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Something came over them all that day, something from the ancient soil which had known scenes like this before the Romans came, and through the centuries thereafter. Something burst through which had long been flattened. They were no longer sober godly folk who yearned for salvation, they grew wild as their ancestors before them with the spring-magic of the May. All but the rector, his wife, and five of his faithful flock who huddled in the parsonage, shuddering at the debauched sounds they heard across the fields, and praying the Lord to strengthen them for righteous battle.

Afternoon came and the glees grew louder. Elizabeth donated a butt of sack from the Manor. And the young swains brought a chair all decked with green and flowering cherry, which they set upon the stage. “Now the Queen!” shouted old Kembold, hoarsely. He was well-flown with ale and acted as master of ceremonies because he best remembered how it used to be. “We maun have a Queen o’the May!”

This was greeted with huzzahs, and a babble of nominations. “Wait, men!” shouted Pond, the miller, exuberantly, leaping to the stage. “Who best fur Queen but our own Bess? Bess Wintrup - the fairest wench in Groton!”

“Moind your manners, Pond!” cried the Manor baker, shocked at this boozy disrespect, but Elizabeth was touched.

“I thank you, goodman - ” she called from her place near the Maypole. “But I could not. You all know why I cannot.” Indeed, for some time she had been aware of a dull backache and nausea, which she ignored.

They all cheered her, and God-blessed her, while other voices rose in favour of Peggy, or Thomasine, or Doll. Wat Vintener even yelled for Sally, who gobbled and blushed with pride.

But Pond had his own ideas which sprang from confused gratitude and feudal loyalty. “If not Mistress Bess - ” he shouted over the hubbub, “then her sister, Martha - she’s fair enough, lads. Oi say we’ll have little Mattie Fones!”

“Oh no!” cried Martha in a panic, but the crowd roared approval. Two husky young farmers rushed forward and seized her; they carried her to the flowery throne and sat her on it. They put a crown of daisies on her head and loosened her hair until it flowed in a rippling chestnut mass down to her waist. And they kissed her, crying, “She’s our queen, our nut-brown maiden! We will love her for aye!”

Martha gasped and protested, but as they circled around and drank to her, gradually a look of shining wonder came into her eyes, and a smile to her lips. She glanced instinctively at Elizabeth who was laughing and clapping her hands, then at poor Mary Winthrop whom nobody had thought to choose. “Thank you - ” she said breathlessly. “Thank you all. I’m so happy to be your queen.”

“Then dance with us, Your Majesty!” cried Pond, his moon face beaming. He raised his hand to help her off the stage. And Martha danced, danced with all of them, whirling and floating like a wood sprite, her small face aglow under the daisy wreath.

Elizabeth watched her in proud affection. This was the way Matt should always be, freed to a childlike gaiety. I have crushed out that miserable jealousy forever, Elizabeth thought, with a resolution that seemed easy - I’ll never feel it more. She accepted a mug of sack from old Kembold, drank a little and regretted it, for it sat uneasily on her stomach. She longed to lie down but could not bear to go.

The shadows were lengthening en the lawn, and the light grew more green and golden. While Martha and many of the young people still danced, some couples slipped away to the shielding hedgerows, or behind the dovecote and stables. Two lads began wrestling under a walnut tree, others ringed themselves around two fighting cocks, arid Kembold suddenly bethought him of a pastime of his youth. “A duel, a duel!” he shrilled happily, his grizzled locks flying. “Lad, fetch me little ould quarterstaff - ” he commanded a grandson, who rushed off. “Now who’ll go me a round wi’ the staves again?”

“Oi will, ye ould whinnier,” cried John Rice, the master shepherd, “and break thy pate as I ever did !”

Kembold responded with a jeer. The stout oaken poles were brought. The thatcher and the shepherd fortified themselves with draughts of sack, the dancing stopped and the cockfighters joined the circle around the two old men, who began warily crashing and feinting with their long staves, until with increasing tempo they began to flail wildly.

It was this moment that Mr. Leigh chose to come stalking around the edge of a booth shouting, “Halt! Halt! I command it! Stop this disgrace!” The rector had stumbled over an intertwined couple in the fields, which added to the indignation some drinks of claret had finally spurred to action. His followers lurked nervously behind him. As the duellers did not hear him, he rushed up to Kembold and grabbed his arm. “Cease! ‘Tis the Sabbath Eve!”

The old thatcher turned with a roar of rage. “Ye dommed fule!” he screamed. “Oi was winning!” And he fetched the rector a great clout on the head with the quarterstaff. Mr. Leigh fell backwards on the turf, and was still.

