The Maidenhead (7 page)

For a moment there was only the silence of the great forest. Then he said, "You get what you give.” His eyes were empty. “And in the end, you give what you take."

He resumed paddling. His eyes had a faraway gaze. His manner was so remote that she decided silence was in her best interest, after all.

But not quite just yet. She felt that her suffering belonged to her alone, and she wasn’t about to let a lawyer full of words get the last one. "Yew may have taken yewrself a wife, but it 'pears to me that I am the one doing all the giving. To have to work like an indentured servant the rest of me life in a rathole of a frontier settle—”

"—with willing hands and faithful heart," he reminded her with a black look that this time did silence her.

At length, when the western sun was balancing on the tips of spiraling pines and the parasol spread of ancient oaks, she sighted a long pier with a wharfhouse at its tip. A path of crushed oystershell led up through ragged grass to a clearing plowed with crops. On a hill were clustered several houses of various sizes.

Mad Dog banked the canoe and, collecting his flintlock, strode on up the path.

She grabbed her portmanteau and hurried to catch up with him. So tall was he that the top of her coif came only to his chest. She had to double step in order to match his lengthy stride.

The main house was constructed of oak slabs chinked with mud and reinforced with moss and roofed with cypress shingles. She followed him inside.

The place had the clean smell of new wood. And it even had a floor, a puncheon floor of split pine. By squinting, she could tell that the window frames were weather-tight. The room’s furnishings were sparse—a ladder-back chair with rushing seat, a pine settle, and a short stool, not counting the long board table, of course.

The fireplace was of goodly size with an oven built into its wall. A lugpole with a variety of hooks, chains, and trammels hanging from it stretched across its mouth. A shovel, tongs, and a pair of bellows were piled at one edge of the stone hearth, and around its rim were heaps of cooking equipment: ladles, saucepans, skillets, pots, cauldrons, and the like.

She smiled. She hadn’t done too badly for herself for the meanwhile, but she wondered how her other matchmaking attempts had fared.

“You can put your things in the bedroom.” He nodded at another doorway that opened on what looked like a lean-to. ‘"Tis the original cabin I built of logs when first I came to the colony. There's a double chest—"

She supposed she should have expected him to get around to this matter sooner or later. She set her portmanteau on the board table, put her hands on her hips, and nodded toward the bedroom. “Yew be wanting a wee one anon?"

His mouth quirked again, she wasn’t certain whether with laughter or contempt. Or mayhap both. He lounged against the entrance doorframe. Its tall lintel didn’t even clear his head. “Well, now, you have agreed to be my wife, and I do not recall any stipulation such as the one you arranged for the Lady Clarissa and her husband, Reverend Dartmouth."

"How did yew find out about that?"

“Thorough investigation was part of my training in reading law.”

She wondered how much else he knew about her. Had he learned about her nocturnal enterprise back in London? "I’d be pleased if yew’d tell me just wot me duties be."

"They’re not that taxing. Be prepared for Juana to— ”

"Juana? Another wife?"

At that, he grinned. "Hardly. Juana is as old as the bogs. A Spanish colonist who more than a decade ago was captured by the Arrohattoc. Even though she’s free now, she prefers the forest creatures to society's creatures. When the whim takes her, she might drop in. To cook, clean, or just to sit in silence and dip snuff. So you will have occasional help during the day."

"And by night?"

He straightened, careful to duck his head, and crossed back to her. He stared down at her. “My God,” he muttered, "we’re both dreading this.”

"Wot!” she screeched. "I got me pride. Yew think bedding with me is bothersome. How do yew think I feel about yew, a savage straight out of the forest?"

He frowned, tugged at his earlobe. "I think we had best get this over with now."

“Yew’re mad!"

His eyes were slivers of silver. "Aye."

He scooped her up against him, and she knew her whole world had gone mad.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"'Tis broad daylight!" She protested as she stood beside the bedstead and glared at him. Her shaven head and bare feet disconcerted Mad Dog. Her feet were so small, with tiny toes. Without her hair, she was all ears and eyes. But those features appeared delicate. She seemed but a child. A small, defiant boy.

"’Tis no matter." He set about unlacing her bodice with the air of a man committed to work little relished. His high-top moccasins were already draped over her discarded peasant’s pattens and buckled shoes on the bedroom hearth.

