Becoming Americans (14 page)

      The young people ate in silence at the end of the table and, when they'd finished the pipe they were allowed after supper, Richard was sent to the servant's hut to sleep.

      He arose early in hopes that he might see Anne again before the journey back to the courthouse. She didn't appear, and he took the opportunity for a brief inspection of the near grounds of the plantation.

      The garden was neatly plowed, and early peas were in bloom. A fence surrounded the vegetable garden, and the geese who angrily honked at his passing wore yokes, fashioned from shingles with a hole cut for their heads. This prevented them from poking through the garden fence, but it didn't improve their dispositions.

      Flowers bloomed along the south side of the house and the powerful aroma of a first-breath-of-spring bush made him think of Pine Haven.

      Captain Ingolbreitsen found him squatting in the herb garden and motioned him to follow. The Captain proudly pointed to the row of bright tulips that bloomed within a neat, short fence of their own. Richard had never seen flowers so beautiful. The petals were like wax, or butter, or like velvet.

      "I give the child one tulip bulb each year. She likes beautiful things. Such beauty is expensive, my boy." He spoke the words to Richard like a warning.

      Anne came up behind them.

      "This is the one you gave me last fall, Captain," she said, pointing to the deep-red one that Richard thought of as velvet.

      "Your Quakers do exacting work," Ingolbreitsen said. "Everything is so orderly."

      "I do the gardening," Anne said. "They are
my
flowers. Today the gardening must wait, though, for I'm making soap. I always have luck with my soap. It always hardens. I make soap for the entire plantation. They depend on me," she said with satisfaction.

      "She's the hardest working child I've ever seen," the captain said to Richard.

      "I know the hard work and the courage of my grandfather and my father, Captain Ingolbreitsen. I'm grateful for the safety and the plenty that they've given me. Grandfather Ware says that gives me a debt of duty."

      Richard looked at her as if there were an old woman hiding in the child's body. Only old folks talked of "duty."

      "I think I like that one best," Anne said, pointing to the red tulip again. "Sarah says it's improper for a young girl to like such a color. Which one do you like, Richard?"

      He pointed to the blue one.

      "Blue has been my favorite color for two years and more," he said, and she blushed.

      "We must go, Anne, but maybe we'll see you at the May Day Fair," the Captain said.

      "You mean you may not be there?" she asked him with some worry in her voice.

      "That depends on how much work my men have done by then," he said.

      She gave Richard a severe and threatening look.

      "They
will
work hard, I'm sure," she said.

      The wind blew cold from the north and Richard and the Captain rowed with the sailors to get warm. The captain let him drink freely from the jug of rum, and by the time they stowed the oars to ride with the current, eating the bacon and fresh bread that Sarah Hodges had given them, the captain was speaking to him as if Richard were a man, though he still called him, "boy."

      "She could do worse than you, I suppose, but she most certainly could do better. And unless you've come by the means to impress Mister Biggs by the time she comes to the marrying age, she
will
do better. Have no doubts about that, my boy."

      "My Uncle John will help, I know. And I've worked with my cooperage to have a skill to hire out—like I'm doing with you, Captain Ingolbreitsen. And I'm open to do whatever it takes. She
will
be mine. I decided that over two years back. It can be done, gathering the wherewithal, I mean." He looked directly at the captain. "Robert Sawyer did it."

      Ingolbreitsen took another drink.

      "Maybe the sawyer worked harder than you do. Or maybe he was willing to take on tasks that you might shy away from, Boy."

      Richard waited until he had the captain's direct look.

      "Maybe not," he said defiantly, and with an air of knowledge.

      Ingolbreitsen bit a chunk from his rope of chew.

      "Work hard, Boy. We'll see," he said.

      On a night in late April, Richard was awakened by one of the English favorites of the Dutch. The pox-marked man motioned for him to be quiet, and they sneaked out of the hut, leaving the other five men sleeping on their beds of rushes and straw. Outside, the cloudy, moonless night was as dark as inside the windowless hut where the men still slept.

      He was led to a tent beside the water where two Dutch sailors and the other English favorites waited.

      "Tonight can be the beginning or the end for you, Boy," one of the men said.

      "Captain says we're to chance it with you tonight, but he leaves it up to us to judge your trust. He says you've asked for it. We'll find out."

      Richard was curious and frightened and excited. He'd had his ears opened by Anne's talk and by the Captain's intimation about Sawyer. He'd watched for strange doings in the last month and had only seen that these three Englishmen were frequently absent from work details on the site, and that any questions asked were answered by a sharp reminder to tend his own furrows.

      It was not a night of great adventure, though the work was stealthily and silently done. The men separated into two groups that rowed two shallops down the river to a waiting ship of Captain Ingolbreitsen's. Hogsheads of tobacco were hoisted and heaved onto the shallops, and then rowed back up and transferred to another ship of the Captain's that had papers to transport only port, shingles, and tar to Holland. They were back by dawn, and Richard had barely closed his eyes when it was time to rise and do his day's work.

      No mention was made to him of payment, and he didn't ask. The Captain had trusted him; he would bide his time.

      The task was repeated twice more that week and still nothing was said. In the middle of the second week, the Captain sent for him.

      Richard knocked and entered the cabin when summoned. The Captain didn't speak directly of the week's activities.

      "I've heard good reports of your work this week, my boy. Things look promising for you. You may, in time, win your prize."

      "Thank you, Captain."

      "Partly as a reward, and partly as a business proposition, I'd like you to take a little trip for me. We'll tell the rest of your crew that you've gone upriver to find a new source of tar before the worm season."

