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Elizabeth preened herself on her choice, and the intelligence of her squaw, nor would she listen to the neighbours’ warnings that there was something sinister about Telaka, Goodwife Bridges was particularly caustic now that Elizabeth no longer hired Dolly to work. She and Goody Warren and Goody Knapp talked a good deal about Mrs. Feake and the ugly heathen she’d got, and for all anybody could see on neighbourly calls didn’t seem to be converting at all.

“Last Wednesday,” said Goody Bridges to her cronies one day, “I ran in for the loan of a smidgin o’ yeast, and finding that squaw alone, and polishing the coppers which they surely needed, I must say, I asked her right out, Did she know God and did Mrs. Feake teach her the catechism?”

“What’d she answer?” asked Peg Warren, her mouse face eager.

“She said, ‘My missis,
she
mind her own business.’ That’s what she said, and in as good English as you or me, a’most. I was skeered I can tell ye, wi’ that one toad eye a-gleaming at me. She’s uncanny, that’s what that savage is.”

The three women looked at each other with meaning. Peg Warren said, “Depend on it, the Devil’s helped her learn English so as to run away better, like all them squaws in Boston, allus taking off for Connecticut. I hear Mrs. Wilson’s was brought back from Narragansett and branded on the forehead, but now she’s gone again. I wouldn’t trust that Telaka far as you can throw a barrel.”

The goodwives Warren and Knapp nodded solemnly. “Is that blue jay still there i’ the kitchen?” asked Goody Warren after a pause.

“Aye”
whispered Goody Bridges. “Tame as you please, hopping about on the table and squawking and eating from that Indian’s hand. ‘Tisn’t natural.”

Again they met each other’s eyes, but said nothing more. Elizabeth was now again the Governor’s niece, walls had ears sometimes, as all had discovered in the old country as well as here, indiscreet speech was dangerous, and authority could hale anyone up before the Court for slander at the slightest complaint. They dropped Mrs. Feake and her uncanny squaw in favour of a topic quite safe in Watertown and scarcely less interesting; the inexorable progress of the chastisement of the infamous Mrs. Hutchinson and her brother-in-law Wheelwright.

Elizabeth was scarcely aware of what was going on. First in early September there was the excitement of Robert’s and Daniel’s return from Connecticut They were full of the Pequot war and its successful conclusion; except that Sassacus, the Great Pequot Sachem, had escaped and fled to the Mohawks, though that, said Daniel, was of no consequence. The Pequot wasps’ nest had been destroyed, all the other Connecticut Indians were jubilant. Uncas, in particular, the Mohican chief, was now violently pro-English, and the settlers’ lives were at last safe.

“Was there danger? Were you nearly wounded?” asked Elizabeth tremulously, feeling the ancient female thrill of awe for the returning warriors, and glad that Robert looked well, and had actually gained weight.

“Why, o’ course there was danger, silly lass!” laughed Patrick, not adding that he had protected Robert from it very skilfully. “We’re a couple o’ heroes, aren’t we, Rob?”

Robert had seen some fighting, and been anxious to do his part, but it had developed that he was most useful at the Fort, acting as scribe and accountant. Neither he nor Daniel mentioned this to Elizabeth, and Robert basked in her admiration.

Then in September Elizabeth was brought to bed of another girl. The birth was easy, there was no time to summon Anneke, and Telaka quietly did what was necessary. Elizabeth was bitterly disappointed that she had not borne a son; for some days in the weakness, of lying-in she was depressed and tearful, until the healthy pleasure of suckling the infant and delight in its sturdiness and crop of red-gold curls brought acceptance and soon she realized that she loved it very much. That, tiny as it was
,
she had a special feeling for it, different and more intense than for the other two at that age. For some reason, as the baby lay in
her arms and nuzzled at her breast she thought again of the strange beautiful experience in Mrs.
Hutchinson’s parlour, and she told Robert that she wished to call the baby Anne.

“If you like, dear wife,” he said tenderly. “It was your mother’s name, was it not?”

“Aye,” she said. She had almost forgotten that. “But wait - “

She raised herself on her elbow, looking up at Robert with sudden dismay. “Now I remember that Uncle Winthrop once said the name was hapless in our family. Three babes he has had named Anne, and all died so soon.” She kissed her baby and hugged it against her breast,

“Well,” said Robert, who had much knowledge of the Scriptures, though he seldom showed it, “Call her Hannah then. ‘Tis the same in Hebrew, and both Anne and Hannah mean Grace.”

