The Maidenhead (2 page)

"Damn me, if they don’t think this is a public show,” Annie remarked at Modesty’s side.

The ogling glances and whistling and cheering didn’t bother Modesty. What she saw did. Or rather, what she did not see. No soaring spires of lead and wood such as adorned St. Paul’s Cathedral, no graceful arches that braced London Bridge with its row of shops, no rounded columns that supported pleasant balconies.

Not counting a blockhouse, a powder house, and a munitions house, she saw only numerous grog shops and stick-and-straw houses. Street after street of them, wherever tobacco wasn’t planted. Pigs and chickens ran wild across the grounds.

She stared stupidly at her surroundings and at the men who one by one followed the stream of flustered young women along one of the narrow streets filled with pungent odors of frying fish, boiling cabbage, and melting lard.

The procession halted at a long, wooden building set on a broad green which appeared to Modesty to be a council hall. “The State Building," a stocky male volunteered eagerly to one inquiring maid. Built of timber on brick and cobble foundation, it was more substantial than the others within the fort and was flanked by tall yaupons.

When they entered, Modesty saw that benches occupied most of the room, with several tables flanking a desk at the front of the room. Behind the desk, the official great seal of the Virginia Company of London was affixed to the wall.

She followed the other women as they filled the benches, and the male colonists, hats in hands, crowded two and three deep along the walls. They were romantics, these Virginians, Modesty thought. They were treating the women like priceless objects. No Englishman did.

In place of padded breeches, knee-length coats, and waistcoats, most of the colonists wore more serviceable clothing the color of the forest’s natural dull shades of brown and green: doublets, jerkins, surcoats, and tabards. All were armed with dirks, broadswords, blunderbusses, and flintlock pistols.

Attempts made at keeping their hair short, as was the style back in England, had resulted in some hacked and chopped cuts. To Modesty, their faces mirrored yearning and open hunger at the mere sight of the white women. She wondered how many men were left of the original 105 males who had first cleared the somber forests in 1607, thirteen years earlier.

Feverish murmurings of the king’s English, Irish, and Gaelic, which Modesty had occasionally overheard in London, as well as the guttural-sounding Indian language, crescendoed to babbling confusion.

Modesty eyed the scurvy lot of men. The Indians she had glimpsed looked healthier than they did. She searched for some tottering old geezer but found mostly young, lean faces. Apparently, only the hardiest survived the harshness of wilderness life.

A foppish man in two-inch heels adjusted his red waistcoat as he hurried down the center aisle. Once behind the desk, he cleared his throat and identified himself as the colonial governor, Sir George Yeardley. He had a little pointed beard and a waxed mustache that curled up at the ends.

"On behalf of our men, I warmly welcome our new arrivals. We realize you are hungry and weary. Tonight, you will be quartered here, at the inn, and in our church, and tomorrow—”

“Tomorrow begins the courtships!" a lusty male voice called out from the back and was followed by further cheers from the men.

Their excitement was interrupted by the London Company representative, who rose from behind the table to the left of the governor and gave a perfunctory smile. Radcliff’s long teeth betokened his name. Modesty kept her head down as he spoke. "I remind you of the Company rules: that a female has the right of choice, has three days in which to comply with her contract, and can choose only one groom.”

A titter of nervous laughter erupted as the women were assigned their sleeping quarters. Modesty was not one of the sixteen brides-to-be selected to sleep at the large half-completed inn on Back Street but was shepherded to the log church. Fortunately, it was a more substantial shelter, though austere didn’t do full justice to the description of its interior. At least the small wavy-glass panes mounted in the leaded lattice windows permitted daylight.

A hot meal of maize, squash, and stewed tomatoes, food new to Modesty and the other women, was provided by the few Company wives. “Prithee, do try my bread pudding," urged a little guinea hen of a woman who identified herself as Mistress Priscilla.

Modesty needed no urging. Just the smell of the hickory-smoked ham made her mouth water.

