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“Not Winthrop now,” she said quickly. “Soon after landing I married a gentleman called Robert Feake. We live at Watertown.”

“Ah, so?” he looked down at her with courteous interest and something else she couldn’t quite fathom, since it seemed to be compounded of admiration and wariness. She noted for the first time that his eyes were grey, and their composed stare had the remembered effect of embarrassing her.

“Where have
you
been, since we left the
Lyon?”
she said, turning away and starting to walk.

“Roving,” he answered, falling into step beside her. “North of Piscatagua, even into New France. By the bye, I saw Lady Gardiner up there last year.’’

“Mirabelle?” she cried. “Oh, what’s happened to her? I still miss her.”

Will laughed. “You shouldn’t by rights, since she pokes fun at your colony. You should hear the drolleries she tells of Puritans! In Quebec she made de Champlain and the Abbé of the Recollets shake with mirth.”

“No doubt,” said Elizabeth dryly, knowing nothing of New France except that the English considered it a fearful Papist menace. “Is she there now?”

“Nay, she returned to England with her husband.” Where Sir Christopher, still smarting from his treatment in Massachusetts, had every intention of making trouble, Will thought with amusement. The inborn shrewdness of the English yeoman had, in Will Hallet, through the accident of his aristocratic rearing, ripened to a sophistication which his recent years of total independence had matured. People’s foibles and motives often amused him, and for his age he was an acute observer.

They had both unconsciously paused near the pond, and Elizabeth saw the yellow-haired girl hovering behind them and pouting. “Is that your lass?” she asked suddenly, with a casual smile, “or wife, mayhap?”

Hallet looked around. “Good Lord, no! I ne’er saw her until I came back here two days past. D’you think me fool enough to marry at eighteen? I’ve no wish for shackles.”

From this reply Elizabeth derived both satisfaction and a qualm. Eighteen, she thought, not yet a man despite his size, while I am twenty-four and well shackled. She saw that several people who knew her by sight were staring at them curiously, and she drew herself up, saying in a brisk condescending voice, “It’s been pleasant to meet you again. Always I’ll feel grateful for your brave act on the ship. Do you stay long in Boston?”

He shrugged, instantly noting her change of tone, and his became as formal. “I daresay not. I’ve kin from Dorset now in Plymouth Colony. I may see them, but I’ve a fancy to go south for a change, maybe Virginia. The ships’ll always sign on a good carpenter.”

“Ah, would that I were free as you!” Elizabeth cried involuntarily, swept by a familiar ache, and a new pain too which was in some way connected with this huge sweaty lad who stood beside her. She swayed closed to him without knowing it, and his wary gaze softened in response. “But you’re a woman,” he said. “For a man
‘la plus grande chose au monde e’est savoir etre à soi’
- his own master - but a
woman!
A woman, an ass, and a walnut tree, the harder you beat them the better they be!”

“You knave!” she cried, with a spurt of startled laughter. “Was that
French
you spoke?”

“Montaigne,” he said grinning, “I told you I’d a most elegant education, and the run of one of the best libraries in England.”

“Will, you’re - you’re fantastical,” she said. “Why don’t you use that education, why you could be schoolmaster here, I shouldn’t wonder, or you could - ”

“Elizabeth?” called a querulous voice behind her. “Bess, where have you been? I’ve been searching the Common.”

It was Robert, his face pinched with annoyance and uncertainty.

Elizabeth flushed and recovered at once. “Oh, Robert, I’m sorry, but this is William Hallet. I haven’t seen him since we crossed on the
Lyon,
where he gave all the Winthrops cause to be grateful to him.”

“Oh indeed,” Robert faltered, mollified by her smile and mention of the Winthrop name.

“Forgive me for detaining your lady, Mr. Feake. I was telling her of my travels in New France,” said Will quietly, absorbing in one quick glance the slightness of Elizabeth’s husband, the white-lashed eyes that watered and blinked nervously in the sunlight, the slender womanish hands, the immaculate lawn falling-bands and cuffs.

