Chesapeake (31 page)

‘You have a paradise,’ she told Stooby, and he nodded; he could not verbalize his feeling for these waters, but sometimes when he rounded a point and saw ahead of him an entire creek reaching far inland, his breath caught as if he were seeing a trusted friend after a long absence, and he loved his fair-haired stepmother for her understanding.

The people who understood the Turlocks best were the Steeds. Henry knew Timothy to be an incorrigible: thief, adulterer, liar, deceptor, vagrant and a dozen other characterizations, each repugnant to a proper household. He tolerated him because his mother, Martha Steed, insisted that he do so, but that did not prevent him from bringing charges against the offensive little cutpurse, and it sometimes seemed that Henry had to attend court monthly to testify. Consistently he won damages from the wastrel, and consistently Turlock paid in tobacco so rank, so filled with weeds that it had to be classified as trash. In no way could it be shipped to England for serious sale; to do so would be to destroy the good name of Steed.

Paul Steed, the doctor, saw a different aspect of the Turlocks, a functional one, as it were, for he was called upon to minister to babies sired by Timothy and to treat the various tragedies encountered by his wives and sons. One day he walked up the path from Devon wharf with heavy steps and head so bowed that his mother had to ask, ‘Paul, what is it?’

‘Tciblento’s dying.’

‘What of?’

‘Some man thrashed her with a club.’

‘Oh, my God!’

‘But she was already dying … of us.’

‘Paul, what do you mean?’

‘She’s the last of the real Choptanks, Mother. There was never any hope …’

Mrs. Steed proposed that Tciblento be brought to the island, where she could be properly cared for, but Paul said, ‘No use. She can’t live a week.’

‘That week must at least be decent,’ Mrs. Steed insisted, and she ordered the servants to prepare the ketch so that she herself could fetch the dying woman, but when she and Paul reached the hut they found Tciblento too weak to move. She had been, as Paul reported, in the process of dying when a drunken hunter for whom she was keeping house attacked her with an oaken club, breaking her jaw.

She lay on a paillasse of pine needles, gasping for breath, her face knocked awry but the grandeur of her dark eyes undimmed. When she saw Mrs. Steed, and recalled the handsome Englishman she had once loved and always, tears came into her eyes. She was too weak to turn her face away, but she was so ashamed that Mrs. Steed should see her secret, she closed her eyes and sobbed inwardly.

‘Tciblento,’ Mrs. Steed said, ‘we’re going to take you home with us.’ The stricken woman summoned strength to shake her head no. She would stay here, in the low estate to which she had brought herself.

‘Shall we send for Turlock?’ Again the dying woman said no.

‘Stooby? Wouldn’t you like to see Stooby?’ Tciblento nodded, so Charley was sent to fetch his brother, but the young waterman was absent on a probing of the coves, and Charley returned not with him but with Timothy.

Mrs. Steed would have preferred to bar the door to this reprobate, but Paul said, ‘Oh, come in,’ and Turlock came slouching to the low bed.

‘Hello, Tcib,’ he said. She looked up at him but could say nothing. Turning to the doctor, he asked, ‘Will she …’

‘No.’

‘Well, Tcib, goodbye,’ he said, and he was off.

She did not betray any sorrow in seeing him disappear for the last time. All things were disappearing, had been doing so for decades, and he was one of the least to be regretted.

There was a commotion now, for two officials were dragging into the hut the man who had clubbed her. He was an ugly fellow no better than Turlock, and when he stood before the dying woman he had so often abused he whimpered, ‘Tell them I didn’t do it, Tcibby,’ and she looked at him and then at his arresters and told the latter that it had not been he. One of the men, knowing better, grabbed the cudgel and started
belaboring him, inflicting real damage, but Paul interceded. ‘Let him go,’ he said, wresting away the club, and now the man whimpered for real cause and disappeared into the forest.

It was obvious that Tciblento could not survive the night, so Paul suggested that his mother sail back to the island in daylight, but she refused—‘I cannot allow her to die alone.’ And she stayed by the bed through the long afternoon, and when the sun set in the western bay she was still there, talking with the silent woman. ‘There were good days on this river, Tciblento. I remember when you were married. You had Indian children, didn’t you?’ And the nothingness in Tciblento’s eyes showed that she had died.

