Becoming Americans (26 page)

      Thinking of it as the empty, high-riding sloop merged with the James River into Hampton Roads, Richard was back aboard the
Deliverance
hearing, "an overabundance of honey is as deadly as the lack, thereof." Were they still paying for that perfect year of 1666?

      Virginia had its largest crop of tobacco, ever, in 1666. There was such a harvest that, though one hundred ships sailed—laden with hogsheads—half the crop was left behind in storage, enough for three year's market. London merchants bought only the highest grades, and at the lowest price. For Richard and Anne, that was no disaster. His land was not yet cleared for planting and his skills at cooperage were in demand when he had the time and inclination to separate himself from the self-indulgence of wedded bliss and the demands of building his new manor house. There was additional pressure for space with the arrival of their first child, a son they easily agreed to name, John.

      Richard looked to his second son, Joseph, alert in the bow, and thought how different the times of the two boys' births had been, even though they were just short of a year apart in age. John, now approaching ten, already carried himself like the heir apparent, the lord of the manor. Though cocky, like Richard himself, John eagerly assumed the responsibilities of eldest child, competing only with a new-born Biggs uncle for the family's attention. It was a time of plenty.

      The very beginning of the new year, 1667, presaged the horrors that were to come. Word arrived from London of the fire that had swept through the center of that great city in September, leaving more than four hundred and fifty acres in ashes and ruins. Hundreds died in the flames that burned for seven full days.

      Grief throughout the colony for friends and relatives at home overshadowed, only briefly, the anger with Lord Baltimore in Maryland. In the previous, lustrous year, Commissioners of Carolina, Virginia and Maryland had finally agreed to limit the production of tobacco. That was an answered prayer. There was great rejoicing throughout, when all three Assemblies approved the plan. But then, Lord Baltimore vetoed the agreement, and the Virginians were again tending expanded fields and plant-beds when, in April, a hail storm hit. Stones as big as turkey eggs destroyed fruit trees and flattened the early wheat and oats. It knocked off shingles and killed hundreds of hogs and cattle. Anne's glass windows were destroyed, though she comforted her husband with a hail of kisses for the sight of the last month's view of the luscious petals.

      As a school of bluefish passed portside, Richard looked past them to Point Comfort. In 1667, the brilliant old Governor had, in frenzy, spent thousands of pounds to build a fort over there. The old fool. The range of any cannon would have been far too short—but for a good laugh—even had the fort been completed in time!

      The Dutch came the first of June, in 1667. Their actions made it a hard and disastrous week for some of Virginia. Much of Lower Norfolk grinned a quiet toast to the Dutch.

      A captured ketch from Virginia was used as a guide and a deceit for approaching the
Elizabeth,
a great English ship of war bearing forty-six guns. Her captain, though warned, had taken off with a wench he'd brought out from England, to a wedding party in Lower Norfolk. Friends of Richard's were drinking with the captain as the Chesapeake's great floating weapon of protection was taken. Then, fifteen ships of high-grade tobacco were burned or seized as prizes by the Dutch.

      Stupidity, thought Richard. They paid for their stupidity. Anyway, the Dutch had always done right by him.

      The rains had come in June, too. Until the middle of July—for forty days— rain fell to drown what remained of people's grain.

      When the rains did stop, in July, and neighbors finally dared to venture out for visits, Joseph Williams was born to the wary couple. The hope that comes with new life buoyed Richard and Anne for the next month.

      The hurricane was August.

      Anne lay at her father's house, tended in a fever by Sarah Biggs, who also nursed new Joseph with her own son, Jabez. The wind came quickly, and Richard, working with his men, was trapped at Deep Creek. The steady, demon force blew a full twenty-four hours, all but the last few hours from the southeast direction. Deep Creek was sucked into the Southern Branch and up the Elizabeth River. As Richard lay with his men in the ditch they'd dug to drain the July rains, he traced in his mind the routes he'd taken, and he knew that the whole Chesapeake must be flowing up the rivers James and York and Piankatank….

