Becoming Americans (57 page)

      "Why wouldn't you have the girl last night, Williams?" Teach asked Richard. "Her sores bother you? Maybe you didn't like going after me?"

      "I've done worse than that, Captain. I remember this wench in Norfolk Town who could…." Richard looked at his nephew and stopped himself.

      "I'm a married man, Teach," Richard said.

      "Got a wife, have you? So have I. Three of them!" Teach roared with laughter. "That's never slowed me down!"

      "I can see that, but it does me." Richard said.

      "Your wife must be beautiful," Teach said. "Beautiful and rich." He swung his cutlass at the reeds.

      "She is beautiful," Richard said.

      "And rich?" Teach pressed.

      "She had a plantation that had been my brother's."

      "Your brother's? How did she come into possession of a plantation that was your brother's? You didn't bed your brother's widow, did you, Williams?" He hesitated "You did, you dog! A man after my own heart, you are, Williams!"

      The pirate laughed again and returned to swinging his powerful arm into the reeds. "I must see this lovely," he said.

      Like the man Bourne told of, they emerged into a piney swamp that was knee to ankle deep in water, where the ground beneath was solid. Stephen realized that he was breathing in a different way, slower and deeper than when he wondered if he'd see the sun again, or smell the dust of summer.

      Richard Williams and Captain Teach had become very friendly. Stephen's uncle wasn't much older than the busy, bearded man, and the both of them laughed and traded stories, even through the reeds. Teach kept taunting Richard with tales of riches and lusty women and fine wines. Stephen was fascinated by the man who told gory tales of his adventures, emphasizing details of butchery and torture he'd performed, seeming to enjoy the frightened silences that fell over most of his listeners, including the men who had joined his crew. Stephen wondered why the stories didn't bother his uncle, and then he remembered the slaughter on the Machapungo.

      At Bennett's Creek, they found the pirogue that Captain Teach and Carman had left with a family of pig farmers. Carmen, with the four men Teach had recruited, rowed the boat as the Deep Creek travelers sat aft and drank with the pirate. Soon the creek widened and, after turning and twisting for fifteen miles, it emptied into the wide and beautiful Chowan. Captain Teach's ship was waiting in the black water upstream of the large island that crossed the river. Teach and his men boarded the ship while Carman remained on the pirogue to go visit with his in-laws at Richard's plantation. Teach would sail downriver in the ship and spend one last night ashore, as Richard's guest.

      "We'll talk business around a big meal, with a good pipe," Richard said.

      By mid-afternoon, the pirogue had reached Richard's plantation on the Chowan.

      The fifty acres had come to Pathelia Williams from her father and had been a refuge to Richard from the bloody struggle in Bath County.

      The Tuscarora War had ended only after two interventions from South Carolina's government. Security returned in 1715 with the total defeat of the Indians and their removal to a reservation inland on the Roanoke River. A plantation on the Chowan had been Anne Fewox's dream for her children, but this was not a tobacco plantation. The cleared land on this old plantation was no longer good for tobacco, and Richard Williams had no desire to be a tobacco planter.

      Even fine tobacco land did you no good if there were no way to get the product to market. The shoals and the Virginia Burgesses made both sea and land access difficult, though many planters crossed the unlocated boundary into Virginia and disposed of their crops to ships waiting on the Nottoway or the Nansemond. Richard had been doing well with tar on the Machapungo, and he'd taken up his father's craft as a cooper when he married Pathelia. They'd sold Edward's land near the Scuppernong and he'd been considering the profits in land speculation when he'd been convinced by his brother to enter into business with him in Deep Creek. He'd begun having second thoughts. Milling was a slow and boring business. The millers he'd met while studying their operations with Joseph were a stolid, settled lot. Richard didn't want to become one of those, and he remembered his dread of any partnership that included Mary Bourne.

      His new friend Teach's life was one of riches and adventure. Richard had known such men of adventure since he'd come to Carolina as a boy of Stephen's age. His brother Edward had lived that adventure for a brief time. Richard regretted that he was too old to live it. In any case, he was not a planter and he had no wish to be.

