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Jack rose and walked over to her. “Do you dislike Mr. Feake, Bess?”

She shook her head. “But I feel some singularity - some mystery about him. Do you know
why
he left England?”

“Why, for the same reasons we all did, no doubt,” answered Jack, thinking this foolish question an evasion. He went on anxiously. “Is there someone else you wish to marry? Are you unhappy here? Remember Edward Howes still loves you. He told me so in London. Would you go back to him?”

Elizabeth laughed on a weary note. “Oh, Jack - spare me Edward Howes again, I beg. Don’t you remember how you urged him on me before you sailed to the Levant?”

“Aye, I remember.” He picked up the poker and turned a log. “I was a fool, Bess. If I had thought - if I had spoken then - if I had stayed - or asked you - “

“Hush,” she said. “What use is that?”

“None.” He put the poker in the great fieldstone hearth. “Yes, my little coz, I think you should marry Robert Feake. My father knows what’s best.”

She sighed. “So everyone says - Jack, what has happened to my jointure? My four hundred pounds. I know your father had it, but now he says my portion is so small that Mr. Feake is amiable to want me.”

Jack started and frowned. “But, my dear, the greatest part went to pay Harry’s debts, long ago. Didn’t you know?”

“No, though I’ve wondered. Do I have
nothing!”

“A little,” said Jack uncomfortably. “My father will give you some settlement, I’m sure, he is never ungenerous.” Never ungenerous, but often muddleheaded when it came to money. Jack seldom permitted himself criticism of his father, but there was no doubt that financial matters might be better handled. Already Jack had discovered that the Governor had poured his own scanty funds into colony finances, and was considerably embarrassed for cash. Perhaps what remained of Elizabeth’s portion had vanished in the same way. But this he would not tell her, and now the four thousand pounds from the sale of Groton Manor would certainly ease the situation.

“I wanted
something
of my own,” Elizabeth said bitterly. “Not always to be beholden, a chattel like the maids and kine, Taking beard and house room upon sufferance - “

“Bess! Bess!” he cried. “My father doesn’t grudge you house room! You know that. You heard how in the starving time last winter here he gave his last handful of meal to a stranger!”

“It is easier to love a stranger,” she said, “and your father has never loved me.”

Jack was silent, knowing she spoke truth, and sensing from the conflict in himself something of what might lie deep hidden under his father’s enmity towards this luscious, forceful woman of his own blood.

Elizabeth answered part of his thoughts as though she had read them. “You all think me strong-willed and rebellious. I’ve been so at times, I may be so again. But it seems I’m not now. For I will marry Robert Feake, since you desire it too.”

“Oh, Bessie, dear - not like that Not because I ask it Not unless you feel it is God’s Will. Have you asked
Him!”

“No,” she said, “and if I did, and He should hear, I cannot think He would answer in any voice different from your father’s.”

Jack stood gazing at her sadly before he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “If you should ever need me, Bess - my help - no matter where I am - and I shall travel widely - send me as token - “ He paused, thinking. He had no ring but the gold one his grandfather had given him; a button might be lost, and he wished to give her nothing trivial. He walked over to the chest where lay his hat and sword and gloves. He picked up one of his London-made doeskin gloves. The Winthrop crest had been embroidered on the cuff, “A hare proper, running on a mount vert set upon a helmet”.

“Keep this, dear,” he said, handing her the glove. “And swift as this hare which is our crest, I’ll answer your need, if you send me the glove. I’ll keep the other in memory of what might have - but has never been between us - and God bless you.”

She took the glove and put it in the bosom of her dress, beneath the brooch Harry had given her. She pulled her collar down to hide the bulge it made, and ran from the room upstairs to her cold bedroom. She shivered, and crouching by her chest under the window, took the glove and brooch in her hand and stared at them. Tokens from both brothers who had loved her in varying degrees, and she them. And this was the end. This was the turning of a page, the shutting of a door. It is finished, she thought, and soon I shall not even be a Winthrop any more. She put the brooch and glove in a little casket at the bottom of her bride chest, under her piles of linen.

