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“Why - ” said Underhill genially, for he intended to move on to most desirable Manhattan land Kieft had hinted would be granted him, “that’s very flattering, but you’ll have no need o’ me now, will you? There’ll be no more danger from the Siwanoys.”

The next afternoon, the three officers and the troops reappeared at the Feake house on Greenwich Cove, for the embarkation.

Toby Feake, who had come home instead of continuing to Stamford with the others last night, had already told Anneke and Elizabeth the outcome of the attack on the Siwanoy Fort.

And Elizabeth had at last broken down. All night she had lain sobbing beside Joan who had been frightened at first, then plaintive.

“Mama, Mama, don’t cry so,” the girl implored. “I can’t sleep and you’re shaking the bed. Mother, pray stop!”

But Elizabeth could not stop, though Joan finally went to sleep.

In the morning when Elizabeth dragged herself up, her face wan and ravaged, her head throbbing, all feeling was blunted. Nor did she think of anything at all, except that as usual the hasty pudding must be made, the trenchers washed, snow water brought in, Robert fed, also the baby, while the girls were allotted their customary tasks: spinning for Joan, knitting for Lisbet, corn-pounding in a mortar for little Hannah.

While the soldiers clambered into the long boats, Underhill came to say goodbye, still in an exultant mood, still wishful of discussing- his great victory. But he was not devoid of sensitivity, and was shocked by Elizabeth’s appearance.

“Farewell, Mistress,” he said, courteously holding his plumed helmet in his hand. “I see I’m most unwelcome, and I’ll not harrow ye with account of what happened, except to say you’ll be grateful some day.” He hesitated. Most women cheered up if you gave them a bit of flattery, even a kiss, but Bess Feake was different. Had always been, even in Boston, when he had considered her the fairest woman at the Bay.

Suddenly he slapped his thigh. “Damme if I haven’t just remembered to tell ye something. Nay, don’t shrink like that. “ ‘Tis something to please you, I’ll warrant.”

Elizabeth continued to stir the boiling cornmeal.

“Saw a friend of yours in New Amsterdam t’other day,” he went on brightly. “Young man by the name o’ William Hallet. Was asking for you.”

“In truth?” she said. Will Hallet and the night at Plymouth seemed as remote and unreal as her agonies last night over the Siwanoy. And yet, unexpected and causeless as an adder’s sting, came a dart of pain. “So he’s come back from England,” she said.

“Aye, but he’s off for the Indies. Was awaiting a ship. Said he had to go, but to tell ye he hadn’t forgot.”

“Forgot what?” she said, ladling the mush into a trencher.

“Why, I don’t know,” Underhill chuckled. “He seemed to think you would. He wanted to write a letter for me to bring ye, but I hadn’t time to wait for it. But if he’s still there when I get back to New Amsterdam, what shall I tell him?”

“Tell him - ” said Elizabeth, “that
I
have forgot.” She put the filled trenchers on the table, and began to cut snippets from a block of maple sugar.

“Cold message, my dear, for a man who seems to have your welfare at heart,” said Underhill, shrugging. “Spoke very earnest about you, he did. I almost thought - ” He looked at Elizabeth’s shut, pale face. Underhill had almost thought there’d been some love passage between them, from the way Hallet spoke. Now it didn’t seem possible. “Well, I’m off,” he said. He glanced at the lean-to door. Robert could be heard babbling softly inside. “I wish ye luck and a better future, my dear. At least you’ve many fine children to comfort you. Ye can be glad of that.”

“Aye,” she said, pulling the crane off the fire. “ ‘Tis true, Captain Underhill, I can be glad of that.”

In March, Toby put his shallop in the water again, and sailed to Stamford where he signed one of the Finch boys as crew before setting off for New Amsterdam and the resumption of his coastal trading.

When he returned to Greenwich Cove he carried to Elizabeth a letter from George Baxter.

“Ye’ve been given all the land here to administer as you see fit, haven’t you?’ said Toby watching Elizabeth read the letter. “ ‘Twas what Baxter told me.”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “That’s what he writes - that Governor Kieft agrees too, in view of Robert’s complete incompetence and as long as he shall remain distracted. I’m to do as I think best with the land, for our greatest benefit, and the children.”

“Makes ye a rich woman in your own right, Aunt,” said Toby with respect “In a manner o’ speaking. Land-rich. And ye can sell off parcels. Several Stamford men’re ready to buy.”