She sighed. “Here, let me.” She slapped away his hands. "Yewr fingers are as thick as sausages.” She turned her back to him and drew off her dress.

He began tugging his deer hide tunic over his head. She faced the other way. Late afternoon light spilled through the open window onto her thin shoulders. Her fingers fumbled with her new petticoat’s points. “Do not tell me thou comes by thy name Modesty honestly.”

“I swear yew bloody well come by yewr honestly.”

He reached around her and jerked on the ties. Her petticoat dropped to the floor. She stood clothed only in her plain smock. Visions flitted through his mind’s-eye of ladies of the French court bedecked in all their enticing underclothes: the four-foot-wide farthingale that concealed the seductive curve of a hip, the corset that pushed up and thrust out the breasts, the multitude of lacy petticoats, the frilly smock, and lastly the fetching drawers, which English maidens, thank God, did not wear.

He took her by her shoulders and turned her to face him. "Thou art a virgin?"

“Find out.”

Her wide, unappealing mouth was as rebellious and disapproving as a puritan’s. But she sure as hell was no puritan. “I mean to."

Which wasn't true at all. He didn’t have the slightest idea how to proceed with this recalcitrant woman. Any maiden he had taken to bed had been as impassioned as he. Here he was with his wife, God help him, and neither he nor she had the slightest inclination to fulfill their marital obligations.

He had really shot himself in the foot this time. For the opportunity of revenge, small though it was, and an additional fifty acres, he had taken on this misbegotten creature.

"Look, the longer we postpone this, the more difficult 'tis going to be,” he said.

Those damnable eyes continued to glare at him.

He tried again. "Just what dost thou suggest I do? Take two wives? Take a mistress?"

“Give up sex.”

Her frankness shocked him. “I’m not ready for that just yet."

"I didn’t think so." She chewed on her bottom lip. "I suppose as long as we are married, we might as well make the best of it. I suggest"— she paused, and he would have sworn she blushed—"I suggest yew hold me hand first. Yew know, like yew see those gents doing with the ladies in the plays at the Globe.”

"I truly am mad.” But he bowed low. "Mad Dog Jones at thy service, my lady."

Her giggle startled him. He looked up to see a dimple at either side of her pale mouth. She dipped a deep curtsey, holding to one side the hem of her cambric smock. “Thou art more gallant than Galahad, sire."

"You are surprisingly good at mimicking.”

She shrugged. "I cannot kiss yew if yew'll not bend down yewr head a bit."

‘"Tis my pleasure to attend a maid whose beauty eclipses the sun.” He had said the wrong thing, he realized instantly. Both of them knew she was no beauty. Never would be. In the silence that followed, he felt foolish.

She was studying him with earnest eyes. “'Twon't work, will it? Me idea of pretending. Oh well, as yew said, let’s get this business over with. We’ll both feel easier for it."

She pulled back the covers and climbed onto the mattress, which he had stuffed with rags, cornhusks, and bits of wool. Watching her bottom wiggle beneath her thin cambric, he astonished himself by feeling a suddenly hot and elemental urgency.

Carefully, he unbuttoned the flap that covered his painfully sensitive erection and stepped out of his trousers. He slid beneath the covers to lie beside her. She lay on her back, her eyes squinched closed, her hands folded across her breasts. She looked like some sacrificial virgin. The image didn’t befit what he knew about her, and was hardly encouraging.

His mind said to tell her to go to hell and then ride to Henrico’s Bloody Bucket to down a tankard of ale. But his body clamored for a relief that it had gone without for over a year.

She opened one eye and peered at him. “If yew don’t do something quick-like, I shall—"

"Will you shut up?" He pulled her against and half under him. There was no pretense on his part that he was engaged in lovemaking. As for her, she made no effort at pretending she was eager to please him. There was a certain dignity in her animosity.

Her hands clenched his shoulders as his knee spread her thighs. He entered her. There was no resistance of the maidenhead. He had expected none. Still, there was something curiously untutored about the way she moved beneath him. It was as if her body were trying to understand his.

His body responded, and he murmured inchoate phrases. Some grand, delicate balance was being created between him and her as they performed the assuagement of desire, the gesture of creation. He knew they were powerfully alive to each other, which was most strange.

