Becoming Americans Page 12

  "That's all right," she said. "I've known young men before. I'll have you ready again in a very few minutes. Then we'll fill the Captain's hour with makings for your memories."

  She boldly undressed herself in front of him and, by the time she'd undressed him, he stood erect and ready for her lessons.

  He was awakened by the Captain standing by the bed, laughing and yelling, "Get your naked arse out of my bed, Boy!"

  Richard looked around for the wench, Sarah, but she was gone. The captain laughed as Richard dressed and took large gulps from the tankard of rum punch that the Captain offered him.

  "Well, how was it, Boy?" the Captain asked.

  Richard had recovered from his embarrassment and exuded a confidence that he'd never had. He was a man.

  "She was the best I've ever had!" he told the Captain.

  "I'll bet she was!" The Captain roared. "I'll just bet she was! Now, get out of here, it's my turn!"

  Richard took another large drink of the punch and finished putting on his shoes, remembering.

  "She was right good, she was," he said. "And I thank you for the present, Captain. You're a good, Christian man to work for."

  The Captain was still laughing when Richard let a blond wench in as he shut the door behind himself.

  Torches blazed around the camp and candles burned in every window of the new courthouse. Kegs of beer and ale sat on the rear of carts where men crowded to refill their tankards. A group of men surrounded two Dutch sailors who were fighting, the excited spectators were shouting bets and urging on their man. Two lines of open-ended hogsheads were laid out that younger servants were running through in races that promised a rope of chew to the victor. A large pig was still turning over coals where it had been roasting for hours. A shriek of female laughter came from a worker's hut and Richard wondered if it were the wench Sarah. He felt a temporary pang of jealousy that he dismissed. He was a man now, and would have many such as she.

  Richard won more tobacco notes at a cockfight where the favorite, Richard the Lion Heart, was blinded and killed by a strutting, mottled cock that belonged to one of the Dutchmen. The Dutch were becoming his friends and partners, as Richard saw it. His fellow Englishmen were countrymen and kinsmen but, so far, it was the Dutch who were building his accounts and who treated him like a man.

  He switched from ale to wine and then to rum and remembered that he'd not yet spoken to Captain Ingolbreitsen about compensation. It was time to do that, Richard thought. He sat outside the Captain's hut until the sounds of raucous activity inside had stopped. Finally, the blonde wench came out, staggering and struggling with the laces in her bodice.

  He knocked on the door several times before the Captain called, "Come!"

  Captain Ingolbreitsen lay sprawled upon his bed, as naked as at birth but for the mats of dark orange hair that covered much of his body.

  "If you want more tonight, you'll have to get it for yourself," the Captain said. "But don't go near the blonde. She'd kill the likes of you!" The Captain roared and rolled over to reach for the tankard that sat by the bed.

  "No, Captain. It's about what's due me. There's been nothing said about what I'd get for…for the special duties and trips I've made."

  "You want something in writing, Boy? Are you daft? You'll get what's coming to you. Have you doubts? Am I not an honest man?"

  Richard quickly backtracked.

  "No, Sir. I've no doubts. I was just curious, that's all. I'm learning to cipher figures and I want to know what I have, what I will have."

  "You know that any commerce with an indentured servant is against the King's law, don't you? That law protects you from being misused, and protects your master from having his goods stolen and sold to freedmen. And anyway, any contract we wrote wouldn't read well before the Governor and his Council, now would it?"

  The Captain laughed and Richard picked at a pimple on his chin.

  "All I can say is, trust me, Boy, and work with me. Look at your neighbor, the sawyer. I did well by him, didn't I?"

  Richard's face was already glowing from the drink. Now, a grin covered his face.

  "Thank you, Captain. Thank you, Sir. I don't know what to say. You've been so good to me…."

  "Get out of here, Boy. You get foolish when you drink too much. Go to your bed."

  Richard went outside and ignored the insult. He'd keep his mouth shut and do whatever the captain said. If he did as well as Robert Sawyer….

  Chapter Six

  Pine Haven was a welcome sight when Ingolbreitsen's sloop sailed by the curving spit of land that protected the small harbor. One of the sailors fired a musket and aroused the attention of two men repairing the pier Richard had helped build. Richard called to the men and Edward's voice came back.

  "I'll meet you at Sawyer's wharf," Edward yelled out to the boat.

  Robert Sawyer met the boat, and Mistress Sawyer came to bring them bread and fruit. Richard looked at her and lamented kindly old Brinson Barnes and Opeechcot.

  The place looked better, now. The infusion of Sawyer's money had brightened up the plantation. Another room had been added to Barnes's cabin and another chimney rose from that far wall. The manor house was whitewashed. Two horses grazed within a fenced area, and Richard saw a wagon underneath a shed.

  Edward appeared on a horse, riding down a road that had grown from Opeechcot's path. He held the reins to another horse that trotted right behind. Edward had changed in the months since Richard was away, and was now as tall as he.

  "You've shrunk since you've been gone," were his friend's first words to Richard.

  "Not all of me," Richard posed and bragged, until he saw Mistress Sawyer blush. "My pocket book has grown," he added.

