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“In the ordinary,” he said with the gentry bred intonation which startled her anew. “I’ve been at Yarmouth with my cousins a week or so, and saw his sister, Judith Palmer, there. Besides, when I heard some fellow in the tavern call him Feake, I asked if he was kin to you.”

“You still remember me?” she said, trying to laugh. “It’s been six years since that Election Day on the Common when you bested the blacksmith.”

“Aye - “ he said. “I still remember you. And still find you beautiful.”

She could not help a gasp of pleasure, at the same time wishing passionately that she had combed her hair and changed this rumpled olive wool dress, worn since setting off for the meetinghouse yesterday. “The lantern light is kind,” she said, looking up at him through her lashes as she had almost ceased to do with men. “Tell me of yourself, where have you been these years?”

“If you like,” he said. “But shall we sit?” He motioned to the pile of nets and, taking her hand, drew her down beside him. His touch befuddled her, and the nearness of his big body. He doused the lantern and began to talk, but at first she could scarcely listen to him. She watched the starlight on his face, and knew that never even in those first days with Harry had she felt quite like this. How was it that again she became timid, dithering, virginal as she had been so long ago on the
Lyon.
And yet Hallet was twenty-four and she was thirty. Soon she forgot even that as she listened to him, and she forgot the sleeping Robert on the boat, and the children.

He had been in Virginia for two years, and then run a trading post for a wealthy Connecticut gentleman called William Whiting. This trading post was on the Delaware River, where the Swedes were trying to establish a colony. Their advent had ruined the English traders, who moreover had been harassed by the Dutch, who also claimed the territory.

“ ‘Twas a failure, my trading post,” said Will with his usual wry candour. “I owe Mr. Whiting money, which galls me. I’ll not rest till I pay it back, but I find I’ve not the kind of wits for merchanting and trading. ‘Tis the land I like. And making something from it with my own two yeoman hands.”

He fell silent while she found the courage to ask a question. “You’ve a wife now for certain?” she said, winding and unwinding a loose piece of
fish.
net. “And babes?”

“Why, no,” he said, laughing a little. “There was a wench in Virginia I was fond of. She lived with me at the trading post, without benefit of magistrate or minister. When I came north we parted pleasantly. Fortunately she was barren, so I’ve no bastards about that I know of.”

“Ah - “ said Elizabeth on a long breath.

He turned suddenly and stared at her hard. “Why are you glad I’m not wed? What does it matter to you, Bess Feake?”

“I don’t know - “ she stammered. “It doesn’t. How could it? You mistook me. Dear Lord, I’ve been so frightened and turmoiled these last two days, I scarce know what I’m doing.”

“To be sure,” he said, in a different voice. “Toby told me something of your trouble in Watertown, but jestingly. Will you speak of it to me, would it ease you?”

“Oh, yes,” she cried. “It would. You see yester morn, after the meeting, Dolly Bridges took a fit...”

She poured it all out to him in a tumbling flood, saying more than she knew when it came to Robert’s behaviour. Will listened intently, trying his best to follow this tale of a mutilated Indian, witchcraft, pain, fear, howling mobs, the minister, and the Governor. And escape at midnight.

At the end, she could not stop herself from weeping. “They hated me,” she sobbed. “They wanted to kill me, and kill poor Telaka. What happened that they hated so? What did we do?”

“Hush - “ he said. “It’s over. You’ll be gone in the morning. You’ll be safe. Hush, sweetheart,” he said and took her in his arms.

She quietened, lying soft against him. Like honey and fire, she felt throughout her body the endearment he had called her. The stars danced and sparkled over their heads. She shut her eyes and her thoughts stopped while she raised her face to his, her mouth eager, beseeching, under his hot firm lips.

He crushed her to him with a force that gave her blissful pain. He kissed her mouth, her lids, her neck, she felt his hand burning on her naked breast, and melted closer to him, murmuring she knew not what.

“By God!” he said, suddenly holding her off, and looking at her with what seemed like anger. “I never thought ‘twould be like this. Bess, I want thee - I must have thee. Come!” He pulled her to her feet. “Over there,” he said hoarsely. “The beach - by the marsh grass.”

She stood panting, so weakened that he lifted her in his arms. “No!” she cried. “No! Put me down!” For as he lifted her she had seen to the end of the dock. The dark line of the
Dolphin’s
mast. “Let me go - Will - “ she cried with anguish. “I cannot.”

