Chesapeake by James A. Michener
Dearest Father,
I am settled into a resplendent island, rich in all things, and I am on my way to building an estate of which you would be proud. But I am surrounded only by savages and I most urgently need a wife. Will you enquire of your friends in Berks whether there be a woman of Catholic upbringing and good family who knows her letters who would consent to join me in this enterprise? And if so, please arrange her passage to Jamestown, where I will reimburse the captain of the ship she takes.
Edmund
Folding the letter neatly, he tucked it among the beaver pelts, cast off the bateau, and with his two Indian braves as crew set out for Jamestown.
It was a long and peaceful sail, during which he was able for the first time to savor the Chesapeake and see it for the glorious body of water it was, without the pressure of exploration or flight. He lay back with the tiller tucked under one knee, his only obligation being to advise the Indians when he wished to come about; they loved this operation when the boom swung, and the sail filled from the opposite quarter, and the leeboards were shifted. It was a game which never palled, this trick of sailing into the wind, making it do what you commanded. Sometimes they asked Steed to allow them to supervise the maneuver, and one of them would take the tiller, and watch the wind and the sail, and cry in a loud voice, “Prepare to come about! Hard alee!” and the other would swing the boom and work the lines. Then both would smile.
So long as the course remained down the Chesapeake, Steed felt no unusual emotion, but once the boat breasted the headland of the James and started tacking upriver, he became tense, for here some of the great days of his life had been spent: his defense of Captain Smith when the mob had wanted to hang him; his escape from the murderous Indians who had flayed his partner; his magical survival of the starving time, when eighteen of his closest associates had perished; and most memorable of all, the sense of having helped launch a little colony in a new land.
It wasn’t so small a colony now; large ships were arriving from England with all the trading goods the early colonists had longed for, and where once there had been only men protecting themselves within a stockade, there were now women joining them to build families which occupied separate homes.
As his bateau pulled up to the wharf, now a sturdy affair projecting well into the river, Steed was captivated by the sight of the women; he had seen no Englishwomen for many years and had almost forgotten the grace with which they moved, the fall of their heavy skirts and the way they tied bits of cloth about their throats. They were like magic to him, a reminder of all he had surrendered in fleeing to his island, and he was filled with that hungriness which would determine all he would do on this trip.
There was a ship in the river, the Victorious out of Bristol, and its captain, Henry Hackett, was excited when he saw the bundles of beaver pelts. “I’ll take all of them you bring, Steed,” he growled. “And what’s that aft, sassafras root? I’ll take all of it, too.” It was much prized for distillations and the making of infusions to lower fevers. But Hackett’s chief delight were the two small tubs in which Steed had stored his salted sturgeon eggs.
“Caviar!” the captain shouted. “I’d take twenty tubs. Fish eggs is in great demand in London. They turn rancid quickly but they’re worth the risk.”
In return for this strange collection of goods, Captain Hackett offered Steed a choice of axes, saws, nails, dried beans, salted pork, a compass, folds of writing paper, ink and a dozen books bound in leather. He chose only after the most careful calculations, as he had done when a boy being offered lollies at the grange, and when he was through, the captain said, “You should have been here to choose two weeks ago.”
“What extra had you then?”
“Brides.”
“Women? English women?”
“And a few Dutch. With your credit you could have bought yourself a beauty.”
“Will you be bringing more?”
“That I will.”
“Will you deliver my letter, then, to my father?” He rummaged among the beaver pelts and produced the carefully composed message, and when he handed it to the captain he explained, “I’m asking my father to pick me out a bride and send her here in your ship.”
“You pay her passage, I’ll deliver her to the gates of hell.”
“I’ll pay in stacks of pelts,” Steed said in quivering excitement. “When will you return?”
“November, likely, if we get passable winds.”
“I hope you do,” Steed said fervently. “I do hope the winds are good.”
When trading was completed, and the bateau loaded, he invited his two Indian helpers to climb aboard the English ship and see for themselves how mighty it was. In slow, grave movements the two little Choptanks went from item to item of the ship’s goods, never touching, never speaking, but when they came to the remnants of brightly colored cloth, their greed became uncontrollable, and each man grabbed an armful.
“Halloo!” a sailor protested. “You can’t just walk off with that there.” In sign language he explained that they must bring him something in trade, and in signs they indicated they had nothing. “Then get something,” he said, and they rushed to the railing and looked down at Steed, crying in Choptank, “Master, we must have the cloth!” When he asked why, they said, “As presents for our wives,” and without reflection he tossed them one of his axes, and they carried it to the sailors, who gave them the cloth they desired. And as they climbed down into the bateau, happy and chattering, with gifts in their arms, Steed realized that among all the goods he had purchased, there was not one intended for a woman, and he was desolate.
