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At the beginning of August, Jack received two letters in answer to those he had written. One was from Governor Theophilus Eaton of New Haven Colony and it was exclusively and unpleasantly concerned with the Hallets.

Mr. Eaton began sternly:

Sir, Yours of the 17th present, I have received, by which I understand, William Hallet etc. are come to your plantation at Nameag. their grievous miscarriage hath certainly given great offense to many .. .

With mounting indignation, Governor Eaton noted the shocking manner in which his injunctions and decrees about the Hallets and Mrs. Feake’s children had been flouted until finally “in a secret underhand way they had taken the children, two cows, the household gods” from Stamford and stolen off into the night. Mr. Eaton’s respect for young Mr. Winthrop barely checked the angriest expression of his righteous indignation.

So all that Elizabeth had told Jack was confirmed. Nowhere in New Haven Colony might she be safe. Jack heaved a sigh of worried exasperation, then opened his other letter, which was from his father. When he had read it he mounted his horse immediately and rode to the Hallet cottage.

He found Elizabeth in her yard hanging out the wash with the help of Lisbet, Hannah, and his own twelve-year-old Betty. Jack was further amused to see that his little sons, Fitz-John and Wait-Still were playing a rough game of handy-dandy with Elizabeth’s boys. And he thought that his wife’s plan for keeping the cousins separated was not entirely successful. He paused a moment to watch, remembering another set of cousins who had played together long ago in a different land, but with the same exuberance, and the same unconscious yet deep recognition of kinship. And of that older set of cousins, not one was living now, save himself and Bess, he thought with shock, Harry, Forth, Mary, Martha - all of them gone.
“Eheu! fugaces .. ,”
he murmured and walked towards Elizabeth with so serious a face that she dropped a wet sheet, and cried. “Oh, Jack, what is it?”

“A letter from my father,” he said smiling. “Aye, Bess - I know you think that must be bad, but you’re quite wrong!”

She picked up the coarse darned sheet, flung it over the line; and wiping her hands on her apron walked with him to a secluded corner of the yard.

“He writes me news that wouldn’t interest you,” said Jack, “until the postscript. And this you may read for yourself.” He tendered the letter to Elizabeth. She looked down with a fearing pang at the well-remembered writing.

Commend me to my daughter Feake and tell her I have written to the Dutch Governor about her business already as much as I can. Desire her also if she have any writings etc; to show for her land in Barbado that she send it to me with speed and a letter of Attorney to Mr. Turner to recover it and I shall help her to somewhat for it, perchance a good sum of money; my wife salutes you all: the Lord bless you all: your loving father

JO: WlNTHROP
26(5)48.

“It has a kindly tone,” said Elizabeth dubiously. “For sure he cannot know the worst about me!”

“He does,” said Jack. “Though in my letter I admit I stressed certain aspects more than others. Bess, could you really think he’d let so close a member of our family suffer gravely without trying to help?”

“Perhaps,” she said, frowning. “But have you forgot how terrible he is in persecution? Subtle even, and devious, as he was against Anne Hutchinson and others - Ah, you may be angry with me again, Tack, but what cause have I to trust him? You don’t know
what
he’s written to Stuyvesant. And what is this tarradiddle about land in Barbadoes? He knows I’ve none and that what little Harry left me - melted unaccountably.”

Jack kept his temper with an effort “You’re determined
in
your hatred. I’m disappointed in you.”

“Call it distrust and fear if you like,” she said coldly. “I’ve never dared to hate him - ah, now I see. This mention of Barbadoes is one of Thomas Lyon’s convictions, ever wishful of getting something more with Joan.
There
is one I hate! And I’d like to injure him as he has us!” Her eyes narrowed and glinted green as she cried passionately, “Would I
were
the witch that Watertown once thought me, and I’d blast Thomas Lyon into perdition, but I’m helpless, helpless!”

“Hush, Bess - Hush !” he cried for the children had all turned to stare at her. “Don’t talk so wild.”

“ ‘Tis not for what he’s done to me, nor yet the children,” she said lower but with the same venom, “ ‘Tis for what he’s done to my Will!”

The fury changed to pain in her strained eyes and Jack was touched. He felt again sharp though fleeting envy for a love so powerful, and which had now forever passed him by.

