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Harry was subdued and compliant during those months; Jack’s presence always had a sobering effect on him, and there had been a painful scene with his father and brother combined, when he had had

“That settles the matter,” said Winthrop with exasperated finality. “We will efface the whole Barbadoes venture, where you were apparently swayed by vicious company, and I shall endeavour not to remind you how disappointing and costly it has been. You will come to New England with me where I can keep an eye on you, and where you will have ample opportunity to serve God and your family.”

“What about Bess, sir?” said Harry glumly, accepting the decision as inevitable. And in truth his London life had ceased to be amusing. Thanet was married, Seaton had gone to Papist Ireland, other acquaintances were cool towards a youth without money.

“Elizabeth - ” said Winthrop, sighing. Since learning of her pregnancy he had come to feel more kindly towards her, and sorrow for his second son’s obvious deficiencies as a responsible husband. He picked up his pen and addressed a letter to “The Rev. Mr. George Phillips, Boxted, Essex” before he went on. “Elizabeth will wait here at the Manor with my wife, until it is sold. Since they are both with child, it is better thus, anyway. John will look after them, and see to the Manor sale. When that is concluded he will bring them over, but
you
will come with me.” He sighed again, not looking at Harry, who stalked out, and he returned to his letter which was an urgent invitation for Mr. Phillips, vicar of Boxted, to join the Massachusetts Company and sail with them in March. “I pray that this Phillips will be moved to come with us, and that the good reports I’ve heard of him are true,” Winthrop said to Jack, who was copying lists of necessities to give the prospective planters. “It would be unthinkable to sail without a man of God amongst us.”

“I thought Mr. Wilson had consented to go,” observed Jack, who had found the scene with Harry painful, though he entirely agreed with his father.

“Aye, I believe Mr, Wilson will go, but not as soon as we. His wife holds back and his parish is loath to part with him.”

I wonder at that! Jack thought with an inward laugh. He did not share his father’s admiration for John Wilson, the rector of Sudbury, who was a fat, pompous man without a gleam of lightness, and whose splayed toadlike nose was famous for its ability to smell out the slightest want of zeal in his fleck. Jack was aware that he was thinking of Mr. Wilson so as not to think of Bess, and the dismay she would feel when she heard the new plan for Harry. There were many times when he avoided thinking of Bess. Still, now that Harry was home it was usually easier. Martha too made it easier. He had become fond of her trusting innocence, her dependence on him, and one could not help but be flattered by the adoration in her eyes.

When Harry told Elizabeth of his father’s ultimatum, she was indeed dismayed. She had been lying in their great carved four-poster listlessly watching the bare elm branches writhing against the dun December sky, while the sleet hissed on the window-panes. Her condition bothered her very little, but she had moments of queasiness. Harry burst into their room, kicked angrily at the log fire, and went to fish in the cupboard for a jug of brandy he kept hidden there. He took a long pull, then, going over to the bed, said, “We’re not going to Barbadoes. We’re going to Massachusetts instead.”

She made a quivering sound and stared up at him. He told her what his father had said, and when he finished she turned her face into the pillows and began to cry.

“Don’t, Bess - don’t, love - ” cried Harry, much moved. He had never seen her cry before, except at her father’s funeral. “I don’t like it either, or leaving you at such a time. But I have no say, you know that. It can’t be so long until you come with our babe, and Brother John’ll look after you.”

At this she cried harder, and he lifted her up in his arms, kissed her wet cheeks and her mouth, and settled her head on his shoulder. “Here, have a swig.” He held the jug to her lips and she swallowed. “Breeding ever makes women upset,” he said tenderly. He was very proud of having begotten a child, the first of the new generation, and certain it would be a son. Once in Massachusetts he could get a land grant far larger than on Barbadoes, and no plaguey tobacco to struggle with either. There’d be game to hunt, forests, Indians, adventure, and freedom. He had no doubt that he could avoid his father’s watchfulness after landing. “You’ll like the New England, darling, I know you will.” He kissed her again with enthusiasm.

“Must we
always
do as
he
says?” Elizabeth cried, yet yielding to his arms. “You’re of age, Harry.”

“But I’ve no money or property left,” he answered cheerfully. “You know that. There’ll be a fine chance to get both in a new land.”

