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Two days before Christmas, Elizabeth bore the long-awaited son. There was of course no Christmas celebration in the Bay Colony; tithing men, deacons, and constables all were vigilant to see that the day was marked by no secret observance either. But Elizabeth was so excited and happy that she ordered Telaka to use all of their flour and raisins for a Christmas pie, and recklessly invited the Patricks over for a wassail bowl on Christmas night.

There was a roaring fire in the bedchamber, where Elizabeth lay with the dark-haired infant snuggled against her. The wassail of hard cider and rum steamed on the hearth in an iron pot. There were pine boughs in the corners of the room, cut for Elizabeth by Toby in bland disregard of Robert’s remonstrance. It seemed that in Germany one always brought pine boughs into the house at Christmas, and even little fir trees studded with candles. Elizabeth thought it a charming idea but unfeasible. She did, however, instruct Telaka to light a dozen bayberry candles and place them around the room, where they trembled like stars and gave forth a

When the Patricks stamped in on a blast of cold air, both laughed with pleasure.  “‘Tfaith, Bess, ye’ve got it snug in here, smells good too!” cried Daniel, dropping a tiny pewter porringer on the bed. “Here’s for the heir! God bless him!” He inspected the crumpled face on Elizabeth’s arm, and said. “ ‘Od’s Body, but ‘tis a
Winthrop
ye’ve hatched this time, lass!”

“Aye,” said Robert proudly, standing at the foot of the bed. “There’s a resemblance. We shall call him John for the Governor.”

Not
for the Governor, Elizabeth thought - for Jack if you like - but she was too happy to upset Robert who had emerged again from his melancholy.

“I bring you ‘speculaas’, Dutch cakes - special,” said Anneke, smiling and kissing first Elizabeth then the baby. “From little vood shapes ve use for children.” She presented a basketful of cookies moulded into stars, windmills, and tiny soldiers.

Toby was invited up, and attacked the wassail and cookies with vim. Soon Daniel started a song, and gulping from the ladle began to toast everyone’s health. Robert’s demur that drinking healths was illegal, Daniel greeted with a roar. “Don’t ye be a long-faced spoilsport - Robbie, me lad! By the Mass, if a man can’t enjoy himself when he’s got him a son ‘tis a sorry world indeed!” Daniel quaffed another ladleful and began to bellow, “Wassailing, Wassailing, kiss me, m’dear! I wish ye a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, a pocket full o’ silver money, and a cellar full o’ nappy beer!”

Elizabeth giggled, slightly tipsy herself. Anneke sang in Dutch, Toby in German, and Daniel, flinging off his sword and mantle, danced an Irish jig.

Elizabeth, clapped and laughed, crying, “Now I’ll sing, and you all join in I” She raised herself on the pillows and sang a song from Groton days when her grandfather had made Christmas a feast of hospitality:

“Come bring with a noise, My merrie boys,
The Christmas log to the firing;
While my good dame she,
bids ye all be free, And drink to your hearts desiring!”

“Aye - drink! Drink!” shouted Daniel, lurching about the room, and “Dance!” He caught Anneke around her plump waist and began whirling and twirling his wife, who shrieked and protested but could not get away from him, while Toby and Elizabeth sang the song over and over and louder and louder.

They did not hear the knock on the door below, nor steps on the narrow stairs, and Daniel was exuberantly kissing and spanking Anneke when the chamber door was flung open and Job Blunt, the tithing man, stood on the threshold, staring at them with a blend of disgust and malice. “Aha!” he cried. “I thought as much from the noise,
which
Goodman Bridges he heard all the way over to his place! Drunk, roistering,
and
- ” he glanced at the pine boughs, the many candles, the wassail pot, “keeping Christmas too. I heard what you sang.”

Robert cleared his throat and drew himself up. “I have a new son,” he began. “ ‘Tis no sin to be glad of it - ” But Patrick, who had taken a moment to recover, drowned him out in a great roar. “God damn ye, Job Blunt, ye prick-arsed knave, what d’ye mean by bursting in here?”

The tithing man stiffened, but stood his ground.
“You’ll
find out what I mean when this ribaldry is reported to the Court, and your lewd speech to me, too. Captain Patrick!”

Daniel thrust Anneke aside, he hunched his red head between his shoulders, his great hairy hands clenched into fists.

