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Will and Elizabeth read the letters before they were sent, and were hopeful, being sure that this time Stuyvesant must answer, at least enough to clarify his own position. But still no answer came. And meanwhile two deaths occurred which powerfully affected their future.

On the twenty-sixth of March, Elizabeth and the girls were at the Winthrop mansion. They had spent the day there to help with the annual soapmaking, an operation requiring the labour of as many women as possible, so that the confusion might be finished off quickly. The household tallow and drippings had been hoarded for months, and stank abominably when they were thrown into the great kettles full of lye and boiled outdoors in the barnyard. There were always anxious moments while waiting for the soap to come, and recriminations if the lye had not been strong enough. Betty Winthrop walked amongst the kettles, adjudging the condition of the boiling noisome messes, reproving firmly, sometimes administering praise; an efficient commander of her forces.

And when two dozen barrels had been successfully filled with the soft clear jelly, she presented Elizabeth with one as recompense, and invited her to stay for supper.

Elizabeth was reluctant, being anxious to get back to Will and the boys who were corn-planting, but Lisbet and Hannah looked so disappointed that she agreed. She nursed the baby, put him at Betty’s direction in the cradle with the infant Martha, and gathered with the others in the Great Hall, where Jack joined them.

Jack had a visitor with him. This was Captain John Mason, the commanding officer of the Pequot war in 1637, and the present military leader of Connecticut. He was a small, serious man, with bright, darting lizard eyes; a strict Puritan and fervent church member; a magistrate at Hartford and much approved by Haynes and Hopkins. He was utterly unlike the other two captains Elizabeth had known so well - Underhill and Patrick.

Mason had arrived at Pequot to investigate at first hand the behaviour of certain Indians who lived on Jack’s lands, particularly Robino. He had spent the afternoon rehearsing complaints which had been brought to him, of canoe-stealing, of depredations made by swine, and a graver one that the troublesome Ninnigret, chief of the Niantics, claimed he had received permission from Jack to hunt “all over Pequot Country.” Which seemed to have been an invention of Robino’s.

Jack appreciated the Captain’s meticulous attention to possibly threatening Indian affairs, and gave Mason his usual courteous attention, but he found the exacting little man dull company, and was relieved when they joined the ladies for supper in the Great Hall. The unexpected sight of Elizabeth dismayed Jack. He had so far kept her out of sight whenever there were Hartford visitors or any visitors who might be inclined to pry or know more than he wished them to.

But there was no help for it, and he introduced her rapidly as “Mrs. Hallet,” then went on to a topic he hoped would fix Mason’s attention.

“The phantom ship!” he said. “Have you heard the latest news of that weird phenomenon, Captain Mason?”

“Aye,” said Mason, “since I’ve recently been to New Haven. They talk of nothing else. Some gaffer’s seen it again, afloat in the air, and all the doomed passengers wailing ghostly on the decks.” He spoke somewhat absently, for he was looking at Elizabeth, and wondering if it were possible that she was the woman he had heard of in New Haven. Governor Eaton had said little, and that little with constraint, but there had been a hint of scandal. It had passed from Mason’s mind, but now, on seeing this handsome woman, who had a warm challenging quality, the Captain felt his interest piqued. He glanced at her wedding band - startled at seeing so non-Puritan a symbol in this household - and having a neat mind averse to puzzles, determined to solve this one.

He waited until Mrs. Winthrop and Mrs. Lake had stopped exclaiming on the phantom ship, then said to Elizabeth, “You’ve recently come to Pequot, Madam? You have some interest in our Connecticut country?”

“Why, to be sure!” said Peggy Lake brightly, breaking the small ensuing silence. “Mrs. Hallet’s a cousin of my brother John’s and was a Winthrop once herself!”

“Indeed?” said Captain Mason, bowing. “Ah, to be sure, I remember from our Boston days. You were then Mistress Feake?”

Jack and Elizabeth both stiffened, but she smiled briefly and said, “Aye.” Betty Winthrop, who was not interested in these inquiries, nor ever anxious to notice Elizabeth any more than courtesy demanded, said incisively, “I hope the phantom ship will not come here. They say it’s been seen along the coast and always betides evil.”

“Oh, I think not, my dear,” said Jack. “I’ve made some study of these things, and believe ‘tis only an optical trick joined to superstitious fancy. I’ve not yet in all my travels seen a chimera which couldn’t be explained away and -” He would have continued because he hoped thoroughly to divert Mason’s attention from Elizabeth, but they were interrupted.

