The Pilgrim (12 page)

“Done! Eight pounds, to be paid you at the end of the first year, together with one share of the expected profits.”

I then asked, “What about the Sabbath? Will your labourers keep the Sabbath?”

He said, “Fear not! Religion and money will jump together in my New English plantation. I promised Rigdale that the labourers there will abstain from work on the Sabbath and attend his sermons. Yes, your friend will at last be allowed to preach the Gospel. He must, however, include in every sermon some words in praise of the Christian virtues of discipline and hard work, and some that condemn idleness.”

Rigdale said, “And so I will!”

Weston said to me, “Sign here.” Then he said, “With God's grace, you will make landfall at the Plymouth Plantation, wherein I have made arrangements with Governor Bradford for all of you to remain until another suitable place for your habitation is discovered in the vicinity. But you will on no account share your supplies with Bradford's people!”

Thus upon my twenty-seventh birthday, on the tenth day of March, in the year of Christ 1622, I signed the contract that set the future course of my life.

• • •

We parted. I took me to Henry Appletree and told him of my covenant with Weston. He said, “If only I could so easily escape to a new life. Oh, to be young! With God's grace, a long future lies before you. I am five-and-fifty. I would be lucky to count my remaining years on the fingers of one hand. Sarah will gradually fade in your memory. She will linger within you in bits and pieces. Neither of us will forget her oozing black forefinger. Part of me wishes that your life will likewise be cut off. But only part of me. Most of me wishes you well.”

We embraced for the first and last time. I recited my little poem over Sarah's grave in the churchyard of St. Martin in the Fields:

My grief stole my faith

And sneaked away.

I cannot trace the thief.

His track of tears

Hath faded from my pitted cheek.

• • •

On the second day of April, which was a Tuesday, I arrived in Winterbourne to bid farewell to aunt Eliza and uncle Roger. Grace Orchard opened their door. My aunt called out, “Who is it, Grace?”

Grace replied, “A stranger, Mistress.”

And I said, “'Tis Charles, aunt Eliza.”

“Just in time to dine with us. Come sit you down.”

Grace served me turnips and a slice of roast lamb. Tom Foot said, “This is Grace Orchard, Charles. She is an idle carder who lived with her mother on South Street. I hired her to be aunt Eliza's maidservant.”

Aunt Eliza said, “Grace is a great comfort to a half-blind old woman like me. Bless the sweet child! I could not live without her.”

Grace gave me a dimpled smile. I told my aunt and uncle that I was bound for the New World to work on a plantation for the space of a year. I said, “I go thence to seek my salvation. I hope to learn whether, by the grace of God, I am predestined to be saved. I think that I shall be more free there from temptation.”

Aunt Eliza said, “Let us hope so.”

Uncle Roger went to his chamber and returned with a jingling purse. He said, “I do not think that we shall meet again in the flesh, Charles. I drink to you, my dear nephew, with all my heart.” He drank deep from his mug of ale and belched. “Take these ten pounds. If you return to England within four years, I shall leave you all my worldly possessions. You will be rich. If you remain in New England, I shall leave my fortune to Tom Foot, Eliza's nephew.

“I have ever loved you, Charles. You are a son to me. When you are a sojourner among savages in the wilderness, remember that the vilest person of earth is the living image of Almighty God.”

I embraced aunt Eliza and then uncle Roger, and said, “Since my beloved father's death, you have been my family. I thank you for your care, aunt Eliza, your decoctions, savoury meat stews, and wholesome advice that kept my melancholy at bay. I thank you for your charity, uncle Roger, and the money you have freely given me. I thank you for sharing with me your passion for words. And I thank you both for your love.

“I shall treasure the memory of this moment. In the wilderness across the sea, I shall see in my mind's eye the dying fire, uncle Roger's empty mug of ale, the flickering candle stub on the table. I shall not remember you as you were, when I was a boy, but as you currently appear to me. Your aged faces shall give me joy. Even your cataract, aunt Eliza, is like a pearl to me. Uncle Roger, the skin of your face looks like old parchment upon which the years have inscribed brown blotches and wrinkles at the corners of your eyes. My memory shall preserve your countenances as they are now.

“Look you! The candle hath flickered out. It conspired with my mind to keep therein a few precious moments that have already passed.”

Uncle Roger belched again. He said, “Send me some metaphors and similes from the New World.”

After dinner, Foot took me aside and said, “If you wish, Grace will come to you in the night. She will cost you nothing. What say you?”