“Yes, I know,” he said. “But ‘tisn’t only Lyon. For there are many reasonable men who think as he does, Bess.” He hesitated, then decided not to tell her of Governor’s Eaton’s tirade. He continued quietly, “The rights of your case are clear to me, and clear now to my father, whatever you believe, but for the others we must be patient. I too have written Governor Stuyvesant, and will again.”

“He hasn’t answered,” she said bleakly, the fire gone from her.

“No - and it’s awkward, since he blusters and threatens, claiming all these colonies for the Dutch. I fear he’s not inclined to do a favour for any English person.”

She made a bitter sound and turned away.

He took her arm and led her farther from the children to the tangle of underbrush next their clearing. “Bess, have you heard aught of Robert since he sailed to England?”

She shook her head, astonished. “Have you?”

“Aye,” he said, and paused, uncertain what to tell her, while fervently wishing that the news had been of Robert’s death. How simple then would have been Elizabeth’s solution.

“Do you have any feeling left for Robert Feake?” he asked slowly. “I know you never loved him, and yet did your duty kindly. I saw Robert in Boston, you know, and realized better than Father ever-has, what you must have endured.”

“Yes -” she said with difficulty, “when you saw Robert he had near recovered Perhaps in England he’ll lay the ghost that troubled him so sorely.”

Jack looked at her with keen attention, and saw that he might speak without distressing her too much.

“He’s in gaol, Bess. In the Fleet. And you spoke more truly than you knew, when you said he went to lay a ghost.”

“In gaol. .” she whispered, her cheeks whitening. She glanced over towards her children. “Oh, Jack, this is worse disgrace than anything has happened, always I fear so for them.”

He shook his head. “You needn’t. They’re nothing like him, and remember - for that one weak broken mind they have thousands of strong and healthy ancestors. His is not an hereditary taint.”

“Why is he gaoled?” she said, wincing. “From whom did you hear?”

“From Edward Howes, our old friend, whom we can trust. I wrote him to keep an eye on Robert. It seems the piteous man, on the day he landed, went to a London magistrate and confessed to a terrible crime committed over seventeen years ago. He said that he had strangled his apprentice, Ralph, and wished to suffer for it.”

She stiffened with an inward gasp; then she shuddered and drew back. “You tell me this, and that it’s no disgrace! How can you be so cruel?”

“Because, Bess - there’s much perplexity. The other goldsmiths on Lombard Street, when questioned, said that a Ralph Barton had some years ago gone off to York to set up for goldsmith on his own. That they were nearly sure it was the same as had been ‘prenticed once to Robert Feake. Still, all England is at war, and inquiries most difficult. They put Robert in the Fleet for safe-keeping until some trace of this Ralph Barton could be found. Edward had a hand in this, and arranged that Robert be imprisoned under an assumed name. It’s also by Edward’s humane efforts that Robert was not sent to Bedlam. At the Fleet he has his own apartment and a servant to care for him. He is much distraught again, and nobody believes his story, though they can’t free him until they’re sure.” He put his hand gently on her shoulder. “Did you ever guess what it was Robert wished to go to England for?”

She was silent a long time. At last she answered very low, “It may be. At least now I see many things I wouldn’t look at before.” She stopped, because an eerie memory displaced the memories of Robert’s “strangeness”. Against the sultry blue New England sky she saw herself and Edward Howes pausing on Fleet Bridge in the snow, and she saw again the prisoner’s hand clenched on the bar of a window in the Fleet Only a vague pathos had she felt then, and some recognition of the loss of freedom foisted on herself as she reluctantly became Edward’s betrothed. Now it might be Robert’s hand that clenched at that same bar. She turned and spoke with conviction. “Jack, I believe he did
not
do it. ‘Twas one of his hideous fancies sent, I verily believe, by the Devil. Robert has always had a demon fighting in him. He was at times possessed as truly by an unclean spirit as ever was the Gadarene whom Christ delivered.”

“Aye,” said Jack solemnly after a moment. “And may Christ deliver Robert. Do you pray for him, Bess?”

“I can’t pray.” she said “My prayers were never answered when I did. There’s naught to be done with a God of Wrath but creep away and hide from His notice. I will not seek afflictions, and deem them joyous marks of Divine Favour. I don’t think pain and cruelty ennobling.”