Elizabeth married Robert Feake a month later, in the middle of December. It seemed that in the Bay Colony marriage was no longer considered a sacrament or performed by a clergyman. Governor Winthrop, as chief magistrate, married them in the front room of his house. Elizabeth wore her maroon taffeta gown, Robert wore his plum-coloured doublet. The Winthrops stood behind the bridal couple, and during the five-minute ceremony Elizabeth heard Martha crying softly, as she had nearly three years ago in St. Sepulchre’s Church at the other wedding. Except for Martha there was no sound but Winthrop’s measured voice, the murmured answers, and the hiss of burning logs. When the newly-weds had signed the contract, Winthrop smiled and said, “You may now kiss your wife, if you like, nephew Robert.”

Robert flushed up to his silvery hair, flattered by his relationship to the Governor, but so awed and confused by his status with Elizabeth that he did not move. She threw him a look of almost maternal pity, and laughed. “Come, come, husband - “ she cried in a brittle voice. “You must not be so ungallant!” She brushed his smooth beardless cheek with her lips, noting that he trembled, and also that he smelled pleasantly of lavender. It won’t be so bad, she thought. And thank God, I’m quit of this. She saw relief in Winthrop’s eyes, and murmured recklessly, “Aye, my uncle. You’ll soon be rid of me.”

He started, uncertain of what he heard, but the group dissolved as Margaret rushed up to give Elizabeth a warm hug, and the others followed.

Elizabeth picked up Joan, who had been standing owl-eyed -through the ceremony, clinging to Martha’s hand. “Here is your new father, poppet,” she said in the same brittle tone. “Isn’t that splendid?”

Robert smiled nervously and touched the baby’s hair. Joan stared at him without interest, then began to nuzzle Elizabeth, and pull at her bodice. Everyone laughed a little too loud. Margaret said, “Oh, for shame - ‘tis time you weaned her completely, Bess . .. Fetch us wine,” she called to the servants who had clustered near the kitchen door. “We must drink to the bridal couple I”

“We do not
drink
the health of anyone, my dear,” said Winthrop. “You forget God alone has the power to grant health or contentment. But we may break bread and take a sip or two of wine in simple amity.”

Oh lud, thought Elizabeth, and the shell in which she had enclosed herself nearly cracked. At Martha’s marriage there had been music and dancing, even at her own to Harry there had been Emmanuel Downing to lend jollity. But now they stood solemnly around the trestle and bowed their heads through Winthrop’s extended prayer. Thomas Dudley and his son Samuel had come to the wedding. As soon as the blessing was over, Dudley and Winthrop began heavy frowning converse, which Margaret watched anxiously, knowing that the disagreements between these two were mounting. Samuel Dudley, however, whispered to Mary, who actually fluttered and looked almost pretty. Poor Mary, Elizabeth thought. If she’d set her heart on young Dudley, she’d have small hope of gaining him in view of their respective fathers’ feelings. Yet Winthrop was ever indulgent with
Mary.

Elizabeth did not know she sighed, but Robert leaned near her and murmured, “You’re weary? I too wish we could leave.”

“Why can’t we?” she said. “I want to go. I will go.”

“But Elizabeth - to leave table before the Governor, and the ride is long and cold to Watertown. “ ‘Twill soon be dark, and my home so poor yet, I’ve been wondering if for tonight you’d not better stay here in comfort... and your child ...”

“Nay, Robert,” she said gently, knowing that he feared to be alone with her, and feared that he could not please her. “We will leave Joan until tomorrow, she is weaned enough for that. And we will start now for my new home. The Governor is no more my master.” Nor, she added silently, but looking hard at Robert, is
any
man.

He swallowed and pushed back the trencher they had shared. “As you wish, Elizabeth. I will always - if I can - do what you wish.”

During the first months of her marriage to Robert Feake, Elizabeth was content at Watertown. She enjoyed her four-room house, small as these rooms were. She loved her tiny garden and the river that shimmered and curved at the foot of their homestall. At last she was her own mistress, and Watertown, seven miles up the Charles from Boston, was usually far enough from her uncle to give her the independence she craved. Though Winthrop had unexpectedly appeared several times in the town. Once, to discipline the Reverend George Phillips for not banishing Richard Browne, an elder in the Watertown church, who persisted in voicing the hideous opinion that Papist ceremonies might be valid for some, and that even Roman Catholic churches were true churches, and not temples of Babylon. Though most of Watertown’s congregation sided with the Governor, Mr. Phillips continued remarkably stiff-armed, and refused to admit that Boston had jurisdiction over anything that went on in his church.