  Things had changed at Pine Haven, too. Richard learned about it as he rode back astride a chestnut mare. Edward rode a frisky stallion he'd named, "Handful."

  Francis Harper had become a quiet man but for occasional angry outbursts. Drusilla was demanding of her new husband, Edward said, and had insisted that Harper further extend his credit with Edward Williams back in Bristol to improve their lives here in Virginia. Harper had slowly relented, but insisted that the stallion and the mare be their first purchases. Drusilla agreed, on the condition they have a small cart—equal to that of Mistress Sawyer—that could carry them to church in some style. And so began, for Harper, the enslaving credit system Edward Williams had bragged about so often to his sons and nephew.

  Since hard currency was nearly non-existent in Virginia, business was conducted with tobacco. A planter's factor in Bristol or in London would credit delivery of goods against the year's crop. Seldom was there an excess, and the planter's debt continued to mount, with the planter bound to his factor as surely as the indentured servant to his master.

  Drusilla now had an adjustable, iron pot-hook, called a trammel, which hung over the fire and made cooking in her great stew pot much easier. She'd ordered pewter chargers to hold meats, and two brass pots. Her only brass pot now was reserved for the medicine that Evelyn needed. As Evelyn's madness worsened, the doses had increased until she demanded constant potions.

  To satisfy their debts, Francis Harper had planted extra crops this year and Richard had arrived just in time for the harvest.

  Richard was amazed by the size of this year's stand of tobacco. The old fields were full, of course, and the new ones too, but the acres of trees he'd girdled to be felled this year were standing over tobacco plants which covered every spot of land that caught sunlight. The cornfield remained, but the former field of flax was now tobacco. Tobacco grew around the house and lined the paths.

  Edward explained to Richard that, with the growing number of planters and the increasing numbers of plantations that were spreading up the rivers, there was such an abundance of tobacco that prices were falling rapidly. Luckily for them, the price of the new "sweet-scented" was not affected so much as the regular oronoco, but the price of sweet-scented had fallen, too. The only solution—short of an agreement with
Maryland and the planters of the Southern Plantations to produce less—was to grow even more. This was not a new problem, but it was becoming a critical one.

  Richard was thrown back into the fields with little time to think or plan. His free thoughts centered more around the memory of the red-headed wench—a story that he repeated often to anger the envious Edward. His free time was spent with drink and the free rough-and-tumble of cockfights, wrestling matches, and games of skill and chance that he and Edward sought and easily found.

  Occasionally, news came from Lower Norfolk County. Ingolbreitsen's sailors brought word of the death of the Quaker Hodges, and of the upcoming marriage of Mister Biggs to the man's widow, Sarah Hodges. Did this mean that Mister Biggs was now a fully confirmed Quaker? And Anne? Quakers couldn't marry outside their sect!

  One near-meeting occurred when Richard accompanied Harper on a day's trip to Mister Ware's plantation for brick forms. Though Anne was there visiting her grandparents, she sent word to Richard that she wouldn't see him. He waited by the cabin where he'd slept on the last trip. Once, she stepped outside the beautiful house and saw him, but immediately went back inside.

  When he tried to question Harper about Anne or about the Biggs marriage, the response was, "Don't try to get above your raising, Boy." He'd seen her for an instant though, and he'd seen that she was no longer a little girl.

  In the late summer of 1663, Richard was invited to his Uncle John's plantation. The word came at a good time. Harper's tobacco harvest was in, and the harvesting of corn was less demanding. The former soldiers had become good workers and obedient servants, so they, with Billy Forrest, were able to finish bringing in the corn. Casking of the tobacco had begun and Richard had pleased Harper by making a store of hogsheads that was more than enough for the crop.

  Richard journeyed to his uncle's manor aboard a sloop of Ingolbreitsen's that was trading up the Piankatank. Richard's hogsheads with false bottoms were lashed down on the sloop, and he went as guest and passenger. The Dutch sailors knew him well by now, and surprised him with the news that Anne Biggs, too, would be in Lancaster County in two days to visit at Ware Manor.

  He determined that he would see her. He was eighteen years old, almost fully a man, and he would speak to his bride-to-be. She was now fourteen, herself. Many girls were married at that age, and he couldn't afford to let pass this opportunity of renewing—of formalizing—his claim.

  Uncle John and Aunt Mary met him at their pier. Cousin Thomas stood on the riverbank with a dog by his side, and a musket slung over his shoulder. Richard was near enough the age, himself, to recognize an adolescent wanting to be treated as a man. He was effusive in greeting his aunt and uncle, and warmly presented them with a crate of limes that he'd purchased with the false-bottomed hogshead. He then made a special showing to greet his cousin with a manly handshake and a respectful inquiry as to this year's hunting.

  A slow and sumptuous meal welcomed the nephew. Mary Williams was a wonderful cook and the serving girl she had was also an expert. As he took in the food and the family surroundings, Richard began to notice changes in the Williams Manor.

