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“Oh, Anneke,” said Elizabeth laughing. “Such flattery, and so early in the day.”

“How is it vith Robert?” said Anneke, after a moment. “Do you ever hear?”

“Aye,” said Elizabeth. “Now and then we hear from Water-town. He’s just the same - eats well and lives entirely in the past, poor soul. Yet they say he’s quite content.”

Her eyes returned to her daughters, to Hannah first, because she had always been first, but also because this was the child’s great day. Elizabeth saw Hannah through a tender mist - the auburn curls tied up with a green ribbon to match her petticoat, the little freckled nose, the wide leaf-brown eyes that met all glances with warm interest and serenity. Lisbet had more regularity of feature, and her flaxen hair, silky as milkweed down, always caught the eye, but there was something brittle and elusive about her.

“Vy doesn’t Lisbet marry?” said Anneke, pursuing the same thoughts. “She’s tventy-two, and has had offers a-plenty.”

“She won’t,” said Elizabeth, and shrugged. “She gives no reason.”

Anneke clicked her tongue, and said with meaning, “Is Captain Underhill invited today?”

“Not invited. He’s at Southwold, and I wish he’d stay there, but he doesn’t.”

“Oh,” said Anneke. “Bess - that girl
can’t
be in love vith him, he could almost be her grandfather!”

“I’ve no idea what Lisbet feels,” said Elizabeth. “Yet distressing as it is, they seem to have an attraction for each other - even when she was a child. They correspond now. Fortunately he has a wife, though I hear she’s bed-ridden.”

“Underhill has a bad reputation vith women,” said Anneke “Is Lisbet safe?”

“Aye, I think so. There’s no hot blood in her, she knows what she’s doing, and if there were, how could we stop her? We can’t lock her up.”

“Oh, veil,” said Anneke philosophically pulling her knitting from her pocket. “You’re pleased vith
Hannah’s
choice.”

“So very much,” Elizabeth’s voice quivered. “Though I’ll miss her terribly, even though she moves only as far as Flushing.”

“But not till next year.” Anneke paused, and thinking of another son-in-law, asked with hesitation, “Bess, do you ever hear of Joan and - and Thomas Lyon?”

Elizabeth winced. She drew a rough breath and her mouth went harsh.

“Joan is dead,” she said. “We heard it from Jack a month ago. Thomas never even let me know she was ill. When I begged her to come and say goodbye before we left Greenwich, Joan sent back word that she preferred to forget I was her mother.”

Anneke made a shocked sound. “Dreadful. . .” she murmured. “That vas never a good marriage.”

“It was a damnable marriage!” said Elizabeth with such venom that Anneke started.

“Och, I don’t blame you that you hate him, Bess,” said Anneke. “Vat he did to you and Vill, and maybe poor Joan, but still there is your grandchild, Vat about her?”

“She’s
Thomas’s
child,” said Elizabeth. “Can we talk of something else?”

Anneke stared down at her knitting. The days of Thomas’s persecution were long past as were the days of Hallet’s disgrace, one might think that Joan’s death and the plight of the motherless child would move Bess, despite everything. Still it was none of her business, thought Anneke, and she loved her friend too much for criticism.

Anneke reached over and patted Elizabeth’s arm. “Aye, ve talk of something else.” She was suddenly struck by the arm’s thinness, and looked up quickly. Elizabeth had stayed slim, and though there was a little grey at her temples she seemed younger than her forty-five years. The long hazel eyes were still beautiful, and she had kept all her visible teeth, which Anneke had not, but Elizabeth’s, fine skin was drawn tight over the delicate bones, and there were dark smudges beneath her lower lids. “You feel vell, Bess?” said Anneke casually. “You look a little tired.”

“I’m all right,” said Elizabeth. “Only sometimes limp and short of breath, then I take fox-glove leaves as Jack taught me to. It helps.”

“Good,” said Anneke. “Don’t let all those noisy boys of yours vear you out, Hemel! You have four and my little Jemmy keeps
my
hands full.” Anneke had finally in 1650 borne a son to Toby, while Elizabeth had two Hallet babies now. Sammy had been born three years ago, at the same time that Will’s first crop of rye finally matured on the very field here that he had hoped it would. He had been delighted with both events.

“There’s Will now,” said Elizabeth, suddenly catching sight of his tall figure standing at the gate and talking to someone. “Isn’t he splendid in that new scarlet coat? I had a time getting the everlasting leather jerkin off him.”

Anneke laughed, “Bess, you look at your husband, eager as a girl vith her first sveetheart. And at your age, lieveling!”

