Читать книгу Constance - Patricia Clapp - Страница 8

November 9, 1620

‘Very well then! I have seen that cold, gray, hard, bleak, unfriendly shore line that everyone is in such a twitch of excitement about. Father hung over the wooden rail gazing at it, his eyes snapping with excitement.

“Come and see, Constance,” he roared. “’Tis America! Come and see it!”

He pushed aside to make room for me, and as I moved close to the railing it seemed a marvel that with so many people leaning there the dreadful little ship did not capsize. With a wide gesture he indicated the line of pale gray sand and scrubby little gray-green trees—all looking like gray ghosts under the gray sky.

“Pish!” I said.

Father glared down at me. “What did you expect, girl? Tropical palms? A city of golden domes and palaces? Use your head, ninny! This is a wilderness! An empty land! We can make of it what we will!”

“Then let us make London of it,” I said.

Father looked as though he would like to box my ears, a thing he has not done since Mother died—how long ago? Seven years? It seems like forever, and yet there are times when deep in my memory I can hear her voice singing little rhyming songs to me, or feel her hands tying my bonnet strings beneath my chin. Giles says he hardly remembers her at all, but he was only six. I was eight, and it makes a difference.

“Blast London!” Father exploded. “A tight, cramped, crowded city, filled with underhandedness, bigotry, and the stench of filthy sewage!”

“It could smell no worse than this ship,” I said, “and I liked it. London is home!”

“London was home. No longer. And good riddance, say I! An honest man cannot make a penny in London, only thieves prosper!”

“And how do you propose to make a penny here?” I asked. “And what will you do with a penny if you make one? I see no great array of shops awaiting us.”

Father opened his mouth, partially hidden now by the blond beard he has grown since there has been little water to waste in shaving—nor for washing, either, and how we all stink!—and I thought he was about to bellow at me again. I would not have blamed him really, for I know how vexing I can be, and yet I could not hold back the sharp words lest I weep with misery. Because Father and I are much alike, he seems sometimes to know these things, so that now, instead of shouting with impatience, he put one arm roughly across my shoulders and pulled me hard against him.

“I know ’tis all strange, Con,” he said, “and mayhap a little frightening. But there is a life here for anyone strong enough to make it. There is land for the taking now, land that will make us rich one day. There is freedom, there is space!”

“There must be places in England where there is space, too.”

“Mayhap. But this is adventure, girl! Women don’t understand that a man needs adventure in his life. To live out one’s short span and never dare anything . . . I am not like that.” He looked down at me and added, “And nor, I think, are you, Con.”

“I was content.”

“Content! A cabbage is content! Is that what you want to be? A cabbage?”

“I want to be at home in our house in London,” I said stubbornly. “I have no wish to be starved to death in this bare place, and eaten by wild animals, and killed by savages—”

“’Tis unlikely that you will die more than once, and therefore you will escape at least two of those fates. And let me remind you that if the savages can live here, so can we.”

“Perhaps you can. Not I. I hate America and I shall always hate it! And at the first opportunity I shall go back to England!” I slipped out from under Father’s arm and moved away from him, just as I heard Will Bradford’s voice.

“Stephen! Stephen Hopkins! May we speak with you?”

With a glowering look at me Father joined Will and Captain Standish where they stood staring with shining eyes at that ugly hateful coast, and I saw his face light up with the excitement that has filled him all through this hideous voyage. Feeling that I must get away or burst into ridiculous childish tears, I scrambled down the ladder, putting yet another rent in the hem of my gown with my clumsy heel, which only made me smolder the more. Now here I sit, wrapped in my cloak and still shivering, an odd great lump in my gullet, and my eyes stinging with tears!

At least I am alone, for everyone else is gathered on deck. Being alone is a great privilege now. There is rarely a corner of the ship unoccupied, whether it be day or night, and there are times when I feel that I must be by myself for a bit or else become a fit case for Bedlam. I think that perhaps Elizabeth knew that when she gave me this journal and my own quill.

Elizabeth can be very surprising. Although she seems as great-eyed and quiet and slow as a cow, she often understands things that Father does not. For example, she has never urged me to call her Mother, though I know that Father wishes I would. I call her Ma’am generally, but I always think of her as Elizabeth. Giles calls her Mother, and of course ’Maris does, but she is ’Maris’ mother. And now she is Oceanus’ mother, too. What a tiny thing he is! And pale, as Damaris is pale. They look like little goblins, with their huge brown eyes like Elizabeth’s.

