A Company of Rogues, page 8
They both laughed, and the children, responding to their laughter, settled down and began rebuilding the fallen towers, this time with Alice joining in. “After dinner Bess is coming down to watch them, and I will be free to begin cleaning and dressing the pig for Christmas dinner,” Nancy said.
“Butchering a pig will seem like a holiday after this lot,” Ned said, pulling her towards him for a quick kiss.
On Christmas morning they all crowded into the main room of the Guys’ house while Nicholas Guy read the service from the prayer book. It was his custom to do this with the household every Sunday morning, but there was a special solemnity to this gathering on Christmas morning. Tisquantum, who normally absented himself from Sunday prayers, sat with them now, and Ned saw Daisy glancing at him often, as if she were trying to figure out how this heathen man fit into their Christian festival. Ned laced his fingers through Nancy’s as the words of the service unrolled around them.
After the prayers, the women brought out the roast pork, savoury pies, breads and cakes and tarts. Wine and brandy joined the ale on the table, and soon there were songs—first sacred carols, then merrier tunes of celebration—sung as the eating ended and the drinking began.
Many of the adults, not only the children’s parents, had spent hours making small gifts for the little ones. These were now handed around with great excitement. There were more carved wooden horses and soldiers than the children knew what to do with—children, Ned thought, who had never seen either a horse or a soldier in their lives. Tisquantum’s gift was perhaps more apt, for he had carved five little wooden boats, one for each child; they all understood boats. “You can sail them on the pond in spring,” Nicholas Guy said, but spring was an eternity away, so Kathryn filled a shallow basin with a little water so the tiny fleet could set sail. Bess kept a careful watch to make sure the sailors, in their enthusiasm, did not upset the sea and flood the floor.
The women had somehow found time for more knitting and sewing—another poppet for Alice and cloth dogs and horses for the boys, as well as practical gifts for both children and adults: patchwork quilts and rag rugs made from old clothes, and warm knitted shawls, gloves and caps and scarves for the cold months ahead. Rafe had carved three wooden whistles, and one after another the men picked them up to try and play along with Frank’s fiddle tunes—with varying degrees of success.
“I’ve a gift for you,” Ned said to Nancy, “but ’tis not here; I will show you later.”
“And I have one for you,” she said.
He had made a wooden chest, like a sailor’s sea-chest; he had cut and finished and polished the wood till it shone. It would be the first piece of furniture for the new home they would build in the spring. He wondered what she had made for him: some item of clothing, no doubt, though unlike the chest it could hardly be so large and unwieldy that she would not give it to him in company.
The shadows grew long and the day darkened to night. Music and games and storytelling would take up the evening and spill out into the days that followed. Some of the men were playing at dice, while Bess had organized the children and a few willing adults into a game of blind man’s buff.
“I was thinking today, ’tis a great improvement over our first Christmas at Cupids Cove,” Ned said to Nicholas Guy, and the other man smiled.
“Aye, ’twould be hard to have a bleaker holiday than that one. We have come far, and have much to give thanks for.”
“I’d wager your last few Christmases have not been such merry times, Ned,” said Kathryn from her seat by the hearth with a sleeping Jemmy in her lap. “Or do sailors spend twelve days dancing the hornpipe and drinking brandy?”
“Hardly.” Ned laughed. “Most times there’s an extra ration of drink, in truth, but ’tis more like to lead to a brawl than a dance. A shipload of men at sea is a dreary place to spend any holiday.”
“You have told us so little of your tale—and you too, Nancy,” Kathryn went on. “You have had stranger adventures than anyone here—save for Tisquantum, perhaps—and I think it only fair that we should hear some stories.”
Ned looked over at Nancy, then at Tisquantum. He saw the same thought in Nancy’s eyes as was in his own head—and though he could not read Tisquantum as well as he could his own wife, he thought the man was likely thinking the same thing. All three of them had lived through things that a storyteller would call “adventures,” but that would hardly make for cheerful telling around a holiday hearth. But Kathryn looked from one to another of them eagerly, her eyes bright.