“Ye can report this to the Court too, then - ” he said softly. His right fist shot out and landed on Job Blunt’s long chin. The tithing man crumpled like a straw man on the threshold.

Elizabeth gave a cry, then they were all silent, looking at the quiet huddled figure. Suddenly Toby laughed, his oxlike face, grown animated. “What’ll we do with him?” he said. “Is he dead, Captain?”

Anneke whispered, “God allemachtig!” She and Robert both moved at once and rushed to the tithing man. Job Blunt was not dead. They turned him over, and he breathed and moaned. “Give him to drink!” said Anneke. Robert obeyed, and ladled some of the fiery wassail into the tithing man’s mouth. Job spluttered and feebly moved his hands.

“Here - ” said Patrick, who had quite sobered. “I’ll dump him downstairs. When he comes to, mayhap he’ll not remember, and we’ll deny everything.”

“ ‘Tvill do no good, Danny,” said Anneke sadly. “So many complaints there’ve been of us lately. So many fines. And you wrote that foolish, angry letter to the Governor.”

Elizabeth knew of the letter, but Robert had not been told and he looked his dismayed question from Anneke to Daniel who said roughly, “I lost me temper! I’ve not had me bounty money
yet
fur the Pequot war, nor the lands that were promised. I know his Worship’s got scant use fur me, and would treat me like Underhill if he had cause, but I want justice.”

“You’ll not get it with angry demands - nor probably at all,” said Elizabeth, falling wearily back on the pillows. Her head was spinning and the merry Christmas had broken into jagged pieces.

“How I detest this God-blasted Bay,” said Daniel through his teeth. He picked up the inert Job, flung the man over his shoulder and carried him downstairs, where Telaka was waiting with obvious anxiety in her eye.

“Missis all right?” she asked. “Much noise, much loud talk not good for her or babe.”

“She’s all right,” said Daniel. “Now. But I doubt she or any of us’ll take our ease for long. Tend this carrion, Telaka, till he comes to his senses, then I suppose ye’d better boot him out, though I’d like to wring his neck.”

“E-ne-my?” said Telaka carefully, watching Patrick. “He is bad man?”

Patrick pave a snort of disgust. “Enemy forsooth! Worse’n a Pequot. At least the Indians don’t go sneaking and tattling, whatever else they do.” He went back upstairs.

Telaka repeated the word “Pequot” under her breath. She turned the tithing man over with her bare foot. Then she knelt down beside him, and extracted a small deerskin pouch from the bosom of her blue cotton dress. She poured some powder from the pouch into her brown palm, spat on it, and rolled the mixture into a ball. She was trying to insert this ball between Job Blunt’s flaccid lips when he raised his lids, gazed up at the glittering black eye and the mutilated face, gave a wild shriek and shoved the squaw violently.

When Daniel, Toby, and Robert ran down to see what the new commotion was, the tithing man had fled stumbling into the night, and Telaka stood with her arms folded by the kitchen fireplace.

To their agitated questions, she gave only one answer. “Bad man gone.” The left side of her mouth lifted, but whether it was a smile or not there was never any way of knowing.

On the following day, Job Blunt took his complaints to Water-town’s minister, the Reverend George Phillips, and Mr. Phillips listened in silence to all the heated accusations - drunkenness, lewd singing and dancing, keeping Christmas, bodily assault, cursing, and obscene language. The minister was a quiet man of decided opinions which frequently did not agree with those of his fellow ministers at the Bay. When he thought it right he had defied Winthrop and the Boston clergy, as in the matter of Elder Browne’s Anglican views some years ago, and of Watertown’s due representation in the government. He owned a large library and was a man of learning, which in him had instilled perspective. He would brook no disorder in his town, but disliked fanatical methods of subduing it; he also disliked Job Blunt, though he concealed this.

At the end of the tirade he said: “Yes, Goodman, these are regrettable charges. I observe that by and large they concern Captain Patrick rather than the Feakes. We’ve been having trouble with the Captain of late. Perhaps I’ve been lax in my pastoral duty. I shall visit the Patricks, exhort them and pray with them.”

“But, sir - ” objected Job, frowning. “He’s got to be punished! The Court should give him the whipping post for hitting me, and the language he used!”

“Quite so,” Phillips agreed. “Though neither the Captain nor the Feakes are of the class one associates with the whipping post, are they? I shall investigate the matter, and you may be sure of admonishment and fines.” The minister’s lean terrier face indicated dismissal; he glanced longingly at the Ovid he had been reading before Job’s interruption, but the tithing man was thoroughly dissatisfied.

