Riverbreeze: Part 1 (8 page)

Even so, she had her late husband’s flintlock
pistol which she knew how to prime, load and shoot like a militia
captain. And if the pistol was not enough protection, she always
carried a little dagger tucked into a pocket she had sewn into the
seam of her skirt.

Outside, she said her goodbye’s to the
brothers and to Robin. Once Robert and Robin were settled onto
their horse and Jamie had mounted Pisador, she handed Jamie a sack
full of dried apples, leftover corncakes, walnuts and dried
venison. They thanked her and she watched them as they rode towards
the back of the property. A feeling of relief washed over her; once
Connelly had eaten and started on the chores Robert had given him,
she could finally be alone in the house where she could do
absolutely nothing if she wanted to, but most likely she would sit
and read her Bible and grieve for her dear friend.

Chapter Two: The Twins’ Story
October 30, 1643, Aileen Plantation, Colony of Virginia

It happened again last night. Elizabeth Tyler
had another one of her predictive dreams. It didn’t frighten her,
not like the first one she had had when she was four years old; it
only intrigued her, let’s just say that this one had been the most…
personal and revealing, showing her a clearer picture of the man
she would marry.

Standing by the window in the bedchamber she
shared with her twin sister, Evelyn, she watched all the activity
happening below in the front yard of her Uncle Francis’ plantation.
Anxiously she studied the faces of every man she saw. So far she
hadn’t seen anyone who resembled the man in her dream but this
didn’t worry her because none of them appealed to her anyway; not
the mariners who were working hard at repairing the ship she had
arrived on, or the Captain, or any of the other planters. Thank God
none of them would be her husband!

Today she and Evelyn were being introduced to
Virginia society, a mere three days after arriving in the colony.
Even though she and her sister were in no mood to socialize, she
understood that her Uncle Francis had planned this gathering a
month ago and had handed out invitations at the last meeting of the
county court. He hadn’t foreseen the late-season hurricane that had
crippled their ship and delayed their arrival by two weeks and
neither had she! No dream about that! But then her dreams hadn’t
shown her much of anything in the past six months.

Six months ago she would have never believed
she would find herself in this strange land. She would have never
believed that she and her sister would be here alone without their
father or without their governess, who had taken care of them since
the day they were born. Six months ago she had been standing by
another window, framed in gold silk damask draperies, that one in
her own bedchamber, in her family’s four-story townhouse in West
Cheap, London, on one of the wealthiest streets where all the other
goldsmiths lived and worked. Six months ago she and her twin sister
had been living lives of privilege, wealth and elegance despite the
recent takeover of London by Oliver Cromwell and a Puritan
Parliament.

As little girls, they had been treated like
princesses; they had both been tutored by the best tutors, learning
both the arts and academics. They had been equally given everything
their little hearts desired, had been dressed alike in satins,
silks, brocades and laces, and had attended the grandest parties,
always being the center of attention because of their identical
appearance. They had been pampered and spoiled by their indulgent
father, Bernard Tyler, Francis’ younger brother.

But that life was over now. A new life was
just over the horizon; a new life with a husband she hadn’t even
met yet. But these prophetic dreams always came true; this was the
second one she had had about this man. Who was he? Where was he?
Was she really ready to meet him? She was only seventeen, too
young, she thought, to live without parents, to be sent out into
the world to be a responsible adult and perhaps become a parent
herself within the year.

Elizabeth went over and over again in her
mind the events of the past six months. Why had their lives taken
such a bad turn? Was it something she and her sister had done
wrong? Had they not been kind enough to everyone they met? Had they
not been humble enough during church services and during morning
and evening prayers? Had they not been generous enough to the
unfortunate and the suffering? Were they being punished for their
love of fine things, music, celebrations, and beauty? Elizabeth and
Evelyn did not follow the strict religion of the Puritans with
their banishment of entertainments and all things beautiful, but
now she worried that maybe they should have changed their
lifestyle. Evelyn, however, had disagreed when they had discussed
this sudden tragedy in their lives. Evelyn had been the strong and
sensible one, assuring Elizabeth that they had done nothing wrong
and that God still loved them. He was not punishing them; He had
not abandoned them. It was just that He had a new plan, and they
must be strong and have faith.

Elizabeth wanted to believe her sister. She
wanted to feel secure and lighthearted again. But it was so
difficult when all she could think about was what they had lost.
They had lost everything they had ever known, their warm home,
their beloved parents, their friends and their dedicated servants.
And Elizabeth not only grieved for the loss of the people and the
material things, she also grieved for the loss of her beliefs. So
much of what their father had told them had been lies, lies to
shelter them from the truth, lies about their Uncle Francis because
their father had never forgiven him.

Elizabeth and Evelyn had never known their
Uncle Francis; they had only been two years old when he had gone
away. But they had been told of him by their father and always in
an angry, bitter tone. They had heard stories of their father’s and
uncle’s boyhoods, how they had learned their trade and had worked
side by side with their father in a prosperous goldsmithing
business in London. The twins’ grandfather had been an esteemed
member of the Goldsmith’s Guild assuring the boys’ membership when
they finished their apprenticeships. But when Elizabeth’s and
Evelyn’s grandfather had died sixteen years ago, their Uncle
Francis had wanted something different, something more
exciting.