      Other than his babies dying, that had been the worst day in Richard's life.

      John Biggs's house—with few others—had survived the storm, whole. The new manor of Richard Williams and his wife Anne had disappeared. The two iron pots left Anne by her mother—and presented on her wedding day by Grandmother Ware—were found protruding from the sand. Richard's new cow, Polly, was found a week later, foraging in the swamp. Ware Manor was gone, as was that of Uncle John and fifteen thousand others in Virginia.

      The nightmarish year of 1667 was followed by nine years of cattle plague, drought, and more children.

      "Poppa," Joseph said from the bow. "Tell me, again, about the year I was born."

      Richard pointed across Hampton Roads to Point Comfort.

      "That was the year the Big Hurricane washed away the foundations of Berkeley's would-be fort." He began the oft-told story.

      Anne added more wood to the fire under her big iron pot. Yesterday's soap had been—as usual—a success. This morning the pot had been for laundry. Now, she was beginning a new pot of stew with the rabbits John had killed, and with the two old hens that had stopped laying. The new servants needed meat on their bones before the summer work began.

      Anne's most valuable possession was her mother's pot. Glass windows had been nice—a glittering luxury—but this pot was a focal point in her life. Solid, real things stood up to adversity: this pot, her love for Richard.

      How Richard had grieved for the lost house and windowpanes! She, though, had forgotten their loss in rejoicing the next spring when two of her tulips reappeared.

      She hummed a happy tune as she skinned the rabbit for the fresh pot of stew. Sally Pine, one of the new girls, was tending to the oven by the hearth, heating it for the dough that had twice risen and would be sealed inside for the night—hot bread for the morning.

      Anne dropped the rabbit quarters into the pot and allowed herself a few moments of quiet. She sat on the three-legged stool near the bubbling pot and settled the stool firmly in the newly packed sand. She'd taken advantage of Richard and Joseph's absence to replace the filthy floor around the hearth. One day she'd have a floor of wood planks, again. Certainly, her children would grow up to have such things. For now she was content with her "Virginia house."

      More sand was needed, she noticed, to build up the floor along that northeast corner. Shade and damp kept on rotting away at the wall. The post was looking seriously weak, too. She'd speak to Richard about it.

      But for what? As fine and busy a craftsman as he was with wood—more than just a cooper—it was always their house that was in need of repairs, when he could take off any time to run help someone else.

      Poppa's—-and a few of the other older manor houses that survived the hurricane of '67—were about the only houses around here that had brick foundations and wooden floors; the usual way of building houses in England. Wood of any description was there for the taking. But the cost of hiring carpenters—and if you were going to be fancy, a joiner—were over three times what they were back in England, her father said. Men with the muscles to raise a wall or to secure rafters would come looking to help. Those gatherings were some of the most fun! But the cost of a carpenter…. Richard was training the boys in his skill, but they seemed to have no real knack for it. Baby Richard's favorite plaything, though, was a toy hammer his father made for him.

      These "Virginia houses," as people had come to call them, were less costly and more quickly raised than the older style. "Post construction," the men said, and that pretty well told the story. Upright posts and studs of locust wood were planted three or four feet in the ground, then secured and connected at their tops by a squared-timber wall plate. The roof frame rested on these wall plates, and that was about it. The outside of the frame was covered with shingles or with fouror five-foot-long rived clapboards. Richard had covered their roof with cedar shingles, and the outside walls with red oak clapboards. Softer, white pine was easily planed, and he'd used long, wide boards of that to panel the inside walls of their twenty-foot square manor house. Some bricks had been salvaged from the wreckage of their first home, and they now lined the firebox of a lath and plaster chimney. A ladder led to the loft where John and Joseph slept on a pallet of bearskins. A long table of rived and planed planks was the largest piece of furniture. Split logs on peg legs served as benches. Two walnut chests Richard made held their clothes and linens. Two polished hogsheads stored their few linens and clothes. Anne's three-legged stool stayed by the hearth within reach of the cherished pots and utensils hanging from the swinging iron crane that Grandfather Ware had given them as a present for the new manor house. He'd had to order many things from Bristol to replace his own losses from the hurricane.

