Читать книгу Constance - Patricia Clapp - Страница 9

November 11, 1620

’Tis two days later, a Monday night, and much has happened. While I was writing last seems all the men in the party gathered together to form a written compact, agreeing on John Carver as our Governor (one of their formalities, since it had in truth been so for some time), and upon a method of government. When that was done a few of them went ashore, and certainly Father was among them. They saw little, and since night was closing in, stayed but a short time. All yesterday, it being the Sabbath, the Leydeners prayed. What a praying lot they are! Father insists we join them for most of their interminable churching, and he roars out the hymns and prayers in a voice that surely can be heard halfway to heaven, casting up his eyes and trying to look holy. He says ’twill do us no harm, and might do much good to follow this group in everything, and I cannot say he is wrong, though I find his saintly attitude most comical.

Today, however, things were somewhat more to my liking. Most of the women gathered together their bundles of dirty clothes and linens, and with much squealing trepidation we clambered down the wavering ladder into the little open shallop and were rowed ashore. Even crowded into the small boat as we were, it took several trips to deliver us all onto the beach, since the children needs must come too, of course, but once there we had a most satisfying surge of laundering in fresh, clear water, cold enough to turn my hands to ice. The sun had come out and there was no wind, and the scrubbing made me so comfortably warm (for the first time in weeks) that, in spite of horrified cautioning from all the women, I washed my hair. What true pleasure it was to sit in the sun, feeling it warm on my cold head, and watching the loose strands of hair shine as they have not for months.

The men had the shallop on shore and had started repairing her so they can sail up and down the coast a bit, searching for the best spot in which to settle, though to me there seems little difference. While they were scraping and hammering—in truth a pleasant sound on a sunny afternoon—and the women draped every shrub and rock and patch of clean sand with their drying clothes, the children found clams and mussels and oysters which we all ate until some were sick from a surfeit of rich food, and of course Giles was one, the glutton! But still the day was a good relief from the crowded, rolling “Mayflower,” and I do hope ’twill soon be repeated.

Dorothy Bradford did not come ashore with us, and I know it puzzled Will. She sits by the hour in that dreadful dark, putrid room on the ship, staring straight ahead of her, saying little. I talked with her a bit that day we dropped the anchor and some of the men, her Will and my father among them, came ashore.

“I hope Will is happy now,” she said. “He has waited long for this moment—to put his feet on a land he could call free.” Her eyes are as gray as the coastline looks from the “Mayflower.” Very few people have truly gray eyes.

“You do not share his joy?” I asked.

“I feel nothing, except, perhaps, a small pleasure that he, at least, is content.” Her mouth is small and barely moves when she shapes the words, as though speaking were too much an effort for her.

“You miss your son,” I said—I don’t know why. But Mistress Bradford shook her head a little.

“No, not even that any more. At first I did—for nights I wept, trying not to let Will hear me. But I realize now I shall never see Johnny again. I no longer weep.”

“But surely he will join you here—when you have a house, a place to care for him.”

“Do you think so?” she asked. “I do not. I have kissed my son for the last time.”

“You must not think such things! You must not, Mistress Bradford!” I said. “We must all hope! I have heard your husband say so.”

“Aye, my husband’s life is built on hope. But not mine.”

“He loves you very much,” I ventured. “Many of the women remark on it. They wish their husbands were as gentle and kind.”

“Oh, yes, Will loves me. I do not question that. But Will loves many things, Constance. His God, and the freedom in which to worship him; this new land—yes, already he loves it, though he knows it not at all, nor what it may make of him. Will loves his son too, but he could leave him behind.”

There was nothing I could say to that. Yet even though I felt no more joy at this new life than she, it seemed I had to lift her spirits if I could.

“You’ll see,” I said, “once you have a house, and your own small garden, and a fire on the hearth, and meat simmering in the pot, and your son asleep under your roof again, things will be as fair as May!”

She smiled the tiniest bit. “That was my name,” she whispered, almost to herself. “Dority May. I was only eleven when I first met Will, and but sixteen when we were married. How long ago it is now! There’s a world between then and now.” She rose slowly and pulled her cloak around her—it was a beautiful deep red when we sailed from Plymouth, but now it is streaked and stained and soiled—and then she looked at me, her eyes as cold as the wind.

“I shall never live in this ‘free’ land, Constance,” she said, “never!” And then she walked away.

It distressed me so much to hear Mistress Bradford talk like this that I told Elizabeth of it as we were putting the babies to bed that night.

“She says she will never live in America, ma’am. And she sounded so sure!”

Elizabeth gave a gentle little snort. “What would she do then, jump over the side of the ship and swim back to England? I see no other choice.”

I supposed she was right, but it did not ease my mind.