Daughter of Satan (38 page)

‘Mistress, have 'ee heard? Have 'ee heard what Polly Eagel have been up to? Caught she were . . . by Master Milroy. Caught right in the act, so I did hear. Oh my lady, he has told the Elders, and Polly have been taken off. It seems that one thing she'll have to do is to confess her sin before us at the meeting house. Then she'll take her punishment. My dear life! The shame of it would wellnigh kill a woman! Not that Polly Eagel's the sort to die for such. She's a brazen piece and no mistake. It's poor Bill Eagle I'm sorry for.'

On the day of Polly's confession, the meeting house was full of an expectant congregation. Tamar was there with Richard. Bartle never attended at the meeting house.

Tamar was struck by the gloating anticipation showing in the faces about her; she felt sickened by the scene. Perhaps that was because she was a sinner herself, and felt she was no better than Polly Eagel. Polly had committed adultery; Tamar was guilty of causing her husband's death; perhaps that was why she could feel no pleasure in watching a sinner brought to justice, as these righteous people could.

The Elder talked for a long time. In the front row of seats sat Polly Eagel; her face was white, her head downcast. She did not look the same gay girl who had come out from England, and whom Tamar had noticed during the voyage when she had heard that Bartle had once been interested in her. Now was Polly brought low. In the front row, near her, sat her accuser, James Milroy, his arms folded, his eyes lifted to the rafters of the hall as though he knew God to be up there, smiling down His approval on the acts of James Milroy.

The Elder preached of sin . . . sin that had crept like a fog into their midst, sin that must be crushed and defeated. Of all the great sins of the world, there were few to be compared with Adultery; and there was one among them who stood guilty of this sin. She had confessed and repented, and that was a matter for rejoicing; but God was a just God, and such sins could not in His name be allowed to go unpunished.
It might be that through a life of devotion to duty this miserable sinner would come to salvation. This was for God and herself to decide. Her partner in sin was not here to stand beside her. His was a lost soul. But let no one imagine he would escape the wages of his sin. He would burn eternally in Hell, though he thought here on Earth to continue his evil life. Polly Eagel would now stand forth.

Polly stood up and turned to face the congregation.

She was scarlet and pale in turn, and she spoke so low that those at the back of the hall had to crane forward to hear her words.

She was a miserable sinner; she had defiled her marriage bed. She gave details of the place and occasion when her sin had taken place, as she had been told to do. Eyes glistened. Puritan hearts beat fast. Tamar watching, thought: it would be better if they might dance now and then, or see a play acted. Then they would not be so eager to take their entertainment from another's misery.

And suddenly, in an overwhelming pity for Polly Eagel, she hated them all, hated the Elder with his hands piously folded, hated James Milroy with his eyes turned piously upwards, hated all those who stood in judgement, with their sly eyes and their tight mouths. But almost at once she realized that she hated them because she should be standing there beside Polly Eagel, for she was a greater sinner than Polly.

Polly's confession was over, but that was preliminary to her punishment. A solemn procession went from the meeting place, led by the Elders and dignitaries of the settlement, Polly among them; other important members of the community followed, and after them came the congregation.

They went to that raised platform whose significance Tamar had not realized before. The post there was, of course, a whipping post. As for the gallows, she had accepted such an erection as a necessary part of any community; it was just that in such a one as this, it had seemed to have been put there merely as a warning. Gallows and whipping posts were a part of the Old Country; she had thought they had no place in the New.

Polly's hands were tied behind her back and she was forced
on to a stool. Tamar saw the brazier, the hot irons; she heard Polly Eagel give one wild, protesting shriek before she fainted and fell back into the arms of one of the Elders.

It was some time before Polly appeared in public, for she had had to serve a month in the house of correction. Tamar had looked once into that poor mutilated face, and she could never bring herself to look again. Clearly she had seen branded on Polly's forehead the letter A; and the sight of the scorched and tortured flesh had enraged her.

