Beheld Read online

  A breeze blew in light and cool. I watched the wind flutter the leaves and make mottled shadows on the houses. The birds flew overhead, their sounds loud and chattery. All, I affirmed, would be as God intended.

  I glanced at my neighbor, Susanna, round at the belly, nearing the end of her pregnancy, and across from her, Elizabeth, hands in the dirt. Both women had survived the Mayflower’s journey. They were the only two women left from that ship aside from Eleanor Billington. My husband’s first wife, Dorothy, my own dearest consort, was on the Mayflower, but she did not survive it, and I was beckoned by William one year later. She slipped, the ship’s second mate said. I have long wondered otherwise. My husband and I do not speak of it.

  Where our fences met, Susanna leaned.

  And I told her help was needed at home, first.

  That was Susanna, always Susanna, complaining about her servants. She was a fair woman, blond hair, with freckles on her cheeks you could see only if you were close enough to kiss her.

  I wondered who it was they were talking about, but then I remembered that I did not really care. Rather, I was feeling the care from the group, which always conspires to swirl others up into its persuasions. But since I’d become the governor’s wife, the women told me less. I was the earpiece to authority. Despite our community’s higher plans, every place has rank. The world swings back to it, because no man or woman is as good or godly as he or she wishes to be.

  Who’s that? I asked, tempted.

  Susanna opened her mouth to say it, when the three of us heard a front door slam. We turned.

  Susanna, what is this?

  It was her husband calling from the threshold, pointing to a wreath of flowers on their door. Susanna was nine years into her marriage with Edward Winslow, an elder of the colony.

  Daisies, Good Husband, Susanna said and turned back toward her friends.

  Master Winslow was testy when there were newcomers. Though it was he and my husband who advertised the fertility and abundance of New Plymouth, there were always newcomers who asked for more than what God granted. Before each new arrival Susanna’s husband reminded us of the new colonists’ false beliefs, saying, They come here expecting beer to flow from the brook, the woods to be a butcher shop, and the lake to be a fishmonger’s stall. It was true. Bring us not your butter-fingered, your sweet-toothed, your faint-hearted, I thought. When a new ship docked, I was quick to assess who might give cause for concern. And I often guessed correctly.

  Master Winslow admonished Susanna for puncturing the wood of the door and wasting the metal of a nail. He continued grumbling as he walked up the hill to the men working on two half-built roofs. He spoke loud enough for his wife to register the grumbling, but not loud enough to elevate his annoyance into an argument, as is common with husbands.

  Adornment is a vanity, Susanna said to us with a smile.

  It was the familiar refrain our husbands sang against our homemaking.

  Elizabeth raised her eyebrows.

  What? He has his gold tassels. I have my wreaths.

  The arrival of a ship of new colonists had us looking more often in puddles, glancing at our own image, wondering what the newcomers would see. It had been a whole season since we had expected new people. In all of us, I saw, there was a slightly turned or upright posture, the awareness that soon, someone new would see us. How would we look?

  The cuts of our clothing were practical, efficient, and unadorned, but in color we were never modest. Susanna wore a dress the color of corn silk. Elizabeth wore russet. I favored green, to complement my eyes.

  But I was a plain woman. Even as a child I had dark fine hair on my face, for which other girls teased, but I did not pluck, following my mother’s warning.

  Italian as a fork, one shopkeeper in Leiden always said when I walked by, despite my many times of saying, I am English, sir, in Dutch.

  In Amsterdam, you could be from anywhere. The older I got the more vain I became, consumed by it before marriage, regretful of it by motherhood. I would not become a woman worried about appearances, staring too long at her reflection. We were trying to be in God’s good favor, and whatever was fashionable was lowly and earthly. Beauty was a vanity, an earthly vanity, which is why the royalty spent their time upon it. That was not us, I kept telling myself, but privately I believed it was far easier to be less vain when you were beautiful. As Dorothy was.