I said, “Bid her come to me at midnight.”

He laughed. Awaiting Grace in the dark, I heard a nightingale singing beyond my bedchamber window. God be praised, for it was the earliest in April that I had ever heard one sing. His liquid warble cleansed my soul. I arose from my bed, put on my clothes, grabbed my knapsack, crept out of the house, and walked into Winterbourne.

The departure of the carrier to London was delayed until eight of the clock. I ate breakfast at The Sign of the Bull. The song of the nightingale had sharpened my ears. I went about the town, relishing its familiar sounds: the barking of chained dogs, the clatter of cart makers, the rasping of a wood saw. I listened to children singing in my old grammar school, a blacksmith beating his anvil, a stone mason hammering upon a chisel in Sheep Street.

During the week following in London, I signed on three-and-sixty more men to labour in Weston's plantation. They were brought to him by his brother, Andrew, who was to be our governor. He stank of liquor and tobacco. He and his agents gathered men throughout London—from the streets, the docks, and the stews and taverns. Thomas Weston hired a carpenter named Phineas Pratt for eleven pounds in ready money to be paid at the end of a year's labour. Like Rigdale, Pratt clung to his precious tool box.

Weston turned away a runaway apprentice barber-surgeon named Phillip Bussel because his black pupils were unequally dilated, the right being larger than the left. Bussel was emaciated, with a sallow complexion, and given to profuse sweats.

Weston said, “You are an opium eater. Do not deny it! Get thee hence! You are not wanted here!”

Bussel said, “When I eat opium, my bowels become sorely constipated, but the better portion of my nature becomes divine.”

Weston hired one-and-twenty idle husbandmen, an idle needle maker, an idle currier, a former weaver, a former felt maker, and a former haberdasher. They were all to be paid three pounds per annum. He hired six-and-thirty rowdy vagabonds for the same amount each. At least half of them were pitted from smallpox. The one named William Butts was drunk when Andrew brought him into his brother's chamber near the dock. I marked down Butts's name &c. Then he said to me, “Also write: I am alone in this world. I have given over my stinking family duties, for under them lie snapping, snarling, biting covetousness, hypocrisy, envy, and violence.”

Andrew said, “Hire him, dear brother. Behold the girth of his arms.”

I said, “These rude fellows will be our death.”

Butts said, “Look me in the eye! Display no fear! I'm not so tough as I appear.”

I reported his extempore rhymed couplet to my uncle Roger in a letter; he replied,

Thank you for your parting gift. The simple couplet, produced naturally without labour from ordinary speech, is much to my liking.

Tom Foot and Grace Orchard are betrothed. I caught you gazing at her dimpled smile across the table. I had the wild fancy that you would remain at the Hempstead and marry her. I would have disinherited Foot.

Why did you flee from here in the night? 'Twas the night I heard an early nightingale in the big oak by the small barn. You must have heard him. I like to think that, however far we will be apart, we will be bound by the beauty of his song.

I compiled a list of annual supplies of victuals and drink for Weston's sixty men sailing on the
Swan
.

Item.
Victuals and drink. 480 bushels of meal. 120 bushels of pease. 120 bushels of oatmeal. 80 gallons of Aqua Vitae. 60 gallons of oil. 30 gallons of vinegar. Pepper, ginger, nutmegs, cloves, dates, raisins, damask prunes, rice, saffron, salt. 1 barrel of pippin vinegar. 60 barrels of beer. 8 tun of cider.

Item.
Arms. 60 long pieces, five foot or five-and-a-half foot in length. 90 pound of powder. 270 pound of shot or lead. 60 bandoleers. 25 melting ladles. 15 bullet molds. 60 forked gun rests.

Item.
Tools. 40 broad axes. 40 felling axes. 40 pickaxes. 30 steel hand saws. 30 two-hand saws. 40 hammers. 30 shovels. 30 spades. 30 augers. 30 chisels. 10 grindstones. 400 nails of all sorts. 30 hatchets. 10 pair of pliers.

Item.
Household implements. 40 iron pots. 40 kettles. 40 large frying pans. 40 gridirons. 40 skillets. 40 spits. platters. dishes. spoons of wood.

Item.
Goods for trading with Indians. 80 hatchets. 40 pounds of glass beads. 30 iron pots. 200 brass bells. 40 broad axes. 40 knives. 30 blankets. 30 hats. 25 ells of red cloth.