  The fine chest that Aunt Mary had threatened not to order stood by the door. The polished hogshead that he'd given them remained, though it didn't appear so expertly crafted as it had three years ago. Three pewter chargers held the food and two pewter candlesticks stood on the table. Three chairs now seated the adults instead of the bench that Aunt Mary and he had used before. Glass panes were in all the windows and candles burned extravagantly instead of the usual, smoking, bear-grease lamps.

  Yet, Uncle John spoke of the "hard times." Planters of Virginia were increasingly furious with Maryland for its treachery in their agreement to "stint," or limit, the production of tobacco. It would bring them all to ruin, his uncle said. Richard shared his uncle's anger with the Marylanders, but couldn't bring himself to pity any planter with sweet-scented acreage. It was the new men, like Richard, who'd have to worry. The sweet-scented land was all claimed and government said the English had to remain downriver of the falls where the Indian country began.

  Uncle John's attacks against the politics of the "popish Marylanders" then turned to attacks against their religion. Richard's anger subsided. He had no passion for his own religion; he certainly had none for another man's. Much of England was upset that the King's brother and heir, the Duke of York, was a Roman Catholic. What would Uncle John say about him marrying into a family which might now be Quaker, he wondered to himself?

  "To the north, it's the idolatrous Catholics, and to the south it's the Quakers. Nansemond and Lower Norfolk are full of them, I hear tell," Aunt Mary said.

  "Word came to us in Gloucester that your Mister Ware's son-in-law is to wed a Quaker," Richard said casually, between bites of the rabbit stew.

  "It's the real truth, it is," his uncle said. "But Cade Ware has prevailed upon the man to not yet force that hard, sad life upon his granddaughter."

  Richard rested his spoon on his trencher and toyed with his bread in relief.

  "Then he's not gone all mad," Aunt Mary said.

  Richard vowed that he would see her soon!

  "Thomas and young Anne Biggs are about the same age," Aunt Mary said, and smiled at her son.

  Richard smiled at the coincidence and at the oddity that this mere boy could be the same age as the young woman he had glimpsed at Mister Ware's house a year earlier. Then, he saw that the look on his aunt's face reflected a dream that she was having of her son's future with Anne Biggs.

  Thomas recognized the smile, too, and was embarrassed.

  "Please, Mother," Thomas said, and looked sheepishly to Richard.

  Richard put down the piece of bread. Cousin, or no cousin, that would not be.

  Thomas walked ahead of Richard on the next day's hunt. They were after the wild pig that had killed a dog and had torn up a plot of yams.

  "I guess it would be a good marriage," Thomas said in response to Richard's probe. "Anne is a good friend of mine. She'll bring a good dowry, to start off with, and she's the only child of Biggs. She'd get her dead mother's part of the Ware estate. And she's damned pretty."

  The brush was thick, and briars scratched Richard's face. Richard knew what his Dutch friends would do. There'd be a mistake in the chaos of the boar's wild charge and the musket accidentally go off…. But he'd not have to consider such tactics, surely. Still, he wondered if he could do that.

  "I don't know her father," Thomas continued. "But Mister Ware's a good man, I know that for sure. Mister Ware took in two friends of mine when their father and mother both died after building up large debts to the physicians. My friend and his twin sister were indentured to Mr. Ware by the vestry, to pay off the debts."

  "Friends of yours live at Ware Manor?"

  Richard was attentive.

  "What is the relationship of your friends to Anne Biggs?"

  "They are like cousins, I'd suppose," Thomas said, and looked appraisingly at Richard.

  "Then we could all meet, sometimes, perhaps." Richard had the plan.

  "You are like the new glass windows, Richard. You are easy to see through. You wish her for yourself. She knows that. Her friends know that."

  Richard sputtered with guilt for his musings and at the surprising effrontery of his young cousin. These native-born colonists had different rules.

  "I heard all about it from my friends at Ware Manor. You know how servants gossip and tell tales," Thomas said and raised a lofty eyebrow.

  Richard was silent.

  Thomas took a bite from his roll of chew and handed it to Richard.

  "We think that we can trick her into meeting you this Sunday." Thomas's tone was matter-of-fact.

  To Richard, the boy was astounding. He was always one step ahead.

  Thomas and the twins delighted at the possibility of foiling the wishes of that "Quaker-lover," John Biggs. They'd see to it that his daughter, Anne, could get her wish without willfully defying her father.

&
nbsp; An outing after church by Anne and the twins would include a visit to an out-of-the-way place where Richard would be waiting.

  The barn on the River Road belonged to Arthur Newman. The house beside it had been burned by Newman to retrieve the nails for a larger house he was building further uphill from the river. Anne would be curious to see the burned shell, and to see the famous view from the new site.

  Richard sat in the Williams pew across the aisle from the Ware pew. Richard had smiled and nodded when he saw her arriving in the churchyard this morning. He spoke to Mister and Mistress Ware separately while Anne was off with friends and her twin "cousins." He wanted to avoid placing her in an awkward position by a face-to-face encounter, yet his eyes discreetly followed her about the grounds and into the church.

  After the service and dinner on the grounds, Thomas Williams said his good-byes to Anne and the Birkenhead twins, and returned to the Williams' and their friends' shaded spot to rejoin Richard and ride off.