  I felt a pinch, lifted up my skirt, and slapped my calf. The first fat mosquito of the day, black and dead against my leg, with my own blood oozing out. A welt already forming. There was nothing like this in Holland, nor in my birthplace of Wrington, England, two places mostly free of anything that would bite or sting, except the people.

  When colonists made the mistake of complaining of the humming bloodsuckers aloud, my husband said, If you cannot tolerate a small insect, you do not deserve what God has given us. People who cannot endure the bite of a mosquito are too delicate and unfit to begin new plantations and colonies.

  William expected from others the austerity and work ethic he imposed on himself. It was one of many signs that he was of God’s chosen, that he would be saved in the most perilous of situations. Whether encountering the Indians for the first time or making his own path from orphan to governor. And because he felt chosen to me, he also felt prescient. As if any lie I were to tell, or half-truth, would be immediately seen by God and William. I was not as austere as he was, and each time I wished for more than he did, I tried to redouble my efforts. I wanted more, often.

  Nearly everything had flourished that summer except peas, which every year we blamed on poor timing of the planting, but nothing seemed to work. I missed peas. This season had been better than the last six that I was privy to, but no one knew what the investors would say. Investors always wanted more.

  My sister lived in Plymouth, which was a comfort, but she had traveled to Salem with her husband.

  We heard another door and looked outward. Across the way, Eleanor Billington had stepped out of her house.

  Eleanor Billington, black curly hair loosely tied back and falling forward onto her shoulders. She wore a bosom-bursting dress, free at the waist but tight at the chest. She darted to her firewood. An urgency, there was, not to stare, for the U-shaped cut that revealed her bosom. She picked up wood and went back inside before Susanna could give commentary.

  Susanna nodded her head, as if to say, See, this is the woman who is not doing her share. As if God was making now her presence known.

  What do you think will happen first? Her husband killed or kicked out of the colony? said Susanna.

  I told her that was a terrible thing to say. Her son, who had passed just two years prior. But God doth punish.

  So many people died that first winter in Plymouth, but like the most pernicious weeds, the Billingtons had survived. Why did God spare them? Thrice William had threatened to kick the Billingtons out of the colony and thrice Eleanor saved her family from her husband’s belligerence.

  I bit my forefinger. Again it bled and again I admonished myself. We never intended to have Eleanor Billington’s kind amongst us. The murmur was they were the sign of Satan’s presence.

  And yet, there was something about her I liked, something I could not name that drew my interest, despite how publicly I stood beside my husband.

  Of the devil’s presence? Methinks not, said Susanna.

  She scurries like a rat, dothn’t she? Elizabeth said.

  A scrawny little rat, said Susanna.

  Behind our backs, our servants whispered, too. When they thought we could not hear them, at the trough, milking cows, at the ovens, they called us puritans and hypocrites, they called us sticklers and precisionists. We wanted to reduce the clergy’s hold on the Bible and they said we wanted to take the merry out of Merry England. But this was not England, this was Plymouth, a land designed in God’s good favor. I had not anticipated that to be amongst our Anglican servants—most of whom were commoners from England—was to be again amongst those
who hated us.

  But we had nearly gained self-sufficiency. There were only a few more payments left to the London bankers. We could lead in the ways God preferred. No icons of God, whose face no one had ever seen. No alms paid for misdeeds, no unnecessary celebrations, like Christmas, which had no scriptural history. Free, we would be, from most earthly trappings.

  Eleanor Billington

  I’m leaving my house, right, John and our son already out in the fields. I’m getting the logs, as one doth, minding my own, when those three steely faces turned to me. Oh, their chaste little bosoms, their pious little smiles. Women who think they are better than I. Than us, the servants. But we weren’t their servants, nay, not any longer. One year out of indentured servitude but watching them look at me, you’d never know it.

  I took enough of those glances in London—I shan’t be needing them now, mistresses, I yelled across the gardens.