He set her slowly on her feet, and stood apart from her. “You cannot?” he repeated. “And why not, since you want it, as I do?”

She bowed her head, looking down at the black water lapping against the piles. “Adultery,” she whispered.

He made a rough sound in his throat, and folded his arms across his chest. “An ugly word, Bess. And one not used in the noble household I once knew. There, as I observed, it was called ‘chivalric love’.”

“Perhaps,” she said, still staring at the water. “But I was not raised in a noble household, and between us there’s been no mention of love.”

“And what is love?” His voice now held sharpness. “ ‘A torment of the mind, a tempest everlasting; and Jove hath made it of a kind, not well, nor full nor fasting.’ So says the poet.”

“It pleases you to mock,” she said dully.

There was silence between them, while the first dawn breeze fluttered the ripples, and a pearly light shone on Plymouth Bay’s horizon. Then Will spoke. “No, Bess, I do not mock. It is that I know not what to say. Nor why it is that we should both throb and quicken so for each other. But you were right to stop us. Will you sit down near me again? I would look long at you, and keep your lovely face in my memory.”

She started and turned, crying in fear, “You’re not going? Where are you going?” She ran to him and took his hand.

He did not smile at this unreason; he sighed and said, “Yes, my dear, I am going to England. I’ve been waiting a ship at Plymouth, but now I hear of one that’s soon to sail from Boston, and shall sign on as carpenter.”

“England,” she whispered. “Not so far ...”

“But I must. There were letters for me at Yarmouth. One from my brother who says my mother is very feeble and yearns to see me again before she dies. The other - “ he frowned and added with reluctance, “from Lord George Digby, the Earl of Bristol’s heir.”

“What does
he
want of you now?” she cried. “You said you were quit

He flushed, but answered soon. “The times are wretched over there, Bess. The King’s march to Scotland came to naught. The people cry out against him. He will not call a Parliament. There’s grave fear of civil war!”

“Let them fight, then!” she cried. “What’s it to you?”

He raised her work-roughened hand to his lips and kissed the palm. But he continued inexorably. “No matter Lady Bristol’s conduct to me I cannot forget my duty to the Earl, nor my affection for his son. Lord George writes he must see me, he is in trouble from a duel, confined to his castle. He writes he has need of a man such as he believes I may now be to help him in certain matters - confidential missions.”

“But you
said - “
she burst out, “that all you cared for was the land, and yeomanry!”

“I also said that I must earn money to pay back Mr. Whiting, which I can quickest do by working for the Digbys. Furthermore, I cannot ignore Lord George’s plea, nor my mother’s.”

She snatched her hand from his. She turned her head and spoke carefully. “Then you’ll never come back. I’ll never see you more.”

In the growing dawn light he had caught the look of her eyes, before she turned away and made her shoulders stiff and proud. Unwilling, he felt a shock of pain.

“It’s not farewell, Bess,” he said. “I’ll return. I swear it.”

“What good is that?” she said, holding herself tight “We can be nothing to each other, and you do not even know where I’m going.”

“I know where you’re going. Toby told me. And do you think I couldn’t find you anywhere?”

“Aye, when I am old and wrinkled and forspent.”

By this bitterness he was troubled. He had much experience of light love, but until tonight had never guessed the pangs, nor found a woman who could turn him from any purpose he had set himself. Yet it was not only in Elizabeth that strange new feelings had awakened. A longing to protect and cherish her had subdued his passion despite his first quick male fury at being thwarted. Now he finally spoke uncertainly. “What would you have me
do,
Bess? Stay near you always, yet gazing from afar? Shall I give up my voyage to England?”

“Ah, no,” she cried piteously, the false anger draining from her.

“Forgive me. I spoke like a child. Go, go quickly. Forget me, Will. Forget this night as I shall try to.”

He turned her by the shoulders, lifted her head and, pushing back the tumbled black curls, looked into her face. With his great brown forefinger he touched the rose of her cheeks, the dark arch of her brows, the cleft in her chin, the full white curve of her throat. “I’ll not forget thee, Bess,” he whispered against her mouth as he kissed it “I’ll not forget thee.”

He was gone before she could speak, or cry out to stop him. She heard his quick footsteps on the wooden planks of the pier and then no more as he went up the sandy street She did not turn to look after him; she sat as he had left her on the dried fish nets, gazing out past the swaying mast of the
Dolphin,
to the sea where red streaks flamed on the dark distant water to the east.