To the surprise of the Indians he did not weigh anchor. Reluctant to depart, he went ashore, to sup at the home of a man he had befriended during the starving time; this man had purchased a wife three years before from one of the earlier shiploads, and now had two children and a third on the way. Steed could not keep from staring, for he thought this woman the most wonderful he had ever seen. She moved and smiled with such grace. Back in England she would not have been considered even pretty; his mother had been a true beauty and he knew the difference, but this woman had a primitive grandeur, which no mere prettiness could equal. She was, he thought, much like a statue he had seen at Oxford, solid and clean and perfectly fitted to its surroundings, and although the topic had not been introduced, he blurted out, “Have any of the women who came in the ship with you become widows?”
She did not laugh. “No,” she said evenly, “we were all married within two days, and we are married still.”
No more was said, and soon a stern-faced bailiff came to the house to advise Steed that sailors on the English ship had given one of his Indians whiskey and the fellow had become obstreperous. Steed hurried away to find the Indian, red-faced, sweating and out of control. He had insisted upon leaping into the river to touch the sides of the ship, and twice he had been hauled out practically dead, but was determined to try again.
“Asquas!” Steed shouted. “Lie down!”
The little swimmer looked at Steed with unsteady eyes, recognized him as in command, and collapsed in the bottom of the bateau, where he lay motionless through the long night. Steed, aware that he should quit Jamestown the next day, remained aboard but could not sleep. He stood most of the night at the sheer strakes, staring at the rude collection of huts which represented the civilized world. He could visualize himself returning to it again and again. “Oh God!” he cried suddenly. “I wish it was November.”
In the morning he reported to the governors of Jamestown, advising them that he was returning to his island. He gave them a full account of the Indian tribes in that region, and of the trading goods that he would be delivering on future trips. They inquired of him the difference between the western shore of the Chesapeake and the eastern, and he replied, “In all respects the western is more vigorous. Your Indians are warlike and your land excitable, your rivers are significant and your trees taller. One day Jamestown will be a new Jerusalem, and
As he left the building in which the magistrates had interrogated him, he heard a commotion at the far end of the village and suspected that his Choptanks might be drunk again, but the noise came from a striking, well-developed blond young woman who was engaging in a public brawl with her husband, much older than she.
He was endeavoring to quieten her, but she kept shouting, “I’ll not stay!” And she pushed him away. In her determination to escape whatever threat he posed, she ran down the dusty path that served as the village street, flouncing her petticoats and generating a tumult.
When she neared the council building at whose door Steed was standing, she turned back to address the populace: “He drags me miles upriver to a filthy stable surrounded by murderous Indians. I’ll none of it.”
In lusty cries she appealed to the crowd for support, but a woman in a red kerchief, herself lately arrived from England, shouted back like a fishwife, “Go back, you slut. Be a decent wife.”
“I’ll not go back,” she screamed, pushing her husband away. “He lied to me. No farm. No boat of his own. Nothing but Indians.”
The woman with the kerchief cried, “It’s no heaven for none of us. But it’s better than what you knew.”
“It’s not!” the angry wife screamed. “In London, I lived in a proper house, not a grassy hut.”
“You lived in jail,” the other replied, and a fight might have ensued except that the runaway noticed Steed in the doorway, watching her with curious intensity. Since he appeared to be headed for the bateau riding at the dock, she seized upon him.
“Are you Steed, from the island?” she asked boldly.
“I am.”
“And that’s your boat, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Oh, take me with you,” she begged. “Take me!” and she clung to him with such a show of anguish that he could not shake her loose, even though her husband was coming forward to claim her.
“Come home, Meg,” her husband pleaded. He made a pathetic figure, a short, squarish countryman who must have worked hard in some rural English county and harder here in Virginia. He wore thick, patched homespun trousers, a rough wool shirt and shoes that some inept cobbler had hacked from a stretch of cowhide. He was in his thirties, the type of rural worker Steed had long known and liked.
“I’m Simon Janney,” he said. “She’s mine and you must give her back.”
“Of course I must,” Steed said. “By no device is she mine. And she is yours.”
“I’m not!” the woman shouted, moving in front of Steed to confront the man Edmund had assumed to be her husband. “We’re not married yet, nor ever shall be.”
“She’s not your wife?” Steed asked, poking his head around from behind her bobbing curls.
“I paid for her passage,” Janney said.
“And he took me to his pigsty. He can have his money back.”
“How?” the woman in the red kerchief demanded.
In desperation the fugitive left Steed, threw her arms wide in a beseeching gesture and asked the crowd, “Will no one pay my passage?”
A shocked silence greeted this extraordinary proposal, then Steed said, “I will.”
He was standing close to Simon Janney when he said this and he heard the countryman gasp. “You mustn’t, Mr. Steed. She’s to be my wife.” He spoke stolidly, as if trying to protect a valuable ewe.
“Never!” she shouted.
“Friend Steed,” the other woman bellowed, “don’t meddle with that one. Maria from the ship can tell you about her.”