Dear God - thought Elizabeth as she hurried forward.
Why
did he interfere? - there was nothing wrong until he made it. She tried to bend down and examine the rector, but the Boxford barber forestalled her, “He’ll be all roight, ma’am . , .” he said, feeling Leigh’s head, “leastways he’s not dead. See his lids flicker.”

The crowd, which had drawn around murmuring, heaved a long sigh. Kembold, wagging his head, muttered feebly, “He shouldna’ve touched me, he shouldna’ve - ”

“You’re in trouble, ould man,” said Pond, very low. Of the five men who had accompanied the vicar, two were missing. “They’ve gone for the constable.”

The thatcher gasped and his dirty face paled. “They’ll hang me . . .” he whispered. He slumped on the lawn not far from his victim.

“Naw, naw - ” said the shepherd. “Vicar’s opened his eyes.”

The rector stirred, put his hand to his head and stammered, “What happened?”

“An accident,” said Elizabeth firmly. “Lie there, while we get bandages from my surgery. Look after him, Mary and Martha - ” she said to the girls. “And remember - ” Elizabeth added in a carrying voice, “if anyone asks, it was an unfortunate accident.”

“God bless ye,” said Kembold, looking up at her with tears in his bleary eyes.

“I must go in now,” said Elizabeth aside to Martha. “I feel ill. But I think we should have a last song,” she cried to Pond. “Can you all sing The Maytime Carol?” For she couldn’t bear the lovely day to end like this in fear and confusion.

They obeyed her, softly and tentatively at first, the youngest ones following those who knew the plaintive ancient melody.

“How beautiful May and its morning came in!
The songs of the maidens we heard them begin
To sing the old ballads while cowslips they pull
While the dew of the morning fills many pipes full
...”

When the constable came from Boxford they were still singing and he found it hard to believe the horrified accounts he had been given of debauchery and murder, especially as the rector was sitting up, and not dead at all, though somewhat addled in his wits.

As for Elizabeth, she hauled herself’ up the stairs in the
Manor and went to Margaret’s room, where Goody Hawes was rocking the whimpering baby. The midwife put up a warning finger and went to forestall Elizabeth at the door. “Mistress Winthrop sleeps - ” she whispered, “Though ‘tis a wonder with the racket there’s been outside all day - Ah - ?” She put the infant in its cradle and peered hard through the dimming light. “So, ‘tis your turn now, is it, my dear? We’d best get ye to bed.”

“ ‘Tis naught so bad,” said Elizabeth faintly. “Only I think my back will break in two. I expect it’ll be over soon.”

“Ha!” said Goody Hawes, without the least conviction. “We’ll hope so, you’re
built
for a good breeder.” But she had sensed trouble as soon as she arrived at the Manor and examined the younger woman. Her fat sensitive little hands had assisted at a thousand births, and they could guess many things from the shape and feel of the belly. That little one in there’s a-coming bottom side up, or I’m a Welshman, she said to herself, we’re in for a bit of work, we are. And so it proved.

All that night and the next day and half the next night, Elizabeth laboured. The pains came in whirlpools - blood-red, streaked with black, they came as grinding knives, as fire, they came like the tortures of the rack. She heard herself scream and wondered what the noise was; exhausted at times she fell into stupor. Frightened faces swam past her bed, Martha’s, Mary’s, Sally’s, and at one time Mr. Leigh with a bandage on his head, who said, “My poor child, I fear you must prepare for death, have you made your peace with your Maker?”

“Go away - you fool!” she screamed through bared teeth. “Always you interfere!” Then Goody Hawes came with a cup of poppy juice and she slept a little before it began again. She did not think of Harry. She did not think of Jack. She was alone with this monstrous thing that clutched and rent and would destroy her. But once, as the second evening advanced towards midnight, she whimpered for her mother. Soon after that, she felt a gentle hand on her clammy forehead, and a voice full of pitying tenderness said, “Bess dear - my poor Bess. Be brave a little longer, the physician’s coming from Hadleigh.” And she opened her eyes to see Margaret’s woeful haggard face looking down at her.

“You shouldn’t be from bed,” Elizabeth whispered.

“Nay - think not of that,” said Margaret, smoothing the damp hair. “But pray, darling. Pray with me.”

Elizabeth couldn’t pray but she followed the sound of Margaret’s voice and knew a moment of surcease. I will not die, I’ll not give up, she thought in some far-off realm where the pain did not reach. At midnight the physician arrived from Hadleigh, consulted hastily with Goody Hawes, ripped off his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves and took a small iron instrument from his pouch.

