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“Use snow,” said Anneke. “ ‘Tis pure enough. And the name - ” she glanced at Elizabeth’s closed eyes, her fever-red checks, her. chattering teeth. “Ve can’t ask her - so any name, Sarah vill do.”

Between them the two women baptized the baby, said the Lord’s Prayer over it - Goody Crab in English, Anneke in Dutch, and were relieved when it was done, Especially as the baby died that night. While she led her nanny-goat home again, Rebecca Husted wept bitterly, for she was young and frightened, and with child herself; but the older women thought the baby’s death a blessing, as did Will Hallet. He set at once to making a pine box for the tiny body, grateful that this last repugnant link with hideous memories should be broken for Elizabeth.

And the next day she was much better. The fever had gone; she lay spent, too weak to move, but conscious.

Anneke waited until the other women went home for a bit, then called Will upstairs. “You may see her,” she said, “but don’t speak.”

Anneke remained in the corner of the room, as Will went to the bed. She saw him gather Elizabeth very gently into his arms, and that she turned her head against his chest with a long sigh, and the pale lips curved in a faint happy smile.

Tears came into Anneke’s delft-blue eyes as she nodded to herself. It was then as she had guessed. But others must not guess. She shook her head while her practical mind outlined all the difficulties and could see no solution. Hallet must go away, she thought, as soon as Bess was strong enough to bear it, nor did she doubt that Elizabeth would agree. After so many years of friendship, Anneke well knew the Winthrop pride and sense of duty which underlay Elizabeth’s rebellions. Now too there were the children to consider, and Thomas Lyon, and Elizabeth’s standing in the community. Greenwich folk were tolerant in most ways, but they were not libertines. And there was Robert, still in Stamford, staying with the Reverend Mr. Bishop. Angell Husted had seen Robert at a distance on market day, and said that Thomas Lyon and Joan had been talking to him. Robert would be back and need his wife as always, poor man, when his present aberration was over,

Anneke determined to bid Will Hallet begone - it was hard, dreary hard, but it must be. There was no other way.

Anneke’s common sense did not, however, reckon either with Robert’s unpredictable behaviour or with the strength of William and Elizabeth’s love.

Elizabeth improved with amazing rapidity, and Anneke delayed her serious talk with Hallet, because she saw that his visits were contributing to Elizabeth’s recovery. Once the danger was passed he returned to his home, but he came each day at dusk to sit by Elizabeth’s bed for a while.

She was still in the peaceful detachment of convalescence, while her healthy body poured all its forces into recuperation, and Anneke with the girls protected her from any worrisome intrusion. She accepted the baby’s death without comment, and asked no questions either about it, or Robert. During this period - alone in the big bed while she savoured privacy as she had never known before - Elizabeth was able to believe that life was as she wanted it to be, and would continue so.

Also Will brought her books, the four that he had with him. These books were to her a revelation. Her father had owned a few volumes of sermons, but his reading, except for the Bible, had consisted of Gerard’s
Herbal.
The Winthrops had a library at Groton which had never attracted her, for the books were in Latin and had unappealing titles. Mary Winthrop, to be sure, had been a great reader of religious works and occasional histories, but Elizabeth’s active mind and body had never been subdued to the state of contemplation necessary for the enjoyment of these. Nor had she guessed that there might be reading which would yield pure enjoyment.

Will Hallet’s four books represented the crystallization of his own taste insensibly formed by the Digbys, but now entirely individual. He brought Elizabeth therefore Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s
Essais,
which he appreciated for their cool sensible astringencies. His humour was gratified by the Reverend Thomas Fuller’s
Holy and Profane State,
a collection of “Characters” wittily presented, and unlike anything Elizabeth had ever imagined.

“Can this author be a
clergyman?”
she asked in amazement one day after reading in the “Good Schoolmaster” that “the schoolmaster deserves to be beaten himself, who beats nature in a boy for a fault, - And I question whether all the whipping in the world can make their parts which are naturally sluggish, rise one minute before the hour nature has appointed.”