Pathelia Williams didn't show her age, but Stephen knew that she had to be over thirty. Her long blonde hair fell loose and curling from beneath her skullcap. The brown dress and green apron were clean, and her blue eyes twinkled like a child's. No wonder his Uncle Richard had married his dead brother's wife and had insisted on hurrying back to see her. His watched his uncle rush to embraced Pathelia as Captain Teach stood fingering his great, black beard. Stephen kissed his aunt, Carman was re-introduced, and they went into the house.

      Stephen listened to Carman tell Pathelia Williams the details of her first husband's death. His uncle and Captain Teach continued drinking rum from the jug as Stephen drank rum and milk and watched the Captain's eyes narrow, focusing on Pathelia. By dark, the three men were drunk, with Captain Teach growing increasingly loud and disruptive. Twice he tipped the table over, spilling noggins of rum and beer. The second time he spilled the lighted lamp onto Pathelia's dress, setting it afire.

      "I'll put it out!" Teach yelled, and with brute force pushed Richard from his wife, then fumbled clumsily with Pathelia's skirt, burrowing his face into her chest.

      "Captain!" Carman insisted.

      "She's my wife, Teach, not a swamp slut!" Richard yelled, and pulled Teach from his wife. A brief struggle followed, which ended with Teach seated back on the bench by the righted table.

      "My friend has not slept for three nights, by dear," Carman said to Pathelia. "I'm sure he meant no harm. He's just drunk and tired. It's been a long day, has it not, Richard?"

      "Aye, it's been a long day," Richard said, not completely satisfied.

      "A long day, and I need a woman!" Teach called out. He stood up again, then fell backward over the bench.

      "Let the great, black beard lie," Richard said. "Let him lie."

      Richard took his wife outside. They stayed away as Stephen sat and talked into the night with his disfigured Uncle Thomas Carman. Captain Teach muttered in his sleep, but never moved.

      Pathelia Williams remained inside the house the next morning as her husband bid farewell to Teach. The Captain seemed to remember nothing of the night before and gladly clapped Richard on the back, telling him what a good man he was, and how he looked forward to doing business with him. As the pirate stepped into the pirogue where Carman waited to take him to his ship, he tossed a small bag of coins to Richard.

      "My compliments to your wife," he said. "She is a gracious and understanding hostess."

      "And what business do you have with the likes of that man?" Pathelia Williams demanded of her husband when he went inside. Stephen thought she looked much older than on the previous day.

      "To let him use my Machapungo land to careen his ship when time comes. And I sent word with Carman for Tobias Knight that Captain Teach is a friend of mine. Knight and Teach can form a profitable relationship, I think," Richard said.

      "Well, you stay clear of him, husband. He's an evil man. His eyes shine out from all that hair like the eyes of a beast. He is a devil. You stay clear of the likes of him. I don't want to lose another husband to the devil's work."

      Richard looked to his nephew and raised his eyebrows in mock terror.

      Stephen had heard enough of his Uncle Richard's and Teach's conversations and mutterings to understand something of their deal. To serve as Teach's introduction to Thomas Knight, he carried two cured hams to the gentleman from Richard Williams. The Collector of Customs and Secretary to the Governor was known to have a taste for the meat cured with Anne Fewox's recipe. It would be a personal touch for opening conversation.

      Richard was no close friend of Knight's, but they had been acquainted for some years. Knight had wed Catherine Glover, the widow of William Glover. Catherine Glover was a longtime friend of Richard's mother, and the Glovers had a daughter the same age as Richard's youngest daughter had been. William Glover had died in 1711—as had Governor Hyde, both victims of the fever which had swept through the colony just as the Indians were spreading slaughter. When scandal broke in the ordinaries over Knight's refusal to assume the debts of William Glover that came with the widow, Richard had been vocally supportive. Those had been debts owed to the Church, though, and many partisans complained that Knight was "robbing the Church." To quite them, Knight had become a vestryman in the West Parish of the Pasquotank Precinct, but people were talking, again. It was said that Tobias Knight was working with the pirates, trafficking in their stolen goods. The hams would introduce Teach to Knight, and Teach would introduce Richard's interest in profit-making cooperation.

