The Hearth and Eagle (12 page)

So she stuffed the turkey with oysters and corn meal, and roasted it on a green sapling spit hung on the andiron hooks. The boiled pudding was also of corn meal, sweetened with all her remaining store of currants and enriched by Betsey’s milk. And in one of her iron pots they concocted a makeshift wassail bowl of beer and brandy and a pinch of her jealously guarded spices.

The guests arrived at noon. Thomas Gray already something unsteady on his feet, lurched over the rocks through a fine sprinkling of snow and singing at the top of his voice. “Here we come a wassailing, among the leaves so green!” He had stuck a gull feather in his monmouth cap, tied a bunch of cedar to his filthy leather doublet, and he held in his hand a fishing pole from which dangled a huge slab of dried cod.

“Merry Christmas to ’ee—mistress,” he roared at Phebe. “I’ve brought un a gooding, my best dun-fish. Twill be fine for thy belly and what’s within it.”

Phebe colored and thanked him. John Peach came in quietly, but even his melancholy eyes lightened at the sight and smell of the great turkey, golden brown on the spit.

“We maun sing—sing—sing,” shouted Thomas, helping himself from the wassail bowl and banging his mug on the table. “Raise thy voices, split uns’ gullets ’till they hear us in Salem. The sniveling pewking whoresons.”

Mark laughed and, clinking his mug against Gray’s, complied in his melodious baritone.

Wassail, wassail all over the town,
Our bread it is white and our ale it is brown—

Phebe joined in, and even Peach after a while in a whispering monotone. They sang all the verses in the old, old way, lifting their mugs and bowing to each object mentioned. For “A good crop of corn” they bowed to the drying ears by the hearth. “Here’s health to the ox,” and they bowed toward the shed where Betsey munched her Christmas ration of salt hay.

For “Here’s to the maid in lily-white smock,” they gave Phebe courtly bows. “In truth—” shouted Thomas slapping his thigh, “she’s no maid by the look of her, but we’ll greet ’ee nonetheless.”

They ate and they drank and they sang. The snow stopped and the wind roared louder. It blew from the northeast and piled the mounting breakers into the Great Harbor. The men grew still a moment, all listening. “Are the boats pulled up high enough, d’you think?” asked Mark uneasily.

“For sure they be—” answered Thomas. “This’ll be no storm. Coom sing again—we havena had ‘The Bellman,’ nor the ‘Boar’s Head,’ yet.”

But the other two men looked at each other and stood up. Peach nodded and buttoned his doublet. Mark, full of wassail and none too steady, followed the fisherman out into the cold dusk to see to the boats.

Thomas Gray promptly fell off his stool and lay on the floor snoring. Phebe began to straighten up the room.

The feast had gone well. For an hour or so they had almost captured the richness and gaiety of a real Christmas. She had thought of them at home almost in triumph, saying to them, “See, we are not so barbarous here, nor to be pitied.”

But now she saw how flimsy a shell had held their gaiety. The wind rose, and the shell was shattered. At home the rising wind meant another log on the fire, another round of punch and a heightening of snug comfort.

Here it meant danger. She pulled her cloak around her and went out into the raw bitter cold to the shed to milk Betsey. She leaned her forehead against the warm flank while her aching fingers fumbled on the teats. Thank God, the cow had proved sturdy. She did well enough on the salt hay and bran they had brought from Salem.

Above the hissing of the milk into the wooden bucket, and the increasing pound of the waves, both woman and cow heard another sound. Betsey shivered and tossed her head.

“Hush—” whispered Phebe, though the flesh on her spine crept as it always did. “The wolves can’t get at you here.”

The shed was strong, and the wolves had never yet come down on the Point; they remained near Forest River.

To soothe Betsey she began to sing the old children’s carol of “The Friendly Beasts.” Often she had heard her mother sing it to the baby.

And next Christmas, thought Phebe, will I be singing it to mine? But the baby did not seem real.

“Aye, dear God, I wish it was over,” she whispered. Her hands fell from the udder. She picked up the heavy bucket, and staggered with it back to the house. She must leave for Salem soon, if the baby were to be born there.

But on each succeeding day the journey was impossible. It could only be made by boat. Thomas Gray’s shallop had been battered, though fortunately not lost in the Christmas storm. John Peach had only a skiff too small to fight the winter gales which blew steadily through January.