And then he knew nothing in that brief moment of self-loss. Some moments afterward, he lay still upon her, trying to restore his breathing, to restore his sanity. His pleasure had been great, his relief extravagant. He dared to look at her. The way the sun shafted through the window . . . were her eyes glistening with tears?

His fingertips traced both sides of her jaw; then he tilted her head up and kissed her lightly. “’Twill be easier the next time.” His words sounded awkward. Who would have ever guessed he had been the most gifted of speakers to come before the Star Chamber?

Wriggling from beneath him, she yanked the cover up over her meager breasts. “That will be a comfort.”

Her truculent tone annoyed him. A tough little wench, she was. He rose.

As he tugged on his trousers, she asked, “Wot is yewr given name? 'Tis difficult to call yew Mad Dog in bed.”

"You may call me by any name you desire. I only require that you come when I call you. Any other questions?"

“Aye. Where be me Jack?"

Chapter Seven

Rose laid her hand atop her stomach and felt the baby move. A little fist? Or a squirmy kick? Mentally she tallied the months left. Three, mayhaps four.

Fortunately, one of the two gowns provided by the Company had a high-waisted basque bodice, so she did not have to worry about letting out the seams of the brown moreen material. The poplin bertha concealed her breasts that seemed to grow fuller by the day.

A "peeping” sound brought her attention back to Bartholomew, wedged in the pew with his five-year-old brother between herself and Walter. The seven-year-old was tall for his age and had inherited his father’s warm brown eyes.

Bart sat quietly, listening to Reverend Dartmouth read from the Common Book of Prayer, but she noted a mischievous gleam in the lad’s eyes. Her own narrowed in inspection of her stepson, noted his knotted hand. With seemingly rapt face turned upward to the pulpit, she pried open the boy’s hand to find a wooden bird whistle. She gave him a conspiratorial wink, which made him giggle. Nevertheless, she relieved him of his toy – bestowed by none other than Mad Dog Jones.

Three weeks earlier, she, her new husband, Bart, and Isaac had traveled to the fall line and the cabin of that wild man Mad Dog Jones to plead Modesty’s case. How forbidding he was, listening to the message for help she had conveyed from Modesty. And its queer terms. All the while, he had said nothing. Only listened. And whittled.

When she had finished, Mad Dog had merely replied,
“I  ‘l l
think upon it,” and handed fidgety Bart the bird whistle he had been carving.

That small kindness had touched her, as had the gallantry of the man’s bondservant. Though he had been scything a field, he had paused to doff his straw hat as she passed by.

Rose, Walter, and the boys had been outside, preparing to climb aboard the lumbersome ox cart. The bondservant had knelt, offering her his knee as a step-up, and had said, “If Sir Walter Raleigh could do this for his queen, can I do less for a queenly mother?"

Imagine, her, Rose Crackston—no, Rose Bannock now—an ordinary country girl, being treated so chivalrously. She was quite certain that the bondservant, Jack Holloway, was a man of integrity, of noble heart, despite the stories circulating that he was a felon.

Services, held in the old Thomas Dale Church, were almost over, which today would be a relief. Not an eddy of air stirred in the hot, sticky, late August morning. Fortunately, the Lady Clarissa’s husband, despite his normal reserve, was on Sundays a lively pastor who had a sense of drama.

Rose looked forward all week to these Sundays, when the men could socialize and conduct business, the women chat, and friends extend dinner invitations. Sunday attendance was mandatory in the colony unless no church was available, and then home readings from the Common Book of Prayer were expected.

Outside the church, the townspeople were already gathering: giving and receiving letters of business, reading advertisements, consulting about the price of tobacco and grain, and settling either the lineage, age, or qualities of favorite horses, for horse racing was an obsession with the colonists. Just as gambling was a ritual activity.

Isaac, no longer constrained by public censure, took off running, his arms spread wide, and then performed a cartwheel that landed him up against old Clem, the cowherder. "Whoa, lad,” Clem said, picking up the boy and smacking the dirt from the seat of his knee breeches.

