Chesapeake (24 page)

That left vacant-faced Timothy Turlock, and on his sale depended the profit for this voyage. Captain Barstowe spoke well of his scrawny thief, emphasizing his youth, his amiability and the obvious fact that he was bright, of fine character and eager to learn. He found no takers. Canny plantation owners had learned to spot troublemakers in the flotsam sent out by the courts of London, and they would have none of this gallows bait. It looked as if Barstowe might have to give him away, but he had heard of a planter on a marshy estuary far west on the James who worked such miserable land that few ships ever called to offer him their servants. It was doubtful if he would long survive, but he did represent a last resort, and it was to his rickety wharf that Barstowe sailed.

‘You’re to be attentive,’ he growled at Turlock, ‘and mind your manners. This is your last chance.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Timothy grunted, staring with contempt at the wretched spot to which he was being taken. Not even in the worst of London had he seen a house so dilapidated, a setting so forbidding. To the door came a woman so scrawny that it seemed she must drop of mortal illness, but she looked strong and was keen-eyed. ‘Ship’s in!’ she called to someone inside, and soon she was joined by a squat, heavyset, rough-mannered countryman who strode down to the wharf extending his blunt hand. ‘Simon Janney’s the name,’ he said.

The bartering was painful. Janney, an extremely penurious man, set the tone by whining, ‘I’d like an extra hand, but my wife’s sick, my niggers eat me blind and the Indians …’ He shook his head, then grudgingly admitted, ‘I’ll take him off your hands … if the price is low.’

‘Now wait a minute, Janney. This man is prime.’

‘If he was, you wouldn’t be this far upriver.’

‘He’ll give you seven years’ pure profit.’

‘Seven years of trouble. But I must have someone.’

‘You’ll take him, then? Fifty?’

‘Pounds? I haven’t fifty pence.’

‘What then?’

‘That stack of tobacco leaves.’

The sale would have been concluded except that Mrs. Janney straggled down to the ship, studied the proposed hand and with a knowing trick pulled up his shirt to expose his back. There the lash marks stood, blue and purple. With a long finger she traced one and said, ‘A bad one, this.’

As soon as the telltale marks were disclosed, Janney lowered the price he was offering, to which Barstowe objected vigorously, assuring the farmer that in Timothy Turlock he was getting a lad who could be depended upon to—His pitch was interrupted when Mrs. Janney exposed the last marks again, saying to Barstowe, ‘Criminals like this shouldn’t be sold at all,’ but to her husband she whispered, ‘Take him. He shows spirit.’ She remembered her own crossing and the fact that she, too, had been last in her lot to find a taker.

So the sale was concluded: Timothy Turlock to the Janneys at a bargain price; half the stack of tobacco leaves to Captain Barstowe, who would peddle it in London for twice what the Janneys calculated.

The first job Turlock performed in the New World was binding those leaves which represented his purchase. His next was rebuilding the wharf, up to his knees in mud, after which he worked fourteen hours a day helping clear fields. Then he dredged a channel to drain a meadow, fenced the meadow and built a barn to house the cattle that grazed in the meadow.

By this time he was down to one hundred and nine pounds and looked exactly like a ferret, for the Janneys fed him no better than they ate themselves, and it became apparent to Turlock that this plantation held little promise. His term had six years, nine months to run, and he could visualize it as only an extended period of starvation and slavery. That was another irritation! Janney had acquired two slaves, but since he could profit from them only so long as they were healthy, they received better treatment than Turlock, who twice heard Janney tell his wife, ‘Don’t risk Toby on that. Send Turlock.’

And yet, he caught occasional insights that made him think Simon Janney had a certain affection for him. Once on a trip down the James they anchored off a great plantation with lawn running down to the river, and the master said, ‘Tim, I’ve seen land on the Rappahannock twice as good as this. If we can get our present farm going, one day we’ll own a better place than this.’

Turlock looked at his employer with a vacant grin, as if he could not visualize the dream that enthralled Janney, and this angered the countryman, who said in a burst of honesty and persuasion, ‘Turlock, you could become a fine workman and some day own your own land.’

