i b8cff8977b3b1bd2 (32 page)

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “We can pray so.” He flexed his cramped limbs and stumbled to the brandy keg. “Here,” he said dipping out a mugful. “We need it.” They all drank, even Martha who seemed in this moment of general terror to have forgotten her own. Her little face was exalted. She looked as though she had some happy secret.

“That Goody Knapp!” said Jack at random, speaking to distract them. “From Silly Suffolk, like us! She sees monsters and goblins and enchanted islands, she prophesied this tempest because she says we’ve a Jonah aboard.”

Martha drew a sharp little breath, and fixed her hollow eyes on her husband.

“How interesting,” said Mirabelle, easing herself and shaking out her hair. “Who could the Jonah be? Not me, I hope. Some of those good women below do not like me because their husbands do.”

“No, not you,” said Jack, smiling faintly. “She’s fixed on some wretched sailor her goodman ran foul of.”

“Jonah had to be thrown into the sea because he was wicked, didn’t he?” asked Martha in a quick, breathless voice.

Jack assented, relieved that she spoke and looked brighter. Elizabeth was not relieved. She heard a note in Martha’s voice that escaped the others, but had no time to think of it, for the lull abruptly ceased. The wind swooped down with a roar more violent than before, and fear returned.

The poundings and crashings and terrifying lurches resumed. Though protected by horn frames, the candles guttered wildly and went out. In darkness and silence now, their bodies were rolled or pitched about in the saloon. Sea and rainwater deluged them through a dozen leaks. Time blurred and stopped. In Elizabeth’s mind ran strange fancies. She thought of her packets of seeds lying patiently in the hold wishful of turning into bright flowers in the new land. She saw them blooming as they would have been, the hollyhocks, the marigolds, the violets, and wallflowers. How sad for them that they must lie forever barren at the bottom of the sea. She thought of Harry, and saw his golden laughing face, his reckless swagger. She saw his finger lift as though he beckoned, and she cried to him, “Nay, Harry, nay. We are not ready yet, your child and I!” Harry dissolved and in her head she heard music. The singing of many voices, very pure and low, not as the Puritans twanged through their noses, but as she had once heard St. Paul’s choir in London long ago. Yet it
was
a psalm the voices sang. “
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
. . .” The voices sang like chiming bells that ended in a jangle, when her outer ears caught a new sound. She started, and stiffened as her mind cleared. It was the sound of shouting outside the door Jack had bolted against the waves.

“Ahoy! Ahoy! Are ye all right in there?”

Jack threw open the door, and the Captain staggered in, holding a lantern. His face was glistening and haggard, but he smiled at them. “Thanks be to God, it’s passed over,” he shouted. “I believe we’ve weathered it Can ye leave the women?” he asked Jack. “I need every man on deck. ‘Alf the mainmast’s gone, the long-boat’s stove in, and part o’ the fo’castle, and the main ‘atch is jammed, but we’re still afloat!”

“We’re all right,” cried Elizabeth, and rushed to light their candles at the Captain’s lantern. Margaret began to cry softly. Martha was curled in a corner of the benches with her head in her arms and did not look up as Jack went off with the Captain.

The sea dropped rapidly, and the stars came out brilliant in a chilly sky. Presently Jack came back and said they had unjammed the hatch and released those below decks, all of whom had survived. The carpenters were at work and there was no more to be done till daylight. They had better go to bed.

The women obeyed. Elizabeth tumbled into her bunk with Joan, and after one great sob of thanksgiving fell instantly asleep. She was shaken awake an hour later in the dawn light to see Jack standing by the bunk and more fear in his face than there had been through the tempest.

“Bess -” he said, “Bess - Martha’s gone. I can’t find her. She went while I slept, but her going roused me. I’ve searched the poop.”

Elizabeth gasped and jumped to her feet. They rushed together through the companionway and down to the quarter-deck, where the helmsman stared. They looked down on the main deck and saw figures, two carpenters hammering on the longboat, and near them, also working, Elizabeth recognized the lad, William Hallet. She clutched Jack’s arm and cried, “Look !”

They saw a little figure in grey slip along the deck from behind the broken mainmast. It paused an instant by Hallet, who was next the starboard rail, and seemed to speak to him. Then, as Jack shouted
“Martha!”
the girl turned and waved, throwing her arms above her head, and darting through the partly shattered rail, plunged into the sea.

