The Pilgrim (13 page)

“Well? What say you, sir? Can you smell divers odors in your dreams?”

“I cannot recall having done so.”

“I will tell thee how to do it.”

“How?”

“Piss abed whilst you dream you are pissing, and you will smell piss.”

I said, “Go piss abed yourself and say that you sweat!”

Henry said, “Gentlemen! I pray you, cease your filthy talk in the presence of my sister.”

I said, “I apologize, Mistress. Forgive me. I forgot myself. Swilling Aqua Vitae is a beastly thing. I swear to you that I will never swill the stuff again.”

Abigail said, “Thanks be to God, for then we can remain friends.”

That night, three of Weston's men forced open a cask of Aqua Vitae in the hold and got drunk. Weston kept them on bread and water and had them clapped in leg irons, with their hands bound behind them, all the next day.

One of the rogues, whose name was Martin Hook, thereafter said to me, “Do you remember me, sir? I remember you. I said to you, ‘If I sail not with you on the
Swan
, sir, hang me up from the main-yard.' I said, ‘I pray you, sir, show me where to make my mark, that I might earn my four pounds, two shillings, and tuppence for my one year's labor in the wilderness across the sea.'

“I would gladly suffer leg irons again in exchange for another night of tippling Aqua Vitae in the hold. Being drunk is my only time aboard this infernal ship that I do not fear drowning. I was almost mad from fright during the storm.

“I was a lad of twelve, on my father's farm in Sussex, when I carried the corpse of little Elizabeth Fowler out of Laxton Pond. How she come to drown there no one knows. Jane Mayo, whilst washing clothes, spied her under the water and fetched me from the barn. As I cannot swim, I walked into the water up to my chest and held my breath and ducked my head and spied wee Beth lying face up on the sandy bottom, midst the weeds. I remember her long braids floating amongst the weeds. Her eyes were shut. I grasped her right wrist. The flesh was cold and slimy. It was the first time I had ever touched a corpse. I took another breath of air and picked up Bess. She was very light in weight. I carried her out of the pond and laid her upon the bank.

“Bess Fowler was nine years of age when she drowned. Jane Mayo cleansed the vomit from Bess's mouth with her forefinger. I touched Bess's cold, slimy wrist once again. It chilled my heart. I have been terrified of drowning ever since. Sailing across the sea on the
Swan
is the bravest thing I have ever done. I'm doing it for ready money: three pounds, six shillings, and one share of the profits we shall make.”

• • •

Abigail and I passed much of our remaining time aboard the
Swan
together. We endured fog, rain, cold, and three more storms, the last of which, on the second of June, split our spritsail in pieces. It was a great mercy of God that it did split, for otherwise it would have endangered the breaking of our bowsprit, and perhaps our topmasts as well. The whole ship kept a fast of thanksgiving.

I must confess that once when Abigail was sick in her cabin, I enjoyed a bowl of Captain Green's Aqua Vitae, after which I asked her forgiveness, which she granted me, with tears shining in her bright blue eyes. I must also confess that those eyes, and her auburn curls, distracted me during our daily prayers. When we prayed in Henry's cabin, I often stared at a big cobweb between the cupboard and the wall. When we prayed on the quarterdeck, I always gazed out to sea, where one afternoon I saw ten porpoises frolicking at starboard. God forgive me, I envied their bestial delight.

Abigail told me something of her life in Boston, Lincolnshire, that is surrounded by fens. Her father was a rich fuller; her mother was a rich fuller's daughter. Their parish church was St. Botolph, which hath a short steeple called “The Boston Stump.” Its Minister, George Story, begged his bishop to be released from wearing the surplice and white vestments. The bishop refused him. The Reverend Story then refused to make the sign of the cross over an infant during her baptism. The bishop discharged him. Abigail's father procured a position for him as the chaplain of the godly Sir Francis Fulford.

When Abigail was six years of age, her father hired a godly tutor for her named Thomas White. White taught her to read swiftly and write distinctly. She learned the catechism and, in the years to come, fervently studied the Geneva Bible.

Abigail said, “Beside the Gospels, I favored the Apocrypha. I took Queen Esther's prayer for mine own. Thus I prayed after each of my beloved parents died of the consumption, ‘O my Lord, Thou only art our king. Help me, a desolate woman, who hath no helper but Thee.'”

