Cape Cod (20 page)

“Start what?”

“A tradin’ post. The Indians trades pelts to thee for trinkets. Thou trades pelts to the Dutch for profit.”

Jack looked out at the river mouth. The new moon had risen, a rapier of light glimmering above black water and blacker land. “And the book?”

“Trade
, Jack. To man or nation, trade matters more than faith. After that, there be no more to tell.”

And no Dutch came that season. So Weston went north and found the
Swan
floundering from one Penobscot fishing settlement to another. He provisioned her with beaver charity and repaid Plymouth, as Bradford wrote, with “reproaches and evil words.” But he never again spoke of book or scandal. This might have been because he considered it a secret to use again. Or perhaps a perverted sense of honor kept him from destroying the reputation of Ezra Bigelow and besmirching the colony he had helped to start.

When he sailed for Virginia, to test his skills as planter, trader, and member of the House of Burgesses, Weston did not even go with thanks. He called them good beggars on his behalf and bade them goodbye.

Ezra Bigelow prayed in thanksgiving at his leaving. Jack Hilyard prayed for knowledge of a book that would give him sway over Bigelow and the island called Nauseiput. Elizabeth prayed that the elders would heed her husband, who now urged them to build a trading post on the Manomet.

She had determined that she would pray like a proper Saint and keep house like any goodwife. But until she could move her family away from those who had punished her so unjustly, she would bring no more children into the world. Upon news of this, Jack seethed.

vi.

In the land of Autumnsquam, the Nausets seethed as well, but with fever. As the cranberry vines reddened and the geese took flight in the year that the white men called 1623, another plague came. It swept through the marshes where some still hid from Plymouth’s wrath. It struck in villages where there were good shelter and plentiful food.

Autumnsquam had once killed a wolf with his bare hands. He had fought the white men in the dawn light. He had refused to be frightened by Witawawmut’s head. But all the courage he could muster meant nothing in the face of this sickness.

His woman died before him and left Autumnsquam alone to watch their son die. He held the boy to his chest and covered him with kisses. He did not care that the sores on the boy’s forehead broke against his lips. He would be glad to join his family as soon as Kautantowit would take him.

He buried his boy beside his wife and buried the others who had been his friends. Then he sat back and waited for the fever and the sores to come to him. But they did not.

After many days, the wind rose, the rain slashed down, and he heard the roar of the sea beyond the bar. It called to him like the voice of Kautantowit. So he paddled his canoe into the east wind, and as he drew close to the inlet, he saw the breakers raging.

Three times he tried to run the inlet, and three times the sea threw him back. The breakers that he prayed would swamp him did not let him beyond the bay. It was not his time to die. Perhaps it was a sign. Perhaps one day, Kautantowit would call him to wipe this land clean of the English and their god. He went back to his dying village and prayed that it would be so.

vii.

Elizabeth Hilyard prayed as well, for four years.

In that time, she did not conceive again. But she could not deny her husband his due. He was, after all, her master.

Though a Saint, she had grown up in a most unsaintly section of London and there had heard of a way to prevent the man’s seed from entering her body though the man did. She took boiled sheep guts—meat casings—and fashioned sheaths that her husband could wear when he came to her. He objected, but she promised that if he wore them, she would never turn him away. She kept her promise and they remained, at least outwardly, good citizens.

Each spring, Jack pressed the elders to permit whaling. But the whales seldom coasted close to Plymouth and the elders would yet permit no settlements in distant parts of Cape Cod. Then he would press them on the need for a trading post at Aptucxet. Press them for anything, his wife said, that might get the Hilyards away from Plymouth.

In 1627, the London Adventurers echoed Jack’s words on trade. After farming and husbandry had ensured survival of the plantation, the Adventurers suggested that Plymouth’s best hope to work off its debts would be in trade. And the London market craved pelts.

So Plymouth bought land from the Manomets, made treaties with the Wampanoag nation and the Dutch at New Amsterdam, and built at Aptucxet a trading post more capacious than any Plymouth house, with two large rooms, an upper chamber, loft, and root cellar. The Indians would bring pelts of beaver, otter, muskrat, even mink. The Dutch would come with glass, pottery, cloth, and the metal goods the Indians coveted. Plymouth would trade in the fruits of its husbandry. And all would benefit.