Elizabeth turned sombre eyes to the window where she could glimpse the tree line of Monakewaygo, her own particular purchase four years ago. And now she had a hundred times that acreage to do with as she pleased, to dower the girls, to educate the little boys, to buy what she liked. Power. Everything else has failed me, she thought. But there is this.

“I’ll be careful how I sell,” she said. “Land values are going up fast, I’ve been talking with Angell Husted. He wants more good pasturage. But I’ll wait until I get four shillings an acre for my best. Now that the Indians are - are gone, the back country’ll open up, settlers will be clamouring from all over. Dutchmen too, I shall be canny.”

Toby’s little eyes opened wide. He had never heard her speak like this, nor he thought, actually looking at her with attention, had she ever seemed hard and purposeful before.

“That’s sense you’re talking, Aunt, at last,” he said. “Anneke too, though she’s not got as much as you, still’ll realize a tidy sum, in time. We’ll start by selling some o’ the salt marsh.”

“ ‘We’?” said Elizabeth, raising her eyebrows.

“To be sure,” said Toby in an offhand way, his stout freckled face reddening slightly. “When the year o’ mourning for Patrick’s up, Anneke and me’ll run down to New Amsterdam and get wed. She’s a mite old for me,” said Toby, “but she suits me. Besides, her cooking and her goodly property offset the age.”

“I see,” said Elizabeth. “And can’t say I’m surprised. No doubt you’ll content each other very well.”

Oh Dan, Dan - she thought with a twisting sorrow. But she would not allow herself to continue into memory.

She sat down and read Baxter’s letter again, turned the paper over, and fetching her quill and sumac ink, began to draw as best she could a map of all the Feake lands.

That night she had a strange dream about William Hallet. In the dream she was furiously angry with him, she hated him. Hated him so that she struck at him with Baxter’s rolled-up letter, which had grown hard like a club. She hit Hallet in the face with it, but it did not injure him, for he laughed and jeered at her. And then in the dream she wept, pleading his forgiveness, but the face was no longer his. It was Jack’s, it was Harry’s, it was at last John Winthrop’s.

She awoke to a bleak and steely determination.

On an extremely hot Saturday in June of 1646, the six Greenwich families performed an unprecedented act. They trudged along the four miles of shore trail to Stamford with a view to attending Sabbath services at the Stamford Meetinghouse. And this they did in honour of little Joan Winthrop, who was to be married today. Joan’s betrothed, Thomas Lyon, had asked that the Greenwich residents with whom he was allying himself should show due decorum and godliness as an accompaniment to his marriage. And Elizabeth had agreed. It was a reasonable request, and she had sometimes felt guilt, about her family’s lack of religious observance. She did not, however, much like her prospective son-in-law. He was pleasant enough, even ingratiating, big and handsome, with fresh cheeks and curly hair, but she thought his close-set eyes had a calculating look, and she knew him to be conventional and very much impressed with the Winthrop name, since he had recently come from Boston. Still, the sixteen-year-old Joan was in love with him in her own passive way. And being a plain-featured brown little thing with no hint of coquetry, Elizabeth recognized that they might have to wait a long time for another good offer. Thomas Lyon was twenty-six, well enough educated by a Suffolk grammar school, and was also connected with the Winthrops’ distant English kin - Sir Henry Mildmay. Thomas had little cash and was sparing with that, but he was very strong and seemed ambitious.

So there was no valid objection to the marriage. Indeed, as Thomas frequently pointed out, it should greatly increase Elizabeth’s comfort, since the young couple were to live with the Feakes at Greenwich Cove.

“You have room in that fine house of yours and ‘twill save me building my own,” said Thomas in proposing this. “And you need a man to help you with your affairs, and with Mr. Feake’s care.”

Which was true enough perhaps - and yet, thought Elizabeth proudly as she walked on the shore path towards Totomack Creek, I’ve done quite well alone these two years. She had made a few judicious sales, and had invested in pigs which needed little tending; by thrift she had managed not to encroach on the few remaining pounds of her jointure.

Also Robert was better. He stumbled along beside her now, clutching a fold of her violet tiffany skirt. His head was bowed, he stared at the ground, occasionally murmuring to himself, but he was not utterly lost to his surroundings any more. He knew that Joan was to be married today, and had wanted to be part of the occasion. Or at least he had not wanted to be left alone without Elizabeth.