      Richard would despair, occasionally—when he'd been heavily into the rum—that he'd brought her from a life of comfort to a life of drudgery and infrequent pleasures. Anne would caress the masses of his curls that she loved so, and reassure him that she would chose no other life than the one she had with him and their children. She'd speak of the future they were building. Their future and the future of their children as English in a growing empire.

      Anne stirred the stew and drifted to her dream.

      A horse approached on the southern road from the Great Bridge. She recognized the gait of Charles Shaw's horse, Stead. Shaw still rode the old mare despite his neighbor's ribbing about Shaw's stingy nature.

      There was much about the old man's personality that brought forth ribbing, but evidence of the suffering he'd undergone for his faith usually stifled people's biting humor.

      Charles Shaw had arrived in Lower Norfolk from Barbados, eight years earlier. On that island he'd been among the first and, typically of him, the most vocal Quaker converts. The authorities had pierced his tongue with a hot poker so as to silence him. That hadn't quieted the man, but rather, made his constant gibbering unintelligible.

      Anne heard the old nag approaching and prayed—with little hope for relief—that Charles Shaw would be merely riding by on some urgent business elsewhere.

      "Greething my chid," he said.

      "Greeting, Friend Shaw," Anne replied respectfully.

      "Ty huthband, ith he redurned from Thames Thown?" the old man asked.

      "No, but we expect him back today, Friend Shaw. I'm sorry you missed him. The community of Friends will want to share the news he brings of my father."

      Anne had known the man for six years now and, with her son John, had very little trouble understanding when Shaw spoke. It was usually
what
he said that was irksome.

      "Thy father lies in the James Town jail, where George Wilson died for The Light," Shaw said.

      Anne held the stick of wood more tightly in her hand. Her great urge was to throw it at him. How dare he stand in the place of her husband to deliver such terrible and personal news!

      "How do you know this?" she calmly asked.

      "The Constable arrived this morning at the County Courthouse and posted a notice on the door," he sputtered. "God be praised that your father was not called upon to suffer the loss of an ear, or the affliction of a thick tongue."

      Anne suppressed a cruel laugh at the man's speech and said instead, "Have a cool drink of water, Friend Shaw, and be about your business of spreading the bad news."

      She made no further efforts to understand Shaw's thick monologue. She'd wait for the details from her husband. The full truth would not be this bad, she knew. She rushed through the necessary hospitality, urging Shaw to ride on, to ride on from her sight. Even in the best of times she strained to be pleasant to the man whom nearly she alone seemed to understand. Undoubtedly, that was why the old man seemed to follow her about when they were in proximity.

      "To suffer for the Light is a gift of God," Shaw said as he re-mounted the old mare.

      Her father would have rebuked Anne for the insolent glare she tossed the visitor and for the words, "You Quaker fools," that she muttered as he finally rode away.

      She went back to the wild onions she was washing for the stew. Richard would be home soon and she'd wait until then to worry. Her father could not live in that prison for two years. Richard would find a way to get him out. Enough pounds, certainly, could buy her father's freedom. John Biggs had readily rebuilt the fortune he'd lost in the hurricane of '67 and the next year's cattle plague. Richard had accumulated some wealth since then, too, with Anne insisting that he save everything for more servants and land instead of rebuilding her manor house with glass windows and a brick foundation.

      The three servants who'd lived out their indentures were free men and woman, now. Paying George Dawes a salary was money down a rat hole, Anne kept saying. New servants were essential if they were to improve their lot much more. They could sell the new land, if need be, to free her father, but not the servants, she prayed. They'd find a way to save her father.