Clarissa's table manners were refined, but she was finicky about what she ate from the shared wooden trenchers.

Rose ate little, Polly licked her fingers with a sigh of ecstasy, and Annie kept up a running stream of talk while she ate.

Her mouth full, she said, “The Company has paid for our transportation, and ye can bet your bones it’s going to demand its pound of flesh."

Modesty quenched her thirst from a leather noggin of ale shared by all of them. “As long as 'tis not me own flesh."

Another Company wife, Mistress Pierce, was a wiry woman who appeared to be forty or more with hair as white as her widow's cap. She claimed she had married a captain in the military and had lived at Jamestown over ten years now. Her husband had died, but she had over sixty acres to sustain her.

“Planted with com, wheat, and peas, they be. None of this tobacco that offers naught for the belly.

“Ye must ask your suitor how many acres he has cleared. Does his house have a floor? And how many rooms? Any livestock? Cattle? Swine? A man with a horse—aye, even a slow-footed saddle horse—well, he will be a goodly catch.”

“Unless he be a drunkard,” the raw-boned Annie retorted to Mistress Pierce’s advice. “Had meself a lout of a husband who took delight in his cups. Then he would get mean.”

Modesty closed a prison door on the memory of her stepfather and his penchant for taking the strap to her. Yes, better she find an old man too helpless to lift a cup—or a strap.

“Ye mean ye’re already married?" the moonfaced Polly asked.

With a deep-throated chuckle, Annie cast the circle of women a broad wink. "Me husband died of a fall, he did. Courts didn’t believe me story, though."

At last, the goodwives retired to their own homes, and Modesty and her companions settled down to sleep on their pallets spread on the white pine flooring. Modesty was restless. A solitary candle burned low on the church altar, but it wasn’t the flickering light that disturbed her. At first it was the utter quiet, broken only by the acrid sputtering of the tallow candle.

Then it was the noisy night sounds of birds, of giant frogs that Mistress Pierce had called bullfrogs, crickets clicking, and a caterwauling that the old goodwife had attributed to pumas.

Rose touched her shoulder. “Modesty, are ye awake?"

"Nay. Of course I am.”

"I’m scared. About the morrow. I would that I 'ad a man court me out of love. Not necessity.”

“Love is for fools. Get yewrself an unambitious soldier, Rose. He has a pension. If yew be lucky, he'll get killed, and yew can collect it and return to lovely London to marry a man who isn’t a pauper and raise yewr child civilized-like."

"Oh, ye can’t mean that about marrying a soldier in ’opes ’e’ll die,” the olive-skinned woman said. “Ye sound so serious when ye joke, Modesty."

“ Tis a Rose of Sharon ye are," she muttered and rolled over onto her side, hoping to fall asleep.

Clarissa’s mellow voice intervened. "What if a maid does not find someone pleasing to her? What then?"

"Out of several hundred men ye could not find a single man to please ye?” Annie scoffed.  “Ye must be daft."

Modesty rolled onto on her back, her hands clasped behind her head, as she stared up into the darkened rafters. "The trick is to find a husband who will dance to yewr tune."

Clarissa sat erect, her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees. "There has to be a way out!" Her smoky contralto voice had the plaintive cry of a caged bird.

Modesty studied Clarissa’s profile. The young woman of quality had violet eyes that immediately attracted one’s attention. Modesty's dealings with London’s seamier underside had taught her to read people. The hint of willfulness about Clarissa’s mouth suggested that she was accustomed to having her way. Of all the women only she had come with a trunk of the finest clothes and accessories, like those of a trousseau.

"Yew are escaping a marriage not to yewr liking, aren’t yew?" Modesty asked, hazarding a guess. Doubtless to a tottering rich old gent, just the kind of marriage she herself sought.

Clarissa’s small, oval chin nodded in affirmation.

Too bad she couldn’t change places with Clarissa, Modesty thought. But not even a silk dress and fine manners would make her into what she was not.