  Alice, the governor’s wife, covered her chest. Susanna put her hand on her hip. Elizabeth went back to her weed pulling. Revelry, it was, to rile them.

  Sing for your supper, that is what my mum did, sang for her bloody supper, and I did what I had to, did I not? To pay Weston for this journey. Given how we lived on the Mayflower, on the wet ship floor with the rats nibbling our toes, he should have paid us. When my feet first fell upon this land, I had in mind to return to the ship’s Master and say, Take me back. This was not the ticket I purchased. We agreed to seven years of labor with respectable, ordinary English people. We agreed to seven years of servitude in Virginia, not Plymouth. But oh no, no, no, William Bradford had an answer. My kind, my common kind, we are never given what we are promised.

  It made our men sour, to put up with what they did, in England and in Plymouth. The chimney sweep boys, the Thames fetchers, when every man you walked by in London was a man thinking he could buy whatever he wished for—a biscuit, a black hen, a backside. And they could, could they not? That was these puritans. You couldn’t say that word to their faces though. They claimed it was slanderous. It wasn’t. It was truth. I knew as soon as they put their self-righteous boots on the Mayflower they would be trouble. Asking us to quiet our singing, scowling when we passed the time by dancing.

  They would not let us return.

  The Master of the ship said, like a magistrate, Sorry, Mistress Billington, but there is not the food to feed you on a journey back to England.

  And when our seven years were complete what did my husband get? What did we get for caring for all those weak, dying creatures, for surviving when most of them did not? The smallest plot in all the colony, that is what we got.

  So when those hypocrites looked their cherubic faces my way and claimed themselves to be the saints and I, a stranger to God? Ho, ho, I said to them. They were as flimsy in mind and spirit as saplings. I feared them not, and loved their surprise at my bawdy self. With pleasure, my dears, with pleasure.

  Call me a groundling, but I dare you to call me a thief, a liar, or a whore. Sure, those puritans did not say it to my face, but they knew what they were and so did I. And God. I liked to remind them of that when they passed by me and glanced out of the corner of their eyes, or when they stared at my good right hand, with dirt in the nails, that had been in God’s clean earth, doing the gardening, planting seeds, presently reaching for our shared bread in the basket, or a sliver of butter.

  When I saw Susanna hold her gaze at me, and Alice try not to, oh what fun, oh what joy it was to say, God is always watching, isn’t He?

  I preferred my breath to be nice and garlicked, keeping away the illnesses those dour ones kept giving us. The illness that killed my son John.

  My sons, I did let them run. I did not keep them behind a fence. My boys could not even pretend to be a fox without those dour ones having their say in my childrearing, tipping off the boy’s fox ears and saying, If you disguise yourself, you betray God.

  John the younger, rest him, came back after exploring for two weeks, wearing a string of shell beads around his neck, running to me, not scared, but asking instead if he could go back, begging me, really, to return with the Nausets. Of course I hit him, slapped the back of his head, sent him staggering forward, but I smiled, too. My boy was not afraid. The only things I hoped he feared were me and his father. When he died, how did our governor comfort us? By denying us his parcel of land.

  I did not want Francis to fear these gnats, or take the same fate, so I encouraged him to leave as soon as he could. Even when the hypocrites drank—which they did, often—they tried to hide any enjoyment they got from it. The most fearful people I ever set eyes upon. Excepting my grandmother about her priest, my grandfather with the magistrate, and my husband about all snakes.

  Which meant they could be easily batted around by fearmongers. Captain Myles Standish—Captain Shrimp, to us—enjoyed it. That hired soldier thought himself right and how easy it was for him to say to Bradford, But the Savages, Governor. Who was the governor of New Plymouth? If ye asked me, I would say Captain Shrimp.

  John Billington

  Working in the field, cutting grain, John swung the scythe with more and more force. He stopped, looked out to the neighboring field. It should have been his son’s land. It was owed to him. And today, he would purchase it.