You didn’t in Barbadoes, she thought. “There’s my four-hundred-pound dowry,” she faltered. Both she and Martha had inherited this sum from Thomas Fones’s estate. “Couldn’t we use that?”

Harry shook his head with regret. “Father has it, nor will he let me touch it.” He did not add that his father had been forced to spend much of this sum in settling Harry’s debts. “He feels that he provides for all your needs here, and will for mine if I do as he says.

There’s no help for it, sweetheart.” He slipped his hand on her breast beneath her bodice, and began to kiss her neck. “No more tears,” he said. “There are far better things to do.” He unpinned the brooch he had given her, and untied the lacings at her waist. She sorted to push him away, but her hand instead began to stroke his thick blond hair, drawing his head close against her breast. “Harry, Harry - ” she whispered, falling back on the pillows, “When we are like this, together, I forget everything but you - ” He laughed low in his throat, and she shut her eyes, abandoning herself to pleasure so keen that it was indistinguishable from love.

They were aroused some time later by a timid knock on the door. Harry cursed and shouted out a sleepy “Who’s there!” to be answered by an indistinct murmur.

“ ‘Tis Sally,” sighed Elizabeth. She pulled herself from the bed and wrapped the satin coverlet around her nakedness. She unbolted the door, knowing that her little maid would never disturb them except for real cause. “What is it, Sal?” she asked through the crack.

Sally was a buxom Suffolk lass of sixteen with squint-eyes and pimples. She bobbed a curtsey and said, “Beg pardon, ma’am, but Master Winthrop, he’s a-waiting to star-rt the prayings, an’ he sent me tew fetch ye.”

“Oh, to be sure - ” said Elizabeth blushing. She noted that Sally held a candle. It had grown late while they dallied together and dozed. “We’ll be down directly,” she said to Sally, but the girl still lingered. “Oi’ve a message fur Marster Harry special. It come from Boxford some hours agone, from the Fleece, it dew.”

“What’s that?” cried Harry, sitting up. “Bring me the message, Bess!”

“ ‘Tis not wrote, sir - ” said Sally. She twisted one red chilblained hand in her apron, and glanced nervously over her shoulder down the long shadowy corridor. “A wee lad come privily to me to say thot the Egyptian’s in bad trouble, will ye tew the Fleece and help him, sir?”

“Blast and damnation - ” muttered Harry below his breath, while Elizabeth thought, Can it be Peyto? though Harry said he’d left him in London. “What sort of trouble, Sally, do you know?” she asked the girl, who nodded and shivered.

“They be saying in Boxfor-rd, that he’s a
witch!”
She gasped, putting her hand over her mouth, and scuttled away towards the servants’ quarters.

Elizabeth lit the candles in their bedroom and said, “Is it Peyto, Harry?” He grunted, and she went on, frowning, “But I thought you got rid of him long ago. You promised your father - ”

“Can I help it if the scamp is devoted to me? If he got a job in the stables at the Fleece to be near me? Good Lord, Bess, he risked his life for me in Barbadoes.”

“You’ve been seeing him, then?”

He shrugged. “Now and then. He’s done me some good turns.”

Ah, she thought, sighing - that’s where the brandy comes from. “What will you do, Harry?”

“Go to the Fleece and see what this all means. Hurry up, sweet, there’ll be enough trouble without our being late for prayers?”

They dressed hastily and went to the parlour. John Winthrop absently accepted their excuses and did not give the prayers and psalms his usual impressive emphasis. As soon as he had implored God’s blessing for the night he dismissed the servants and younger children and addressed the others. “There’s been called to my attention a matter of such grave concern that, occupied though I am with preparations for departure, I feel it must be dealt with.”

They all looked at him anxiously except Jack, who had been with his father when the angry delegation of townsfolk from Boxford stamped through the sleet into the Manor. Winthrop continued frowning. “The landlord of the Fleece, Constable Cole, Mr. Doggett, and Goodman Biggs all waited on me here this afternoon to prefer a charge of witchcraft against - ” he paused and looked at Harry, “a fellow recently hired as ostler at the Fleece.”

“Witchcraft!” cried Margaret, her round face paling. “Oh, John, how terrible!”