“Sir,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning over the minister’s table, “I haven’t told you the worst, I was a’most afeared to - ”

Phillips sighed, “Well...?”

“That squaw the Feakes got. The heathen wi’ half a face - she tried to murder me! I caught her stuffing something bitter in my mouth, it burned my lips, and the look in her eye - I tell you, sir, it was devilish.”

Phillips leaned back in his chair. “This, ah - incident took place after the blow on your chin, when you were still addled?”

“I see what you’re getting at, sir,” cried Job in angry excitement. “You think I fancied it, but I didn’t. And what’s more the whole town’s talking about that savage - they know she’s a
witch.”

The minister contemplated his tithing man steadily. “Now, Goodman, you have made a very grave accusation indeed. On what evidence is the
‘whole town’
saying this?”

“Well,” said Job, sulkily after a moment, “Goody Knapp and Goody Warren, Goody Bridges too, they all think so. They saw that squaw overlooking a cow in the Bridges pasture and next day it died, and she has a familiar too.”

“Ah . . .” said the minister, raising his eyebrows. “So she has a familiar. A black cat perhaps? Or a toad?”

“No, sir,” said Job. “ ‘Tis a blue jay. It stays in her kitchen, she talks with it.”

“Indeed,” said the minister. “An unusual familiar. Is Mistress Feake aware of these suspicions about her servant?”

“I doubt that,” said Job, hunching his skinny shoulders. “She’s a bad ‘un herself, by all accounts - no better’n a trollop.”

Phillips stared, his eyes narrowed, and he said with icy quiet, “What do you mean by
that?”

Job looked a little frightened; he licked his lips and his eyes slid from the minister’s stern face to the floor. Phillips waited, and Job finally burst out defiantly, “You must know there’s long been talk about her and that knave Patrick, in and out of her house at all hours, hugging and kissing too, little Dolly Bridges says, n’ then when that last lass o’ Mistress Feake’s was born - that Hannah wi’
red
hair - ”

“Goodman Blunt!” said the minister, rising. “You have certain specified duties to me and the town. These duties do not include the spreading of malicious slander, which I may remind you is punishable by the court. You are dismissed from your office!”

Job gasped, he mumbled apology, he demeaned himself to beg for the continuance of his position, which had brought him many sly perquisites, but his pastor was adamant. Job finally went off in a fury which he solaced at the ordinary across the meetinghouse green.

Phillips sat down again and shook his head, knowing very well that this move would not control the slanders he had heard, but would only send them underground. Twinges of pain in his stomach became insistent as they often did when discouragement followed his efforts at the wise handling of his flock. He pushed the Ovid aside and opened his Bible at the New Testament, which, unlike his colleagues at the Bay, he greatly preferred to the Old.

In his journal for that year, John Winthrop wrote:

The devil would never cease to disturb our peace, and raise up instruments one after another.

And he retailed “the plots the old serpent had against us”.

These included the hanging of a mad woman at Boston, continuing Baptist and Antinomian heresies, the disgraceful behaviour of Captain John Underhill who, having returned from England and professing repentance, yet proceeded to commit adultery; whereupon, being banished again from the colony, he went to the Piscataqua region and got himself appointed Governor of Dover, to Winthrop’s great annoyance. There were also misunderstandings and high words about boundaries with both Plymouth Colony and Connecticut. Indeed all the offspring colonies, instead of honouring the supremacy of their parent at the Bay, were showing themselves undutiful. Worse than that was a sudden wave of migration from Massachusetts to Virginia and Barbadoes. Winthrop struggled to restrain these renegades, but the Devil continued his subversive machinations. There was a fearful threat from England. After five years Matthew Cradock wrote again for the Charter, saying that news of the colony’s dissensions and jealousies was causing grave worry about the Bay’s welfare, that the banishment of Mrs. Hutchinson and so many other people was a source of marvel, and that there was a strong possibility that a governor-general would be sent out from England to regulate matters. As they had five years ago, Winthrop and his assistants decided to ignore the letters and foster the assumption that they had never been received. King Charles had been so much occupied with his own troubled affairs after the last summons for the Charter that the demand had been dropped; perhaps it might be so again.

The Bay kept Fast Days, Days of Humiliation, in the endeavour to find out how they had offended God, and lost His cherishing care.