Jack flew down the stairs with Elizabeth after him. He dashed across the deck, but young Hallet was quicker. He dived in almost as Martha hit the water and grabbed her floating hair as she came up. “Throw me a rope -” he yelled. The carpenters came running with the boat hook and its attached line. Jack seized it and heaved it out. The lad caught it, they pulled him in, and Jack, held by the men, clambered down the side until he could grab his wife from the boy’s clutch and haul her up and on to the deck, where she lay in a swoon, breathing heavily. Hallet climbed up and vaulted on to the deck. He stood panting and looking down at Martha. “She spoke to me, just before she - she did it,” he whispered. “Said she was a Jonah. Everyone’d be happy when she’d gone. Poor little thing.”

Jack took the lad’s hand and shook it. “Thanks be to God you were there and can swim,” he cried. “Get some dry things on.”

He picked Martha up and carried her across the deck to the poop stairs. Elizabeth, who was trembling so she could hardly stand, cried, “Jack, shall I change her clothes and heat her some sack?”

“No,” he answered grimly. “I will deal with her myself. Don’t interfere with me, Bess, and don’t leave your cabin, no matter what you hear!” He mounted the stairs and stalked back to the saloon with his burden. He forced brandy through Martha’s lips until she sighed and opened her eyes. She gazed up at his grim face with a remote wonder.

“My love -” she said. “My love. I thought never to see you again.”

“Why did you do it, Martha?
Why
did you do it?”

“Because you don’t love me, and because I am guilty - guilty -”

“Hush!” he said. “I do love you, and we are all guilty. We have each one been saved from death this terrible night. I don’t know what for, unless it is to learn the meaning of life.” He downed a mugful of brandy, gave her some. He carried her to their cabin, where he ripped off her wet clothes, dried her with the blanket, and lay down with her in her bunk. He pulled her roughly into his arms.

Massachusetts Bay Colony
1631-1640

On the
Lyon,
the next morning after the tempest, the sun shone, and a light northerly breeze gave the ship steerage way, but permitted most of the crew to join in the repairs. Mr. Eliot held a solemn Thanksgiving on deck, then went to bed exhausted. Most of the passengers slept all day, including Martha, but when Elizabeth went to her sister’s cabin at twilight, the girl was awake, and greeted Elizabeth with a smile.

“Bess,” she said softly, “I’ve been living in black shadows a long time, haven’t I? I don’t remember much.”

“Don’t try.” Elizabeth kissed the thin cheek, rejoicing that all strain and wildness had left Martha’s face.

“I know what I tried to do,” said the girl quickly, taking Elizabeth’s hand, “but now I don’t know why, or remember all that happened last night, except the tempest and I had much brandy - and Jack - Jack - ” She coloured and stopped. “He does love me.”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth steadily. “I think, you are at last truly his wife. I’m very glad. Now why don’t you get up and make yourself pretty? We’re to sup soon and the Captain’s ordered a boiled suet pudding stuffed with raisins to celebrate our safety!” Still she spoke to Martha as a child, for still she so appeared and had always acted.

But Martha gave her a long grave look that was not childish, and said, “You’re good to me, Bess. You’ve all had patience with me. I hope there is not talk about - about what happened on the deck. I wouldn’t have you shamed.”

“There’ll be no talk,” said Elizabeth. “Jack’s spoken to the carpenters, the helmsman, and the young lad who - ” She paused, wondering if Martha remembered the boy who had saved her, and knew instinctively that she did not “A lad who was also there,” she continued. “Jack told them you were distracted by the tempest It was a night of extraordinary happenings which everyone wants to forget.”

“Aye,” said Martha quickly. She swung her thin legs over the bunk. “Do you suppose Lady Gardiner would help me dress my hair like hers? It’s so becoming.”

Elizabeth laughed. “I’m sure she’d be delighted. And lend you rouge and beauty patches too if you’d be so brazen.”

The supper was festive. The breeze continuing light, and all repairs going forward rapidly, Captain Peirce honoured them with his presence. Martha was transformed, not only by Mirabelle’s handiwork but by a soft glow as she sat beside Jack, who kept looking at her with open tenderness. Only Elizabeth knew and Margaret guessed that this was the true beginning of their honeymoon, yet all were conscious of manifold dangers passed and the richness of their escape. They drank some of the Captain’s excellent sack. Elizabeth longed for her lute, but Jack had a Jew’s harp to set the pitch, and they sang together - ballads, love songs, and country songs in which the young minister joined heartily.