Rigdale sold his stock of furniture for fifteen pounds and eight shillings. We both bought four pair of shoes, three pair of Irish stockings, two cloth suits, one suit of canvas, one Monmouth cap, three shirts, one pair of garters, one rug for a bed, one pair of canvas sheets, one coarse rug, and five ells of coarse canvas to be filled with straw, to make a bed at sea. We also purchased one barrel of dried oxen tongues and one barrel of beer for us to consume on shipboard, and two bottles of Aqua Vitae. I took with me my Commonplace Book, and Rigdale and I each carried a Geneva Bible.

Andrew Weston, Rigdale, and I boarded the
Swan
with Weston's fifty-eight other men at St. Katherine's wharf at five of the clock on Monday morning, the twenty-ninth of April in the year of Christ 1622. The last two passengers to board were a young gentleman armed with a sheathed cutlass sword and a comely maid. We made their acquaintance on the quarterdeck. Their names were Henry and Abigail Winslow. I was relieved to learn that they were brother and sister. Abigail had auburn curls.

The wind being east and north, and the weather being fair, the
Swan
's crew weighed anchor at about seven of the clock.

Captain Green called out, “Let go forward!” and “Let go aft.”

I leaned upon the port rail, just aft of the bow, and said, “Farewell, England.”

Andrew Weston said, “Farewell, sack. Farewell, claret and malmsey. Farewell, roasted beef, roasted pork, mutton, woodcocks, and capons.”

Rigdale gazed across the Thames and said, “Farewell, Southwark. My beloved Ann is buried in Southwark. Our little daughter, Joan, is buried beside her in St. Olave's churchyard. I hope one day to join them there.”

The Tower of London, London Bridge, and St. Paul's slowly receded from my sight as the
Swan
was towed out on the Thames away from the other ships, with their forest of masts, that thronged the river.

Captain Green cried out to his crew, “Cast off tows!”

Henry said, “God be praised! We are free of the Church of England, its bishops, and ecclesiastical courts.”

I said, “Its surplices. Its hallowed water. All of its lewd ceremonies.”

Rigdale said, “Its profanation of the Sabbath. Its licences to preach the Word of God.”

Abigail said, “Its persecution of the Saints.”

Andrew Weston said, “Its Book of Common Prayer with St. Chrysostom's prayers. Who is this St. Chrysostom? I warrant St. Chrysostom was a papist.”

Henry Winslow said, “Well said, gentlemen. We hold the same beliefs. My sister and I hope to join our cousin Edward, once of London and Leyden in Holland, who now abides among the Saints in the Plymouth Colony. Are you gentlemen also joining kin who dwell in that godly colony?”

I said, “No, sir. Master Rigdale and I are Master Weston's men. We shall all sojourn in new Plymouth for a little while before we venture into the wilderness and establish a colony of our own. There, with God's help, we shall fell timber for English markets and trade with the Indians for peltry and get rich.”

Henry said, “I have read that the Indians of New England delight to torture their prisoners by flaying some with sea shells and cutting off the fingers of others and roasting them to eat.”

The Captain cried out, “Man the sheets! Haul and make fast!”

The sailors hauled in the sheets, the wind swelled the mainsail, and the flags atop the mast unfurled. The
Swan
heeled away from the wind to starboard.

Abigail stumbled down the sloping deck into my arms.

She said, “I thank you, sir. You saved me from a grievous fall.”

I said, “Would that Eve could have spake thus to Adam.”

“You have a keen wit, sir.”

“Thank you, Mistress. I honed it in disputations with my tutors at Cambridge.”

“So you are a Cambridge man, Master Wentworth. Well, well!” and, for the first time, she looked intently at my pitted face.

Henry said, “Cousin Edward's father and our father were brothers. They were both fervent Separatists. Our mother, of precious memory, was too ill with the consumption for Father to take our family to join cousin Edward and the other Separatists in the Low Countries. Father tended Mother day and night for three years. She died two years ago in the month of September—the same month in which Father, of precious memory, coughed bright red blood into his handkerchief.

“Said he, ‘I know the color of this blood. Your mother coughed up bright red blood like this. This is arterial blood. It means my death.'

“The surgeon bled him and gave him infusions, decoctions, and tinctures—all to no avail. I clothed and unclothed him. Abigail made his bed, fetched him water, fed him, and changed and washed his bedclothes for over two years. He died last August 1st, one day after his forty-ninth birthday.