Jack was troubled, and her speech dismayed him. He had never questioned such things, but accepted the teaching he had been reared with, and he thought it needful to say reprovingly, “You speak like a heathen, Bess. I grieve to hear it You must think of your immortal soul, and bear your cross for His sake and for your own salvation.”

She looked at him with a sad smile. “ ‘Tis no use, Jack. I’m in the darkness, and there is but one thing I desire of life.”

His grave brown eyes looked their question.

“To hold my William’s love, and to be his true wife,” she said.

“Poor Bess,” he murmured. “Poor little coz. It would be much, but I’m sure - not enough.” He sighed and walked over to his children.

Later that week, Betty Winthrop was delivered of a daughter, who was named Martha in a compliment to Governor Winthrop’s new wife, and with apparently no recollection on Betty’s part that the name might commemorate a different Martha. Elizabeth’s skilled midwifery was not requested, nor for some time were there any but most formal relations between the great mansion and the little Hallet cottage.

When Elizabeth’s own delivery took place in October, her neighbour Goody Langdon did what was needful, but the birth was as easy as the last had been hard.

It was a boy, as Elizabeth had prophesied, and when she saw Will bend over the red-faced mite, and saw the leap of excited pride in his eyes, she knew a moment of rapture.

“Your son, my dear love,” she whispered. “Isn’t he big and strong and lusty - like his father?”

“In truth -” said Will, gazing down with wonder as the baby’s fist closed around his finger. “I think he does look like me, has the same great ape jaw.”

“For shame!” she said. “Little William Hallet’s a beautiful baby I” She raised her arms and pulled Will’s face down to hers. “Does he make you happier? Aren’t you glad now, darling?”

“Of course, hinnie,” he said, kissing her and trying to keep all hesitation from his voice. “I am well content. I love thee and this little poppet” He smoothed her hair back and kissed her again. But she knew that he was thinking of all that he had meant to do for his son, and that in strict legal terms it did not even bear his name.

“Can’t you forget that?” she cried as though he had spoken, “Must you keep fretting over what we can’t help? Jack understands, and nobody else here suspects.”

For how long? he thought. And does she think I can be happy when I am here on sufferance and she under the protection of another man? But he said nothing. He went out to hammer on the shed where the roof was not yet finished, noting grimly that the cow whose leg had been injured upon landing from the boat seemed no better. The other cow had died, soon they would have to borrow milk.

The winter dragged by. A hard winter of ice and blizzards. The Hallets would have suffered without Jack’s watchful kindness, also Betty Winthrop, who had a perfect sense of what was fitting, stifled her disinclination and extended hospitality. Will and Elizabeth accepted it for the children’s sake. And their visits to the mansion provided each of them with distraction. Elizabeth often worked on Jack’s medical formulas for him; she learned to mix - as well as he could himself - the secret ingredients of his ‘Rubila’ which were antimony, nitre and salts of tin, coloured red.

Will, glad of providing some return, helped Jack with his voluminous correspondence, and particularly by classifying notes on his development projects; the ironworks at Saugus which were at last turning out eight tons a week, the contemplated saltworks at Pequot, though so far no saltworks had prospered; the Pequot gristmill; and continual mining ventures. Will utilized his clerical training under the Digbys, and Jack was pleased by the results.

During the winter Jack also wrote two letters to Governor Stuyvesant on the Hallets’ behalf. The first one, to have gone by a ship’s captain, Thomas Alcott, was not delivered, and when Jack discovered this, he wrote another.

Noble Sir, I wrote to you in the winter... to know your pleasure concerning the estate of mrs. Feake...

I am bold ... to request your favour concerning her . . . that whereas there was an agreement made with William Hallet for the managing of the estate (which Mr. Feake before his going into England told me at Boston that he fully consented to, knowing Hallet to be industrious and careful, which I find since his being here to be very true) that you will be pleased to let the estate be again returned into his hands, not knowing any other way how it can be improved in the comfortable maintenance of her and the children, who . . . for want of it are in a necessitous condition:

... as also that you will be pleased to grant him liberty to return within your jurisdiction . . . which license under your hand I beseech you to send by this bearer...

Your humble servant
JOHN WINTHROP.