Worse followed in February, when Phillips and others of the principal Watertown men refused to pay the levy of eight pounds the Governor had ordered for the fortification of Boston. Phillips actually said that he did not think Winthrop had power to make laws or raise taxes without the consent of all the people in the Bay, nor did he believe such power granted by the Charter. This disagreement lasted some time, and ended in Phillips’s unwilling submission when Winthrop demonstrated that the first General Court had given full powers to the Governor and his assistants, no matter what the Charter said, and anyway the obstreperous inhabitants of Watertown could air their grievances in a few months at the next Court.

Elizabeth was amused by these incidents, and delighted that she lived in a place which dared combat Uncle John. Though Robert was never of that number. He continued to be in awe of the Governor, and anxiously adoring of Elizabeth. This frequently touched, and sometimes exasperated her. If she had loved him, her bridal night might have been tragic, but as it was, Robert’s fumbling overeagerness, his total inexperience, his peculiar embarrassment, all produced in her no deeper feeling than sympathy. Harry had well taught her the arts of love-making, and though she was startled to find herself in the role of teacher, the matter was soon adjusted.

Robert clung to her, he was incoherently grateful for her soothing kindness when he had nightmares, he derived comfort from her nearness, but as the months went by his never importunate virility dwindled.

Elizabeth accepted this philosophically. Robert never seemed quite like a man to her; not that he was actually effeminate, but their relationship, she realized when she thought of it, was more that of a mother to a rather shadowy but devoted child. And for the present that sufficed. Especially as Robert had after all given her freedom, of a sort, and lavished on her every material comfort that he could afford. She was grateful, and accepted. The ninety pounds jointure that Winthrop - urged by Jack - had finally settled on her she kept locked in her chest with Harry’s brooch and Jack’s glove. Nor did Robert ever ask about it.

On the morning of August 24, Elizabeth awakened after a stifling muggy night, and turning in their big bed saw that Robert was already up and pulling on his breeches. “Lord help us,” said Elizabeth, yawning and twisting her hair off her sweaty shoulders. “What a night; I’m measled with mosquito bites, all of an itch. There’s much to be said for the old country.”

Robert did not answer, he was carefully washing his ears at a basin. Always he was very clean. Elizabeth scratched her arms, stomach, and breasts violently, looking at the red splotches with disgust, yawned again and got out of bed. “ ‘Tis St. Bartholomew’s Day,” she said, and sighed. “Oh, Rob, d’you remember the Fair? How I loved it. Every year I went, and it so near our home in the Old Bailey, I could hear the music while I lay abed too.”

“I never went to the Fair,” said Robert with constraint. “Or at least I don’t remember it.” He began to comb his thin flaxen hair.

“But of course you’d remember it! And of course you went. All Londoners did.” She had spoken without thinking but, now she saw what she thought of as “the strangeness” in his face, a shut, dark look, and it occurred to her that this came whenever there was mention of London.

“Why do you always seem so moonstruck when I speak of home?” she cried in sudden irritation. “Before God I believe you’ve some shameful secret of the past!”

He winced, and his eyes blinked rapidly as they had almost stopped doing since his marriage. She saw his long fingers clench the comb. “Don’t speak to me in such a tone, my dearest wife,” he pleaded, walking slowly towards the bed. “I can’t endure your anger.” He knelt beside her and put his cheek on her knee.

“Oh, pother!” said Elizabeth. “I’m not angry, only hot and uncomfortable. Why must you make such a fuss about naught? If you’ve a secret, keep it, only
I
like to think of home sometimes.”

“Is
this
not yet home, Bess?” he said sadly. “I’ve tried to make it so.”

“Of course it is - you ninny.” She patted his shoulder. “I hope Sal’s put a keg of beer in the spring, or it’ll sour in this thundery weather. That wench gets more careless every day.”

“Shall I find you another maid, Bess?” asked Robert quickly, looking up into her face.

“And
where,
I’d like to know? There’s scarce a lass over here willing to be a decent servant. I doubt Sally stays after her passage money’s paid up, she’s none too content now unless she’s bawdy-trotting with one of your men.” Sally had made it obvious that the only amenities she round in Watertown were the dubious attentions of Robert’s two indentured menservants.