Читать книгу Constance - Patricia Clapp - Страница 14

March 1621

And then one morning, just last week, I opened the door of the Common House to look at the day, and it was spring. The air was warm and soft, but with the salty smell that is always here, and I could hear a thousand birds all talking at once in the trees! Priscilla Mullins sat on a rock below me, near the shore, and she was talking to John Alden. He stood like a tall ghost—pasty white and weakened from the Sickness, but standing! He’s going to get well, I thought suddenly. He’s not going to die!

I looked around as someone touched my shoulder gently, and Will Bradford stood there, one hand against the doorframe to steady himself. “You’re up!” I said, like a ninny. “Ought you to be? Are you strong enough?”

He smiled his very slow smile. “I am all right, Constance. Weak, shaky, and badly in need of a shave—but all right.”

I looked at him and knew it was true. They were beginning to recover. Those who were left were sitting up, or trying their weak legs in a few shaking steps—but they were getting well! Elizabeth came and stood beside me, breathing in the freshness of the morning.

“They’re getting well,” I said. “I don’t think any more are going to die!”

“I have felt the same thing. Pray God we are right!”

Father came toward the Common House, his feet stepping with their old strength on the dirt path. He stopped in front of us, and stood looking at his wife. Elizabeth’s sleeves were rolled up, her hair was an uncombed sight, her dress was reeking with filth. Her face was smudged and drawn and shadowed, and yet her eyes held a peace, a look of ease I had not seen in weeks. Father stared at her, seeing all I saw, and then he grinned.

“Elizabeth!” he said solemnly. “My beautiful Elizabeth!” And then, like fools, the two of them stood and laughed. Father put his arm about her shoulders and pulled her against him and kissed her, a great smacking kiss, and then he slapped her bottom.

“Come home, lass,” he roared at her. “There’s no one needs you now as much as I do.”

And with his arm still around her, they walked down the short lane from the Common House and up the hill. I watched them go, and Will Bradford, still standing beside me, watched them too. From somewhere we heard the sound of hammers and the pull of a saw through wood.

“Plymouth is a-building, Constance,” Will said. “Its people are getting well, and houses are rearing their walls, and the spring is come. God is still with us.”

But of the one hundred and two people who sailed from England, fifty-one are dead.

March 1621 Continued

My bracelet, my precious golden bangle that Father gave me before we sailed, is gone! I thought I would keep it always as a part of home, but ’twas my own doing that I have it no longer, and I have no one to blame but myself, and the silly impulses that at odd times beset me. But before I set down here why I no longer have my keepsake (Elizabeth says people do forget things, and I never want to forget this), I had best mention how the days have gone.

After the Sickness was over I thought I should never get enough sleep, nor feel myself truly clean again. But after two long nights of uninterrupted rest (I even slept through Father’s fearsome snoring) and nigh a dozen washings, I appear to be as before.

Our house is now quite finished, thanks to Ted Dotey and Ted Leister, whom Father calls his Two Teds, but compared to the house we left in London, this one is a poor place. There is but one room, of fair size, its walls of closely fitted boards, the first dirt floor now covered with thick planks. A smooth-cut beam runs flat around the walls about as high as my shoulder, holding the boards tight and acting as a shelf for our trenchers and few platters, our tankards and our various small implements. The chimney place in the back wall is large and built of stones, and it gives us a good blaze. Father says the danger of fire from sparks lighting on the thatched roof is great, but for the present thatch makes the quickest and easiest roofing. The three small windows, one beside the door which opens south upon the Street, and one each in the east and west walls, have nothing better than oiled paper in them, which lets in a murky light when the sliding shutters are open. A ladder runs up the wall to the loft above where the Two Teds sleep.

The furniture is little more than the few pieces Father and Elizabeth brought with them—their bedstead, a cradle for Oceanus, the big chair Father always sits in, a great carved chest, and Elizabeth’s small box. Other than that there are just the pallets for Giles and the Two Teds and me, stools for each of us, a trestle board that the Teds made, and pegs pounded into the wall for our clothing. In truth, I would be ashamed of living in such a place were it not that here in Plymouth there is no house any better. Giles finds it quite acceptable, but he likes everything about America as much as I hate it all.

I do not like the house. I do not like Plymouth, I do not like America, and there’s an end to it! Who would want to live in a country where savages watch us covertly from the trees, never showing themselves save in quick glimpses of heathenish dark skin as they slip away? Who would want to live where an Indian arrow can strike death from the forest with no warning sound? Who would want to live in a tiny Colony, helpless against any determined Indian attack? Before the Sickness there might have been a chance to fight them off, but not now. Even after what has happened, and after what I did with my bracelet, I know that this is true. There are far more Indians here than there are Englishmen!

But I was telling of our house. Most of the others are housed now too, with only a few of the unmarried men living together in the Common House. Since the Sickness there are but four married couples left to be the heads of families: the Brewsters, the Carvers, the Billingtons, and Father and Elizabeth. Of the others, the widowed and the orphaned, some have their own homes, and the rest have been taken into the various households.