The old man’s hooked nose almost touched his jutting chin. The children made fun of his contorted features, but children and adults alike delighted in listening to him play his German flute and in listening to his stories about the Pitch and Tar Swamp, where alligators devoured men alive and quicksand swallowed cows whole and mysterious lights guided lost souls out of molasses-like marshes.

The five-year-old cocked a crooked grin for old Clem and scampered away before Rose could bridle her stepson. "Isaac," she called, "don’t go far.”

Walter appeared unable to cope with the boys. She suspected he was still overwhelmed by the death of his wife two years before.

“Friend Bannock," John Rolfe called, crossing the churchyard to greet them.

It was at this same church that Rolfe's first wife, the Indian princess Pocahontas, had been converted to Christianity and baptized. After her death in England, Rolfe had returned to Henrico and last year married Joane Perce, granddaughter of the Earl of Northumberland and daughter of Henrico’s Lieutenant Percy.

Although Rolfe was only thirty-seven, his shoulders were bowed by rheumatism. A curious power gave grandeur to the nondescript man, so that he reminded Rose of a biblical patriarch.

Walter had told her that the local planter was well respected in the colony, and had succeeded in crossing purloined Spanish tobacco with the hardy native species.

Beneath her palm, Rose could feel her husband’s arm tighten. Idle conversation was difficult for him. "Good morrow, Ma—Master Rolfe."

Joane, a frumpish little woman who contrasted with Rolfe’s sticklike anatomy, said farewell to a friend and joined her husband. "Mistress Bannock, I’ve been intending to talk with you. Now that you have settled in at Falling Brook, the ladies in our quilting bee would have you join us."

Rose had been considered an outsider by the Henrico women, but now she knew that judgment had been passed on her and she had been found acceptable. "I thank thee, Mistress Rolfe. I liked Henrico and Falling Brook the moment I first saw them.

Falling Brook was little more than a cluster of ironworkers’ huts on the outskirts of Henrico. She had learned from the settlers that the community had been named for the late Prince Henry. Sitting on a hill of a peninsula overlooking the James, Henrico had three streets of well framed houses, a few storehouses, the church, and a tavern. The townspeople had already laid plans for a more stately church, a hospital to be called Mount May Lady, and even a university, by setting aside 10,000 acres.

Rose knew she could make a home for herself here. Here, she had a purpose. Walter and the boys needed her, as would her baby.

“I too have been awaiting the opportunity to talk with you about the House of Burgesses," Rolfe said to Walter.

Rose had heard that Rolfe had been elected last year to serve as Colonial Secretary for the General Assembly. “Henrico needs two burgesses to represent it this coming year at the General Assembly," Rolfe continued, “and I and Reverend Dartmouth, the incoming governor’s new chaplain, would like to put up your name as one of them.”

"Why—why me?”

Rose was as startled as her husband, but pleased that Rolfe would recognize in Walter a good man. She felt fortunate. Walter was truly considerate of her, helping her with those household chores she found difficult in her cumbersome condition.

“We are sorely lacking men of the gentry to represent us, men of your fine qualifications,” Rolfe said. “A man who is both a businessman and a family man."

“Well, I don—don’t know," Walter began, his bald pate turning red.

“Mayhap Master Bannock would like to think about it, John,” Joane said kindly.

“Of course, of course." He clapped Walter on the shoulder. “Reverend Dartmouth will be coming by to see you, I am sure. If I can’t persuade you, I am hoping he can."

Rose rounded up the boys, and they all started toward home, a cabin abandoned by one of the men who had been employed at the nearby iron works and furnace and who had decided to go back to England.

She waited until after the boys took off their Sunday-meeting clothes, changed into yellow nankeen breeches and linen shirts, and ran outside to play before she broached the subject of which Rolfe had spoken earlier.

She was squatting before the fireplace to check on the samp porridge, cornmeal she had mixed with beef and various root vegetables. She had been cooking it slowly for three days, and knew it would be ready when she could lift it like a loaf of bread from the iron bake kettle. “I think ye would be a good burgess, Walter."

He put aside her garden hoe he was sharpening and crossed to her. “Here, let me help— help you." He took the heavy kettle by its handle and shifted it from the fire to the banked embers off to one side.

He was on eye level with her now. "I have heard ye talk about the need for a better road to connect the settlements," she said. "And a gristmill. And our own militia to replace the soldiers who come and go from England with no real care for our safety."