  When the colony’s land had last been divided, each free man, woman, and child was entitled to one acre. His eldest son, John, was living with and working for Richard Warren’s family, as was common to do, to learn a trade and ease the burden. When the announcement was made of who would get what parcels of land, Master Billington went to the meeting hall with the rest, not hopeful for the most favored land, for he was not well-regarded by those making the decisions, but he anticipated four acres. After all, he had two children and a wife.

  Myles Standish read the names, the acreage, and pointed on a map of the locations.

  Midway through the list, his name was called. For Master Billington, three parcels, Standish said, and pointed to a place near the brook.

  They had given him three parcels, not the four he was due.

  John Billington did not make the snort he wished to, nor the cry of outrage that, as a younger man, he would have made. Instead, he was patient for Bradford’s ear.

  Once the announcements were over, he followed Bradford through the crowd.

  He waited until Bradford was exiting the group before he said, Four acres is due me, Governor Bradford.

  Governor Bradford turned, but only halfway.

  You were granted three parcels: one for you, your wife, and your youngest son.

  The fourth?

  Your eldest is not living with you, Master Billington. The requirement is that all members of your household must be living in your house.

  Bradford knew it was common practice to send your eldest out to another family so that they could learn, not become too soft and reliant on their mothers, and also bring in more money for the family. No one ever spoke of living at home as a requirement.

  Where does it say that, Governor?

  There were no laws then, nothing written, anyway.

  Every new situation calls for considerations.

  These considerations were meant only for certain people. Bradford was walking away, toward his house, smiling at people around Billington’s head as they passed, greeting, doing every trick to say to Billington, You are not worthy of this conversation with me.

  John Billington was so angry he took to the fields, where he found himself on his knees. He had cried only a few times: When his wife agreed to marry him. At the sight of his mother in the stocks, her face painted over in white cream to hide the red, cracking sores. No one should treat a woman that way, even if accused a whore. She did what she had to, and for meeting the wishes of wealthy men, she was hanged. How little his people were given, would ever be given.

  He worked the scythe, chopped the barley with more force.

  Ever since he was not granted the land owed him, Billington worked quietly. He kept away from the hypocrites,
did not go to Sunday service despite how forced upon them it was, unofficially. He developed a plan.

  He went to Merrymount, thirty miles north, to seek out friends who understood, friends to dance and sing with, friends to help him forget. And when he was done forgetting, he took to fighting again. He wrote an angry letter to the investors but as soon as the letter was out of his hands and on the ship heading eastward, Billington had regret. It would not work, going above the hypocrites by writing to their lenders. Investors had no reason to believe him, a Billington. Truth has no value when riches are involved. One is loyal to the class closest to his own. The investors had yet to reply.

  Finally, he conceded, if he wanted the land, he would have to pay for it. No one in the colony was to trade with Indians without approval from the puritan leaders and no one like Billington would ever be approved for trading. For the wealthy, a crime is rarely a crime. Living amongst hypocritical leaders required clandestine means.

  Who traded with the Indians? Those who did the approving: William Bradford, Myles Standish, Edward Winslow. The colony leaders traded as it suited them, and their pockets were heavy with the profit he, John Billington, was forbidden from having. When Billington had extra gunpowder, extra ale—he got nothing.

  Billington went to his friend Thomas Morton of Merrymount, who found a buyer for his extra goods. Morton was a lawyer from England, but one of the few good ones, who had, before coming to New England, advocated for his poorer countrymen.

  Billington had met Morton when an invitation spread about a May Day celebration in Merrymount. Merrymount, built as a trading post, was loosely under Plymouth’s jurisdiction at the time. When Billington heard the Plymouth elders rail against Merrymount for the community’s Bacchanalian ways—men and women lying openly together, dancing around the Maypole, Indian and English trading and imbibing ale as suited them—John Billington knew he must attend. Anything the hypocrites despised, Billington had learned from the years living amongst them, was likely something he would enjoy.