The Hearth and Eagle (7 page)

“Oh to be sure, sir—” she stammered, turning scarlet. The minister nodded and continued to walk. Phebe followed silently, striving against dismay. On her father’s land these dwellings would not have been thought fit to house the swine.

They came to a clearing of uneven grassy ground and near this clearing there were three wooden houses. The largest was two stories high and fairly built with windows and gables, almost like those at home. It was the Governor’s house.

John Endicott met them on his stone doorstep and spoke a few gruff words of welcome, but he seemed out of temper, a sharp frown between his bushy brows, his pointed beard waggled irritably. For he was Governor no longer, as he had yesterday discovered upon the arrival of the
Arbella
with the royal charter, and his successor, John Winthrop.

“You’d best return to your ship,” he said, “till your new Governor lands and can regulate your proceedings. We’ve little food or shelter for you now and there is much sickness.”

Even Mark’s enthusiasm was quenched by this, and after further consultation between Endicott, the ministers and the
Jewell’s
master, the new arrivals trailed disconsolately back to the ship. So Phebe and Mark slept again in the cramped cabin they had foolishly thought to have seen for the last time.

The first day on shore was filled with a feverish activity. When the
Arbella
had been warped up to the town dock near the
Jewell,
the great folk on board, the new Governor, the Saltonstalls, the Phillips, all moved majestically down the gangplank ahead of its lesser passengers. Phebe watched eagerly for the Lady Arbella, until she landed last of all, walking slowly, her tall figure swathed in the fur-lined cloak, though the day was warm. She was leaning on the arm of
a
tall, fair young man who was her husband, Mr. Isaac Johnson.

Phebe drew back shyly as the lady passed, but Arbella noticed her, and smiled with great sweetness. “Why, it’s Mistress Honeywood, Isaac, I told you of her.” She held out her hand. “How was the journey, my dear?”

Phebe took the thin white hand and curtsied. “I thought it would never end, milady, but now I scarce remember it, there’s so much to do here.”

Arbella nodded. Her blue eyes wandered past Phebe to the dusty lane which disappeared amongst the trees by the first earthen dugout. “ ’Tis good to be on land,” she said vaguely. “I’ll soon gain strength again.” This was to her husband, and Phebe saw the quick anxiety in his eyes.

“To be sure you will.” He clasped the hand which rested on his arm. “Do you know where we’re to go?” he asked of Phebe. “Governor Winthrop was to return for us, but he must have been detained.”

“Oh yes, sir, they’ve prepared a fair wood house for you, down by the green, ’twas built last year by some gentleman of Mr. Higginson’s party—at least,” she added, her lips indenting with a rueful humor, “it’s a fair enough house for Salem.”

Isaac nodded, and she thought how much alike those two were, both tall and fine-drawn, both informed with an idealistic courage.

“We don't look for a castle in the wilderness,” he said. “Will you guide us, mistress?”

Phebe gladly complied, but as she trudged up the path ahead of them her heart was troubled. They did not expect a castle, but did they expect the hardships and the actual hunger which already Phebe had discovered in Salem. This morning when filling a pot with water for the cleansing of their garments, she had talked with a gaunt middle-aged woman near the spring. Goodwife Allan acted half-crazed as she told of the previous winter; the wolves, the savages, the bitter bitter cold, the hunger and the sickness and fear. Her high thin voice whined through her drawn lips as though against its will. She had no pity, nor desire to frighten, either. It seemed she could not stop from touching again and again like a festering tooth the horror of her memories. And Phebe could not get away, for the woman followed her about until another woman came and spoke sharply.

“Hold your tongue, Goody. 'Tis cruel to so frighten the young mistress here,” and turning to Phebe she spoke lower. “Her two babes died this winter. She returns to England when the fleet goes—and so do I.”

Home to England—! Phebe had clamped her mind down hard against the great leap of longing and envy she had felt, and hope too. Surely Mark would soon see how different all was from his expectation.

Yet now, watching the Lady Arbella and her husband, she felt some shame for her own faint heart.
They
would never falter, thought Phebe proudly, nor turn back home in fear and failure.