On the first day of February the wind dropped at last and a glittering sunshine dazzled on the snow patches. The waters of the two harbors calmed to glancing ripples filmed along the shore by brittle ice, and Phebe knew that they might set forth for Salem.

She knew also that it was too late. An agonizing backache had awakened her at dawn. By noon she was in full labor. Mark, helpless and frightened, paced back and forth, from the bed where he clumsily smoothed her forehead and murmured endearments which she did not hear, to the kitchen where he tended a roaring fire and kept a pot of water boiling.

Boiling water he had heard was needed in childbed, but he did not know why and he knew nothing else of the procedure. He dared not leave Phebe to summon the other men, but John Peach presently came of himself to tell them he had the skiff ready.

“No good now—” Mark groaned. “Her pains are already monstrous hard. I don’t know what to do.”

A smothered cry came to them from the bedroom, and the sweat sprang out on his forehead. He ran to Phebe. She was panting, her eyes stared without recognizing him, the pupils dilated to black holes.

An hour went by and he knelt beside the bed. Sometimes she seized his hand as though it were a block of wood without life, and clutched at it so violently that his great bones cracked.

Sometimes she tore at the stout coverlet and her nails ripped gashes in the material.

At five the pains seemed to lessen a little and Phebe drowsed. There was a knock on the door. Mark opened it to see Thomas Gray and an Indian squaw.

Gray, sober for once, stepped forward. “Look ’ee, Honeywood, John Peach come to me cot saying thy good wife’s pains’re on her, and ’ee fair distraught. This squaw’s got brat of ’er own, and must know summat of birthing. So I brung ’er.”

Mark’s intense relief at the sight of a woman, any woman, was nearly eclipsed by astonishment. Only a few Marblehead Indians had remained to brave the winter, and they kept severely to themselves over by Tagmutton Cove. Nor did they allow their women to roam. This young squaw in her doeskin dress, with a mantle of beaver fur on her shoulders, was not uncomely, though her bronze skin was faintly pitted by the smallpox. She gave Mark a deprecatory smile, which showed even white teeth.

“Name’s Winny-push-me, or summat like that,” said Thomas. “I call her Winny.” As Mark still looked astonished, he added, “She’s my doxy.” He gave the squaw a pinch on her backside and she giggled.

“But Tom—it’s rash!” Mark cried. “We darn’t offend the Indians, we’re so few here—”

Thomas went to the fire and rubbed his hands. “Ah, ye needna fret. She’s widder woman, they care naught wot she do. I’ve bedded with her off and on, for better’n a year.”

A moan from Phebe recalled Mark. He took the squaw by the arm. “Go see what you can do.” The woman understood his gestures, and Mark followed her to the bed.

Phebe cried out and shrank as she saw the dark face and felt the alien hands on her, but through the red surges of renewed pain she heard Mark’s voice. “She’ll help you, sweetheart. Let her do what she will.”

Winnepashemic was a skilled midwife, a role which often fell to the tribe’s widows. She watched Phebe’s pains carefully, nodded, and produced from her bosom a leather pouch. From it she drew a sharp bone knife and a small leather thong. These she laid on the floor to be used later. She got hot water from the kitchen pot and mingled with it a powdered herb which she forced Phebe to drink. In a few minutes Phebe’s pains increased in violence and frequency. Winnepashemic nodded again, satisfied, and pulled down the blankets.

Half an hour later the baby was born. The squaw cut the cord with her bone knife and bound the stump with the thong; then she wrapped the baby in her own beaver mantle and carried it to the kitchen.

She thrust the bundle toward Mark. “Man,” she said, beaming. Mark, whose body dripped with sweat and whose hands shook, stared at her blankly, but Thomas jumped up and pulled apart the beaver wrapping.

“So it be!” he shouted. “A fine boy, red as a strawberry an’ plump as an oyster.” He clapped Mark on the shoulders. “Ye can smile now, m’ hearty young stud.”

Mark looked at the baby, at the smiling faces of the fisherman and the squaw. He mopped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and went in to Phebe, walking on tiptoe. In his great chest was a hard fear. The sound of her screams was still in his ears.

She lay so quiet and flat on the bed that his mouth went dry and he could not speak. Then he saw her drowsy lids lift, and she too smiled at him.

“No need to fear, Mark—” she said dreamily. Her smile seemed to come from secret distance. But she saw his need and made greater
effort.
“It’s all over. Aren’t you content we’ve a fine boy?”