Elizabeth was deeply grateful for her sister’s recovery, and the assuaged look in Jack s eyes, and she went to bed happy. Yet in the middle of the night she awoke to find that she was weeping, and knew that she had been crying in her dreams, “I am a simpleton,” she said aloud, but softly, so as not to wake Mary who was snoring in the upper bunk. She put her arms around Joan and drew the baby’s head onto her breast. Joan snuggled down, and presently they both slept.

Five days later the
Lyon
arrived at the Grand Banks, which were swathed in the usual fog, and the Captain hove to so that the sailors might fish for the cod of which they stood in great need. Provisions were growing scanty, and even the Captain’s mess was reduced to half rations of salt beef and pease for every meal. There were several cases of scurvy in the hold, and much coughing and sniffles, for the weather had turned bitter, and there was no way to get warm but lie in sour, verminous bedding, or to fight for a place near the cooking hearth.

Peirce relaxed rules during the fishing, and Elizabeth profited by this to wander over the ship. She was tired of confinement, anxious to forget hunger pangs, and wishful of finding William Hallet.

The catch was good, and she picked her way amongst fishing lines and a mass of flopping silvery bodies. Finally she spied Hallet near the fo’castle. He was fishing too. He had hooked a large cod, his young face was intent, his big body leaned far out as he dextrously played his fish, and jerked it over the rail to land with a watery smack at her feet. He cried, “Careful, wench! You’ll
get
hooked yourself if you stand so near!” Then he saw who it was, and said, “Pardon, Mistress Winthrop,”

“Good day,” she said, smiling, “What a big fish ... I wanted ...I’ve been wanting to... to thank you... for the... what you did that night. . .” She knew that she was stammering, and that her constraint came from more than embarrassment at referring to Martha’s near tragedy. He was years younger that she, only a common lad, and yet somehow he made her feel like a green girl.

“I don’t want thanks, Mistress,” he said coolly, while he cut off his fish’s head with his knife. “Mr. Winthrop’s loaded me with thanks, and five pounds too, which I wouldn’t have.”

“Why not?” she cried. “You deserve it. And surely five pounds would help you get settled in New England.”

“I wouldn’t take money for a thing like that” He spoke with anger. “You’re like all the gentry, think you can buy a man body and soul for silver. I’ll make my own way and work for what I earn.”

She was discomfited. The gay intimacy which had sprung between them the first time was gone.

“Will,” she said, after a moment of watching him bait his hook, “why do you speak so sharp? Isn’t it natural that I should thank you for saving my little sister’s life?”

He looked at her slowly as she stood beside him in her thick crimson wool cloak, her dark curls wet with fog beneath the hood, her nose red from the cold, her long hazel eyes troubled.

“The sharpness wasn’t for you,” he said, casting his line out. His tawny hair, salt-crusted and uncombed, swung forward to hide his face as he peered down into the water.

“For what then?” she persisted. “Won’t you tell me? You’re overyoung to be so grim.”

“By God, Mistress - ” he said, suddenly turning on her. “Grimness has naught to do with years. You speak like the sheltered ninny no doubt you are!”

“And you - ” she cried, stiffening, “speak like the boorish rustic no doubt
you
are!”

At this he laughed suddenly, a boyish peal, not quite steady. “Touché,” he said, to her amazement. “A neat thrust. I see I must make amends.”

“The best amends you can make is to tell me how you come to speak in fencing terms, and use words like ‘amends’ which fit strangely with your clothes and general carriage. Are you perchance some young lord in disguise?”

“Far from it!” he snorted. “I’m a yeoman, at least I come of yeoman stock. We Hallets’ve farmed Dorset lands back to Doomsday, and the Devil take me if I’d be anything else!” He peered over the side at his line floating limply on the waves, and said with a mixture of gentleness and impatience, “Look, ma’am. There’s no mystery. You’ll have my tale in a trice. I spent six years as page in the household of the Earl of Bristol at Sherborne Castle. I lived with his children, the young Digbys. I was tutored by their tutor, and befriended - for a time - by Lord George, the heir.”