“Aye,” said Will smiling. “Fuller was rector of Broadwindsor in Dorset, when I got home this time. I met him often at Sherborne Castle, and admired the man. He is like John Donne who said, ‘Religion is not a melancholy, the spirit of God is not a dampe!’ “

“Did he?” said Elizabeth, wondering. She lay back on her pillows, remembering what she knew of St. Paul’s famous Dean, whom even John Winthrop had not - in those days - disapproved of. Yet how incredible a concept, confusing, topsy-turvy. Neither by precept nor example had she ever found reason to believe that religion was not a melancholy, that the Spirit of God was not a damp. Except with Anne Hutchinson, who had perhaps believed something like this, and yet in that tragic life there had been no touch of levity.

Elizabeth sighed, and then smiled at Will. “My wits are woolly,” she said. “I can’t seem to think. I can’t quite follow your Montaigne either, though he and this - ” she touched the Fuller, “are precious to me for your markings, And when you’re away from me, they bring me close to you.”

“You like
this
better?” he said, picking a small vellum-bound book from beside her pillow, “and
The Temple?”

“Both,” she said with dreamy content. “I ne’er knew poetry before, except my lute songs. Now I lie here with these two books, and they picture England, as I think she never really was, except in my brightest fancies. They help me see all beauty, the springtime and the sorrow, and the yearning which is part of something I have never known except with my gardens or at Monakewaygo - and now in your love.”

“Oh, Bess,” he said gruffly. “Fair words you speak yourself.”

Inviolate she was, imbued with a transparent simplicity which could not long endure. Far more than Anneke he dreaded the day when she would no longer be sheltered in this quiet bedroom, and the period of serene drifting must end.

“Read to me, Will,” said Elizabeth, languidly crossing her thin white arms behind her head. Looking from his face to the crackling fire, she snuggled deeper into her feather bed and gave a contented sigh.

Will laughed. “Indeed, Madam, I am yours to command. The poetry, I suppose... which shall it be?”

He had brought her two books of poetry, one a collection by John Milton, which Digby had given him on the day they parted, and had suitably inscribed. Except for the inscription, Will would not have carried it across the ocean, since it had not the appeal for him of his other books, especially
The Temple
by the Reverend George Herbert. Herbert’s spiritual poems epitomized for Will all the religious wisdom for which he occasionally strove. They combined with Montaigne’s
Essais
to voice his own philosophy. But he was not surprised that Elizabeth, more sensuously aware of image than he, preferred Milton.

“Start, ‘To hear the lark begin his flight,’ prithee,” she said smiling.

“What,
again?”
he cried in mock dismay. “Let’s try ‘Lycidas’ for a change. For sure you like the flowers in it!”

“Aye,” she said acquiescing. “I see them all as they were on a May Day morning in Groton.”

“And think how to turn them into simples for the cure of sickly folk ... I hope,” he said, teasing her and as a criticism of Milton’s floral catalogue, which he considered somewhat sugary, and was unable to visualize except as a pasture in great need of mowing.

“Nay,” she said seriously. “I see all the flowers glistening like jewels in a golden light, they remind me of something in my childhood, I can’t quite remember, a tinted glass window, I think. Read please - Will.”

He pulled the candle closer, and began –

“Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine
The white pink and the pansy freaked with jet
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head.
...”

“Hist!” she said suddenly putting her hand on his arm. “What’s ado downstairs?” She sat up clutching her chamber robe around her.

He closed the book and they listened, hearing light footsteps hurrying up the stairs. Lisbet burst in, her flaxen hair flying, her blue eyes wide with dismay. “Father’s back!” she cried, twisting her hands. “He’s fled from someone, he’s been running. He wants to see you. But he’s pulling stuff out of his chest in the lean-to, packing a sack. I don’t know what to do with him!”

Will put the book on the table by the candle and stood up. Elizabeth pushed hard against the pillows, and waited until the sickly hammering of her heart eased. “Well, tell Father to come up here then, dear,” she said as quietly as she could. “How does he seem?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl. “I was afraid when he ran in. Hannah’s with him, and the boys.”

As Lisbet went out, Will bent over Elizabeth. “I’m going to stay here,” he said. “Don’t be afraid, hinnie, there’s no need.” He glanced at the poker by the hearth, and slid near it, his wary gaze on the door.

He relaxed as Robert rushed into the chamber carrying a knapsack and looking both frightened and triumphant. He was breathing hard, his shirt was torn, and he was sweating, but no stranger would have thought him mad. He stood on the threshold looking at Hallet.