“On his deathbed, he bade us flee England and the dominion of the Anglican church. Said he, ‘My children, I bid you cross the sea and dwell in the Plymouth Plantation with our godly cousin Edward and his brothers and sisters in Christ.'

“I wrote cousin Edward. He answered me thus: ‘Come hither, dear cousins, and help build a commonwealth in the wilderness ruled by Christ through His Elect.' I spent twenty pounds of our inheritance to buy our passage in two cabins on this ship, together with six pounds, four pence to dine with the Captain in his cabin.”

The
Swan
sailed around a bend in the Thames and passed the Isle of Dogs. We beheld its gibbet, from which a blackened, putrid corpse was hanging in a rusty iron cage.

Rigdale said, “'Tis very like peering into a grave. Oh, Ann, to think that you now look like that.”

Henry drew his cutlass from its scabbard and said, “I bought this in London from a soldier. Look you! It hath but one cutting edge. I have pledged myself, by this sharp blade, to become a soldier of the Lord in defense of the Plymouth Plantation. One day, by God's grace, I will cut off a heathen Indian's head.”

Abigail said, “My brother is filled with martial ardor in the service of Christ. I am a frail female vessel who thus far is empty of grace. But I have hope that I will discover that I am predestined to be saved. Who knows? Perhaps God's grace will be bestowed upon me and one day I will dwell as one of the Saints in the Plymouth Plantation.”

I said, “I also pray for God's grace. The temptations in England were too great for me, which is why I choose to live chastely in the wilderness among Weston's men.”

The wind tossed the auburn curls upon Abigail's forehead and stirred the ends of the white kerchief tied about her long, slender neck.

• • •

Abigail and Henry lodged aft in two small cabins, each just large enough for a canvas bed stuffed with straw and a cupboard. Andrew Weston lodged with Captain Green in the great cabin. Rigdale and I slept upon our canvas beds stuffed with straw on the crowded gun deck with Weston's other men. For fear of the ship catching fire, the Captain forbade us to light candles or cook our victuals. We dwelt below in perpetual darkness.

On our fifth day out, at about nine in the morning, the wind grew so strong at southwest, and heavy rain withal, that Captain Green ordered the crew to take in the topsail and lower the mainsail. The storm tore the foresail in pieces. I lay upon my bed and listened to the wind howl and the waves break against the hull behind my head. The men about me vomited and groaned. Then I too took sick. The storm continued all the day and night. I was nauseous the whole time, but only able to vomit a bitter liquid. And after that, I had nothing left within me to disgorge.

The storm slacked off at about five the next morning. I lay there in the dark, too sick to move. At length, I roused myself and made my way up to Abigail's cabin, wherein she said to her brother and me, “There is a common saying that only those who go by sea know what it is to fear God. I learned in the night that the saying is true.”

The three of us offered up a prayer of thanksgiving for our deliverance from our first storm at sea, and, with Rigdale, we kept a fast in gratitude to almighty God all the following day.

I soon became accustomed to the stench in the gun deck of the damp, the spoiled victuals, rotting straw, spew, piss, and excrement. At the beginning of our third week at sea, Captain Green told Weston that the filthiness of his men lodged on the gun deck endangered the health of the ship. Weston, who never once went below during our voyage, summoned Rigdale to his cabin and ordered him to appoint men to keep the gun deck clean. Rigdale appointed himself, me, and four other men to keep our room clean for three days; then he appointed six others to succeed us, and so forth.

The next morning, after I had emptied two buckets of excrement over the side, Abigail said to me, “God bless you sir, for cleansing our ship of some of life's filth.”

“I am of the opinion that before Adam fell, the whole of the world was always clean.”

“Why, that shall henceforth be my opinion, too.”

“You are heartily welcome to anything of mine.”

“What, then, is your opinion of me?”

“First tell me this: thirteen days ago, when we met here upon the quarterdeck, you gazed intently upon my pitted face. Pray tell me why.”

“My father, of precious memory, also had a pitted face. He was stricken with the smallpox at the age of sixteen. Your face brought his beloved face to my mind.”

“Perhaps that is why God afflicted me with the smallpox.”

“Why is that?”

“Why, to bind you to me at our first meeting.”

“And what—if anything—binds you to me?”

“Your curls. My heart is entangled in your curls.”