“Do they?” Elisabeth said smiling dreamily. “How strange.” She lay back on the pillows and said, “Have you heard aught of Mrs. Hutchinson? How she does?”

“How she does?” repeated Robert, astonished, “Why, she goes on trial soon, and Wheelwright is banished.”

“Dear Lord!” cried Elizabeth, starting up again, “What do you mean?”

“Why, I mean just that.” said Robert a trifle sharply. “You must know that the synod of all the colony ministers at Newtown found that woman and her brother guilty on eighty-two points of heresy.”

“No,” said Elizabeth. “I didn’t.” She added through tight lips, “And I presume my Uncle and Mr. Wilson ably found eighty of the points themselves.”

“Bess! It frets me when you speak in that tone of your Uncle Winthrop. I cannot understand you.”

“Don’t try,” she said. “But tell me what has become of Mrs. Hutchinson’s powerful friends? Of Harry Vane, and Mr. Cotton, of Captain Underhill and Mr. Coddington; do they not help her?”

“Vane has sailed back to England,” said Robert slowly, unwilling to go on, but also anxious not to cross her who was still in childbed. “Mr. Cotton, when the ministers all exhorted and prayed with him at the synod, confessed at last that he had been in error to support that she-Satan in her wicked heresies. He was penitent.”

“Oh, was he Indeed?” she said. “So Mr. Cotton is now safely enfolded with all his godly colleagues, and need no longer be embarrassed by Mrs. Hutchinson’s long trust and aflection.”

“Wife!” cried Robert, suddenly anxious, “You’re not yourself. You speak unreasonable.” He came close to the bedside and took her hand. “Pray forget all this, it has naught to
do
with you.”

She withdrew her hand. “What of the other two, Underhill and Coddington, and the many more who believed in her?”

“In truth,” said Robert, “I do not know.” His lids blinked and the stubborn shut look stiffened his face.

She did not mention the subject again to Robert, but she thought of it much, and relied on Daniel Patrick’s visits to keep her informed.

The Captain attended Anne Hutchinson’s trial in his official capacity, and came back each evening from Newtown increasingly disgusted with what he had heard. “She’s a fine, spirited gentlewoman,” he said one day when Robert was out, and they could talk freely. “Holds her head high and answers ‘em with so much pith, they get dumbfoundered. They quote Scriptures, she quotes back at ‘em, and I’d a laughed except there’s something goes against me grain to see thirty men badgering one lone woman. She doesn’t look well either, and they say she’s with child, poor soul.”

“Who’s hottest against her?” said Elizabeth quietly. “My Uncle Winthrop, I presume.”

“Aye,” said Patrick with a rueful laugh. “He acts as judge and prosecutor both, and a sharp sarcastic tongue he has, trying to trip her up. That long-nose pastor from Roxbury, Thomas Welde, he and Hugh Peter’re the nastiest, but there’s not one of ‘em decent to her, far as I can see, now Mr. Cotton’s slid t’other side o’ the fence.”

“She has no friends at all left?” whispered Elizabeth.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Patrick rubbed his nose and frowned. “But they’re not let in the courtroom, ‘cept Mr. John Coggeshall, and
him
the Reverend Peter muzzled at once. Mr. Coddington too, he spoke up for Mrs. Hutchinson right smartly. “Here is no law of God that she hath broken,” he said, ‘nor any law of the country that she hath broken. Therefore she deserves no censure.’ But they wouldn’t listen.”

“What law can they pretend she has broken?” said Elizabeth. “How can they do this to her?”

“Well, Bess - ” said Patrick, fumbling for his pipe, and shrugging. “The way I see it, His Worship and the magistrates and reverends have somehow turned a woman’s liking for one kind of preaching above another kind o’ preaching into a hideous crime against the Commonwealth, ‘n that’s the nubbin o’ it.”

Elizabeth fretted that night about what she had heard. Had she been quite recovered she would have braved any consequences to get to Newtown and try to see Mrs. Hutchinson, though she knew very well the lady was under guard, and no woman would be allowed in the courtroom. As it was, she prayed for her friend, and sent her uncle thoughts of intense dislike.

The next evening, long after supper, Daniel came again to the Feakes. Elizabeth had gone downstairs for the first time, and was sitting in their best chair by the fire. Robert was hunched over the table, writing a letter to his nephew, Toby Feake, who was still in Germany with Robert’s sister but intended to come to New England. This prospect pleased Robert, who explained to Elizabeth, “A likely lad. Sister Alice says he’s handy with boats and shipping, is very fond of the water. He’ll be useful to us, especially since Hugh’s bond Is nearly up and we’ll be short a man.”