She was weary and disillusioned. She was like a traveller who thought he had travelled far along a road that was beset with hardship, only to find that he had been walking round in a circle and had moved only a very short distance from the starting point.

The snows had disappeared and the harsh winds had softened. Spring was coming to New England.

Polly mingled with the people, the A standing out clearly on her forehead, her head downcast and all the natural joy drained out of her. Whenever Tamar saw her she averted her eyes. She felt as she did when she was with Jane Swann – poor Jane, who had become vague, hiding in quiet corners, not hearing when spoken to. She sat in her father's house, spinning. When other women sat at their spinning wheels the sound of their singing would mingle with the hum of the wheel. Jane was never heard singing.

It was perhaps easier to live a Puritan life in the cold of winter. But when the bluebirds and the robins were building in the forest and their songs filled the air, when the fruit trees were in blossom, the young men and maidens would look towards each other and think that life could not be all work and prayer, as their serious Elders seemed to believe it should be.

Two young people were whipped publicly for the sin of fornication. They had, they declared, every intention of marrying, but spring had taken them unaware. That was no excuse; so they were punished before they went through the simple marriage ceremony. They were told that their sin merited death, but since they were members of a new colony which
needed children, they would be given a chance to regain salvation through a life of piety and devotion to God.

The Elders were deeply concerned at this time by what seemed to them a hideous menace. It was not fear of famine or hostile Indians that gave them their greatest anxiety; it was a certain Thomas Morton.

To the Puritans this man was the Devil in person. He was a swaggering fellow very proud of his scholarship, describing himself as ‘Of Clifford's Inne, Gent'. He had come to New England a few years before with a Captain Wollaston and a company of men, their idea being to start a plantation. This they had set about doing not very far from Plymouth, at a spot which they had named Mount Wollaston. But Wollaston had grown tired of the hardship such a project had entailed and had sailed off to Virginia, in the hope of finding an easier fortune. The same Morton – as the Puritans said – had, by some evil means, ousted those left, in charge by Wollaston, and taken over command of the place himself. And the first thing he had done – and this in the eyes of New Plymouth was an indication of his character – was to rename the place ‘Merry Mount'.

The state of affairs between New Plymouth and Merry Mount was far from cordial. Morton accused the Puritans of disregarding the laws of England by denying the marriage ceremony to the colonists and supplying some simple form of their own. The Puritans retaliated by accusing Morton of selling firearms and strong drink to the Indians and so endangering the lives of all the settlers in New England. The real cause of the trouble was that the people of New Plymouth were Separatist and those of Merry Mount, Episcopalian.

As the days grew warmer, Bartle made preparations for the journey back to England. All day the small boats were busy, transferring stores from land to the
Liberty.
Many turned away from the sight of the ship, for it made them think of home. Polly Eagel would shudder when she saw it, and touch the letter on her forehead. Annis took her youngest down to the beach to show her what was going on; but Annis was sad, seeing the ship's preparations, because her beloved mistress was sailing away on that ship. Tamar had said she would
come back, but who could know what might happen to prevent her?

Yes, indeed, spring was a time of disquiet, for spring was to be enjoyed by youth and lovers. There were many marriages, and it was said that there should have been many a whipping to precede those marriages, if the watchful Puritans could but have found sufficient evidence.

Mistress Alton and Brother Milroy were friends together; they were of one mind, devoted to the Puritan cause, so eager to bring straying footsteps back to the path of righteousness.

It was Thomas Morton, the Episcopalian of Merry Mount, who now also took a part in the shaping of many lives.

The Elders were storming against him at the meeting place, but the young and the lively could not help it if their eyes turned towards Merry Mount; and they whispered together of the goings-on at the ‘Mount of Sin' as an Elder had called it.

For Thomas Morton was setting up a maypole on Merry Mount. At home they had danced round the maypole for many years, since it was an old English custom to make merry in the early days of May as a welcome to the spring, a thanksgiving for the burgeon of the year. The master of Merry Mount was a merry man, and there was drinking and carousing in his settlement.