I asked, “And did He answer thee?”

She replied, “I am not now so desolate as I was.”

In fair weather, we admired the night sky from the quarterdeck and thanked God for the new sights in His heavens. The polestar was now lower than in England, and we saw the new moon more than half an hour after sunset. It was much smaller than at any time it shone above England. On the twelfth of June, the full moon illuminated Abigail's upturned face. She returned my gaze, and we looked into each other's eyes.

I said, “Let us henceforth call each other by our Christian names. What say you, my sweet Abigail? From now on, between us, let it be ‘Abigail' and ‘Charles.'”

“As you wish, Charles.”

Then I said,

Charles and Abigail

Set sail.

And Charles loved Abigail.

One night,

By the bluish light

Of the full moon,

He said,

“I love thee, Abigail.

But what doth it avail me?”

Then she said, “What a pretty little rhyme! And extempore, too! You say that you love me and ask, to what avail? To tell you true, Charles, I do not know. I am all in a whirl.”

“And my wits are gone a-woolgathering. I do nothing well but think on thee.”

The last night aboard ship, Abigail said to me, “I do not deserve your love, Charles. I dutifully tended Father for two years, ten months, and sixteen days. But God forgive me, I wished every day that he would choke to death on his bloody, purulent spittle lest I be stricken with his chest pain, his high fever, and his short, dry cough.”

I said, “Why, then we are twins in misfortune. My thoughtless recitation of my sins to my sick father caused his death.”

• • •

We made land in Plymouth harbor at five of the clock on Thursday morning the eleventh of July, in the year of Christ 1622. We dropped anchor a league from a beach on which there waited a dozen or so men. They discharged their muskets into the air. About half a mile to the starboard, in the south, I beheld two parallel rows of some thirty thatched houses atop a flat hill. They were enclosed by a high wall of sharpened wooden stakes. Just beyond that, to the southwest, atop another hill, there was a platform mounted with four or five cannons aimed toward the sea. Then I beheld a great granite rock protruding from the sand near the foot of the first hill. Half a mile or so to the east, I beheld a dark forest of white pines. Each was at least a hundred foot in height, and some were a hundred foot higher than that. They were the tallest trees I had ever seen.

I cheered with the men on the quarterdeck, and we tossed our greasy caps in the air. Henry waved his cutlass; the sun shone on its blade.

The sun was hotter than in England. A solitary goose flying low and to the northwest above the Bay was much bigger than an English goose.

Rigdale said, “How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?”

Then there came a smell from the shore like the smell of a garden, and two wild pigeons came as well and lighted on the deck beneath the main-yard.

It took the space of four hours for everyone and his baggage to be conveyed ashore in the
Swan
's five boats. I landed on the hot beach with Henry and Abigail. All of us lay about in the shade of some pines and great oaks growing on a strip of land adjacent to the shore. There, within the hour, each of us was given to drink a draught of cool water from earthen jugs carried by a goodly number of men from Plymouth town. A bearded man wearing a steeple-crowned beaver hat gave me mine.

I said, “I thank you, sir. I'll be sworn. This is the sweetest water I have ever drunk.”

He said, “This is town water, sir, from the Town brook. When I was an exile in Leyden, I worked for five years as a glover with a Jew named DeCosta who had converted to the Dutch Reformed Church. He knew English well enough to teach me a few Jewish blessings for various and sundry things, which he took upon himself to convert to Christian use. The only one I remember is the one he recited before drinking a draught of water. Whenever I drink our town's cold, sweet water, I think of DeCosta's converted blessing: ‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, at whose word water comes into being, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.'”

Abigail was hailed by a gentleman armed with a cutlass in a black leathern scabbard, who declared himself to be her cousin, Edward Winslow. He said, “God be blessed! Cousin Abigail! Is that really you, sweet coz? Yes. I last saw you as a little girl, but I well remember your eyes. You have your mother's beautiful blue eyes. Were you with her when she died?”

Abigail said, “I was.”

Edward Winslow said, “And did she make a good end in Christ?”

Abigail said, “Alas, both my beloved parents, of precious memory, died very hard of the consumption and could not speak a word for the space of several hours before the Lord took each of them away by death.”