‘You … feed … us … more,’ Timothy said resentfully. The little thief lived almost at the subhuman level, and certainly at the subverbal. He never spoke in complete sentences and rarely used a word of more than one syllable. What he intended by this austere collection of four
words was
If you feed us better food, I could work a great deal harder,
but to voice a subordinate clause beginning with if was quite beyond his capacity, and comparisons like
harder
and
better
were refinements of thought he could not master. He existed in a world of meaningful looks and mumbled monosyllables.

Janney, of course, had developed the ability to translate his grunts into workable if not sensible communication, and now said with a certain respect for Turlock’s ability to work, ‘Stay with us, Tim, after your term’s over. We’ll own the Rappahannock.’

Turlock did not even bother to grunt at this remote philosophical proposal, but at the end of that year Janney showed him something physical which excited his cupidity. For some weeks they had been collecting tobacco seed from various plantations, and now Janney announced that he and Turlock would take it across the bay to lands which, he said, ‘we own over there.’

‘Where?’

Janney could not be bothered to explain, but he assigned Timothy to the task of helping the slaves build a shallop for the plantation. It turned out to be a sorry affair, more holes than boards, but if Turlock bailed constantly, it did stay afloat. The first long trip was up the bay to Devon Island, where Janney had come to help burn off more acreage for tobacco, and what Turlock saw there was a revelation: a decent house, a wife who kept it neat and who educated her sons, a Papist chapel of their own, and other appurtenances which bespoke wealth. What disturbed Turlock, wide-eyed at the luxury, were hints he overheard indicating that his master, Janney, had almost as much wealth as Edmund Steed. Why … live … pig? he asked himself. Why … seven years … pig?

The idea gnawed at him, and when Steed said, ‘Tomorrow we’ll cross the channel and go to work,’ he was resentful at having to quit this lovely spot. But when he entered the fields to the north, set down amidst beautiful rivers with unexpected vistas and grand variations, he gaped. Each field he moved to seemed more desirable than the preceding, with deep water at its edges, tall trees rimming its boundaries, and a multiplicity of wildlife. This monosyllabic criminal from the fens of London became the first white man to appreciate the glory of what lay hidden among the backwaters north of the Choptank: the dozen rivers, the score of creeks, the hundred hidden coves.

‘God damn James River!’ he cried as he viewed this paradise. ‘My land.’

As the leaky shallop pursued its tedious way back home Turlock brooded upon the miserable situation in which he was trapped; the devastating impact of the Eastern Shore on his mind was not its beauty, which enthralled him, but the fact that it existed
now,
that a man of courage could enjoy it
now.
This realization would gnaw at
him for a year, and back home he caused more and more trouble.

One August day in 1638, when Janney insisted that he work past sunset, he first grumbled, then refused. ‘I can drag you into court,’ Janney threatened, ‘and make you work.’ Then he assigned him a task too dangerous for his blacks, and Turlock revolted.

‘Do you resist?’ Janney asked.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Get down there and chain that stump.’

‘How?’ Pimply-face snarled, and when Janney bent down to show him, Turlock grabbed a spade and bashed his master’s skull. Then, satisfying himself that the fallen man was not dead, he kicked him twice on the point of the chin to keep him unconscious, then went whistling toward where the shallop was moored. On the way he stole a gun and all the tools he would need, tossed them into the boat, then ran to the house. After giving Mrs. Janney a lively kiss, he stole her scissors, her needles, two of her husband’s shirts and three fishlines with hooks.

‘Goodbye,’ he mumbled, chucking her under the chin as he left for the river.

He calculated that even if Janney revived sooner than expected, he would not be able to make his way on foot to any plantation in time for the owners to accomplish much, and with the shallop gone, pursuit on the river itself would be impossible. For one solid day at least he had clear sailing.

What he did not take into account was the iron will of the Janneys; if they had survived Indian raids, they could survive servant rebellion. Mrs. Janney, when she saw the shallop disappear, ran about the plantation until she found her husband, lying prone in the mud, his face caked in blood. Screaming for Toby to come to her assistance, she dragged him home, bathed him, placed him in bed, and then set out on foot to the nearest plantation. She arrived at her neighbors well past dark, and informed them, ‘Our servant tried to kill the master.’