For Jack Hilyard’s foresight, for his bravery against Witawawmut, and perhaps as recompense for punishment that many considered unjust, Bradford named him proprietor. Ezra Bigelow was glad to be shed of Hilyard, his bitter wife, and his nettlesome elder son. And the Hilyards were glad to move some twenty miles to the shoulder of Cape Cod. Jack would see little direct profit, but much in the way of goodwill—from Plymouth and his family.

On the first night, he found it in the upper chamber. Beside the rushlight, Elizabeth removed her skirt and petticoats. Then she slid her black stockings down her legs. Then she took off the bodice that encased her upper body and the bum roll that fullened her hips. Then, though the night humors were known to be a danger to the naked body, she pulled her shift over her head and stood, for the first time, completely bare before him.

“I’ve no fear of the night air,” she whispered. “And I brung no sheep’s guts to Aptucxet.”

He leaned on one elbow and his eyes caressed the whiteness of her body. “It surpass my knowin’.”

“What?”

“Why thou choosed me, when all them fine Saints lined up for thy hand.”

“Two reasons.” She knelt on the edge of the bed, bringing her sex so close to his face that the smell of her intoxicated him. “Thou art thine own man. And thou hast that—” She threw back the coverlet.

His shirt formed a little tent above his loins. “Thou knows the words to make a man feel manly.”

She pushed the undershirt up toward his waist. She made motion to sit upon him, then hesitated, as if she had forgotten something.

His heart nearly quit when she lowered her mouth toward his root. He had heard of this done, for a price, by London whores. Now, in the exquisite privacy of Aptucxet, far from the prying eyes of the colony, his wife would do it for him. Then she stopped. He understood. They were rebellious, not depraved, and sodomy was sin no matter where done. She wet her fingertips with her tongue and anointed him. “Now, let us make another child, a free child.”

Jack put his head back and thought how blessed he was.

In the loft, Christopher heard the creaking of the bed ropes and wished the same blessing for himself. He was nineteen, tall and brawny, with a thickening beard that made him seem all of a man, in no way connected to his wiry father. And there was a sullenness about him that masked a questioning nature.

The sullenness derived from questions that could not be asked in Plymouth, as they challenged the faith of Plymouth. There was but one church, said the Saints, one path to God, and the fate of all was predestined. But Christopher had befriended Indians who visited Plymouth, had learned their language, had heard of Kautantowit, of Geesukquand and Habbamock and all the spirits of sky and earth, and he had found meaning in them. They explained the world in a way that men could understand.

And that, he believed, was what faith should do. If one set of beliefs could not teach men the way to live in harmony with their world and themselves, what should men do but seek God in another way? It was for certain that eight hours each Sunday upon a hard meetinghouse bench had never explained to him why the head of one who sought to save his land should rot at the meetinghouse door.

Thus it was a happy day when his father charged him to go among the Cape tribes and speak of Aptucxet. He yearned to meet the Nausets once more, to seek Kautantowit in the marshes and beaches, and perhaps see the smile of the girl named Amapoo again.

After three days’ journey, in which he visited many villages, he came to Nauseiput Island, shining like a ruby in the October light. Several Saquatucket families lived in the clearing where Christopher and his father had once tried to settle. The Saquatuckets had built their
wetus
around the old foundation hole, in which a heap of discarded shells rose higher each day.

Sepet was the sachem. He was white-haired, with skin hung in pouches where his chest muscles had been, and he dwelt without women or children. “Our world changes. We are fewer each year. And Kautantowit…”

“He must be sad.”

The old man rubbed the saggy flesh of his breast. “Who can say? Sad, or mad that we do not praise him?”

“Tomorrow I visit the Nausets.”

Sepet poked at the fire and laughed bitterly. “Do you know the name of their new sachem?”

“Autumnsquam?”

“So we wish, but his name is George. He takes an English name to be a friend of the English.”

“What of Autumnsquam?”

“Sad and lonely, like me. The sickness of pox took his woman and his son, like mine.”