Robert, in his turn staring at the young giant who looked like a labourer and spoke like a gentleman, responded to the attraction which strength and masculinity always held for him. “Why, good day, Mr. Hallet,” he said, inclining his head. “I didn’t mean to speak harsh but I was worried about my wife’s absence. Our relatives have been waiting - some members of the Winthrop and Dudley families, that is,”

Elizabeth noted Robert’s unconscious use of the honourable prefix “Mr.” and also that Will ceased to smile when Robert mentioned her exalted relatives. He will never allow himself to be patronized again, she thought, and spoke quickly,
“Do
come to see us in Watertown, please! Any day take the ferry to Charlestown, then follow the riverbank west a few miles until you come to our home lot. The house is quite large, thatched; there’s a sapling fence covered with honeysuckle, and an iron door-knocker with a lion’s head.”

“Aye, do come,” said Robert dutifully, though he did not understand the urgency in his wife’s voice.

Hallet bowed. “You are both very kind.” He hesitated for a moment, looking at Elizabeth’s eager lovely face, A sudden confusion came on him, for he felt his heart beat thick and fast. He reddened, seeming all at once the boy he still was, and he spoke awkwardly in the rougher language or his early childhood. “Shan’t have time enough. I mean to ship out - tomorrow. And I must shog off now.” He turned briskly and beckoned the blonde girl who had seated herself on the bank of the pond and was sulkily picking apart her rejected maple wreath.

He’s nothing but a rude boor, after all, thought Elizabeth. She raised her chin and said, “Well, then some other time perhaps, if amongst
all
your journeyings, you should return to Boston. I give you good day.” She managed a quick, thin smile, and linked her arm in Robert’s. She did not look back as they walked towards Blackstone’s spring and the waiting children.

It was not until they reached home that night that she remembered her promise to visit Martha, and realized that if Will Hallet had come to Watertown, she might well have not been there to see him. She put him resolutely from her thoughts, which did not prevent a strange and humiliating dream some nights later in which she lay in Will Hallet’s arms, felt his naked hairy chest pressing on her breasts, and kissed him in an abandon so piercing sweet that she awoke; and saw Robert creeping out of bed in the dawn-light, bound, she thought, for the privy. She stared at the hunched-over form in the white nightshirt while the dream faded. Then she said quietly, “What is it, Rob? The gripes again?”

He started, and turned his head, seeming confused, as sometimes happened at night. “The gripes - ?” he repeated, his voice hoarse and dragging. “Pain - in the darkness - like it was then - but not for
him,
not any more - nor can he tell them unless the Devil tells them-”

“Rob!” she cried, jumping out of bed, ‘You must have fever!” and she felt his forehead which was cool and dank. “Pray God ‘tis not smallpox . . .” she whispered. There was a raging epidemic of smallpox amongst the Indians, but it seemed to spare the whites.

“Let me go,” said Robert in the same hoarse voice. “I must wash my hands. Wash them in the Blood of the Lamb . ..” He pushed past her and ran to the ewer of water on the table.

“Robert! Wake up, dear,” she said, shaking him. “Your hands are clean, you needn’t wash them!”

He put the ewer down, heeding her voice. “I needn’t wash them?”

“No, no,” she said. “Come back to bed. Lie down. I’ll bring you mint to breathe, ‘twill clear you of these vapours.”

He obeyed her, and after he had sniffed the crushed mint, fell into a heavy sleep, but she was uneasy until morning when she examined his fair thin skin closely for any sign of the dreaded pocks. There were none, and Robert seemed his normal self, except that he questioned her anxiously as to what he had said in
the
night.

“Some nonsense about washing your hands,” she said. “I was so sleepy I really don’t know. As long as it’s not smallpox - ”

He shook his head. “I had that as a babe in Norfolk, I believe. But you, Bess, on this trip to Ipswich, you will pass through Indian country where they say all are dying of it.”

“Oh la. Don’t fret,” she said smiling. “A London-reared child has taken every sickness by the time it’s grown - if it survive. Have no fear for me.” She watched to see if mention of London would cause the “strangeness,” but it did not. And she wondered too if there would be any repetition of his odd actions the last time she had left him alone. She was taking Sally with her, since Martha badly needed servants, and now her usual semi-maternal care for Robert, sharpened by contrition over the shameful dream of Hallet, suggested an idea. Robert should go with Joan to the Patricks’. He always seemed content near the big rough Irishman, while Anneke was the soul of beaming hospitality. And so it was arranged.