The twins had been told how he had been lured
by the promise of free land in the colony of Virginia. They had
even been shown the handbills that were continuously distributed
around the streets of London promising fifty acres of land for each
paying passenger, and since their uncle had paid passage for
himself, his wife, his two young daughters and two servants, he had
received three hundred acres of free land. And since he also had
money of his own, he had been able to purchase additional adjoining
land. So he had decided to sail to Virginia with his agreeable
family and start a life there, leaving Bernard with the family
business.

The girls had never known how abandoned and
lost their father had felt. They had only been toddlers, but even
as they grew, Bernard had never shown that side of himself to his
daughters. It wouldn’t have been proper for them to see any
weakness in him. And it also wouldn’t have been proper to reveal to
them that he wasn’t very adept at continuing the business on his
own. Despite the fact that he had been a brilliant craftsman who
could work silver and gold into magnificent pieces of jewelry and
tableware, he just hadn’t had the keen business sense that his
brother had had.

Unfortunately what he did show to the girls
was contempt of their uncle, blaming all his troubles on his older
brother, not admitting that he, alone, was the one to blame. For he
was the one who liked to live high off the hog and indulge in drink
too often, not Francis. And he was the one who allowed the business
to decline year after year, leaving him no choice but to take
advantage of the common practice of goldsmiths acting like banks.
People would deposit their money with him; he would give them a
receipt for the gold in the form of a note promising to pay them
back on demand, but instead of saving the money for them, he would
spend it, eventually using money from one person to pay another.
When less and less customers came to deposit their money with him,
he found himself having to borrow money from other sources and
eventually panic and despair set in. But the girls had never been
allowed to see that side of their father, only to hear the
disparaging words he spoke about his brother.

Nevertheless, mounting debts hadn’t stopped
him from showering the girls with whatever they wanted. The guilt
hadn’t let him. When the girls had been three years old, their
mother had died trying to give birth to the son that Bernard had
always yearned for, a horribly deformed baby that thankfully hadn’t
lived more than a few minutes. He had known he shouldn’t have
gotten his wife pregnant again, the birth of the twins had
compromised her health, but he just hadn’t been able to help
himself just like he hadn’t been able to stop himself from
borrowing and spending, borrowing and spending. Bernard had gone
further in debt believing that one day things would turn around and
get better. But they never had. Additionally, foreign craftsmen
settling in the district west of Cheapside who made counterfeit
jewelry much to the annoyance of the Goldsmith’s Company also
greatly contributed to his decline.

The girls also never knew that Francis had
written often, offering help and inviting Bernard to join him in
Virginia and become partners once again, but Bernard had been too
stubborn and jealous; and he would never forgive Francis for
leaving the family business. And because of his severe jealousy and
anger at his brother, he had constantly badmouthed Virginia and any
man who went there to get rich as a tobacco planter and live among
the savages.

Bernard had told the girls most of the men
who went to Virginia were criminals or beggars and blighters; that
they flocked to the new land to escape the law and then when they
got there they either sold themselves as indentured servants or got
their land by some other illicit means. Every day the girls had
been led to believe that Virginia was a most uncivilized place and
not fit for high-class citizens like themselves.

Lies, all lies.

But despite all this, Bernard had put it into
his will that upon his death, if the girls weren’t married and
living with their husbands, they would go to live with their Uncle
Francis in Virginia. Actually Bernard didn’t have any other choice.
He hadn’t wanted them to become wards of the city and he had only
known of one very old aunt who lived in the far north of England.
And to his knowledge, their mother’s people in France had all
disappeared in one way or another.

So that is how they came to find themselves
in this backwards, nowhere country, and that is how Elizabeth came
to find herself in this practically furnished room, with old velvet
curtains on the windows and an equally aged velvet comforter on the
tester bed, their father having committed suicide five months and
four days ago. The drink, the jealousy, the anger, and all the
debts had become too much for him to bear. Bernard Tyler had taken
his own life, rather than risk imprisonment, leaving his twin
seventeen-year-old daughters to his brother, Francis, and without a
copper penny to their names.

It angered Elizabeth to know she and her
sister had never been told of their father’s difficulties, or of
the massive debts that he had accrued. She and her sister weren’t
so spoiled that they couldn’t have given up new gowns for each
party or that latest redecoration of their bedchambers. If they had
been sons, they might have been told, they probably would have been
brought into the business and might have saved it from ruin; but
no, they were female and therefore, left in the dark and
ultimately, left to a fate completely out of their control.

Elizabeth remembered the day so clearly when
she and her sister had been told of their father’s suicide by his
solicitor. It had been raining—how appropriate—and she and her twin
and their governess, Louise, had just finished eating breakfast of
bread and cheese, cold meats and watered wine in the morning room
and were discussing their plans for the day as they did every
morning. The solicitor had come in with the butler, looking
ominously grave but sympathetic. He had delivered the news as
gently as he had been able, but gentleness hadn’t softened the
blow. Their father had been found on the floor in his shop, an
empty bottle of poison close to his hand. The twins had been
shocked, devastated and frightened. They hadn’t understood how this
could have happened. They had never realized their father had been
so unhappy and desperate.