The slave Kaboonder came lumbering in, his eyes rolling, his black features twisted with alarm. “Master!” he cried, kneeling by Jack’s chair. “Master! Messenger come. Terrible news!”

Jack stood up and looked towards the door where a Massachusetts Indian stood panting, a small scroll of paper in his hand. Jack beckoned to the Indian, who came forward and held out the scroll.

Jack broke the seal, unrolled the paper and looked down. He lifted his head and gazed blindly at the window shutter.

“What is it, John?” whispered Betty.

He moistened his lips, still staring at the shutter.

“My father’s dead,” he said.

His mouth contorted in a grimace. He turned and hurried out of the room.

Betty Winthrop gave a cry and rushed after him. The others made pitying murmurs. Mrs. Lake grabbed the uncomprehending little Fitz-John and burst into tears.

Elizabeth felt the blood drain from her head, she saw the walls begin to spin and darken. The sickening emptiness in her head surged down and engulfed her whole body. She slipped sideways off the chair and on to the floor so quietly that it was a moment before the others saw, and ran to help. She lay for many minutes in the only swoon of her mature life.

Jack left that night for Boston on his fastest mount. He covered the hundred miles of trail by the morning of March 31 and reached Boston with a foundered horse.

Adam and Deane were alone in the parlour by the closed coffin when Jack came. The widow, and her six-months-old Joshua, lay in the bedchamber, prostrated with shock and grief. Stephen was in England fighting for Cromwell, Samuel was in the West Indies at Antigua.

Boston had been waiting for Jack to come, had postponed the funeral so that he might have ample time.

Before the official condolences began - the visits of the ministers, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Cotton, and of Thomas Dudley, the Deputy Governor; of old John Endecott, Richard Bellingham; all the elite of Boston - Jack had an hour with his half-brothers.

“Oh, brother John, why didn’t you come earlier?” Adam cried. “I wrote you how ill he was, and sorely longing to see you. His last words were of you.”

Jack stared at the coffin, so small and mute beneath its black velvet pall. “I didn’t get the letter, Adam,” he said hoarsely. “When did you send it?”

“A fortnight ago, by Clark’s pinnace, when Father’s cough and fever had brought him very low.”

“I had no news of him,” said Jack, turning away; he slumped in his father’s great high-backed hair, his shoulders shaking.

“He asked, as though it were his last request, that you ‘strive no more about the Pequot Indians,’ “ said Adam, “that you ‘leave them to the Commissioners’ order.’ He shrank from all thoughts of conflict, and grew mild.”

“Aye . . .” said Deane, sighing. “He changed much at the end. Seemed to regret many harshnesses. He refused to sign a court order of banishment saying that he had ‘done too much of that work already.’ He blessed each of us and asked our forgiveness for any wrong he might have done us. - And every day he looked for you.”

Jack made a violent motion with his hand, and Deane went on quickly, “Oh, he knew ‘twas not lack of love that caused your delay, and he drew great comfort from Mr. Cotton’s prayers . . . Brother John, the day before he died he spoke about Harry’s drowning - and of our cousin Bess. We thought him wandering because he said a strange thing about her.”

Jack raised his head to look at Deane. “What strange thing?”

“He said, ‘I should
not
have made her kiss the rod, there mercy should have tempered justice.’ He said it several times, as though the thought tormented him, though we didn’t understand.”

Nor did Jack for a moment, then to his grief-dulled mind there came a memory - the Hall at Groton, a terrified swooning little girl, a bloodstained hazel switch. “Aye,” he said. “I think I know. ‘Twas long before you were born.” He looked at the coffin. “Leave me alone with him, brothers, I would be alone.”

They buried Governor John Winthrop on the third of April of that year 1649. The funeral procession wound throughout all the Boston streets, and the mourners were all its citizens and many from the other towns. Prolonged salutes were fired by the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company, Mr. Cotton preached the funeral sermon, and the new meetinghouse bell tolled at intervals all day long - sixty-one times for the years of his life.

They entombed him next to Margaret in the burying ground on Trimount Street, they read elegies at his graveside. And even his enemies wept, acknowledging the courage and single-minded purpose which had led the Great Migration, and established in the wilderness a new nation which would endure.