Christopher bowed his head. “I must see him.”

“He lives near the round pond on the bay, with his niece, the girl Amapoo… and her man.”

That night Christopher slept on Nauseiput, in Sepet’s
wetu
, on a bed of deerskin. But he did not have blissful sleep. He dreamed of Autumnsquam’s baby, adorned with shells, and woke in a sweat. He listened to the wind in the trees and the rattled breathing of the old Indian beside him, and after a time, he slept again. Then he dreamed of Amapoo, and it was a dream so intense that he woke in the middle of a night-come.

The next day, with anticipation and trepidation, he moved on to Nauset. He remembered from six years before that Aspinet’s village had spread a great distance both north and south along the shore. Now there were few columns of smoke rising anywhere in the Nauset land. The fields looked to be planted more with weeds than corn. The children were scrawny. The dogs bared their teeth. And many
wetus
were stripped of covering, nothing more than bent saplings, like skeletons in the sun.

In respect, Christopher first visited Sachem George, half brother of Aspinet. George wore an English cloak, grinned a great deal, and promised that all the Nausets would bring their pelts to Aptucxet. Christopher gave him a new knife, then went north to the round pond.

There he found two dwellings built on the shore. Autumnsquam sat before one and chipped flint with a stone. Beside him were three large rush baskets, each overflowing with arrowheads.

Christopher held up his hand.
“Poo-ne-am.”
Greetings.

Autumnsquam was startled. His hand went to his tomahawk, but after a moment, he recognized the white man. “Hil-yud? Christo-pher?”

“Autumnsquam,
netomp.”
My friend.

“Appish
, Christo-pher.” Sit.

“I bring my father’s greetings… and his sorrow.”

Autumnsquam looked up at the leaves of maple and beech. “My boy rides the southwest wind with Kautantowit.”

“I will remember his smile always.”

Autumnsquam turned his eyes back to his chipping, as though the memory filled him with too much sorrow to contemplate.

“You make many arrowheads.”

“We will need… We will not speak of arrowheads. You made my boy laugh. You are welcome here.”

And they talked the afternoon through, of the growth of Plymouth and the shrinking of Nauset and the turning of the earth.

Toward sunset, she came. He saw her from a distance, crossing the sandbar that separated the pond from the sea. She balanced a basket of clams upon her head and walked a respectful distance behind her husband.

“They are together two years but have no children.”

“They have time.”

“I would give her a child myself, but she is my blood.”

The husband, named Spoospotswa, was young but scrawny and sunken-chested. His cough echoed ahead of him like the call of a sick bird.

Amapoo, however, had grown well into womanhood, not tall, but with good flesh on her shoulders and arms, a healthy round face, and the firm breasts of youth. Christopher could not see her legs, as she wore a skirt of marsh grass, but he thanked God that Wampanoags did not consider uncovered breasts a cause for lust.

Before Autumnsquam said his name, she recognized him. She put down her basket and came to him, filling her face with a smile. He wished to take her hand, but feared that her husband might take offense. And if he accidentally touched her breasts, his breeches would betray his manhood.

So he bestowed his gifts. Autumnsquam received a hatchet, Spoospotswa a knife that made him Christopher’s friend for life, and Amapoo a looking glass.

That night Amapoo put on her best deerskins and hung copper pendants in her ears. Her husband did not notice. He sat by the fire and watched its reflection dance on the blade of his new knife. Nor did he notice that Christopher could not take his eyes off his woman.

Christopher stayed three days. He slept in Autumnsquam’s
wetu
, though each night he was kept awake by Spoospotswa’s coughing. He fished, helped with the harvest of corn, and quietly yearned for Amapoo.

When it came time for him to leave, Amapoo offered to go with him along the sandy paths as far as Nauseiput. Spoospotswa had little interest in a journey, but Autumnsquam said he would accompany them and visit his old friend Sepet. Christopher was happy for the companionship, though he would have been happier had Autumnsquam stayed behind.

Old Sepet welcomed them all. And that night, the shell heap in the foundation grew higher. The women served, the men ate, and each time that Christopher glanced toward Amapoo, her eyes shone into his.