He had set up an idol, thundered the Elders; year, a calf of Horeb. He would realize he had made a woeful place indeed of his Merry Mount when he felt the vengeance of the Lord.

But Thomas Morton cared nothing for the Elders. He had come to the New World to make a fortune, trapping animals for their skins and trading with the old country; and doubtless he had found the Indians' desire for what they called ‘the fire-water', and their keen delight in European firearms, very profitable. And now he had committed as great a sin in the eyes of the Elders of New Plymouth as any, so far, in setting up a maypole.

Excitement was high in New Plymouth. All the men from the ship had decided to pay their homage to the ‘Calf of Horeb'. It would be like a bit of home, they said, to dance round a maypole.

All through the days before the first of May there were
sounds of revelry on Merry Mount. There were shots from cannon to herald the frivolity, and the sound of drums came over the clear air. The maypole was a pine tree to which had been nailed a pair of buckshorns. It could be seen for miles.

In the morning Bartle took Tamar out to the
Liberty
to show her how far preparations for the return journey had gone.

‘In a few weeks we shall sail for England I' he said, and excitement gleamed in his eyes.

But when she thought of England she must think also of terrible things; of her mother in the cottage, of the women she had seen at the town hall being searched by the prickers, of the seamen begging in the streets. She looked back at the land and thought how fair it was in the morning sunshine, with the faint mist rising from the meadows and the sparkling river losing itself in the sea, and the nearby forest and the distant mountains. The settlement itself was not exactly beautiful, but there was about it something which moved her more deeply than the beauties of nature. Those little houses represented bravery, courage, sacrifice. She wished her gaze would not stray to that spot where the platform would be with its whipping post and its gallows. She wished she could shut out of her mind the memory of Polly Eagel's scream as the hot iron touched her forehead. She wished she need not think of Polly, walking through the village street, her head downcast, all the saucy gaiety gone from her, branded for life.

But Polly had sinned, she reminded herself.

So have we all! came back the answer.

And then: But this is not cruelty such as I have seen at home.

Nevertheless, it is cruelty.

She told Bartle of her thoughts, and he laughed and caught her to him.

‘You want a land of your own,' he said. ‘There will be no winter in such a land. It shall always be springtime, and there we shall be eternally young. Food grows on the trees and you and I stretch ourselves out on the grass and love and love and love . . .'

Then she laughed with him that she, the most imperfect of beings, should demand a perfect world.

Bartle said: ‘We will call at Merry Mount and dance round the maypole. It will bring memories of home; and when you see the merrymaking you will be as eager to slip away from these shores as I am.'

She could not help being excited at the prospect of hearing merry laughter, of dancing at Bartle's side. She had missed these things; she had missed them too long.

She wanted to ask Annis to go with them, for Annis loved gaiety; she was on the point of suggesting it, but she refrained. It would not be good to tempt Annis; Annis was so happy in the new life; she was saved, and she would not have the same inclination towards frivolity that she had once had. Had she forgotten, wondered Tamar, those occasions when she had met John in the barn on her father's land? She made no reference to them when she had heard that the young people were to make public confession and suffer a whipping for doing what she and John had once done.

Bartle and Tamar took one of the boats and went along the coast to Merry Mount. It was late afternoon and all the settlers on Merry Mount had turned out to help in the preparations for the fun. Indians, naked but for their belts of wampum, stood about watching: some with solemn faces, some smiling at the antics of the white men.

Thomas Morton welcomed Bartle and Tamar.

‘Come, my friends, laugh and be merry with us. Life was meant to be enjoyed.'

He knew Bartle as the Captain of the ship which was shortly to sail away, and he knew Tamar was his wife. So this was not such a victory as it would have been had he, with his maypole, been able to lure some of the Puritan young people over to his Mount. Still, all were welcome.