      Stephen thought of his uncle looking at him and raising his eyebrows. Stephen had been forced to walk away, so as not to laugh at his uncle and make his Aunt Pathelia more angry. His uncle made him laugh. His uncle was so different from his father; it was strange that they were brothers. His father had never lived anyplace but in that one house in Deep Creek. His father lived only to work and to work at planning for more work. His Uncle Richard had had an adventurous life. He'd lived in several places. He knew most of the people in this colony, it seemed.

      What different men they were, Stephen thought. His father cared so much for what people thought of him, of his holdings, of his public morals, of his family. He didn't care so much about what his own family thought of him. He was a cold man, Stephen had told his brother. At least, to him. His father had never included him in a joke. His father's jokes weren't funny to Stephen.

      His Uncle Richard was a free man. He was a strong man, and a brave one. He'd brought James back home through a hail of Indian's arrows and stones. He loved his wife and was faithful to her. If his father was faithful to his mother, it wasn't from love, but from a lack of passion and concern for what people would think.

      Stephen wondered how long he could continue to live at Deep Creek. He realized that he didn't have to live there if he didn't want to. He was old enough, big enough, to go on his own. Captain Teach had wanted him. Others would. Or, he could still find Captain Teach if he needed to. His Uncle Richard was in business with the pirate!

      Even in the swamp there was more freedom than there was at home. At Deep Creek he was a prisoner with no future. If his father built a mill and became wealthy, the mill would go to his brother James. Stephen felt no jealousy at all, just a small emptiness in knowing that, as second son, he would always be second best. At some time he would have to leave Deep Creek.

In mid-May, Thomas Biggs, Will, and four more crewmen arrived with his boat. They already carried hogsheads of tobacco that they'd boarded up the Roanoke River. The entrance to the Roanoke was difficult, Willy told Stephen. That's why his father had gone for the tobacco first, he said, before they had a heavy load of tar. The short, broad Cashie River ended its run between the mouths of the Chowan and the Roanoke, and small islands, mud flats, and piney swamp made navigation troublesome.

      "It's beautiful, virgin country, Stephen." Willy told him. "After you get past the mud flats into the river you start seeing the great old fields and the rich farmland that the settlers have opened. Many small planters, all looking fat and happy. There's an easy life to be had in Carolina, Cousin."

      As they rode the current down the Chowan and into the Albemarle Sound, his Uncle Richard seemed to want solitude. He seemed busy with his thoughts, and offered little conversation. Stephen spent the time with Willy, telling of his struggle with the swamp and of the hidden society he'd seen. When he told of meeting and traveling with a pirate, his Quaker cousin's eyes opened in surprise and envy.

      Robert Fewox met the boat at Scuppernong and said that Anne was visiting in Bath, and so they sailed on to Deep Creek.

      James Williams let the froe hang by his side as he peered down the creek. He was right; it was his uncle's boat.

      "It's Stephen and Uncle Richard!"

      Mary Williams stuck her head out of the opening to the shelter she used during the day. Nights were still spent at Tom's house. She put down the knife she was using to skin a rabbit and wiped her hands on her apron. She hurried down to the landing.

      Stephen jumped from the boat and wrapped the rope around the piling. He ran to his mother and put his arms around her.

      "I was worried about you, Son," she said.

      "No need to worry, Ma. I was with Uncle Richard and Grandpa. Nobody knows the swamp like Grandpa."

      "Well, you come get something to eat. I know Grandpa didn't cook for you in the swamp," Mary Williams said. She led her son to the shed while Joseph Williams stood talking to his brother, never having acknowledged the return of his youngest son.