No muffled drums marked her passage. No handmaidens chanted of Pentaquod, who had saved their tribe, nor of the deeds of her sons, who had accomplished nothing. Her people were dispersed over wide areas, with no werowance to remind them of tribal ways. Many lay unburied in the strange places where they had fallen, and now she too, lay dead, in a hovel at the edge of a river her father had once ruled.

FOR SOME TIME NOW THE COMMUNITY HAD BEEN
suspicious of him. His master had confided to the governor that ‘Edward Paxmore, whose indenture I purchased seven years ago, has taken to wandering about the colony without my permission, robbing me of labor justly mine.’ As a result, spies watched his movements, reporting any unusual behavior to the committee of ministers, and the family from which he hoped to buy a piece of land for his carpentry shop when his indenture ended refused to sell.

Informers told the governor, ‘He has traveled from Dover to Salisbury to Rowley to Ipswich and has been contentious in arguing with passers-by about the works of God.’ Therefore, when Paxmore returned to Boston and reappeared at the house of his master, the sheriff was waiting to haul him off to court.

At the hearing, his master whined, ‘Edward is a good carpenter who builds well. But in this final year with me he has taken to arguing about the works of God. He has cheated me of his labors, and I am sorely done.’

‘What remedy?’

‘Please, your honor, extend his indenture for another ten months. It’s only fair.’

The governor, a thin, arduous man, was little concerned with financial restitution to masters; such cases were common and could be handled by ordinary judges. But this ominous phrase, ‘arguing about the works of God,’ disturbed him mightily, for it was clearly blasphemous and smacked of Quakerism. Within recent years the governor had ordered the hanging of three Quakers and had personally attended their executions. He had no intention of allowing this pernicious heresy to gain a foothold in Massachusetts, for it was an abomination.

The governor had a firm mind in all things, but he was perplexed by the man who stood before him, this tall, thin workman in homespun jacket too short at the wrists, in pants too skimpy at the ankles. He was awkward-looking, yet all had testified that he was an excellent carpenter. It was the Adam’s apple and the eyes that troubled: the former jumped about like those in witches; the latter carried that intense fire which marked those who believe they have seen God. Such men were dangerous, yet this carpenter had such a gentle manner, was so deferential to the court and so respectful of his master that he could not be a common criminal. Deep matters were involved, and they must be gone into.

‘Edward Paxmore, I fear you may have fallen into evil ways. I hand you back to the sheriff for presentation in court on Monday next for proper interrogation.’ Having said this, he stared balefully at Paxmore and stalked from the room.

The trial should have been of little consequence, for Paxmore, thirty-two years old and with an excellent reputation for hard work, would normally have been rebuked for wandering and depriving his rightful master of his labor. The judge would add an additional six months to the indenture—never as many as the master claimed—and when these had been discharged, the carpenter would become a free man and a valued addition to the citizenry of Massachusetts.

But Paxmore’s trial was to be different, for when the court convened on Monday morning Judge Goddard, a tall, heavy man who spoke in ponderous sentences, had the grim but satisfying task of putting final touches to the case of Thomas Kenworthy, confessed Quaker and recusant. On three earlier occasions Judge Goddard had ordered Kenworthy to be whipped and banished from Massachusetts, and thrice the Quaker had crept back into the colony.

Paxmore and his master were already seated in court when the sheriff brought Kenworthy in. The Quaker was a man of forty, thin, dark of face, with deep-set eyes and the manner of a fanatic who looked piercingly at people. His hands were bound and he seemed reluctant to step before the judge; the sheriff had to push him along, but when at last he was in place he stared defiantly at the judge and asked in a strong voice, ‘Wherefore does thee judge me?’

And Goddard thundered, ‘We have a law.’

‘It is thy law and not God’s.’

‘Silence that man!’

‘I will not be silenced, for God has ordered me to speak.’