The next morning Elizabeth set off at sunrise on the long Indian trail through the wilderness. Her uncle had sent Tom French with the horse. Elizabeth mounted, holding Lisbet in a basket across her lap. The servants, Sally and Tom, walked alongside. Their clothing hung in saddlebags behind the cantle. Elizabeth, as they struck north past Fresh Fond towards the Mystic River, was not pleased to hear from Tom that they must stop at Winthrop’s farm “Ten Hills” where His Worship would join them for the journey as far as Saugus. She had wanted to enjoy the silence of the forest and the feeling of adventure, and always found her uncle’s company a strain. But there was no help for it.

At eight they reached a well-cleared grassy plateau, with a view of both the Charles and Mystic Rivers. Here fruit trees had been planted, and an experimental crop of barley. Here too was a flock of sheep, and a long, low house made of wattle and daub. Win-throp had designed to make “Ten Hills” his country estate, but spent little time here since recently gratifying the perennial English itch for land. He had now acquired many other acres around Boston Harbour and an island called The Governor’s Garden which Margaret much preferred for its safety and accessibility.

John Winthrop greeted his niece somewhat absently, offered her cider and hasty pudding, then mounting his own horse hurried them all down the hill to Medford where they were ferried across the Mystic. Winthrop remarked politely that he hoped Elizabeth had left her family in health and would find Martha improved, then lapsed into a dark silence until they reached a collection of wigwams which he said was John Sagamore’s chief village.

“It seems deserted,” said Elizabeth, staring at the smokeless vents in the round bark shelters. There was no life to be seen except a brindle cur scratching its fleas on the muddy bank where a dozen empty canoes were drawn up. Half a deer carcass, hung on sticks, was oozing putrefaction in the sun, but the nauseating stench of the village did not come from the deer carcass alone. Their horses quivered and shied. Tom had trouble holding the bridles.

“Ho there! Netopl Netop! John Sagamore, are you there?” Winthrop called. There was no answer for a moment and then a faint ghastly wail came from one of the shelters. “Aieah-aieh-ah...”

An old woman crawled through a door, inching along on her elbows, her matted grey hair streaming around her. “Aih-eh-yah,” she moaned again, lifting a sightless face encrusted so thick with sores running yellow pus that she had no features.

“My God,” whispered Elizabeth, snatching up the baby and holding her so that she might not see, while Sally with a cry of horror hid behind a rock. Winthrop dismounted and, walking carefully around the moaning old woman, peered into the wigwams.

“Dead. All of them,” he said as he came back. “John Sagamore too. You see how God fights for us in smiting our enemies. The Massachusetts tribes are near wiped out, the Narragansetts also. Ah, the Blessed Lord hath tenderly cleared our title to the land we, possess!” He clasped his hands and raised grateful eyes to the sky.

“But these Indians weren’t our enemies,” said Elizabeth sharply. “The raids we feared never happened, and
we
brought the smallpox to them on our ships.”

“What matter the channel God uses, Elizabeth?” said her uncle, frowning. “Why must you always be contentious and ignorant? Do you not know that Captain Stone and his men were killed by Indians last winter, and another trader too?”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “But that was in Pequot country.” And who knows what provocation the Pequots were given, she added to herself. She had no special fondness for the Indians she had met, but the sight of this gruesome village sickened her, as her uncle’s smug certainty of God’s intentions always annoyed her. Winthrop mounted and flicked the bridle.

“But she’s still alive! We can’t leave her like this!” Elizabeth cried, pointing to the body on the ground that flopped back and forth gasping Like a great fish.

“What could be done for her?” said Winthrop in icy tones. “And she’s not a Christian.”

Elizabeth bowed her head and suffered Tom to lead her horse along the trail. What indeed could be done? Except, she thought, looking angrily at her uncle’s back, pay these poor savages at least the tribute of pity, and not glory in their destruction.

They continued for some time silent on the trail that led through a virgin forest of maples, hickory, and elm. Here and there Elizabeth noted the strange native wildflowers in bloom, so different from any seen in England, though the settlers had given them English names. The curiously shaped jack-in-the-pulpit, the roots of which the Indians boiled and ate like turnips; the shy, beautiful lady’s-slipper; and clumps of the white perky little flowers that Plymouth’s children, fresh from Holland, had christened Dutchman’s breeches.

As they reached a tiny pond, Lisbet began to whimper. “The babe’s hungry, sir,” called Elizabeth to Winthrop’s back. “I fear I should stop and suckle her.”