The weather has been mild and already the men are beginning to turn the earth for planting, though they must first clear away the rocks and trees. There is much for everyone to do, and Governor Carver watches sternly to see that none avoids his fair share. Father seems to be everywhere at once, hunting and fishing for food, helping to complete the houses, clearing the ground for planting, meeting with the Governor and Will Bradford and Captain Standish and the other leaders to plan for the community, smacking his lips over a glass of the brandy he brought and keeps carefully hidden in the bottom of the great chest, and telling us of the wondrous things he plans to do. To hear him, Father will own half America by the time Giles is grown!

And so it was that a very few days ago, the 16 of March, Father was standing in front of the Common House with Will Bradford when an Indian, wearing not a stitch save a leather apron round his waist, came out of the wood and strode toward the two men, calling out “Welcome, Englishmen!”

It was incredible enough that one lone man should enter our little village by himself—unarmed, and unaccompanied—but that he should also speak English was past believing. Giles, who somehow manages never to miss any bit of excitement, broke away from where he was playing stickball with the Billington boys, and came galloping up to Father, just in time, he says, “to see their mouths gawp open like loonies.” When the Indian then extended his right hand toward them, neither Father nor Will could do more than to clasp it with their own.

The Indian announced that his name was Samoset and that he came from Pemaquid—wherever that may be—and he had, it seems, simply come a-calling. Master Bradford felt that some sort of formal gathering should be held, and sent Giles thundering off to find Governor Carver and Captain Standish and Master Winslow and a few of the others. Giles took a moment from his errand to burst into the house where Elizabeth and I were sorting through the packets of seed she had brought, looking for some hollyhock which she was sure she had included, but we could not find it (though it turned up later mixed in with some written instructions for herb teas), and blurted out the news. It threw me into such a panic of fear that I jumped up, spilling the packets across the floor. Running to the door, I slammed it shut and lowered the bar across it.

“What’s taken you, sister?” Giles demanded. “There is nothing dangerous in one Indian.”

“Don’t be a fool,” I snapped. “There are hundreds of others close behind him! I know it! They have but sent him on ahead to be sure that we are as weak as . . . as we are!”

Elizabeth started picking up the seeds. “Then let us not do anything to make this one man our enemy,” she said calmly. “Constance, do you make a corn pudding, child, and fetch the little butter and cheese that is left.”

I stared at her. “What are you thinking of, ma’am? Are you mad?”

Elizabeth picked up the wild duck that Ted Leister had shot that morning and left on the table. “’Tis a good thing we have this,” she said. “Your father will have the Indian here to sup, or my name is not Elizabeth Hopkins.”

“Here? He would not dare! Why, the heathen will murder us all!”

Elizabeth looked up from plucking feathers from the duck. “Child, if the Indians choose to murder us they won’t spend time in discussing it with your father and Will Bradford first.”

“But they are savages!”

“Whatever they are, they have had ample opportunity ere now to chop us all into small bits while we slept. The fact that they have not done so would indicate they may not be quite as bloodthirsty as you seem to think. Quickly, Constance, the pudding.”

Giles took himself off, leaving the door unbarred and ajar behind him, and it was all I could do not to close it firmly again. But somehow, in the face of Elizabeth’s calm, I could not. With my hands shaking, and my teeth chattering so I dared not speak, I mixed the corn pudding. Every moment I expected to hear shrieks and screams as hordes of other heathens surged into the village, but the afternoon spun on quietly. Later, when the duck dripped its rich fat into the pan as it roasted, when the pudding cooked thick and creamy in its pot, when the table was laid with trenchers, Elizabeth’s precious pewter spoons, and our great tankard filled with water (for the beer we brought with us is long since gone), Father came striding up the hill from the Common House, the Indian beside him, and Giles tailing behind like a dutiful puppy. They walked in the door, and I stood frozen in the center of the room. Father looked at me quizzically.

“This is my daughter, Constance,” he said to the Indian.

I opened my mouth to make some sound lest I annoy the man by my silence, but not a sound would come. I could only nod my head like a muted booby.

“And this is my wife, Mistress Hopkins,” Father went on.

One would have thought Elizabeth entertained savages at dinner every day of her life! She simply smiled and nodded to him, as if he might have been Mistress Brewster dropping in for a bit of talk, and then went back to her work at the chimney!

Father seated Samoset in his own big chair—the which the Indian considered very fine—and himself sat on one of the stools, with Giles hanging over his shoulder. I could barely keep my eyes off Samoset! He was surely a fine figure of a man, as tall as Father, but very lean and hard, and his skin a most beautiful coppery brown. His hair, black and as coarse as a horse’s tail, was shaved into a sort of comb on his head, and his eyes were brilliantly dark and narrow. He looked clean enough, but there was a ripe odor about him that permeated the house very quickly, in spite of the cooking smells. Giles seemed to breathe it in like rose attar, but it soon nigh stifled me, so that when I was by him, serving the food or in passing, I held my breath till I was near blue. Elizabeth caught me at it, and with one of her little frowns and a shake of her head forbade me to do anything that might cause our guest to look at us with aught but kindness.