‘Stifle that blasphemy!’ the judge roared, and the sheriff clapped his hand over the prisoner’s mouth.

When silence once more prevailed in the small white room Judge Goddard resumed control of the case, placing his large hands on the table and looking with contempt at Kenworthy. ‘Three times I have
ordered you whipped, and three times you have continued your heresy. Do you learn nothing?’

‘I have learned that God does not need governors or judges or ministers to speak to His people.’

‘Sheriff, remove that man’s shirt.’

The sheriff, a tall, lean man who betrayed a sense of satisfaction with his job, untied the prisoner’s hands and ripped away the woolen shirt. Paxmore gasped. The man’s back was a network of small round scars, but not like any he had seen before. These formed little cups across the man’s back, and Paxmore would never forget the strange remark of the man at his elbow: ‘You could hide a pea in each of them.’

Judge Goddard said, ‘Are you aware, Thomas Kenworthy, of how your back looks?’

‘I feel it each night before I go to sleep. It is the badge of my devotion to God.’

‘Apparently you are of such a contumacious character that ordinary whippings have no effect on you. My order that you quit this colony has been ignored, three times. You have not only persisted in your Quaker heresy, but you have made so bold as to preach to others, infecting them, and there is no humility in you.’

‘There is love of God in me,’ Kenworthy said.

‘Nor respect, neither,’ the judge continued. ‘In your three other trials you refused, did you not, to remove your hat in the presence of the governor and his court?’

‘I did, and if I could have my hat now, I would wear it, for Jesus Christ so commanded.’ His eyes fell on the hat Paxmore had worn into court, and in a sudden break-away from the sheriff he seized the hat and placed it defiantly on his head. The sheriff started to fight for possession of the hat, but Judge Goddard rebuked him, ‘Let the criminal wear his hat, if it will help him hear my sentence,’ then lowered his voice and said, more slowly, ‘Thomas Kenworthy, it is my duty to pass sentence upon you.’

‘God has already done so, and thy words are nothing.’

‘You speak falsehood,’ the judge thundered, allowing his voice to rise.

‘I speak the instructions of God, and they are never false.’

‘Do you then nominate yourself a minister, that you comprehend the teachings of God?’

‘Each man is minister, yes, and each woman too.’ Kenworthy turned to face the spectators, and because he stood nearest Edward Paxmore he pointed a long finger at him and said, ‘This prisoner haled before the court is also a minister. He speaks directly to God, and God speaks to him.’

‘Silence him again,’ the judge shouted, and once more Kenworthy’s hands were tied and his mouth covered.

Paxmore, trembling from the effect of having been twice involved in
this trial, watched with fascination as the judge painstakingly arranged the papers on his table, obviously seeking to compose himself lest anger make him appear foolish. Taking a deep breath, he leaned forward to address the Quaker in measured phrases:

The cruel sentence had no effect on Thomas Kenworthy, for he was already living in a kind of ecstasy in which whippings and gibbets were no longer of much concern, but it had a devastating effect on Edward Paxmore, who leaped to his feet and shouted at the judge, ‘If you’re going to hang him, why whip him first?’

The question was so explosive, and so obviously germane, that Judge Goddard imprudently allowed himself to be trapped into answering. ‘To punish him,’ he said spontaneously.

‘Is not death punishment?’ Paxmore cried.

‘Not enough,’ the judge responded. And then, realizing what he had done—that he had spoken like a fool—he bellowed, ‘Lock that man up.’ And he stormed from the small white room.

The sheriff took his two prisoners to the jail, a dank room below the level of the public streets, and there directed the blacksmith to apply one set of leg irons to the two men. When this difficult and untidy job was completed, and the two men were lashed together as one, the smith and the sheriff departed, leaving the condemned Quaker and the carpenter in semi-darkness.

Then began the dialogue of salvation. Thomas Kenworthy, one of the first Quaker preachers in America, a graduate of Oxford and a man versed in both Greek and Latin, interpreted the simple revolution in theology that had taken place in England less than twenty years before: ‘George Fox is not a holy man, not a priest in any sense of that word, no different from thee and me.’