She was a child of the streets who had been robbed of all illusions. In a society where only the strongest survived, she had only her mediocre talent of art and her worldly knowledge of human nature to barter—

"That's it!" she said, springing to a sitting position.

“What’s it?" Rose asked.

"We need someone to barter the best marriage arrangement for ourselves. A marriage broker!”

She hurried on, her words spilling out barely ahead of her thoughts. “Think about it. Tis yewr choice. Why not make the best arrangement possible—accept only the proposals of those bachelors who can offer yew something in exchange besides years of hard work?” She thought of the independent Mistress Pierce with her own sixty acres. "Land, animals, conditions to yewr liking—all these can be arranged for yew.”

"What if . . . what if I want a marriage that doesn’t require . . . ” Clarissa tried again, her expression set in determined lines. "I love someone else. A poet. I couldn't imagine giving my maidenhead to any but Nigel Jarvis. Especially not to the old Duke of Clarence."

Modesty’s mouth crimped in exasperation. "Surely yew knew what would be expected of yew once yew signed that marriage contract.”

"I didn’t think. I had no time to make other plans.”

“And I wager yew relied on the two things that had always helped yew out of uncomfortable situations before—yewr wealth and beauty. Well, they’re useless here." She was feeling irritated with Clarissa and slightly sorry for herself. Wasn't she in the same tight spot?

"I only knew that I had to find a way to stall," Clarissa explained. "My father arranged to have Nigel sent to Marshalsea for two years."

Modesty knew that the prison was used mainly for pirates and debtors. "Obviously, yewr poet is no pirate."

"He was imprisoned for penning pagan sonnets.”

Modesty rubbed her chin, then snapped her fingers. "That's it! It could be stipulated in the marriage arrangement that no"—she searched for the biblical word—"no connubial relations with yewr husband would be required."

"Three acres," Annie said. "That's what I want for meself. Like Mistress Pierce."

"But we already have contracts,” Rose pointed out with a yawn and blinked her eyes sleepily.

"Contracts to marry the men of our choice. Nothing was said against our making the terms of our marriage.”

Clarissa pushed her tumbled doubloon- colored curls back from her face. "Who would we find among the rabble of this godforsaken outpost to act as a marriage broker?”

Modesty’s smile was barely modest. “Why, meself.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On the morrow, more men streamed into the fort. Modesty estimated there had to be at least 600 men, as thick as the mosquitoes, swarming after the women in Market Square, the scene of the courting.

The day had dawned hot and humid and grew only more so as Modesty and a score of other young women clustered beneath a palmetto-roofed shed used to cure tobacco. Like most Londoners, Modesty knew that up until now Jamestown had served as a market for the sale of white Englishmen and Irishmen into servitude. But today it was marriage contracts being sold.

She saw the maids coyly eye the swains and whisper among themselves in frivolity. She had instructed the women with whom she had billeted the night before to look and ask questions to their hearts’ content but to give no pledge today. That evening, they would discuss whom they were attracted to and what requirements they desired in exchange for marriage. Then, the following day she would begin negotiations.

Modesty watched as, their hats doffed, some of the men bashfully drew near enough to talk, then drifted away to the shade of long-beaned catalpa trees. From their gestures and the occasional words she overheard, they were discoursing among themselves about the merits of the maids. Other bachelors scrapped like dogs over a bone.

“Good teeth and skin," Modesty heard remarked about herself. Then another in a baggy brown tradesman suit replied, “But flat as a bed slat. Give me a pair of strong hands—’’

“—and a pair of melons to match,” another man finished with a bawdy gesture and a purely masculine snort.

Modesty knew she had not Polly’s ample bosom, and as for strong hands ... she glanced down at her slender hands, hands that had done little besides wash an ale tankard or wield a paintbrush.

For her part, she measured the men who passed by and found them wanting. Never would there be one as handsome as Jack. Nor as fascinating. Nor as much a scoundrel.