“Aye - “ said Elizabeth, breathing deep. Then she added slowly, “Why, he’s talking to the young widow Thorne, she seems to be the first arrival.”

Anneke glanced sideways at her friend, and knowing Elizabeth as she did; sensed a withdrawal, though Elizabeth’s face showed nothing. Anneke examined the widow Thorne, who was very pretty, had dark curly hair, and a roguish smile. She was demurely dressed in black, with a plain white collar. She looked about twenty-five. Anneke had never seen the young woman before and was struck by a resemblance to someone. In a moment she realized to whom. In colouring and height, in the tilt of the head while laughing up at Will, there was a suggestion of Elizabeth as she had been when Anneke first met her in Watertown over twenty years ago.

“Do you see much of this widow Thorne?” asked Anneke, carefully counting the stitches on her needle.

“From time to time,” said Elizabeth, and went on with some incoherence. “Susannah Thorne lives over in Maspeth with her father Mr. Booth, rather lonely for her, and she comes to visit the girls. The Thornes were Dorset folk, so Will and Susannah often reminisce too. I expect she’ll marry soon again.”

“No doubt,” said Anneke, knitting fast while she had an uneasy thought. Will Hallet was only thirty-nine, and men of about that age were susceptible. Her Toby was much younger than she, but it did not matter, since romantic passion had never been their bond, and she neither inquired nor cared what he did on his voyages. When Will and Susannah Thorne walked over to them, Anneke favoured the pair with a sharp stare. But Will gave his wife his usual warm attentive look, while Susannah cried in sincere pleasure. “Oh, Mrs. Hallet, I’m so
glad
to see you! What a wonderful day for Hannah’s fete!”

Elizabeth smiled, and pressed Susannah’s hand with extreme cordiality, because the thoughts which had just occurred to Anneke she had already suffered many times; ever since she had first seen the pretty young widow, and the resemblance to her younger self, and Will’s unconscious response to it. She was miserably ashamed of these thoughts, but they fretted her at night, and added to the sleeplessness which had been growing of late.

“Have you seen Mr. Wickenden, Bess?” asked Will as Susannah ran off to greet the girls. “I want to talk to him about his sermon.”

“He’s in the barn - cobbling,” said Elizabeth with a rueful laugh. “On a pair of Johnny’s boots. He says he’s as near to God when he’s working as he is when he prays, and that he wants to mend Johnny’s boots because he can thus best show his love for us.”

Will answered seriously, “And so he can. He’s a strange little man but he really seems to follow Christ’s teachings and I find the things he says about God more convincing than any I’ve ever heard.”

“I know you do,” said Elizabeth bleakly, “I only wish he weren’t a
Baptist!
She spoke with such emphasis that. Will laughed outright.

“Oh, hinnie,” he said. “Your Puritan blood cries out in you, even though you don’t know it. A Baptist is a ‘heretic,’ isn’t it - that’s what your Uncle Winthrop thought when he repeatedly banished them from the Bay.”

She looked at him in dismayed astonishment “You think I’m like my Uncle Winthrop?”

“At times,” said Will, chuckling.

“But I’m not godly or pious, and I never go to meeting, or quote scriptures,” she cried indignantly, while Anneke, whom they had both forgotten, stared at them.

“In those ways you’re not like him,” Will said. “I didn’t mean to vex you. But I wish you wouldn’t close your mind to what Wickenden says. It brings comfort to think that Christ may speak directly to one’s heart, without benefit of minister or priest I’d like to believe it.”

“Arminianism - “ she said involuntarily, and Will laughed again. “Is it not also what Anne Hutchinson taught?” he asked.

She raised her head, startled. “In a way, I suppose, but she was deluded. If there is a God, He proved His wrath at her, just as the ministers foretold in that excommunication.”

“I wonder,” said Will, and there was a moment’s pause before he added, “But in any case, of this I’m certain, Bess: Every human being should have the liberty to worship - or not - exactly how he pleases, which has always been the virtue of the Dutch, though Stuyvesant, the old fool, seems to be forsaking his homeland’s tolerance - Ah,” he said in a different tone. “Here come the Bownes, now Hannah will be joyous.”

He walked towards the gate, and as Elizabeth rose to greet the newcomers, Anneke said, “This is a surprise! Vat’s got into Villiam?”

“A little cobbler from Providence called Wickenden, a friend of Roger Williams, I think,” said Elizabeth with hesitation. “Turned up last month, asking if we’d any shoes to cobble and is still here. He’s beglamoured Will, somehow. I don’t like it”

“Vy not?” said Anneke. “If it makes Vill happy?”