• • •

Rigdale led me, the Winslows, and one Phineas Pratt in prayer three times a day. In fair weather, we prayed on the quarterdeck. When the weather was stormy, we gathered in Henry's cabin. Pratt was a master carpenter from Ipswich who had signed a contract with Weston for twelve pounds a year—the most ready money any of us were to receive. He and Rigdale had left their tool boxes in Captain Green's care. One rainy afternoon, in the captain's great cabin, they examined each other's divers tools, viz., augers (both). Various and sundry planes, cabinet scraper, crosscut saw, &c. (Rigdale). Rip saw, framing chisels, gauge, plumb line, hammer, &c (Pratt).

Pratt hammered a nail half way into the wall and then rubbed its head with the tip of his forefinger. He said, “I have the magic touch. You, sir, Master Wentworth, I'll wager you a shilling that you cannot drive this nail up to its head in three blows.”

I said, “My religion forbids me to make a wager, sirrah.”

He said, “Yes, sir, of course, sir. Never mind the wager. Forget the wager. Far be it for me to tempt you to sin. I bid you to try so that you may behold the effect of my magic touch.”

I struck three hard blows, but each time the hammer flew off the head of the nail. Pratt and Rigdale laughed. I laughed, too.

Pratt said, “I played a little carpenter's trick on thee. Forgive me, sir.”

“I forgive you, sirrah, if you explain the trick.”

“I rubbed ear wax upon the head of the nail.”

I laughed. “Henceforth, I will call you, ‘Ear-Wax Pratt.'”

He said, “Your servant, sir,” and pulled the nail out of the wall.

“Nay, I will not call you ‘Ear-Wax Pratt.' I will call you ‘Phineas.' Phineas is a noble name. There was once a Phineas who was the pagan king of antique Thrace.”

“You mean to say that my father named me for a pagan?”

“So he did, sirrah.”

“Father never told me. I'm not surprised. He was a papist. I converted to the true religion when I was a journeyman in London.”

“Which religion is that?”

He said, “Why, the Church of England, sir.”

Rigdale said, “Would you take me for a member of the Church of England, sirrah?”

Pratt said, “I cannot say. I cannot see into your soul. I know not what you are. Are you a Minister? You lead our little congregation in prayer thrice daily. But why do you not preach a sermon to us on the Sabbath?”

Rigdale said, “I would if I could.”

I said, “You do not require a licence to preach aboard the
Swan
.”

“God must give me His licence to preach.”

On the following Sabbath, the wind slacked about noon, and the cool weather grew very calm. Rigdale's little congregation gathered on the quarterdeck. An immense black whale breached just off the starboard bow. He jumped clear of the sea and dove back beneath the waves. Then he burst to the surface, blew two soaring plumes of water that formed a V from atop his head, and vanished again into the depths.

Rigdale cried out after him, “Leviathan! That was Leviathan! God be praised! We have beheld Leviathan!

“Dear friends, with God's help, I will this day preach a sermon to you on Job 40:20, ‘Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook and with a line which thou shalt cast down into his tongue?'”

He stood awhile in silence and then spake thus: “God help me! I have nothing to say about Job 40:20. I have nothing now to say about anything, save my soul. And I have but one thing to say about that: my soul is a dry land.

“Dear God, licence me to preach a short sermon in the plain style to these godly Christians on the aforesaid words of Job. O, my God, the Jews do not yearn for their Messiah with more devotion than I yearn to preach Thy Word. O Lord, harken unto my prayer.”

Another whale breached off the starboard bow and vanished into the sea. Rigdale said, “I took your companion as a sign for me to preach a sermon on Job 40:20. I was wrong.”

• • •

In fair weather, Henry, Abigail, Weston, Rigdale, and I dined in the great cabin with Captain Green. We had each paid three pounds, tuppence for the entire voyage to eat various and sundry victuals: dried bread and biscuits, salted eggs and salted fish, bacon and cured meats, calf tongues in bran or meal.

We all grew particularly weary of dried bread. One afternoon, at the beginning of June, Weston said, “Last night I dreamed that a warm loaf of freshly baked white bread was set on a table before me. I said to myself in my dream, why can I not smell this delectable loaf of bread?

“Pray tell me, Master Wentworth, can you smell in your dreams?”

“I am thinking on it.”

He said, “Whilst you think, I will pour me another cup of Aqua Vitae.”

“If it please you, sir, pour me another as well, for I cannot stomach drinking the beer on shipboard. It is either very salty or as thick as pudding.”