I thought at first the meal would never end, but halfway through I began to be so caught up in the stories that were told that I forgot the smell, my deep fear, and all else. Samoset told us of learning English from English fishermen who had been working at this Pemaquid for twenty years, salting down their catch and shipping it home. He taught us the names of some of the tribes of Indians who live in this area, and told us which we might trust and which we should fear. Once he looked at me, and his eyes sent a shivering straight to my backbone.

“Samoset have girl child too,” he said.

I knew not what to say—not having had to speak to him before—but then I stammered, “Is she . . . is she . . . pretty?”

His voice seemed to get even deeper as he said, “To Samoset she is morning star.”

Giles couldn’t stand it having me talk to Samoset when he had been told to be quiet, so he suddenly burst out, “I want to give Samoset a present, Father.”

Father beamed at him, pleased. “And what have you to give, Giles?”

Giles reached into his back pocket and in that flash-quick way he does things, pulled out the knife he had traded Love Brewster a jay’s nest for. “This,” he said, and thrust it out at Samoset, blade first. In truth, the Indian recoiled, and a most frightful look went across his face. Father grasped Giles’s wrist, roaring at him.

“Have ye no sense, young jackanapes? What are ye doing?”

Poor Giles dropped the knife, which clattered to the floor, and looked as though he would burst into tears.

“I only wanted to give the knife to Samoset,” he whimpered. “What have I done?”

Samoset leaned forward and picked up the knife from the floor. “Young brave move too fast,” he said. “To give a knife in friendship, it must be like this!” He carefully handed the knife to Giles, handle first, his arm extended. Giles took it slowly.

“But I wanted you to have it,” he said.

“In friendship?” the Indian asked.

“In friendship.”

“Then give again, as I have show you.”

Giles did as he was told, the while Elizabeth and Father watched him carefully. Samoset took the knife, smiled just a little, and said, “In friendship it is taken.”

I could see Elizabeth give a great sigh before she turned back to the fire.

When the meal was over Father brought out the brandy, and he and Samoset each had a little, while Elizabeth sat in the corner feeding Oceanus. I was beginning to wonder when our guest would leave, for he showed no desire to take his departure, nor Father to have him, yet by this time the Two Teds had scaled their ladder and were fast asleep, and I was nodding on my stool. At last Samoset stood up and Father rose too, and then the Indian said, “Samoset sleep here by fire. In the morning he go.”

I looked at Elizabeth and she at me, but there was naught to do. I brought an extra rug from the chest, and Samoset calmly wrapped it about him, lay down on the floor and started to snore.

Surely no one ever spent a stranger night! Giles and I put our pallets close together, which was a mistake, because as soon as Father fell asleep and joined his snores with Samoset’s, we fell into such a state of giggling that we nigh choked to death on our own mirth. At last Giles fell asleep, and I must have too, for when I next opened my eyes it was pale morning and Samoset was standing in the open doorway gazing at the fresh clear sky. No one else was awake, so I rose quickly and went to him.

“I will give you some breakfast,” I said.

“No need. Samoset eat later.” He stepped outside into the cool spring air, and I followed him. I did not know quite how to bid him good-bye.

“You must bring your daughter with you when next you come,” I told him.

“Indian women stay home,” he said. “Much to do. They do not travel with their men.”

I felt rebuffed, though his tone was not unkind, and I looked down. My eyes fell on my dear bracelet, and, unthinking, I turned it with my fingers so that the sun’s first rays caught it brilliantly. I looked up and saw that Samoset was looking at it too. And this is the part I cannot explain! For I took the bracelet from my arm and gave it to him.

“In friendship,” I said. “For your daughter.”

Samoset took the bracelet and looked at it carefully. “It is good.”

“Yes. It came from England. My father gave it to me. Now I give it to you—for your daughter.”

He put his hand on my shoulder and smiled at me. “Samoset take gift to daughter. He tell her that white sister sent it to Indian sister. It is a good thing, for it will make friendship. Samoset says his thanks to you.”

And then he simply turned around and off he went!

I tried to explain to Father why I had given away his present to me, but it was difficult, because I was not sure myself. He shook his head, calling me quite daft, saying that he thought I had liked the bracelet—the which I assured him I had—and then adding that if he lived to be a hundred and had a dozen daughters, which he hoped God would spare him, he would never understand the female mind. Elizabeth set the trenchers of steaming porridge on the board and told Father not to fret about understanding the female mind, but to concentrate on the Indian mind, which she felt I understood better than he, and that she thought I had done more to bring friendship between the Indians and ourselves than anyone else had managed, and would Father please to bless the food now so we could eat. He did.