Some days later Jack thankfully left the Bay, which now held little to interest him. Aside from his sorrow, he had an added depression in that he saw clearly that Endecott was to be the next governor, thus making some futile sort of full circle, since it was Endecott who had been Governor at Salem nineteen years ago, when John Winthrop came sailing into its harbour on the
Arbella
with the new Charter and his own appointment.

Endecott - the narrowest bigot of them all! And notorious in England for his ill-judgments, as when he had publicly cut the Cross of St. George from the English flag, averring that he could not bear to see that Papist symbol. Jack’s appreciation of the Bay had been wandering for years, and now the last strong tie was cut. From now on his home and affections should be engaged by Connecticut.

On his way back Jack briefly visited Roger Williams of Providence, and there heard an extraordinary rumour which was confirmed some days after the return to Pequot.

Elizabeth learned this news from Will, who had gone up to the mansion to see Jack on an errand he had not discussed with her.

Since the night when the message arrived announcing John Winthrop’s death, and Elizabeth had fainted, she had been ailing. She had no pain, but slept badly, her breath was short, and she could not hurry up the hill to their home as she used to. Her usual brisk vigour seemed to have drained out of her, and Will watched her anxiously. She was not pregnant. There was no reason for her sudden debility except prolonged strain, and the news of Winthrop’s death. She seemed not to realize herself how deeply this news had affected her, but to Will it seemed that some mainspring of her life had broken. She was, for the first time in his knowledge of her, lost and groping, unable to think for herself.

He had several uneasy conferences with Jack which he did not mention to Elizabeth, since their upshot was uniformly worrisome.

On this May evening he walked back to his little cottage, and found Elizabeth lying on the pallet in the kitchen, languidly directing Hannah’s efforts to concoct a makeshift mithridate, for which many ingredients were unobtainable. But Elizabeth knew that something must be tried to strengthen her, and Jack’s ‘Rubila’ had not helped.

Her eyes brightened as Will came in, and she tried to get up, then sank back on the massed pillows. “You’ve been long with Jack, love,” she said. “Whatever were you talking about?”

He inspected her quickly, dismayed at her continuing pallor, and the dark patches beneath her heavy eyes. He sat down beside her on a stool and told her a part of the discussion.

“There’s high news, Bess! From England. I still can’t credit it, but ‘tis confirmed. Myself - I don’t know whether to weep or rejoice!”

“Oh, Will!” As he had hoped, she looked more eager, and with something of her old impatience, she cried, “Tell! Don’t tease me!”

“Here it is, then,” he said. “King Charles has been beheaded, and we have no more a monarchy.”

“Beheaded -” she repeated. “Why, that couldn’t
be
! Who would do such a thing! Kings aren’t beheaded.”

Will laughed curtly. “This one has been, on the thirtieth day of last January in the courtyard outside Whitehall. And now, hinnie, my dear, we have a Puritan Commonwealth under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell - that doughty general. Kings have been abolished, the House of Lords has been abolished. I too find it amazing - and -” he added frowning, “I wonder what’s happened to the Digbys, since many Royalist Lords were executed. I believe however that Lord George at least will ever be able to run with the hares
or
the hounds.”

“I saw the King once . . .” said Elizabeth slowly. “He seemed so small, and yet royal. What’s happened to the little Queen?”

She found the news of interest, but it did not move her deeply.

“The Queen’s fled to France, I believe,” said Will. “The Royalists have proclaimed Prince Charles the new king at Edinburgh but I doubt he ever reigns. The Commons and Old Noll are firm entrenched - ’tis what most the people wanted.”

“ ‘Tis what most want here, of course,” she said. “Jack must be pleased?”

Will laughed. “Aye, since we’ll have no more interference. Besides your cousin Betty’s stepfather - Hugh Peter - preached a terrible denunciation sermon to the King before the execution. The colonies’ll have strong friends in England now.”

“Puritan friends,” she whispered. The sudden weariness returned and her lids drooped. “Will -” she said, with pauses for breath between the phrases. “How marvellous are the - tangles of destiny. Had the King not ousted my Uncle John from his position - at the Court of Wards and Liveries - twenty years ago - I wouldn’t be here now, nor any of us.” Her own words astounded her and she looked up at Will with sudden fright. “And had I not talked too rash to the Countess of Carlisle one Christmas morning, would Uncle John have kept his office? Ah, I
have
been truly wicked all my life, and he was right to detest me!”