Elizabeth cared little whether Robert’s nephew came to live with them or not, but she agreed with the practicality of replacing one of their servants, and thought it might be pleasant to have a kind of son in the house. “You’re sending him the passage?” she asked idly, watching the flames dancing between the big black andirons. Robert granted, and Telaka came in from the kitchen with a tankard of hot spiced beer, “Drink,”
she said, thrusting the tankard at Elizabeth. “Make milk.”

“Why, thank you, Telaka - “ said Elizabeth, smiling. “How well you’ve mulled it, but I’m not thirsty.”

“Drink!” said the squaw, her one eye growing stern. “Baby cry too much.” She stalked out, her blue cotton skirts swishing.

It was true, Elizabeth thought, sipping at the beer; her milk had diminished during these days of worrying about Anne Hutchinson. She must fetch dried dill and fennel from the garret tomorrow, make a decoction of them. They always made the milk come. I should be spinning, she thought, not sitting idle, then raised her head gladly as they heard Patrick’s knock.

The Captain strode in pulling and beating his hands. “ ‘Tis cold out. Snow in the air. ‘Twill be a hard winter if November starts like this.” He tossed his mantle on the chest, drew a chair up to the fire and toasted his steaming leather boots. He glanced at Robert, who had smiled a welcome before returning to his letter, “It’s all over, Bess - ” he said to her, quite low.

She stiffened, looking her question.

“Banished,” said Patrick. “Banished as soon as the trails’re fit to travel, imprisoned now in Welde’s brother’s home in Roxbury.”

“It’s monstrous!” Elizabeth cried, no longer caring whether Robert heard or not. “Where can she go?”

‘‘Nowhere in Massachusetts, or Connecticut,
that’s
certain,” said Patrick, “Perhaps Roger Williams’ll take her, being open-hearted and having suffered himself,”

“But that’s wilderness - ” said Elizabeth, thinking of the charming comfortable home she had visited in Boston. “What has she done to be cast away like that?”

Patrick pulled a scrap of paper from his doublet “I wrote down the verdict for ye. These are the very words. Governor Winthrop he said:

Mrs. Hutchinson, you hear the sentence of the court. It is that you are banished from out our jurisdiction as being a woman not fit for our society. And you are to be imprisoned until the Court send you away.

Then Mrs. Hutchinson said:

I desire to know wherefore I am banished.

Governor Winthrop answered, as haughty as a Duke:

Say no more! The court knows wherefore, and is satisfied.

And that was the end of it”

“So my wise, charitable uncle has won again,” said Elizabeth, after a long pause.

“Now, now, wife - “ interposed Robert hastily, putting down his pen, “you must get this maggot from your head, my dear. Uncle Winthrop knows what’s best, and this shameless woman has been traducing the ministers, she has pretended to direct revelations from heaven, and Dan hasn’t told you that she flew into a passion crying that
she
should be delivered from the lion’s den, and your uncle and the whole colony ruined.”

Patrick cried with sudden anger. “The gentlewoman was ill and so weary she could hardly speak. Beset by all those yapping curs continually, is it wonder she talked a little wild? ‘Tis a shocking business and no fit work for
men.
I marvel, Robert, that you seem to back it,”

Robert’s pale eyes widened, his face fell to dismay. Was it contempt they both had in their eyes? Or simply anger, which was bad enough. He looked from his wife to his best friend, and the formless fear, which was never long defeated, oozed out again from hiding. His lids fluttered, and his hands trembled as he said anxiously, “I’ll say no more. It is only that Uncle Winthrop and all the ministers, they are our leaders.”

“I’faith they are,” said Patrick mere quietly. “And I like it not. There’s many more don’t like it, either, as you’ll soon be seeing - Well,” he suddenly gave them his wide blunt-toothed grin. “I’ve had me bellyful o’ squabbles. Bess, if ye’re not drinking that fine tankard o’ beer, I’ll relieve ye of it.”

Anne Hutchinson was duly imprisoned at Roxbury, and her husband went south to find some place in Rhode Island where they might be sheltered, Her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, was cast from the colony immediately despite the bitter weather. He fled farther north to Piscataqua,

Winthrop, however, was by no means finished with his measures for subduing what he had come to look upon as a probable insurrection Having punished the principals to the utmost limit that he dared, he now turned his implacable gaze on ail Anne Hutchinson’s sympathizers.