“But Phebe—it w-was fearful. I thought—thought—”

He fumbled for her hand, clumsy in his pity, and amazed that she could smile that little secret smile.

“Aye—” she squeezed his hand, quieting his restless fingers, “it was bad, bad as I always feared. But I got through it—and the babe. We’re strong.”

He was humbled by the triumphant pride in her last words. He saw her exalted, and far from him. Nor did he know that above the natural triumph of accomplished childbirth, she had private cause to exult. Though her next words might have given him clue.

“You won’t mind, Mark, if we name him Isaac?”

“Isaac?” he repeated. He had thought, in the few times he thought of it at all, that the baby if a boy would be Mark again, or perhaps for her father—Joseph. Isaac? Isaac Allerton. His frown cleared. It would be fine compliment to the man who had settled them here, it would increase his interest in them when he finally arrived himself.

“For Master Johnson,” she said softly. “Please.” During the hours past, the pain had wiped out all thought of anything but itself. She had not thought of her mother, she had not thought of God. She had been as beastlike as Goody Carson on the ship. But now she knew that did not matter. And since it had finished she had felt the Lady Arbella near her, smiling a happy smile.

Mark was not pleased, but he could deny her nothing now. And later, if he cautioned her to silence, Mr. Allerton would believe the boy named for him. Mark bent over and kissed Phebe on the mouth.

In the September of 1636, Phebe, dressed in her crimson farrandine and bridal cap and neckwear of the Mechlin lace, hurried along the Harbor Lane to Redstone Cove, as eager as little Isaac for the day’s festivity. The child danced with excitement and she held him tightly by the hand or he would have darted on ahead and maybe soiled the new suit she had made him from her blue serge gown. Yet, were it not for the cooing baby she carried on her left arm Phebe felt she might have run and danced like Isaac.

The sun warm and golden as brandy poured down from an azure sky, but it was not too hot. A small crisp breeze blew down the harbor, and the Neck had moved so near in the September air, it seemed a reaching hand might touch the massed green trees across the water.

“There she be—there’s the ship!” shouted the child. Phebe nodded and smiled, and paused to look a moment before scrambling down among the rocks to find a sitting place for the launching.

There she was, finished at last, the pride of all Marblehead. A great fair ship, one hundred and twenty tons burden, the largest yet built in the colony as Mark so often boasted. Fully rigged, she poised lightly on the ways like a black swan, and across her stern ran her name in glowing red letters,
Desire.
Ah yes—well named, thought Phebe, settling herself on a rock and spreading her crimson skirts. For more than a year the village had centered its hopes and dreams upon this ship. And Mark more than any of the others.

She saw him now leaning against the taffrail on the high poop deck, talking to Jemmie White and John Bennet, and they all held mugs in their hands. He waved to her and shouted—“Hulloa—Phebe, I’ll be right down to you. Does the boy know his part?”

She waved back, and made little Isaac wave. As the first child born in Marblehead, he had been appointed to christen the vessel. As the son of a man of consequence too, thought Phebe proudly. Mark had thrown himself heart and soul into this venture, and contributed every penny he had and labor too, working day after day with the other men on the sturdy oak hull. He dreamed of his share of the profits from her cargoes, and he announced that he had found his real profession at last. He would be shipwright and owner.

He had, during these six years of their settlement here, done fairly well at the fishing; he had his own shallop and his own fish flakes at the foot of his land on Little Harbor, but Isaac Allerton’s larger projects had never been realized. True, Allerton came to Marblehead and established his fishing stage, but soon the remote little settlement bored him, there was small scope for his ambitions, and then misfortunes beset him, his house burned down, and the
White Angel
was lost with all her cargo. He became morose and restless, and in 1635, having deeded all his Marblehead property to his son-in-law, Moses Maverick, Master Allerton disappeared in the direction of the New Haven Colony, and Massachusetts knew him no more. Then Mark had said “Good riddance,” feeling that he had misjudged Allerton’s worth, and having in any case small interest in working for someone else.

How many changes here, in how short a time, thought Phebe. Eleven women now in Marblehead besides herself, and twenty-eight men, and the children. She looked down at the sleeping baby on her lap, small Mark. His birthing had been aided by Dorcas Peach, a jolly stout widow from Saugus, suddenly and surprisingly married by the melancholy young fisherman, John Peach. And the birthing had been easy, very different from that of Isaac.