He was brought over to Spain from his own country years ago and ended up in England somehow. He hopes to get back to his people.”
“Is he from here?” Bess wondered.
“No—someplace to the south.”
“He’s surely a fine, well-made fellow—for a heathen, I mean,” said Daisy.
As the two sisters sized up Tisquantum, Nancy looked over at Kathryn. She alone showed no curiosity about the newcomer: rather, her attention was focused on the equally handsome figure of Thomas Willoughby.
Eight A Resemblance is Remarked Upon
Musketto Cove, November 1617
A person fair is giv’n,
But nothing else is in thee sent from heav’n;
For in thee lurks a base and earthy soul…
—Homer’s Odysseys, Book 8, 240–42
She watched the three men approach: the familiar form of John Crowder, the unfamiliar and striking native man, and, walking a little ahead of them both, the too-familiar figure of Thomas Willoughby. It was his first visit to Musketto Cove since he had brought her home four months earlier.
He can do nothing to harm me. Kathryn recited those words to herself like a prayer every time she thought of Willoughby. Her fear, after all, had been groundless—had it not? Nicholas had not been pleased that she had spent that night at Willoughby’s plantation, but he had believed her, and not blamed her. The whole business was forgotten.
Yet when Willoughby’s ice-blue eyes fell upon her, she felt something colder than the late-autumn breeze. When he quirked one corner of his mouth in a lazy smile, it felt like a threat.
She scooped up Jemmy from the ground. “Bess, watch the children down at your house while Nan, Daisy and I prepare supper. We must ready ourselves for a few extra guests, it seems.”
Bess took Jemmy gladly and rounded up Kathryn’s older children along with her own, leading them towards her little house. Kathryn turned to Nancy. “What do we need to do to make supper feed three more men?”
“Kill and dress another chicken, if we can spare it.”
“And do it lively, like, for the others are already stewing,” Daisy added.
“We can spare a chicken. Nan, you do that, and Daisy, get us some more carrots and parsnips—I will see to the ale and perhaps a bottle of wine, if Nicholas wishes to make this a celebration.”
When Nicholas pulled her aside, a few moments later, she was able to tell him that she had already anticipated his need: the visitors would dine with them. “They have returned from an expedition into Trinity Bay to seek out the natives, with this man Tisquantum going as their interpreter,” Nicholas explained. “We should all hear their tale.”
Back in the house, Nancy and Daisy were already at work. Daisy, as usual, kept up a steady flow of chatter as she peeled and chopped vegetables, while Nancy worked quietly, plucking the freshly killed bird.
“’Twill be odd to have a heathen sit down at our table, and serve him as if he was a Christian,” Daisy said.
“Hardly odd to me,” Nancy said.
“No—of course—you served the native woman in Virginia. But she was baptized and married to an Englishman.”
Nancy shrugged. “Cooking a meal and putting it on the table, or scrubbing out clothes and hanging them to dry—work is much the same anywhere. Little matter if it be an Englishman, a Spaniard, or an Indian you be working for.”
“I’d not want to keep house for a Spaniard neither—but at least they do be Christians, even if they are filthy papists,” Daisy said. “Heathens is another matter altogether.”
Nancy shrugged and went on with her work. Kathryn wondered what strange memories were tucked away beneath Nancy’s neat white coif: she had said very little about the pirates who captured her, or the Powhatan princess she had served, or her voyage to England. Only the bare bones, but none of the meat of the tale.
But if Nancy had little to say about native people, the menfolk, when they gathered for the meal, had plenty. Willoughby held court like a lord, telling how himself, Crowder, Tisquantum, and six others who had since returned to Cupids Cove, had set out into Trinity Bay. They had sailed in the barque Indeavour to the place where Governor Guy had met with the natives six years earlier.
“Aye, I remember it well,” said Nicholas, and Ned nodded. “Truce Sound, Governor Guy called it, for the peace we hoped to make with them there.”
“’Twas not the first time returning there,” said Crowder. “Two more expeditions went back to that spot, and cruised along the coast looking for more sign of the natives. I went with Governor Mason two years ago, but we saw no sign of the people of the land.”
“But this time was different,” Willoughby said. “When we drew near to shore there was clear sign they had been there, and recently, too. Then on the following day, while we were aboard ship, we saw them come down to the shore. We waved a white flag—”
“And we know, from our last encounter with them, that they understand this sign,” Crowder added. “But they came armed, with arrows on the string, and let fly at us.”
“We had Tisquantum here with us in hopes he could speak their tongue,” Willoughby said, gesturing at his companion, who had said nothing yet except to thank the women as they put food on the table. “But they gave us no chance. Had we not been so pressed, ’twould have been funny indeed to hear him shouting out in his own language that we came in peace, all the while they were shooting at us.”
“D’ye think they understood?” Ned asked Tisquantum. “Would they know your tongue, or you theirs?”
Their guest paused a moment before answering. “They may not. All the languages of the people are…” he hesitated. “Some words are the same. As a Spaniard and a Portuguese might understand some of each other’s words, or an English and a Dutch man, you see? If we met, I might have made myself understood to them.”
“’Twas no matter, any rate,” Thomas Willoughby said, taking the reins of the conversation again. “While they were firing arrows, we got off two shots with the muskets we had aboard, and they ran like rabbits. They are a suspicious folk.”
“But they were not so five years ago,” Nicholas pointed out. “That time, they were most willing to meet and trade.”
“It surprises me not at all,” said John Crowder, “nor should it surprise anyone who has talked to the summer fishermen in Trinity Bay. I have met a few fishermen who have had encounters with the natives. More than once I’ve heard tales that the natives came down to the shore peacefully enough when a boat approached, only for the fishermen to fire upon them with muskets. ’Tis little wonder they have learned to distrust English men and English ships.”
While the men talked and ate, the women went back and forth from table to hearth, refilling cups, clearing away trenchers. When Willoughby said, “I do not think the natives here are as peaceable or friendly as in other places—sure, we have heard how down in Virginia they come and go, and trade with the colonists, and some have even become Christians,” Kathryn’s eyes flickered to Nancy’s, wondering if she would speak up. But Nancy kept pouring wine into Willoughby’s cup, her eyes cast down and her lips sealed.
“The Wampanoag trade with English—and with Dutch and French also,” said Tisquantum. “So do many others of the people. Trade with Portuguese and Spaniards also, in the lands farther south. But it does not always go well. If these people, these Osa’yan’a, or whatever they are called, mistrust Englishmen, it may be they have learned the lesson.”
“But we mean them no harm!” Nicholas insisted, at the same time as Ned said, “I think you learned that lesson yourself, did you not? Surely that is the very reason you are here among us?”
Though Nicholas was the master and Ned but a working man, it was to Ned that Tisquantum turned to answer. “Yes. It is so. The English captains came to my home, to Patuxet, to trade. And our sachems were glad to trade.” He paused, reached out to touch the iron pot that the chicken had been stewed in. “We had copper, but no iron. Arrows, but no guns. Who would not have iron pots and muskets, if they could get them?”