Their children were, of course, part of the expedition. The fastidious Lisbet, thirteen now and very conscious of her flowerlike prettiness; Hannah, a sweet and chubby redhead, who kept near her parents; the little boys, Johnny and Robin, scampering on and off the path.

As they all passed the Husted homestall near the Sound, Angell and his wife came out to join them. “Why, good day, Mr. Feake!” said the young farmer, trying to hide his astonishment. “I didn’t think you could - that is - how well you look - doesn’t he?” he finished awkwardly to Elizabeth as Robert made a vague motion with his free hand, and did not look up.

“Aye,” she said, smiling faintly. Robert had put on weight in his years of inactivity. His delicate bones had vanished into plump flesh which was suitably garbed today in a new fawn-coloured doublet and breeches trimmed with silk braid and made in New Amsterdam. Elizabeth had provided new clothes for all her family, who were dressed in the latest Dutch fashions.

Bright spots of colour they made along the leafy path; not only the Feakes, but their new neighbours, the Richard Crabs, John Coes, the Sherwoods, and Robert Husted - Angell’s father – who had moved his homestall across the boundary from Stamford to Greenwich, preferring the latter’s independence and lack of restriction, as had all these new settlers,

“Och - ” said Anneke, suddenly mopping her flushed face with a small lawn kerchief. “ ‘Tis varm, Ve’li be melted ven ve get to Stamford. I hope if Toby makes a good price on this voyage of his, he can buy a horse. ! cannot valk as I used to.”

“Well,” said Elizabeth. “ ‘Tis in a good cause. The child didn’t want a Dutch marriage, even if we could have found a minister. And Thomas is a thorough-going Puritan,” She sighed and Anneke glanced ahead at the young couple who headed the procession. Joan’s short figure was dressed in dark green sarcenet, Thomas Lyon wore a sober grey suit and black hat. His curly hair was cut very short in the manner of the Roundheads, which seemed to be a name given to the Parliamentary forces in England who were commanded by a man called Oliver Cromwell. This Cromwell was fighting King Charles in a civil war which had risen in the homeland. Thomas Lyon had brought the tidings from Boston. In Greenwich they had heard rumours before about the war, but dismissed them as negligible, the sort of unrest and rebellion they had all grown up with in the old country, nor wholly escaped in the new.

But now Thomas brought the incredible news that the King was losing - that his Queen and children had fled abroad - that Charles himself had surrendered to the Scots. Elizabeth and her neighbours had been astonished and concerned for a day or two, until they had decided it must be only a temporary defeat. It was impossible for the throne of England to be overturned by a commoner. Moreover, it was happening so far away, and the news six months stale, and doubtless exaggerated. When a violent north-easter blew off most of Angell Husted’s roof shingles and flattened all the tender new greens in Elizabeth’s garden, English affairs dropped from interest.

The Stamford-bound procession reached Totomack Creek where there was a rough footbridge, the boundary between Dutch and English territory. Elizabeth looked to the right, down the little cove towards the ruins of the Indian village, which had been deserted immediately after the destruction of the Siwanoys.

“I wonder where that foul Nawthorne went after Underhill paid him off,” she said to Anneke in a bitter tone. “Thank God we’re quit of him and his half-wit clan.”

“Ja,” said Anneke, without interest. “They say all the Indians who vere frightened from here fled across the Sound. You should use this land, Bess, ‘tis yours. Good fishing place. Or sell it.” They both gazed at the small sheltered cove, which had once held canoes and chattering Indians. The cove, rock-bordered, was shaded by lofty elms and maples, its dark-green waters were steaming in the heat above rich oyster beds.

Robert raised his head. “Where’re the Tomacs?” he said. “Where are their wigwams?”

Elizabeth and Anneke both started. They turned and gaped at Robert.

“Do you
remember
the Indian village, Rob?” Elizabeth said, as calmly as she could. “Do you really remember it?”

Robert blinked rapidly and let go of Elizabeth’s skirt. “To be sure I do,” he said with impatience. “Why shouldn’t I? And Nawthorne who gave me the bone necklet I gave Lisbet.”

“Hemel!” whispered Anneke. “So now vat comes! Vill it last?”

It appeared that it would. They reached the Rippowam, a tidal river, in spate so that they could not ford it. They hailed a man to ferry them over in his flatboat, and as they walked up the river path on the eastern bank Robert made several puzzled comments. “The gristmill’s running,” he said, looking at the great waterwheel below the millpond and dam. “I thought it burned down.”