The Maidenhead (15 page)

She stretched out her arm. "Please, ’old me ’and."

Her hand was small, like a trusting child’s. “What be your name?" He knew he was prattling like an old spinster who lives out her lonely days spinning yam before a fire and suddenly has a visitor. But he was at a loss as to how to help her.

“Rose. And ’oors?"

“Jack. Jack Morley, the Earl of Monteagle." The lie came easily, as lies always did whenever he felt inadequate, unsure, worthless. What the bloody hell, even if he and this young woman survived, he would never see her again.

"An earl,” she said with wonder and awe.

"I was on my brig, the
Maidenhead
, when I spotted you in the river."

“The
Maidenhead
." Her little gasping laugh sounded forlorn in his ears. "The man I thought I loved ... not me husband ... he wanted me maidenhead.” She paused and drew a fortifying breath. "But not me."

"The cad," he mumbled, knowing he might as well be castigating himself. It was likely that somewhere there existed one or more women he had bedded and abandoned with child.

Her fingernails dug into his palm.

He waited until the spasm passed, then, to keep her talking, asked, "Where do you live?"

"Falling Brook, just beyond Henrico. ’Oor ship put in there, did it not?"

"Aye," he said cautiously, wondering how much she might have heard about his enterprise.

She screamed out her anguish. Her body writhed with another thunderbolt of pain. She released his hand and rolled from side to side, her arms wrapped around her stomach once more.

The sight of blood staining the white sand galvanized him into instinctive action. “Sshh,” he said, stroking away the wet strands of her hair clinging to her cheek and forehead. ‘"Tis going to be all right."

He went about trying to make her comfortable, removing her buckled shoes, stripping off her wet woolen hose. Her feet were no bigger than his palms and blue with cold. He chafed first one foot, then the other, with his hands.

"Thank ... thank ’oo." Tears trickled from the comers of her eyes. ‘"Oo are a 'ero. A knight worthy of the Round Table.”

Something that might have been integrity cringed inside him. "You are delirious."

He began stripping away her bloodied underskirts and pushed her overskirt above the dome of her stomach. "I recall something about clean linens and hot water,” he said, talking to keep her mind off her pain. And off his ignorance in such matters. "We come up lacking with clean linen, but your wee one could not have picked a prettier spot to be born. Lots of water.”

Her answering laugh was more a groan.

He felt for his dirk, tucked into his belt scabbard. He could only hope her outcries did not attract any more savages.

Her hand latched onto his arm. He bent over her again. "Isn’t there something about pushing? Are you trying?”

A tight laugh issued from the slit of her mouth. “Do 'oo want to try?”

He winced at her coarse accent. He had not rescued an aristocratic mermaid but a Billingsgate sturgeon. Life was like that for him. Always the leftovers. “Where do you hail from in England?"

"Middlesex.”

“A country girl are you now?" His mother had been a country girl, from Hertfordshire. He tried to imagine her as this one was. Young, naive, giving birth to him, a child she didn’t want.

"The Indians in the canoe?"

"Kidnapped me, they did."

"Well, we'll return you. When the mist lifts, the Maidenhead will be prowling the waters, looking for me." He hoped.

“Ohhh!" she gasped and shut her eyes against the pain. Her mouth was a gash.

His teeth worried his lower lip. “Try pushing again. Maybe that will get this over with more quickly.”

"I don’t 'ave to try.” She was panting. "The babe is shoving 'is way through."

"Oh. So ’tis a boy you’ve decided it’s to be?” Her hair was drying, and it spread across the sand like spilt ink. Beneath her pallor, a natural pink color could be detected on her cheeks. “Rose,” he murmured, thinking how perfectly her name fit her complexion.

“Aye.”

Before he could reply, she screamed out. Quickly he clamped his palm over her mouth. "I think ’tis best you hurry the wee one.”

Her back arched. Her heels dug into the sand. Her teeth sank into his palm. God, he felt so helpless.

Then he saw it. A small portion of the baby’s head. “Looks like your babe is tired of waiting!”

As he watched the wee one enter the world, exultation overcame him. This was rapidly replaced by a feeling he had never experienced, reverence. The only time he had been near a church was when he had robbed the lottery shack on St. Paul’s cathedral steps. He had felt no reverence then.