There were many stories Ned and Nancy had not told to anyone but each other, and some, he suspected, that Nancy had not even told him, just as he had not told her every story. He had never told her, for example, about the Lenape woman he had bedded in the village where they had met the Dutch traders. But he could tell the rest of that story, leaving out the sin.
“I’ll tell you a tale, then,” he began, “of a storm at sea, when I was aboard the Treasurer with Captain Argall, how we were driven before the wind till the mainmast cracked clean in two, and we took shelter in a bay with two Dutch traders.”
Ned told the assembled group about the Dutchmen they had met in the course of repairing the ship, the translator Juan Rodriguez, a man of many tongues and nations, who had made his home among the Lenape, and the feast in the village that night. It reminded Ned of telling stories to his family when he visited them in Bristol: the children so eager to hear tales of sea battles and bloodshed, and Ned wanting to talk about anything else.
His story of feasting with the Lenape led to the company asking Tisquantum about his own people and their customs, and from there, to Nancy telling about her service with the princess Pocahontas.
“’Twas the most like herself I have seen Kathryn since we came home,” Nancy said to Ned much later, as they made their way up to the sleeping chamber.
“Aye, she has ever loved a tale—remember when the players would come to Bristol, and she would round up you and me and a couple of the other ’prentices, and go off to see the play?”
“I’ve no great love for telling tales, but I’ll act the player if that is what it takes for her to—oh!” Nancy broke off as she approached their bed.
Earlier in the day, amid the feasting and celebrating, Ned had slipped away and, with Tisquantum’s aid, carried the chest he had made up to their bedside. Nancy gasped when she saw it, and knelt to touch the carving on the lid, their initials entwined together. “How beautiful!” she said.
“I hoped you’d like it—’tis the first thing I’ve made for our house, but ’twill not be the last. Over the winter I’ll make us a bench, and some stools and the like. No use to make the table or the bed until we’ve a house to put them in, but I can begin with a few things while the snow’s down, and—”
She sat down on the sturdy lid of the chest and pulled him down beside her, and stopped his words with a kiss. “In faith, Ned Perry, you’re as full of plans as ever you were,” she said, “and I can scarce wait to see the house you’ll build me, and all that you will put into it. But you ought to rearrange your plans a little. Before you get on to benches and stools, put your tools to work building us a cradle.”
Ten New Life Grows in the Spring
Musketto Cove, May 1618
A bright board then she spread,
On which another rev’rend dame set bread.
To which more servants store of victuals serv’d.
—Homer’s Odysseys, Book 15, 178–80
The baby’s wail woke Nancy from dreams. Sunlight poured across the bed, and she sat upright, wondering how long she had slept. She had woken before dawn to take Lizzie from the cradle, nursed her, and fallen back to sleep with the baby nestled between herself and Ned. Now the sun was up, Ned was gone, and she could hear the rest of the household below, eating breakfast.
Turn your hand to the task at hand, Nancy thought. She had new responsibilities now that took precedence over any others. She was not accustomed to lying in bed while others worked, but there was a hungry infant with a wide-open mouth next to her, so her task was clear.
Nancy knew there was no time in a woman’s life when she was given as much chance to rest as the weeks after her first child was born. For every baby after this, even in her confinement she would still have other children to care for. It was likely that until she was an old woman, these would be the only weeks of Nancy’s life that she would have but a single task to do. But resting was against her nature.
“Are you awake?” That was Daisy, coming up to the sleeping chamber with pottage, bread, cheese and small ale.
“Ah, Daisy, you’ve enough to do without waiting on me as if I were an invalid.”
“Nonsense! ’Tis, what, only three weeks since she was born?” Daisy laid the tray down on the bed beside Nancy. “All is well in hand. The men are all off working, the mistress is baking pies, and Bess and I are doing the wash. In the afternoon, if the rain holds off, we will go to the garden to begin clearing the ground for spring planting.”