I wish my eyes were brown; people with brown eyes have always looked more intelligent to me. But instead mine are such a deep blue they are nigh black, I think, and when my hair is clean it is very light, so that hair and eyes seem not to belong to each other. Also my neck is very long and I am far too tall and thin, and although Elizabeth says I will fill out, there will have to be a deal of filling out before I look like aught but a pikestaff. At home I used to look sometimes into the round, polished silver disk that was my own mother’s mirror, hoping that by some magic I would wake one day to find a beauty reflected there. Father caught me at it once and roared that he had enough to worry him without preening simpletons in the family, and he thanked God I was plain, since beauty brought nothing but trouble. Elizabeth said very quietly she feared he had thanked God for a peace of mind he would never get, because I was not going to stay plain. How pleasant if she should prove to be correct!

In all events, the little mirror was left behind when we sailed on the “Mayflower,” and perchance it is just as well, though I miss it sorely. There has been enough unhappiness on the voyage without the constant reminder that I am but a gawky, moon-eyed wench. With danger, and sickness, and dirt, and hunger—all suffered just so we might reach this dismal America—I needed no other woes.

There has been death, too. First the loudmouthed sailor who took delight in calling us “glib-gabbety puke-stockings” and other names I cannot repeat, and whose death was made more horrible by his shouting and raving profanity, and then—later—poor Will Butten. It was the night Will died that Elizabeth gave me this journal. She found me weeping here in the cabin, and though I feared she would chide me for such weakness, she simply sat beside me and held my hand. She was still weak and tired from having had Oceanus, and I felt like a great booby behaving as I was, but I could not stop.

“It is not that I knew Will so well,” I gasped, “but he was so young! Just a little older than I!”

“I know,” Elizabeth said, in her soft cow-voice.

“And now he is down there at the bottom of all that dreadful ocean—”My voice did ridiculous things, squeaking and breaking like a bawling babe’s. “—and the fishes—”

Elizabeth leaned over the side of the bed and opened the lit tie box she has kept with her ever since we sailed. The cabin is so small that everything is close within reach, and an arm outstretched from the bed can nigh touch either wall. From the box she brought out this book, folded in a brown Holland sheet. She unwrapped it and laid it on my lap, and then used a corner of the sheet to wipe my eyes as though I were no older than Damaris.

“Constance, there are many times when a woman needs someone to talk to, and I hope you will remember I am always here to listen. But there are other times when a woman has thoughts she cannot share with anyone, and yet she must needs rid herself of them, if only to see them more clearly. Perhaps this is one of those times. I brought this journal—it seemed that one of us should keep some account of this . . . this strange adventure. Your father never will,”—she smiled a little—“I doubt he could sit still long enough. My thoughts are not worth the writing, and besides, I can always croon them to the babes, who think they are lullabies. The journal is yours, Constance. May be it will help you.”

I have written nothing in the book till now, except on the first page, simply because it was so clean and white and seemed crying for the touch of a quill. There I wrote “Constance Hopkins, Her Book,” and underneath I put “1620.” It looks very neat, and rather important. Somehow there seemed nothing left to write about poor Will Butten, perhaps because I had said it all to Elizabeth. And since then, though I have held the book often, and smoothed the pages, and looked at that first page that makes it truly mine, I have written nothing more until today.

It is very strange, this being anchored offshore, rather as though we were nowhere at all. Everyone says the voyage is over, for which God be thanked! But where are we? We still must live on this stench-filled, rolling “Mayflower” until those men who already seem to be the leaders—and of course Father is one of them, he could not bear it if he were not—make some decision as to which part of this cold, gray, deadly land will be our home. Home! Oh, London, I miss you!

I want to feel civilized cobbles under my feet, and look out of the diamond-paned window in my little bedroom, and hear the mongers crying their wares. I want to push through the crowds in Petticoat Lane to buy a bit of lace or ribbon, and watch a London wedding—the shy bride and proud groom going into the church, followed by parents and friends and families. I always thought that someday I would be married in the same way, but these psalm-singing folk from Leyden believe that marriage is a civil thing, with no need for churching to make it proper.

If I stay in this fearsome land—and if ever I marry—’tis most likely that old Governor Carver will mumble some few words over me and that will be the end of it. And what matter, after all, since whom would I marry? Gangling John Cooke, no older than I and prone to spots? Handsome John Alden, with eyes for no one but Priscilla Mullins, even though that pallid minx Desire Minter follows him step by step about the ship? Edward Dotey or Edward Leister, Father’s two bondsmen, who plague me and tease me and vow they will swoon for love of me? Hardly likely! Father says there will be a stream of ships bringing new settlers. It may be. But it seems to me that any who come here of their own free will are addled in the head, and not such as I would choose for a mate.

Just before we sailed Father gave me a bauble, a pretty bracelet, narrow and gold and with a delicate chasing of ivy round it. “To remember London by,” he said.

It rests lightly now on my dirty wrist, and I shall keep it by me always. But even without it, I can never forget London!