The
Dolphin
sailed at eight that morning, moderately provisioned and with a bundle of trading goods lashed to the deck. Toby had arisen sober enough and surly. He said nothing of Hallet, and Elizabeth soon saw that he did not clearly remember the night before. She escaped all questioning since none of the sleepers on the shallop had awakened. For this she was grateful, though during the long days and nights of sailing she found no other cause for gratitude. Often enough in her life she had thought herself miserable, but it was never like this. She moved through the necessary duties in a haze, tending the children, emptying the slop buckets, boiling as best she could succotash and salt beef over the tiny fire which was laid on an iron slab in the cockpit Beneath these surface actions was a gnawing ache that sharpened at night to pain, while she relived those hours on the dock at Plymouth. Lovesickness, she thought at times, taunting herself in an effort to reduce the pain by ridicule. Or lust, what more than that? The lewd wantonness of a gentlewoman; mature wife, and four times mother, flinging herself like a tap wench into the sweaty arms of a common carpenter, then panting, pleading, clinging in a shameless bawdry to this fellow who had not even spoken of love. Thank God sanity and decency had rescued her in time. But no sooner had she thought thus than all her sour triumph fell apart, the pain returned a hundredfold, and burying her face in the pillow so the sleeping Robert might hear nothing, she would weep because she had not yielded. Why
had
she not gone with him to the beach by the marsh grass and known at least the piercing sweetness of the flesh and its desire assuaged. Surely he could not have left her then, or if he had, she would have known he would return, for the seal would have been on them. These thoughts at night, but in the morning others.

After Robert arose she would lie on, staring at the deck above and telling herself cold reason. Will Hallet would never return, nor would he had she yielded. For certain at Sherborne Castle there were elegant ladies, very young ones, perfumed and painted, with soft white be-ringed hands, ladies versed in the arts of “chivalric love”. And he, no longer a common carpenter but a lord’s intimate, seeing these ladies - who could not help desiring his strength and careless manhood - what memory then would he retain of a tousled, plain-garbed woman who had found no better love words than a mealy-mouthed prating of adultery. “I’ll not think of him again,” she said each morning to herself. “I swear it” And each hour she broke her vow.

Robert, dimly aware of her silences, and that she hardly ate, ascribed this to yearning for the Winthrops or to the hardships of the voyage. He treated her with kindness which she scarcely noted, and helped her with her duties. He was no longer seasick, and indeed felt better than he had in years. As each day brought them further west, he took more interest in their journey and the coastline that they glimpsed at intervals. They rounded Cape Cod without mishap, sailed between Martha’s Vineyard and the Elizabeth Island, then passed Narragansett and the Isle of Aquidneck or Rhode Island so far out to sea that they could barely distinguish the shore.

Once Elizabeth had thought of begging Toby to stop at Aquidneck so that she might visit Anne Hutchinson, and see how she fared. When she heard Toby tell Robert their position on the third day after rounding the Cape, Elizabeth roused herself and asked how far it was to Portsmouth on the Island.

“Ye mean where lives that Hutchinson woman now?” said Toby. “ ‘Tis yonder many leagues to the north. Newport’s the nearest settlement, but I’d not put in there even if the wind wasn’t contrary.”

“William Coddington’s settled himself at Newport with others who grew weary of Mrs. Hutchinson ere long,” said Robert glancing at his wife. But it seemed that Elizabeth was entirely cured of her perverted interest in the false prophetess, for she asked no more questions and went below to the cabin with a bowl of food for Telaka. The squaw’s injured legs were better, she never complained, but she continued intermittently seasick, and still lay on the pallet.

As the shallop entered the Sound past Fisher’s Island they were becalmed for two days. The lug sail hung inert across the mast, or slatted feebly, while the
Dolphin
wallowed in great oily ground swells. The hot May sun beat down on them, and Toby, frowning, worried about their provisions and said if this kept up they’d have to row; he and Ben on one of the great oars, Robert and Elizabeth on the other, and they needn’t think it would be easy. A breeze sprang up next morning, but it blew strongly from the west and the shallop had no means of sailing into the wind. Toby, muttering several robust curses manoeuvred his boat southward until he touched bottom near some oyster beds at the tip of Long Island. He dropped anchor, pulled up the little skiff they had been towing, and jumped in it. “Ben, stay on board wi’ the boat,” he commanded, “You others, ‘cept the squaw and the babies, ‘ll come ashore and gather shellfish. Uncle, bring your fowling piece.”