Governor Winthrop came hurrying across the green to meet them, and Phebe curtsying and drawing aside noted the Lady’s gracious words, how she praised the beauty of the countryside, and even praised the compactness of the rough-planked two-room house which had been prepared for her.

The Governor and Mr. Johnson plunged at once into frowning consultation, and Phebe, warm from Arbella’s smile of thanks, slipped away, back down the lane to the South River. A hundred yards up the slope from the Landing Place, near to the Burial Point—Mark had found them a shelter. He had bought it for a barrel of meal from one of the men who wished to leave Salem. It was twelve feet long and eight wide, made from a sapling frame; the walls and roof were of woven rushes and pine bark. Its floor was the ground, its door a single batten of hewn oak planks, and its end fireplace of piled field stones cemented with fish-shell lime provided the only daylight through its wide square chimney.

It had been copied like its fellows from an Indian wigwam. It was dark and damp and smoky, but it was shelter.

Aye—but how will it be alone here—she thought, entering the wigwam to start their supper preparations, and the new trouble which the sight of Arbella had momentarily banished came back to plague her. For Mark was leaving her to sail southward with Governor Winthrop and most of the company and search for better lands.

At no time had Winthrop considered permanent settlement of his company in Salem, but he had found physical conditions far worse than he expected, nor were spiritual matters to his liking. The ministers Higginson and Skelton had unaccountably changed during their year here. They had come over as Puritans, averring their loyalty to the Mother Church and interested only in freeing her from certain forms of Papist corruption.

Had not Mr. Higginson upon taking the last sight of England a year ago cried, “Farewell the Church of God in England, and all the Christian friends there. We do not go to New England as Separatists from the Church of England—but we go to practise the positive part of Church reformation, and propagate the gospel in America.”

And yet upon his arrival in Salem, Winthrop found that these same ministers had adopted the congregational polity and affiliated themselves with the Separatist Church at Plymouth. And so strict in conscience had they become that Winthrop’s company, being no members of the Salem Church, were not even invited to worship with them on the Lord’s Day.

There were besides many jealousies; the earlier settlers under Endicott and the ministers felt themselves dispossessed by new authority, just as Roger Conant and his settlers had been literally dispossessed, in 1628, by the arrival of Endicott.

So Winthrop would sail again tomorrow on the
Arbella
to explore Massachusetts Bay and decide on a more welcoming site for the new settlement. Most of the male passengers would accompany him, and Mark too of course, already impatient with Salem, but ever hopeful and eager for more adventuring.

I must be reasonable, thought Phebe, sighing, I can manage alone for a time. She moved around the wigwam trying to make it more homelike. Though all the
Jewell’s
freight had not yet been unloaded, the Honeywoods had found some of their household gear, and together carried it to the wigwam. There were blankets to sleep on, the two chests of clothing, a skillet and spoon, and an iron pot which Phebe, feeling very housewifely, hung from the green lugpole left by the earlier tenant. And there were the andirons. They gave an incongruous and elegant air to the rough Indian fireplace, and Mark had been impatient with her insistence that they must be used. But when their first fire blazed and they sat down on the blankets to eat, he admitted that they were sturdy, well-made dogs and did better than the stones the other new settlers were using.

They supped that night on pease porridge and a large catfish which Mark had caught in the river. And they had beer, bought with one of the precious shillings, from a sailor on the
Arbella.
But the shillings were not so precious here, Phebe had soon realized—only to those who were returning to England. Here nothing mattered but food.

It had not occurred to Mark that she might be short of food during his absence, since they had brought barrels of pickled meat, flour, and pease, but already Phebe had seen enough of the conditions to realize the vital importance of conserving supplies as long as possible—in case they stayed long. Always that reservation whispered in her heart.

But there were wild strawberries in the woods, and mussels and clams at low tide for the picking.

“You’ll not be frightened to be alone, Phebe?” said Mark suddenly, seeing her pensive. “I’ll be back soon. You know how little I wish to leave you—but I must.”

“I know dear—” she said gendy, for she saw that he was shaken from the bustle of novelty and action which had made him thoughtless, and that there was anxious awareness of her in his eyes. “No, I won’t be frightened. Why, I can see the ships from our doorway, and then there are all the other folk—so near.”