Edward said, “My beloved first wife, Elizabeth, of precious memory, also sleeps in the Lord. She died of the scurvy last spring at the age of eighteen. Forty-four of our dead lie buried in our graveyard at the foot of Fort Hill. That is almost half our number. We leveled the graves to conceal them from the Indians lest they take advantage of our weak and wretched state.

“I married again within six weeks of Elizabeth's death. 'Tis a common practice amongst us Saints. Widows and widowers cannot survive for long on their own in this wilderness. My new wife is named Susanna. She is twenty years of age. I trust that God will decide who will be my wife in heaven.”

Abigail said, “Dear coz, this is my brother, Henry.”

Edward said, “I thought as much. You have your father's look about your mouth and chin. Welcome to the Plymouth Plantation, cousin Henry. God grant health to you and your sister. What's this? What's this? You bear a cutlass! Your cutlass marks you for a soldier, cousin Henry.”

Henry said, “I hope to become one.”

“Good,” said Edward. “Good. We need soldiers here. The Narragansets conspire against us.”

“Who are the Narragansets?” said Henry.

“Savage Indians. Our enemies,” said Edward. “Captain Standish will explain everything to you. Suffice it now to say that he is our commander. He fought the Spanish papists in the Low Countries and the Narragansets here in defense of our ally, the Indian king, Massasoit, who rules some sixty warriors to the west of us. We estimate that the Narraganset Indians to the north of us can presently muster two hundred warriors. You will serve against them under Captain Standish, like all the men of the Plymouth Colony.

“Now tell me, coz. What gentleman is this?”

Abigail said, “This is our friend, Charles Wentworth, who once studied Divinity at Cambridge.”

“Well met, sir,” said Edward. “A Cambridge scholar. Well, well. Master Brewster also studied at Cambridge. Methinks 'twas law. I will tell him anon that you have joined us. I warrant that he'll be happy to have an old schoolmate amongst us. I bid you welcome, sir, to a new life among the godly in the Plymouth Plantation.”

I said, “Alas, sir, I am a member of Master Andrew Weston's ungodly crew. I have come hither with them to make money trading with the Indians for peltry and timber. And from what I have seen of the straight, tall pine trees that will one day serve as innumerable masts for our stout English ships, we may count ourselves as rich men.”

Edward said, “Have you been reborn in Christ, Master Wentworth?”

I said, “No sir, not yet. But I have faith in the Lord.”

Edward said, “And you, my dear cousins, have you been reborn in Christ?”

Henry said, “Not yet, dear cousin Edward. But we too have faith in the Lord.”

Abigail said, “And you, dear cousin Edward. Have you been reborn in Christ?”

Said he, “I too wait upon the Lord.” Then he said, “You and Henry will lodge with me and Susanna and her infant son who was named Peregrine by her late husband, William White. William died of the scurvy about a month before my poor Elizabeth. Peregrine was born during our crossing on the Mayflower. Hence his name.”

Abigail said, “I do not understand.”

I said, “Peregrine means ‘wanderer' or ‘traveler' in Latin.”

Henry said, “A name that befits us all.”

At length, led by two men from Plymouth, the crowd began trudging in the sand to the east. Edward, Henry, and I divided Abigail's baggage between us and, staggering under the load, trudged along with the rest.

Having gone about a mile, we came to the west gate of the Plymouth town stockade. We passed within to face a murmuring throng.

Edward Winslow left me in charge of all of Abigail's baggage and led her under the shade of a nearby oak tree. There he said, “Sister, lie down a little—that always does me good.”

Then came here three men: a tall man with a big nose and a man with a grey beard, followed by a very short man in a coat of mail, wearing a pikeman's helmet and carrying a rapier. These were followed by a drummer, a trumpeter, and two musketeers.

The drum rolled, the trumpet sounded, and the crowd fell silent. The tall man stepped forward and spake in a deep voice, saying, “I am William Bradford, the Governor of the Plymouth Plantation. By arrangement with your Master, Thomas Weston, the Treasurer of the Company of Merchant Adventurers in London, I welcome you as our guests. You will remain with us for several months until, with God's grace, you will establish a colony of your own.