Nancy had known little of gardening or farming in her Bristol girlhood, but she had understood that once a patch of ground was cleared for growing things, it generally stayed clear from one year to the next. Such did not appear to be the case in the New Found Land. When the brush had been cut, the rocks removed from the soil, and vegetables planted, the next spring would find a new crop of rocks in the thin soil, turned up by the winter’s ice and snow. Now in mid-May, with most of the snow gone, the women and any children old enough to hold a rock would spend a few days picking over the soil. They would add more stones to the growing pile in the corner of the garden, preparing the ground for planting.
“I’ll bind Lizzie up in a sling and take her to the garden when you go—the fresh air will do us both good.”
Daisy bent over the bed and traced the curve of Lizzie’s cheek with a fingertip. “Ah, she’s such a bonny thing. Here, little maid, let me hold you while mama has her own breakfast, now.” As the baby’s head lolled away from Nancy’s breast, Daisy lifted her with ease and paced about the room with a practiced rhythm, putting the child over her shoulder and rubbing her back.
How strange, thought Nancy, that she herself, who had never been particularly drawn to babies, should be a mother, while Daisy was childless. Daisy, Kathryn, and Bess all seemed to have a natural ease with children, while Nancy, so deft to sew a seam or pluck a capon or roll out a pastry, found herself awkward and graceless when she picked up Lizzie. She felt a great rush of love for the child, but sometimes doubted whether she was up to the task of caring for her.
Daisy sighed, looking into Lizzie’s little round face. “I am so glad you had a girl—in a few years she will be a playmate for Alice. Too many little boys around this place.”
“Perhaps Bess’s next one will be a lass also.”
“Aye, it might be—or happen she’ll have twins, as our mother did. There’s that many twins in our family, I’m surprised she’s not had a set yet.” She sighed again. “Truth be told, I never would have thought I’d be five-and-twenty with no child of my own.”
“It still might be. Isaac has not given up hope.”
Daisy blushed. “Even if I were to marry again, which I will not, Isaac would not be—” She broke off as the baby gave a hearty burp. “There, that’s lovely! I’ll take this little maid downstairs with me while you get dressed and go to the privy.”
The garden, where Nancy joined the other women a few hours later, was a large cleared space of ground between the house and byre, looking out onto the beach where the men readied the boats for the fishing season. It was a fresh, cool spring day with an east wind blowing in off the water, and the four women quickly set to their task, receiving an indifferent amount of help from Jonathan and Will, who were easily distracted from the job of picking up stones.
“That’s four years of rocks,” Kathryn said as she and Nancy made their way towards the rock pile. Lizzie was snuggled peaceably against Nancy’s chest; she was a good baby who rarely cried except when she was hungry. “Though not so many the first year—we only cleared a small patch when we first came. Planted a few carrots and turnips, that was all. But we have added to it every year.”
They walked back from the rock pile to find Tisquantum leaning on the garden fence, talking to Daisy and Bess. “Beans are good, but grow better if you plant them with their sisters—that is what we call them.” Tisquantum joined the men in preparing for the summer fishery, but he was interested in everything and sometimes discussed gardening with the women, explaining to them how the Wampanoag women used fish to fertilize the soil.
“Their sisters?” Daisy rocked back on her heels. “And what might a bean’s sister be?”
Tisquantum smiled. “Beans grow with askutasquash—a vegetable, you can eat the flesh of it—and maize—what you call a grain. We plant all three together; they help each other to grow.”
“Well, I don’t know what your cootie squash is, I never heard of the like, and we’ve not had much luck growing any kind of grain here, though the master thinks we ought to try barley again,” Daisy said. The settlers were still relying on grain sent out from England on the company ships, which was ground into flour in the mill at Cupids Cove.
“It may be too cold here,” Tisquantum said. “Do you not wonder why the people of this land move about, hunt and fish, but do not settle and make farms?”
“Well, ’tis because they are—” Daisy bit off what she was about to say, looking flustered.