This was something more even. The great mystery of life was unfolding before him. A supreme secret, if he could but grasp it before it disappeared.

He heard a sputtering little cry, like a kitten’s mew, and put out his hands to receive the baby. ‘"Tis a boy," he whispered. "Just as you predicted."

“Another boy!” she sighed.

“Another boy?” He used her petticoat to enfold the reddened, wizened, bawling gift. Black downy hair matted the small head. With wonder, he touched one tiny ear, shaped like a cockleshell. The flailing fists were no larger than a musket ball.

"Aye," she said, smiling softly and looking for all the world like a lovely Madonna. "I ave meself two other sons. Stepsons, really, but I love them as if they were me own. Me 'usband will welcome another 'and at the sawmill. Let me see me babe."

Relieved to be rid of the squalling infant, he laid it in the crook of her arm. And with the act, the great mystery evaporated from his mind.

Chapter Thirteen

With Jack no longer there to help, turning up the land for the spring crop was taking longer than Mad Dog had anticipated. Would he ever see the cagey chap again?

He wiped the dribble of light rain from his brow with the back of his hand before picking up the mattock. He needed a plow, but such an implement was so heavy that four horses or a span of oxen would be required to pull it.

Raising the flat-bladed pickaxe above his head, he swung downward in a mighty arc. The mattock broke up the soil and cut roots of bramble and nettle that were impertinent enough to grow on land he had declared his.

Thinking of the impertinent woman who had turned his sanctuary into a Bedlam, his tempo increased.

The hoyden didn't know the meaning of logic or reason.

With the strike of the mattock, the loosened earth exploded.

She was harder to read than a Pamunkey war trail. He never knew what to expect from her next.

He swung again, his muscles straining his deer hide tunic. Clods of damp dirt showered the ground around his high-top moccasins.

A fortnight ago, he had picked up his pipe, only to find minuscule trolls painted in cobalt blue dancing in a ring around its clay bowl.

Again the mattock smashed into the earth.

For all he knew, at that very moment she was forging indenture papers to sell him off as a bondservant. A clever wench, his wife was.

He could feel agitation churning in his loins. He dropped the mattock and turned his face up to the March drizzle. Any colder and it would be snow. He swallowed the rain water and sputtered and laughed at the thought he entertained.

By God, he must be mad after all, but he would do it.

Maybe this was his opportunity to make things right. His chance to turn around the horrible consequences of his rapacious act thirteen years ago.

He did something that was in complete contradiction with his meticulous nature. He left the mattock where it lay, in the rain, and strode off toward his cabin.

He passed Juana on her way to the springhouse. Her sharp old eyes scrutinized him. He realized she was wondering what he was doing, returning from the fields so early in the day. Then her tobacco-toothed grin revealed itself. She knew.

He strode on.

He found Modesty at the board table. Across it were scattered fresh vellum, unsharpened quills, a perforated wooden sander, and a wax wafer to seal missives. She kept a candle burning for sealing with wax.

Ever since undertaking her enterprise, she had been working industriously. Her craftsmanship was astonishingly good, and could pass even his discerning eye.

Her tongue tipping her teeth, she was penning her cursive words. Over her shoulder, he read, "This bill of sale made the twelfth day of February in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-one between Lord Richard Radcliff and . . . ." Her head was bent low over the parchment, the better to see her handiwork. Her brown hair, highlighted with blistering red, curled a good two inches below the plain edge of her coif.

"So this is how my shillings are being put to use.”

She didn’t even look up as she picked up the penknife to sharpen her quill. "I am turning shillings into pounds for yewr foe’s undoing.”

He was glad her gaze was trained on the quill’s end or else she would note how undone he was.

"Juana says that Henrico hosts a fair come Mayday,” she continued, dipping her pen into the brown ink that she made by mixing vinegar and ox gall. "I want to—”

He fought to bring himself under control, his features impassive, his voice callously indifferent. "I want you." What had happened to his usual eloquence? At that moment he was barely articulate. He fingered a flaming lock at her nape. “Now.”

The penknife halted.