“I don’t understand, sir,” said Forth in his rather pedantic way. “Why did they come to you if the alleged witch or warlock is at Boxford? Why did they not take their charge to Mr. Brand at Coddenham Hall; is he not their squire?”

“They came here,” answered his father, “because this knave is known to have been in the service of a member of my family. He is, in fact, Peyto, that disreputable gipsy churl I repeatedly told you to dismiss, Henry, and whom you assured me you had.”

“I did, sir,” said Harry quickly.

“Had you any knowledge of his presence now so near us at Boxford?” Winthrop’s eyes flashed with anger born of distress. There had been no witchcraft, no such hint of the Devil’s presence in this part of Suffolk for years, and the delegation had heatedly assured him that it was being taken as a sign of God’s wrath and divine opposition to Winthrop’s plans for leaving home. Mr. Doggett had even said that local men who had signed agreement for New England and guaranteed passage money were withdrawing their names.

“Answer me, Henry!” cried Winthrop
In
a thunderous voice. “Do you know aught of this man’s being at Boxford?”

“No, sir,” said Harry, looking his father straight in the eye. His lie sprang not entirely from cowardice, though he was afraid, but from loyalty to Peyto, whom he thought he might help more easily if their recent connection was unknown. Jack raised his eyebrows to give his brother a sad speculative glance, but Winthrop accepted the statement with relief.

“What do they say Peyto has done, sir?” asked Harry in a small voice.

Winthrop pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, and scanned the arraignment Doggett had written for the aroused townsfolk to make their marks on. He then read the gist of it aloud.

“1.  He is admittedly an Egyptian, and all such are known for evil practices, the landlord hired him unaware, thought him Welsh or Cornish, having never seen natives of those places.

2.  He is given to secret sorcery and divination by means of Satan’s own tool, some strange-pictured playing cards.

3.  He has a familiar, a nearly black donkey to whom he often talks in a strange language, and the donkey has been heard to answer him.

4.  Since he came, there have been many marvellous disasters. Six cows died along Stone Street where he was seen to ride his donkey, then Robert Reynolds, the cordwainer’s entire shoe shop was burned last Sabbath day. At the Fleece, they have heard strange noises in the night, particularly the ringing of the chamber bells in the courtyard, from rooms known to be vacant. This has so frightened travellers that the landlord is losing his custom. Worst of all, when Goody Biggs began to suspect him by reason of her horse running away out of the Inn courtyard after this man had watered the beast, and came to accuse him of malicious mischief, he denied it with a foul oath and the next day Goody Biggs’s young daughter fell into fits. Upon her mother asking her if they were caused by the foreign ostler at the Fleece, the girl said they were, and that she had been bewitched.

5.  The man was accordingly seized, stripped, and searched. His ears had been cropped, the scar of an apparent brand burn on his cheek had been tampered with so its letter was uncertain, and many thought Satan might have made it. There was found also a large mole on his arse shaped like a cloven hoof. There is thus no possible doubt that this man who gave his name as Guy Smith, alias Peyto, has formed a covenant with the devil. And we demand that he be burned at once without trial.”

Winthrop folded the paper and put it back in his pocket. There was a long, shocked silence, during which Martha began to weep. Finally Margaret said in a trembling voice, “This is fearful, my husband, surely they won’t
burn
him - if these . . . these horrors be indeed true, yet surely he may but hang.”

“They can neither burn nor hang him without a trial,” said Jack sternly. “My father told them that. But they were very angry and Doggett quoted Moses’s own law as given by God. ‘A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard shall surely be put to death.’“

“What have they done with Peyto?” asked Harry roughly. He believed in witchcraft, of course, and it was true that his servant had uncanny skill at reading his peculiar cards, but for the rest the charges were ridiculous; he knew Peyto as well as he did his brothers.

“He
was
chained in the cellar of the Fleece,” said Winthrop, “but just before prayers Doggett sent word to me that he has escaped. They think he bewitched the cook’s little lad, who helped him.”

Fortunately nobody but Elizabeth was looking at Harry, for he could not hide his relief, while Jack said, “I did not know that. He’ll get away then, out of the country, and perhaps the trouble will be over!”

Winthrop shook his head. “He’ll not get far in this weather; he fled naked as a frog, and Cole has the whole of Boxford out searching for him. We must at once rouse all our manor folk to help.”