Elizabeth walked towards the guests and did not answer. There was the old confused rebellion in her heart and mingled with it the fear that Will was escaping from her into a realm where she could not follow. Jealousy. This new and bitter feeling she had discovered in regard to Susannah Thorne, but surely it was not the same feeling when directed at the little cobbler? Resentment then, annoyance at the hours Will spent shut up with Wickenden, talking, talking. Hours which used to be sacred to her, in the evenings when they sat together, when their day’s work was done. The hours that she lived for, when he became hers alone. I’ll not stand for it, she thought. As soon as Hannah’s fete is over, I’ll get rid of that cobbler. And Susannah too. It should not be difficult to limit the young woman’s visits to the times when Will was in the fields.

“Good day, ma’am - “ said a pleasant voice in her ear, and she started and turned to see Hannah’s young man smiling diffidently at her. “I’m sorry, John!” she cried. “I was wool-gathering, my dear son.”

“ ‘Tis kind of you to call me that,” he said. “There’s been a lack since I lost my own mother, and now ‘tis filled. Is Hannah inside?” he added eagerly.

Elizabeth laughed. “In the kitchen, counting minutes till you come.”

As John Bowne hurried to find his sweetheart, Elizabeth watched him with affection. He was dark and slight, and he had charm. The charm of competence, good will, and integrity. There was a fresh strength about him too as though he had imbibed it from the mountain air of the Derbyshire Peak district where he was born, at Matlock, twenty-six years ago. His father, old Thomas, and his sister Dorothy with her husband, Edward Farrington, had come with him from Flushing today and Elizabeth saw them all laughing at the betrothal chairs on the platform, and teasing Hannah and John who were standing with locked hands smiling into each other’s eyes.

By noon, when the guests had all arrived, Will mounted the platform and stood by the two chairs; looking down earnestly at the forty upturned faces, he made a speech.

“Good folks, we welcome you all, and hope you’ll make merry and have sport and feasting later. You were invited to celebrate our little Hannah’s eighteenth birthday, there is another occasion which we will also solemnize - it may,” said Will smiling, “be no surprise to most of you. Hannah Feake and John Bowne are to be formally betrothed today, but before that ceremony, and with their most earnest agreement, I’ve invited someone to ask God’s blessing on this event, and to talk with us. Are you minded to hear him?”

There was a stir and polite murmurings of assent. How I wish Will wouldn’t do this, Elizabeth thought. It’ll spoil the day. I never expected
he’d
take to sermonizing or holding prayer meets, and while the little cobbler climbed up on the platform, she set herself to endure boredom and annoyance. The ministers had been bad enough, but at least they were men of education. Wickenden was not, and he spoke with the raw thick accent of the Midland Counties.

He was a small shrunken man. Beside Will on the platform he looked dwarfed, he wore a patched homespun suit, his greying hair and beard were both ill-kempt, his hands were densely callused from his trade. Elizabeth sighed with exasperation as he began to speak solemnly - “I greet ‘ee terday, brethren sn’ sistern i’ the Fellowship o’ Christ.”

He went on to tell them that he had once been a “Seeker”, never easy in his spirit with the strict Presbyterian ways, the ways that said a man was dammed or saved forever by God’s original decree, and had no way of knowing Truth for himself. Nor, said Wickenden, could he find rest in the Old Established Church, for there again there were priests and Bishops, and they made such a din with their prayer books that he for one could never hear the voice of Christ strike through the tumult. But then in Old England he had met two men, who showed him the way out from the sorrowful seeking.

The first man he had met long ago, and what the man said was sensible. He said that baptism was the symbol of the Christian life commenced, and so it was useful to give it to weak silly infants, “An’ this, friends, I still believe on!” cried Wickenden, his voice suddenly rising in power. “But ‘ee needna, if ye wish not - fur the very nub o’ all I’m a-telling ye is that ye must listen to wot the spent says to ye
direct,
ye shouldna take a creed from
any
man. Ye mun listen fur The Voice! Wait fur The Voice!”

Elisabeth’s wandering thoughts came back. She stared at the little cobbler, and something in her moved feebly, like a ripple on a still black pond, then it was gone. But she heeded as Wickenden went on. He had been back to England, two years ago, back to Nottingham, his old home. And there he had heard another man speak - outside it was, on the edge of Sherwood Forest. George Fox was this man’s name and he didn’t think that God preferred steeple-houses to any other place when He came into one’s heart. George Fox didn’t talk of baptism, or of communion, he spoke only of Christ’s own words. He said that Christ was not far off in the sky, that he was not even in some heavenly place with the angels,