He placed his hands on both her shoulders. His voice was low, as rough as her poorly hack-led spinning thread. "In my bed or here at the table. I care not a whit where.”

Slowly she looked up over her shoulder. Her mouth was set in a hard line, but deep in her eyes smoldered that astounding passion of hers. "I am yewr wife, not yewr whore.”

He tugged just enough on her hair to tilt her head further back, exposing the long, smooth column of her throat. "Wife, whore, it makes no difference to me."

She shook off his hand. “Yew stink of manure." She returned to sharpening the quill.

Her nonchalance infuriated him. She must have seen from the comer of her eye as he drew back his arm. She ducked, but his aim was not for her but the accoutrements littering the board table. With one backhanded swipe, he sent them falling, fluttering, rolling.

She gasped. Dropping her quill, she shrank as far away as the end of the bench allowed. She held the penknife pointed at his midsection. “I choose me lovers.”

He advanced on her. Would she stab him? Did she hate him that much? "Aye, you did. You married me." He leaned over, took the penknife from her, and sent it thudding into the wall.

“When a man has the key to a room,” she said stonily, "the woman inside can hardly be said to be doing her own choosing.”

Wrapping one arm around her waist, he slid the other beneath her legs to lift her as easily as he would a bale of hay, and spread-eagled her upon the table.

She broke his hold. Spitting and spewing, she aimed a well-placed kick at his crotch. He dodged at the last second. She lashed out blindly with pummeling legs. Her shift and skirt were riding up beneath her buttocks, exposing hose-encased calves, bare thighs, and a glimpse of a triangular patch of short, wiry hair.

His eyes must have betrayed the excitement the erotic sight instantly aroused in him, because suddenly her legs stopped their thrashing.

Her expression changed from one of impotent fury to blatant sensuality, as if she knew she held the winning hand. Braced on her elbows, her thighs tantalizingly parted for his intimate view, she asked in a husky voice, “Where is Juana?"

He unbuttoned his breeches. “She won’t return for a while. She’s wise in the ways of a man and a woman.” To his ears, his voice sounded strangled. "As I think you are.” He lowered himself over her. “Mayhaps you are a witch. Mayhaps you have bewitched me.”

She opened her arms and thighs to enfold him against her and take him in. “Oh, no. I told yew," she whispered against his ear, “I am yewr ordinary fairy.”

Slowly, rhythmically, he began pumping into her. “Ordinary you will never be.”

Her soft white thighs closed around him. Her lids drifted closed. Her lips parted. She sighed. "Neither are yew, Mad—’’ Her eyes opened. "What is yewr real name?”

A humorous bent seized him. "Just call me your coxswain."

Her response of low laughter was delightful. Gradually her hips began responding in tempo to his. Then they were pounding hard, meeting each of his thrusts. She was engulfing him. "Oh, God,” he groaned.

He felt it coming, that indescribable feeling he always experienced when making love with her. Colors would explode on the back of his lids. He would lose himself, if only for an instant, but in that time he would be given that elusive taste of eternal ecstasy.

When clarity was restored, he lay flaccid between her damp thighs, his head on her clothed bosom. He realized that she was tenderly stroking his tumbled hair.

“Yew were most fortunate yew did not strike me just then," she murmured idly. “Or else I should have returned at once to me fairyland."

He mentally counted on his fingers. This was March. No, she wouldn’t be returning to fairyland. At least not before the year was out.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“ ‘Then said Boaz unto his servant that was set over the reapers, Whose damsel is this? And the servant that was set over the reapers answered and said, It is the Moabitess damsel that came back with Naomi. Then said Boaz unto Ruth, Go not to glean in another field but abide here fast by my handmaidens.’ ’’

Patrick paused. Every one of the thirty-six upturned faces in the little church was enrapt with his reading of the biblical story. His gaze fell on her, and Clarissa shivered. He spoke with extraordinary power, with a charisma that during biblical times was said to have come from the Holy Spirit.

Her husband returned his gaze to the printed page. “ ‘And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the people, Ruth the Moabitess, have I purchased to be my wife. So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife and he went in to her. And she gave birth to a son.’"