Tisquantum laughed. “Because they are what you call…” He paused for a moment, the laughter leaving his voice as he said the word. “Savages? That they live like animals? But Wampanoag are also people of the land, and we farm, we grow crops.”
“So do the Powhatan,” Nancy said, remembering the neat fields she had walked through in the Powhatan village.
“You see, we know how to farm, and to live in villages, as the English do,” Tisquantum said. “The people of this land are not savages, no more than Wampanoag or Powhatan. We farm because the land is good for growing crops. Each people knows best how to use their own land. Some lands are good for growing tobacco, some for growing the three sisters, some for hunting and fishing. The people of each land live in the way that is best for that land.”
“Can that be?” Nancy wondered. “That we are trying to grow food in a place that is not fit for it?”
Nancy thought she might have imagined it, but the look Tisquantum gave her seemed almost one of pity. “It is not easy, you know this already. But I think askutasquash would grow here, if you could get it. Among Wampanoag, as with you, growing food is women’s work, but I have learned a little from my mother and sisters. A wise man always listens to women.” Tisquantum grinned again, and headed towards the beach.
Bess said something quietly to Daisy, and giggled. “She thinks he is handsome,” Bess told Nancy and Kathryn.
“Be quiet! I never said no such thing.”
“Well, ’tis no more than truth,” said Kathryn. “He is a fine-looking man, of his kind.”
“Yes, but his kind is not our kind,” Daisy said.
“Nancy said the settlers down in Virginia married with the native women,” Bess pointed out.
“Some of the men among the settlers took mistresses from among the Powhatan people,” Nancy said, “but Master Rolfe was the only one who took one to wife. And I never heard of it going the other way, an English woman and a native man.”
“Exactly,” said Daisy. “And you all know I am sworn not to marry again. So even if he were an Englishman, it would not happen.”
When the work in the garden was done, Daisy and Bess went back to the big house with the children. Kathryn and Nancy, with Lizzie still dozing in her sling, walked along the rocky beach that separated the ocean from the pond. At the end of that beach, across the little cove from the Guys’ house, was the clearing where Ned had framed out the house he and Nancy would move into. He, Tisquantum, and Frank were all working on the walls this afternoon.
“They’re making grand progress,” Kathryn said. “You must be anxious to move in there.”
“I suppose I am—are you so anxious to have me gone?”
“You goose! You know I am not—if I had my way we’d sleep in the same bed like we did when we were girls.”
“Our husbands might find that an inconvenience,” said Nancy.
Kathryn laughed. It was good to hear her laughter again, Nancy thought. Her spirits had been lighter throughout the winter, and when the first ship from Cupids Cove had gone over to Bristol, Kathryn had gotten Nicholas to write a letter to her father and Lily. Writing to them seemed to have brought her a little peace of mind.
“Well, mayhap they would not wish us to share our beds,” Kathryn said now. “But Nicholas knows how glad I am to have you back.”
Nancy had grown up believing she would always be a servant in another woman’s house. A house on its own little plot of land, while still staying close to Kathryn—it was, truly, more than her wildest dreams. That was the prize the colony offered in return for hardship and hard work—that a simple working man and his wife could have a house and land of their own.
“I do look forward to it, truly,” Nancy said. “Only I wonder…” She hesitated. “I wonder if I will be able to manage, when I am alone there with the little one while Ned is out in the boat.”
“Manage? Lord ha’ mercy, Nan, when have you not been able to manage? From what you’ve said, you managed your way safely off of a pirate ship, from Bermuda to Virginia, over to England and back again. What is’t you fear?”
“I know not—only that I see you and Bess with your babes, and you all seem so easy with them. I wonder if I have the knack for motherhood.”
Kathryn put her arms around Nancy, an embrace that drew the sleeping baby in as well. “Have you forgotten how frightened and clumsy I was when Jonathan was born, how I was afraid to pick him up lest I break him? Your hands and head were both steadier than mine, in those days. Mothers grow up along with their children, I think.”