“The Lady Arbella—” he said with a curt laugh. “I vow you dote upon her noble ladyship. I never thought to find you so fawning—God’s blood, Phebe—it’s to be rid of such as her, I quitted England!”

She had been sitting beside him in the bed-roll, and now she rose and walked away from him to the doorway. “It has nothing to do with her rank, Mark.” She spoke with coldness and dignity.

“What is it then?” he asked in a quieter tone, standing up beside her.

She could not answer. Never had she found it easy to speak of the secret things in her mind. The Lady Arbella was like a shining silken banner for the humble heart to follow. She was beauty, she was courage, and she was England here on this alien and unfriendly soil. Mark would never understand that, nor need to. He needed no symbol to strengthen him.

She shook her head. “I cannot say.”

But Mark was no longer attending; he had forgotten his question in watching the curve of her rosy cheek, and the roundness of her neck and bosom. He picked her up and sat down with her on his knee, where he held her fast, pulled off her cap and tossed it in the corner, rumpled and loosened her smooth brown hair.

“Not so solemn, sweetheart—” he whispered. “We must be merry in our fine new home.”

She resisted at first, being still grieved by their difference. But he began to caress her playfully, teasing her with mock anger, kissing away her protests until at last he had her laughing too and as eagerly amorous as he.

The
Arbella
and Governor Winthrop came back in a few days, he having decided to gather up his company and establish a temporary settlement at Charlestown. It was not an ideal site since the peninsula was small and the water supply very scanty, but it would serve as a base for further exploration.

Phebe had been bitterly disappointed that Mark had not also returned to Salem. He had however sent her a letter which was delivered to her wigwam by a friendly sailor.

She carried the letter inside her dwelling and stared at it with a mixture of apprehension, embarrassment, and pride. Mark knew—or had he forgotten—that she could not read—that was an accomplishment deemed useless to a yeoman’s daughter. She turned the half-sheet of folded paper, admiring the red seal stamped with a small signet, and guessed that he, never backward in fulfilling his impulses, had borrowed all from one of the great folk on board.

At last she broke the seal and stared at the lines of cramped and blotted writing:

“Swete wife be not vext I linger too finde us setlment. Ther is muche to see but the peple are not so as we ded expect. Ther is good stor of feishe but harde to come bye and not enuf provisseyenes.

Bee stout harted.

Thy lovinge husband
M. Hunywood.”

She followed each word with her finger, her brows drawn together. Almost she got the sense of it, but she was not sure. A certainty born of love told her that here was no particular bad news, and that he had written the letter so that she might have an immediate token of him, and for this she bent her head and kissed the paper. But it was exasperating not to know precisely the meaning.

She considered a while, then nodded her head with decision. There was but one person in Salem who could read the letter, yet who would not smile at it or Phebe’s ignorance, one person to whose delicacy of understanding one would not shrink from exposing intimacy.

Phebe took the hearth shovel, dug into the earth in the corner of the wigwam, and pulled from its hiding place the key of her bride chest. This and Mark’s oaken chest stood in the wigwam with the precious provisions.

She drew out her best dress, a soft crimson gown with slashed sleeves, made of a silk-and-wool fabric newly fashionable in England, called farandine. She put on her wedding ruff and cuffs made of cobweb lawn trimmed with Mechlin lace, and she rejoiced that the day being so mild, she might dispense with the heavy hooded serge cloak which had done hard duty on the ship and was her only outer garment. Before donning her best lace-trimmed cap, she pulled her hair forward into loose ringlets about her ears and examined the effect in a small steel looking glass.

Then she set forth up the road toward the common, happy in the feminine consciousness of being suitably dressed for her visit. Not so elegant as to affront the gentry, nor in coarse sad-colored clothes like the goodwives and maid servants.

The weather was very hot, warmer than it ever was in England, and the lane was dusty. Soon she came to the village “green,” no green now but a square of trodden earth and brownish stubble. Some women clustered as usual around the well, gossiping while they drew water for their households. At the other end near the stocks—unoccupied today—three young men played at stool ball, ceasing frequently for thirst-quenching at the Ordinary near by. Idleness like this was naturally frowned upon by the magistrates, but the return of the
Arbella
and Governor Winthrop’s intent to remove all his settlers had relaxed supervision.