Monday morning at one o’clock Elizabeth was delivered of a baby girl.

When Jack arrived from London on the Friday, Elizabeth’s strong twenty-year-old body had nearly recovered, and when he came in with Martha to see her Elizabeth was sitting up in bed nursing her baby, a dreamy smile on her red lips. She wore a crimson chamber gown, and her black curls tumbled loose down to the brocaded coverlet. “Greetings, Jack - ” she said from the remote fastness of a blissful preoccupation. Suckling was to her a sensual joy from the first. “See my babe? She’s still a mite puffy and askew from the fearful time she had a-birthing, but Goody Hawes says she’s sound as a trivet.”

Jack swallowed, discomfited by her almost ethereal beauty, as well as by the fullness and whiteness of the blue-veined breast at which the baby tugged avidly. He had been deeply shocked at the accounts of her danger, shocked also though in different degree by the rector, whose head was still lumped and who met Jack in Boxford with a lurid relation of the scandalous happenings on May Day, climaxed by Elizabeth’s insufferable rudeness and virtual blasphemy when the rector, exercising Christian forgiveness, had gone to prepare her for death. Elizabeth was certainly too headstrong and irreligious, Jack had thought, and meant to tax her, as his father would have done. But when he saw her he forgot her misbehaviour and was stricken with confusion.

He inspected the baby, which seemed to him remarkably ugly, though its abundance of light fuzz prompted the only remark he could think of. “ ‘Twill be like Harry, no doubt,”

“Aye,” she said, kissing a tiny wrinkled fist. “Poor Harry, he was sure of a boy... but next time...”

“Oh, Bess - ” cried Martha, staring at her sister. “How
can
you speak of that - so - so calmly?” Still Martha heard in nightmares the echoes of Elizabeth’s screams, still saw how she had looked with face like a clay death’s-head - and the disgusting smell of blood.

“ ‘Tis over and forgot,” said Elizabeth, smiling. She shifted the replete baby and covered her breast, then looked at Jack and Martha. “She’ll be baptized Sunday of course? Will Mr. Leigh do it or is he too angry with me?” The green twinkle of mirth shone in her long hazel eyes.

“Of course he’ll officiate. I’ll tell him to,” answered Jack.

“I wish you two to be godparents, please.” Elizabeth gave them both a look of purest affection from which all baseness had been purged by agony, and now the bliss, of motherhood.

Jack suddenly realized that Martha was there, clinging to his arm. He patted the childish hand and said quickly. “We’ll be honoured, won’t we, Matt dear?” The girl nodded, looking up into his lean brown face, and Elizabeth thought, They are alike these two in feature, I never saw it before because Martha’s so small.

“I wish the baby christened Martha Johanna for you both,” she said.   .

Martha reddened with pleasure. “Oh Bess,
two
names for such a wee scrap!”

Elizabeth nodded. Her eyes met Jack’s in a fleeting glance that said, And thus we will always be reminded by my babe of the barrier between us.

“We’ll soon need Mr. Leigh to officiate at something besides a baptism, eh, Mattie?” he said, putting his arm around the girl. “As soon as we hear of my father’s safe arrival in Massachusetts I’ll write to him and tell him we’ve waited long enough.”

On Saturday, June 12, the
Arbella,
having been nine stormy weeks at sea, slid along the southern coast of Cape Ann and sighted journey’s end at last; the collection of bark huts and sod-roof dugouts which the Indians called Naumkeag, but the settlement’s temporary Governor, John Endecott, had rechristened Salem.

The air was fresh and sparkling with a whitish light unlike the golden mists of England, a land breeze brought the eager passengers the fragrance of pines and wild strawberries. They were crowded on the decks, exclaiming, cheering, and some weeping, as the
Arbella
ran up the Royal Ensign and shot off two salutes to alert those on shore.

John Winthrop stood with the gentry on the poop deck. They had all donned their finest clothes, just unpacked by their servants. John Winthrop wore a new black silk doublet trimmed with gold braid. His ruff was edged two inches deep with Mechlin lace. His hat, though unplumed, was garnished with gilt band and buckle. Across his chest a baldric of red, silver, and blue, the royal colours, supported an impressive sword of state. On a stool beside him, in an elaborate padlocked box, reposed the precious Charter. John saw a shallop put out from the flimsy-looking dock on shore and knew it contained Endecott, because Captain Peirce of the
Lyon
had gone to fetch the supplanted Governor.