From one plantation to the next, word spread that revolt had started. Like a fire burning wildly across dried evergreens, this dreaded message went; this was the consequence that all masters feared, the rebellion of either their servants or their slaves. When they caught Turlock they would kill him.

Timothy, assured that much must be happening at the plantation, kept his eyes to the rear, and when he saw various boats scurrying about guessed that an expedition was forming to apprehend him. Quickly he steered into one of the small estuaries that fed the James, unstepped the mast, and grinned contentedly as search parties swept by.

At dark he raised the mast and slipped silently downriver a dozen miles, then hid as dawn approached—and in this manner, reached the mouth of the James, where he put into operation a clever plan. Satisfying
himself that the final plantation possessed a substantial sloop with a stout sail, he steered his shallop two miles back toward Jamestown, built a small raft, tied to it his hoard of tools, then crashed the stolen boat on a shoal, made his way through the shallow water and poled his raft downstream to the waiting sloop, which he appropriated. By dawn he was well into the Chesapeake.

His strategy worked. Searchers on the James spotted the wrecked craft and assumed that he had drowned. It was not till late afternoon that anyone missed the sloop, and by then he was well gone. All that was left to the frustrated plantation owners was to seek out a Jamestown justice, who signed a warrant for his apprehension, dead or alive. As he handed the document to Mrs. Janney he said, ‘Bring him back and I’ll hang him.’

Alone on the broad Chesapeake, his mast unstepped to prevent detection, Timothy Turlock paddled and pondered his situation. If he went back to England—hanging. If he went back to Jamestown—hanging. If he put into any Virginia river—chains and more hanging.

And then he saw, rising through the mists, the first faint outlines of the Eastern Shore, and he could visualize the cool rivers and peaceful coves he had known when burning fields for the Steeds, and this sanctuary became his target. It would be a new land, far from Virginia and mean-spirited masters. But could he survive alone? As he kept the sloop headed east he pondered this, and for the first time in his life tried to discipline into complete sentences the vagrant thoughts which hitherto had raced helter-skelter through his vacant mind.

Stop … Devon … see … Steeds?
He judged not; Edmund Steed had looked like the kind of man who might be a magistrate, obligated to send him back.
Indians … here … like Indians … there?
He suspected the Choptanks might prove peaceful, else how could Steed live so easily?
What to eat?
On his earlier trip he had seen ducks and geese and the Steed servants had found oysters.
Where sleep?
Any kind of shack would equal what Janney provided, and from observing how Indians built their wigwams, he felt sure he could do as well.
Can … I … live?
This was the powerful question, and even though he summoned all his intellect to weigh the variables, he could reach no sensible answer. The effort pained him, quite exhausted his capacities, and he dropped these difficult thought processes. Instead he looked at the land ahead and grinned.
No chance … back there.
He was committed to the Eastern Shore.

To escape detection by any English ship putting into the Potomac, he unstepped his mast during daylight hours and lay in the bottom of the sloop, but once he reached the Eastern Shore, he moved northward at a steady clip, seeing numerous enticing bays. He became ravenously hungry, but his cunning warned him against landing here: too close to the James.

Later, when he felt that he was safely north, he beached his boat,
hiding it among rushes, and foraged for what berries he could find. Using as bait the head of a fish he caught, he lured crabs; when toasted over a small fire they sustained him. At dusk he would come out of hiding and sail through the night, and in this cautious way approached the Choptank.

He did not venture directly into the channel south of the island, but lay to for several days, scouting the place. He saw smoke rise from the hidden house and movement of servants along the shore, and to his surprise the masts of two different boats, a bateau and a ketch. He supposed the latter must be an official craft come from Virginia to arrest him, so extra precautions were advisable.

He waited till one dark midnight when no lights showed on Devon, then slipped silently along the southern bank of the Choptank until he was well upriver. Then, in waning darkness, he darted across the river and hid along the northern shore, and as dawn approached he saw in the shadowy darkness something which gave him much assurance: a low marshland covering many acres, backed up by what was obviously fast land, for it was lined by towering trees standing dark against the sky. A night bird sang briefly and the broad river lay in unruffled stillness.