Was it the fire that flushed his cheeks? "Ye know—know I can't talk—talk as good as I sh— should."

“Ye do when it is something ye feel strongly about." She touched his wrist. "Like when ye talk to me in bed at night. . . about your big plans for your sawmill, about your dreams for Bart and Isaac.”

His fingers rubbed at his ragged mustache. "Me and the wife, that was the ti—time we liked to talk be—best." If his cheeks were flushed before, they could have caught fire now.

"Walter, ye have yet to kiss me," she said, feeling suddenly shy and quite the virginal maiden.

He rose quickly. “Best check the animals afore dark.”

With wistful eyes, she watched him go. Did he still love his first wife?

Though not educated, Rose possessed a clarity of mind that came from one contented with a simple lot. But more and more, she was given to asking herself why, when all she wanted was to give a heart overflowing with love, she seemed to attract the very people who did not want to love?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Though it was midday, the cabin’s thin horn- scraped windows offered scant light. Clarissa took the pick from the mantel and pulled out the betty lamp’s wick to make the grease bum brighter. Accustomed to scented candles and glass windows, she found herself floundering in this backwoods hamlet.

Her father was a Dutch banker who had inherited an English title. Her mother had been a beauty who had seen to it that Clarissa was taught early to dance, sing, and play the clavichord like a professional. She knew that she would as soon commit suicide if she thought she had to live in this cultureless land of simpletons forever.

She thought of her silver, glassware, and books still unpacked in her trunk, a symbol of her determination to cling to hope. But as the weeks passed, she lost her confidence that she would ever see Nigel again. She saw that confidence as childish folly. Virginia was as big as a hundred Englands. It stretched far beyond the knowledge of man, white or Indian.

The rap at the door brought her back to reality. She lifted the door’s latch to find Sally staring up at her with awe. The eight-year-old held a fire scoop. She grinned, showing a missing front tooth. "Ma sent me over to borrow a few hot coals.”

“Come in.” Clarissa stood aside and let the redheaded urchin enter. Taking the fire scoop from Sally, she crossed to the hearth.

"Ma forgot to bank the embers with ashes last night,” Sally prattled, "and no amount of puffing and fanning is going to get any spark to blaze again.”

Clarissa used the tongs to pluck a few hot coals from the fireplace and put them into the scoop.

"Pa would be in a real tizzy if he’d known Ma had gone and forgotten," Sally volunteered.

"Well, we cannot have that, can we?" Clarissa looked at the girl, really looked at her. She was dressed in a long muslin over-blouse and a calico skirt and was barefoot.

Sally saw her looking and wiggled her dirty toes nervously.

Clarissa recalled how cheerless her own childhood had been. Great stress had been put upon an erect carriage, and she had been systematically tortured to achieve it. She had sat for a couple of hours every day strapped to boards to keep her from slumping. She had been forced to wear stays with needles built into them to prick her tired little waist when she relaxed for an instant. And she had been made to walk about balancing books on her head for poise. Even as a child, she had worn all of the panoply of her mother, including hoops, heels, and masks.

What would it be like to go barefoot?

After Sally scampered out, Clarissa headed for her retreat, a rustic bench of bent hickory saplings placed in the alcove of a grape arbor at the side of the cabin. As usual, the sweet smell of honeysuckle beckoned her beyond the arbor.

A few days after her arrival at Henrico, she had discovered the arbor, its rustic bench, and the honeysuckled arch which led to an almost hidden path through bramble and thickets down to a secluded section of the riverbank carpeted with budding raspberries.

Glancing around to make certain she wasn’t observed, she sat down on the bench, removed her red-heeled shoes and, rolling down her garters, peeled off her fine stockings, edged with stiff lace. Like Sally, she wriggled her toes in the tufts of grass. "Mmmm."

Then, collecting her stocking-stuffed shoes, she plowed through the honeysuckle vines and gingerly picked her way through the thicket to the bottom of the hill. A small breeze ruffled the water. She stared across the broad river at the black wall of forest on the other bank. It was so silent out there.

How often over the past weeks she had stood there, hoping to espy an English ship sailing up the James with news. But she knew it would a full two years before Nigel could come for her.