The blonde whipped about to confront her accuser, and the swift movement of her ample body conveyed an excitement Steed had not experienced before; she was like some powerful goddess turning to protect herself. “Bring Maria here,” she said with menacing softness, “and I’ll attend her.” She reached for Steed’s hand, drawing him close to her, and he, feeling for the first time the sexually powerful body of a woman pressing against his, clasped her hand. And by that action he committed himself.
“Friend Janney,” he said persuasively, “let her go. She’ll never be yours.”
“She must,” the stubborn little farmer said. His square red face, unshaved for three days, betrayed the torment he was feeling, and Steed felt sorry for him. But then Janney mumbled like a peasant, “I paid for her.”
“I’ll repay you, and more. I need a wife on my island.”
This simple statement of need echoed through the crowd, and all who had waited for the bride ships understood, but his confession had its greatest effect on the woman. Dropping his hand, she gently slipped her arm about his waist, and he felt dizzy and stammered, “We’ll be married this day.”
“Oh no!” she cried, withdrawing her arm. “I’m to see the island first. No more pigsties for me.”
“Don’t meddle with her, Steed!” warned the other woman again.
“I can’t pay you now,” Steed explained to Janney, “but when I next bring my goods, you shall be paid first.”
“He paid seven pounds,” the blonde said.
“Then I shall give him eight.”
“But she’s to be my wife,” Janney repeated. He was like a stunted oak damaged by careless plows but still deeply rooted in earth.
“She will never be,” Steed said, and he led Meg Shipton to his bateau.
The couple arrived at Devon in June 1614, he thirty-two years old, she twenty-five. At the moment of disembarking he had never yet kissed any woman but his mother; he had been too busy defining his relationship to God in England and to Indians in Virginia; but she had been at the job of kissing men for some fourteen years, and during this crossing of the bay she had developed a deep curiosity as to what it might be like when she finally plopped Mister Steed into bed.
She was delayed, however, when he required her to survey the land to which he was bringing her: the flourishing fields, the trees, the birds. “Are there Indians?” she asked apprehensively, and he pointed to the two who were tying the bateau to shore.
“And their wives will be here to help you,” he assured her, pointing to the smaller wigwams near his own. “They’re gentle folk,” he began expansively. Then suddenly he lost his bravado and clutched her hands. “My home’s a pigsty too. I need you, Meg.”
She squeezed his fingers. He was so courteous that she could believe what the others had said in Jamestown: that he was from Oxford, dismissed by his noble family because of some petty quarrel. He had been very brave during the starving time, they told her, and had twice escaped murder by the Indians. But there was some mystery about him, else why would he seek an island? Looking at his eagerness to please and sensing his gentleness, she almost fell in love with him, but instinct warned her against such folly. First she must inspect this island, and determine what he intended doing with it, and whether he had the funds to open new fields and build a real house. She acknowledged an obligation to repay him for her passage money, but she would do this in her own practiced way. Indeed, she was eager to begin.
But when they reached his wigwam, a shabby affair of saplings and woven grass, she was prevented from entering by the arrival of the two Indian wives bringing baskets of vegetables and wriggling crabs. They proposed instructing her in how to cook Indian dishes, an art in which she had no interest whatever, and after several hours were wasted in domestic trivialities she snapped, “Let’s clear them out and jump into bed.”
The words intimidated Steed, for he had been conjuring
“It’s a fearful place, this,” she said, poking her finger at the grassy wall, “but it’s no pigsty.” Deftly she slipped out of her clothes, and then, seeing that he had made no move to do likewise, said chidingly, “Come, get on with it,” and she pulled him onto the straw bedding; from long practice she knew how to handle such a lover.
But when morning came she leaped from the rude bed in terror. “Good God, what’s that?”
It was the blue heron uttering his hideous yet reassuring cry. “The Indians call him Fishing-long-legs,” he whispered, laughing gently at her fright. His night with her had been an experience of great joy, and he reached for one of her long, handsome legs to pull her down beside him again.
“We’ve work to do,” she reprimanded, and the next sixteen months were a revelation. Meg Shipton, raised in squalid London quarters, took to the island as if she had been reared on farms. She sweated to help plow the fields on which the wealth of this enterprise depended and grew greasy-black from tending the fires that burned away the bark of tall trees that had to be cleared from new fields. She grew skillful in collecting crabs and oysters, and came to enjoy the two Indian women who taught her tricks like making hominy: “Mistress, you place corn in hot water mixed with wood ashes. The lye eats away the yellow covering, leaving only the white insides. So delicious fried in venison drippings.”
And yet, for all her voluntary work and the eagerness with which she helped Steed build a real house, she was somehow reserved in her relations with him; they had wild delights beneath the covers, but he sensed that she held him in some kind of contempt. They talked freely, but she always seemed to be laughing at him, and he gained the impression that she was being compatible only because she owed him a debt. Often he caught her looking at him quizzically, and he tried to determine in what way he had failed her, but whenever he came close to touching upon this subject, she drew back and smiled at him indulgently. But in spite of her obvious reserve about him, she never disciplined him in bed: he had agreed to buy her and she was his.