“Thanks be to Almighty God that I find you here!” said Robert. “ ‘Tis what I wanted before I leave. They’re after me to stop me. They had me locked in Mr. Bishop’s house. I got out the window. ‘Twas not truly Christian of them, when I had told them what God said.”

Could this be her husband, Elizabeth thought - husband for sixteen years, father of her children? This little middle-aged man, stout, bald, dishevelled, gazing up at Will with an intense and pathetic determination. This man whom she had pitied and feared and despised. Her head swam and her lids drooped. It was Will who questioned in a steady voice.

“Who’s after you, Feake?”

“Why, Thomas Lyon, to be sure, and others. You see they don’t want me to give you the property. The Reverend Bishop doesn’t either. For days they’ve argued with me. They treat me like a child. Which I am not.” Robert looked up into Will’s face with a certain dignity. “I know what is right to do now, though I have done so much terrible wrong. And I shall do it, no matter what they say.”

Will swallowed, startled like Elizabeth into a new recognition of Robert, wondering if they had really locked him up, or was this a delusion. “You’re safe enough now, Feake,” he said gently. “And you can talk to me, but not in here. Bess isn’t strong enough, she’s been very ill.”

“Has she?” said Robert, not looking at her. “Aye, she suffered on my account, did she not? And would again if I stayed. I had begun to hate her, but God says I must not hate her. You don’t hate her, do you, Will,
you
wouldn’t harm her?”

“No,” said Will, colour rushing up his face. “Come downstairs, Robert. You can’t talk like this here.”

“But they may be coming and you’ve not got the paper!” Robert cried, “Here, wait - ’tis here.” He fumbled in his torn shirt and brought out a scrap of paper, heavily inked with muddy cramped writing. “The maidservant brought me the materials, while I was locked in Bishop’s house.” He tendered the paper to Hallet who glanced down expecting to see some raving written there.

But there was not. It was a simple document giving to Elizabeth Feake the ownership of all Robert’s landed property and half his cash which was hid in a chest by the lean-to fireplace; moreover, William Hallet was to be co-administrator of this property, and dispose of it as he thought best for the benefit of Elizabeth Feake, her children and himself. The paper was signed “Robert Feake, Stamford, March 1647.”

Will read it twice with stupefaction. “But great God, Robert,” he said finally, speaking without restraint and as to a man in full possession of his wits. “This is fair enough to Bess if you mean to go away - in fact, generous, but there’s no reason to include me in there, let’s strike that out.”

“Nay,” Robert shook his head in the stubborn mulish way of his saner years. “ ‘Tis the way I want it. I know what’s right to do. Farewell - my friend,” he said hurriedly to Will. “I’ve taken my share o’ the money from the lean-to chest, and I’ll be off. You’ll see to the rest for me, won’t you?”

“Rob - !” cried Elizabeth, who had been watching in an anguish of indecision. She did not know what was in the paper, but she saw by a dozen signs that Robert was nearer to his normal self than he had been in years. “Rob, you can’t be off like that! Where are you going?”

At last he looked at her. Into his pale blinking eyes there came a mist, as though she were someone long dead whose memory brought dim sorrow. “Why, I’m going back to England to see how God will deal with me there!” he said. “ ‘According to this judgment shall it be done unto him,’ saith the Lord.”

“What judgment?” she whispered. “Rob, what is it that has darkened all your life, has driven you even to distraction, whatever it is, poor Rob, there’s no need to go. You’re not well enough for that hard journey.”

The poignancy of her voice struck to Will’s heart, and even penetrated Robert’s obsession.

“For sure I’m well enough,” he said slowly. “God gives me strength to suffer what I must. It was Ralph, you know, Bess, that I must suffer for. I’ve not forgot you and the children, I showed that on the paper, but that’s over, don’t you see? I’ve nothing left for you or them, ‘tis only with effort I can believe you exist.”

“You feel so now,” she said very low, “but perhaps it will change again. Robert - what is it that happened with Ralph?”

For a moment Will thought Feake would answer her, and he knew that she from decency was making a last effort to help her husband, despite all she had suffered, careless even of himself and their love.