Clarissa flushed and pricked her finger on the wild rose she held. Patrick’s blunt prose made her uncomfortable. Nigel’s flowery verse had never filled her with so much .  .. unrest.

That was it. Unrest. And spring fever.

Spring! The year had gone so quickly!

"So on this auspicious day,” her husband was saying, "we gather to rejoice in the birth of a son four months ago to Master Bannock and his wife.”

Clarissa stared at the spot of blood on her fingertip. The rose had been Patrick’s idea. On their way to church that morning, he had seen it and picked it. He had an affinity for plants and animals. All living things, in fact.

Was life like the rose? One couldn’t have the pleasure of its beauty without suffering the pain of its thorns? What would Nigel have to say about that? In less than a year, he would be free. And then what?

“If the parents will bring the infant forward now for the christening.”

In the pew to Clarissa’s left, the parents moved to stand in front of Patrick. In Clarissa’s mind, Rose Bannock was like her namesake, a wild rose thriving amidst the squalor of a barbarous land. Now that she was no longer round with child, she was almost waiflike. By her side, Walter stood inordinately tall and very proud of the sleeping infant in his wife’s arms.

Patrick glanced at her, and Clarissa remembered the cue. With the wild rose in hand, she went to stand beside the couple as godmother. Her fingers touched Patrick’s as she passed the rose to him. At the tingly sensation, her breath fluttered in her throat.

She peeked at him, but he seemed not to have been affected, as she had been. He was in such mastery of himself. And here she had always thought she had been the one in control of her emotions.

Holding the rose by its stem, her husband dipped the bud in the small brass bowl of water, then lightly touched the baby’s downy head. "I christen thee Jack."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Get your starboard tacks aboard and haul taut off your lee sheets,” Jack ordered a bandy-legged sailor.

Jack turned his face to the stiff breeze sweeping in off the ship’s stem. Five months and both foul and fair weather had taken him places along the Virginia shoreline that not even the colony’s intrepid adventurer, Captain Smith, had mapped. Colonists still talked about the captain wherever Jack had stopped, although he now spent most of his time in England when not exploring faraway places.

A couple of days was the usual amount of time Jack spent visiting each community. Sometimes he partook in their games of ninepins, billiards with the common farmer, or gambled either at horse racing or piquet with the more well-to-do planters. Often he was reduced to watching a demonstration of the community militia, as if he were some visiting dignitary.

Some communities had names evocative of England, like Charles Cittie, Surrey, Warwick, Isle of Wight, Elizabeth Cittie. Others, plantations, were evocative of grandeur, such as Martin’s Hundred and Mount Radcliff, his last port-o’-call before returning to Ant Hill and then sailing for England. With the stack of orders from other planters whose trust he had gained, he was well positioned to dupe Radcliff.

As the ship approached Mount Radcliff, Jack stood at the railing, impressed by the brick manor house which loomed ahead. Like a monarch on the throne, it sat on an emerald knoll with its horseshoe-shaped staircase serving as a footstool. Not shutters but glazed windows overlooked the lazy-flowing Chickahominy. Like loyal subjects, smaller, timbered outbuildings clustered in the background.

Jack had learned as much as he could about Radcliff and the manor from the settlers without arousing suspicion, and they had told him that the bricks for the manor had been imported from England at the expense of the Virginia Company, and the stone for the staircase had been quarried in Ireland. Bricklayers and masons, initially hired to work on Jamestown’s municipal buildings, had been commandeered by Radcliff for his own private use, as had fifteen of the bondservants with whom Jack had been transported.

Leaning on a stout cane and identifying himself as Radcliff s overseer, a man of short stature greeted him at the landing. Believing Jack to be of the gentry, the little man appeared anxious to please. “Oliver Munger.” He bobbed his head and doffed his felt hat.

At that, Jack saw the man’s ferret eyes and knew he would have to tread carefully. Men like Radcliff’s minion were sly and, like bloodhounds, scented immediately activities of an illicit nature.

Munger conducted him from the dock, up the grand staircase, into the manor and then to the library where Radcliff awaited him. With a thinly veiled air of condescension and a contemptuous curl of his lips, Radcliff extended a beringed hand, indicating an upholstered X chair. "I have heard word of your enterprise. You represent—"