      Richard was still mystified by those weeks of June and July when worms attacked unprotected bottoms afloat in fresh waters. Only ships anchored in fastmoving currents or taken out to deep salt water for the season were protected. Smaller boats were pulled ashore for the duration, or were hauled up for a total scraping and heavy tarring.

      The reward and business proposition was an exciting trip to James Town. Again at night, Richard and the three other Englishmen were rowed to a waiting ship in the Eastern Branch. They, themselves, were the cargo this time. The ship weighed anchor and flowed with the tide to Hampton Roads, where she set sail up the James River to James Town.

      An English gentleman, George Manning, was waiting for them in the captain's cabin when they boarded. The plan he outlined was simple, and he spoke the details of the plan in a manner that suggested to Richard that this activity was a common practice and one that, for this particular gentleman, was routine.

      Their bodies were to give substance to the list of indentures Mister Manning held that, upon being registered with the authorities in the city, would entitle the gentleman to fifty acres per head. These headrights were negotiable instruments that entitled the bearer to fifty acres of unclaimed property. The English gentleman was simply an agent for Bartholomew Ingolbreitsen. Captain Ingolbreitsen would sell the contracts to planters or to investors desiring more acreage.

      In the morning, the four seasoned Englishmen joined the group of three children and two women who were newly arriving in the colony. Richard and the men looked at these frail creatures and agreed among themselves that none of these would survive a year. They spoke briefly to the frightened group, learning only that it had been a harrowing voyage that left them starving, the remnants of a collection being imported by George Manning. Richard and his cohorts were replacing four men who had died on the long voyage.

      Richard and the men lay under blankets when the inspectors came aboard in James Town to verify the lists. Their healthy bodies would have given them away, though the inspector passed by so quickly as he chatted with Mister Manning that they weren't even seen. The news was of the Assembly's recent decision to make this a real town of thirty-two new brick houses—large ones. It would be another failed attempt to construct towns in Virginia, the inspector said. The wealthy settlers were only here amassing wealth to carry home to England. There was no support for such town-building efforts by men of substance. Their plantations were on deep rivers, they traded directly, and had no wish for centralized markets.

      Again, Richard couldn't touch land and explore James Town. But, he and his friends could see the bustle of activity in the town, and were watching from the ship when the hastily raised beams for a new house collapsed, killing two workers. That night, as a construction site blazed on the far side of town, the four of them were transferred to another ship of Ingolbreitsen's that was returning to the Elizabeth River with supplies.

      This mission was repeated three more times that spring and summer, including—much to Richard's distress—the day and night of the May Day's Fair. He made no complaints to Captain Ingolbreitsen, but asked the Captain to deliver his present to Anne. He'd fashioned her a small chest of walnut wood that was polished and stained and rubbed with wax until it had a great sheen. He'd lined the inside with a piece of velvet for which he'd paid dearly to one of the Dutchmen. A latch was crafted with the initials "AB" carved into it at the suggestion and design of Captain Ingolbreitsen.

      "Tell her that I'm sick and asking for her," Richard asked the Captain when told he'd not be at the fair.

      "I'll tell her you're recovering from the flux and that you send your warm greetings to her and to her father," the Captain replied.

      By the end of summer, the courthouse was completed and Richard prepared to return to Pine Haven and resume his work for Francis Harper.

      The Captain summoned him for a final, private task.

      "Richard, there are few Englishmen under forty years of age that would step inside a church were it not for fear of His Majesty's sheriff, or of the wrath of a vengeful deity. Those who do claim a love for God and live according to the rules He lays down for them—whatever they decide those rules are—earn my respect. I'm not one of them, but I admire a man—or a woman, for that matter—I admire a man of courage. That's why I engage in this little business that we're about on this trip. True, there will be some money to change hands, but…

      "Tonight we load hogsheads for delivery to near the Biggs plantation. We'll stay the night there—you'll see your prize—and load on shingles for delivery up the Chesapeake when you're returned to Harper. The hogsheads that we load tonight will contain men. Like those on the sloop that brought you to Lower Norfolk County."

      Quakers! And Anabaptists! The captain was smuggling Dissenters.

      "Quakers…!" Richard began.

      "We'll not discuss the matter further, tonight. Things left unsaid cannot be repeated. We leave with the next tide."

      Richard helped gently load the four hogsheads for the trip upriver. He was the third Englishman now, since one of the men had been killed in a knife fight that had won Richard three shillings of English money.

      Gambling and drinking and fighting were the leisure pastimes of the work crews, and Richard had held his own over the summer. His private hoard of coins was growing, and he held notes for tobacco poundage that he would exchange for tools before he left Lower Norfolk County. The Captain still hadn't spoken of the payment for the extra tasks he'd performed, and Richard had decided to broach the subject on this trip.

      The hogsheads were light, and Richard wondered about the men inside. He wondered what had happened to the men smuggled down from Gloucester County when he came? But mostly, he was wondering about Anne. Had she grown more? Had she missed him this summer? Why had she and her father not been back to the parish vestry church all summer? He'd not seen her since the trip to her father's plantation.

      His questions were answered the next day. The sloop sailed down the Eastern Branch and up the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River, just past the Biggs plantation and Deep Creek, to another channel on the western shore where two pirogues, lashed together, were pulled up onto the bank. The light hogsheads were transferred to the pirogues and then rowed ashore. Immediately, they were opened and their contents emptied. Men crawled out and stretched themselves to stand up. One of them broke into sobs that could be heard back on the sloop.

      As one of the pirogues brought the captain back, there were cries of, "God bless thee, Captain." "Thank thee and thy crew, Captain."