Becoming Americans (32 page)

      "Then, gracious hosts, I'll do it," Richard said. "I'll tell my boys and be off. If you're ready, Francis?"

      The two armed men sulked and drank deeply. They'd miss the company of Williams—he seemed like one of them—and they'd miss a good cockfight. Because of that damned Miller!

      Richard and Francis Dean walked briskly down the moonlit road towards the Cherry's plantation, five miles away. When they were out of sight, they left the road and turned westward, towards the swamp and the Pasquotank River.

      Francis knew this countryside and followed the high ground and the paths that neighbors had created in this more populated area of Albemarle. After a twohour walk, they reached a field of ripe tobacco and saw firelight coming through the open door of a log house. Richard sat among the hills of tobacco as Francis crept toward the house and made the distinctive sound of a Carolina parakeet. Immediately, an elegantly dressed man came to the door, withdrew his sword and placed it on the ground. That was the signal for Francis to approach the cabin. Soon he came out with a man dressed in leather breeches with a buff coat and Monmouth cap. He staggered as Francis hurried him towards the tobacco field and Richard.

      When they got to him, Richard could tell that the man was drunk. That was Miller's reputation, though Richard had thought the man would have some control as he fled for his life.

      "Governor Miller, Richard," Francis said.

      "My thanks, Sir, and please know that you'll be fully recompensed for your time and efforts on my behalf. The Lords Proprietors will be…" Miller began.

      "I don't give a damn for your thanks, nor for your Lords. I'm doing this for my wife's uncle and for the recompense you wisely mention," Richard said. "Let's see it. Now. First, before we begin."

      The drunken ex-governor pulled a pouch from inside his breeches and showed Richard coins that glowed in the moonlight and made Richard's heart leap.

      "Let's go," he said to Francis.

      They retraced their path, moving less swiftly, now, with the stumbling Miller. As they passed through a field of corn that skirted the edge of the swamp, a dog ran up to them and stopped.

      "Horace." Francis called softly to the dog. "Good dog. Come here, Horace."

      The dog barked once and Francis tried to calm him, reminding the dog of who he was. But the dog smelled strangers, and Miller's odor of fear provoked the dog further. Horace barked again, and then again, growing louder.

      The men began to run, with the dog chasing and barking. The noise awoke a sleeping pen of hogs—whose odor clogged the nostrils of the men—and soon there were shouts of men coming from across the field. A hue-and-cry had been issued, and the countryside was alert to catch the rascal.

      Richard, Francis, and Thomas Miller turned into the swamp, holding their arms before their faces to deflect the briars and branches. As they ran, they could hear the sounds of other animals fleeing from them. The swamp truly was alive at night, with wildcats and bears and foxes and thousands of other living creatures searching prey. The barking of Horace was joined behind the men with the barking of other dogs and the calls of men following them.

      Francis Dean knew the country, and the dappled moonlight let him lead the others through the mass of growth on narrow paths of deer and bear. Miller stumbled on a cypress knee, and his splash into the water brought gunfire from behind. Soon they were trudging to their knees in the morass, praying to themselves that they'd not be swallowed by the mire that made smacking sounds as they withdrew each step.

      The sound of barking dogs grew distant, and there was no more gunfire. Francis led them from the mire to higher ground and the tangle of more briars. Richard noticed for the first time that the aroma of night flowers over-powered the scent of rot, and he was glad to have his head cleared of the putrid stench of pigs.

      Miller had sobered, and he quietly and quickly followed his rescuers. When they emerged from the swamp, they were on the path back near the Dean plantation. The moon was gone, but the eastern sky was hazy with the threat of morning. They had to hurry.

      Francis led them around the back of his home to the shed that had the ox and cart. Richard jumped onto the cart and, after the tap of his knife's handle in three places, the hogshead opened into a chest lying on its side.

      "Your cozy home until we reach Virginia, Governor," he said, and pointed to the inside of the opened hogshead.

      "Pa!"

      Joseph lay on the straw beside his ox, Hal.

      "Joseph!" Richard barked in a whisper. "Be quiet and don't move. Ask no questions and say nothing to your brother!"

      "But, Pa, you're all so dirty and bloody!" Joseph's urgency strained his whisper. "Who's that man?"

      Richard looked at the others and himself for the first time. He and Francis were in no condition to be seen by the armed men asleep—but soon to wake— inside the house.

      "Come," Francis said, and he led Richard and Miller away from the house, upriver. "We'll bathe here and then go home," he said.

      "No," said Richard. "First we take care of His Excellency."

      "Take off them clothes and clean yourself in the river. Quietly. And hurry yourself," he told Miller.

      Thomas Miller stripped naked and stepped into the water. He washed the filth and caked blood from his body and crawled back ashore.

      "He's as hairy as a bear, your ex-governor is," Richard said. "Some say that's a devil sign."

      "My hogshead wouldn't pass as sweet-scented with you and your wet deerskins inside, so Governor, try not to get no splinters in your arse," Richard said, and tossed Miller's wet breeches into the brush. The man stood shivering, naked but for the heavy pouch of coins hanging from the cord tied about his waist.

      They led him back to the shed and closed him in the hogshead. Joseph stood against the wall, his eyes and mouth open wide in shock and fear and confusion. He dast not say a word.

      Richard and Francis quietly approached the house and loudly jumped into the river to begin washing off the mud and blood, laughing loudly as the sun came up.

      The armed men rushed out of the house fully dressed, as Dean stumbled through the door, pulling on his boots. Mistress Dean stood in the doorway, pushing her hair back beneath her cap. Three servants came running from their huts with guns in hand.

      "Francis, you are drunk!" his mother said, and she rushed towards the riverbank.

      "The boy is scratched and bleeding, Mother," her husband pointed out.

      "We're fine, Father," Francis said.

      "You won some money, Dean," Richard said, and tossed three coins at the man's feet.

      "Coins!" Dean said, and ignored the scene before him to stoop and claim his prize.

      "Why are you both so scratched up?" Mistress Dean asked.

      "Half a score of sore losers got into a brawl and broke the cages of five cocks. The birds flew in our faces and we were lucky to escape them with our eyes!" Richard said. He and Francis cheered and splashed each other with water.

      "Both of you get out of there and dried off," Mistress Dean commanded. "I'll fetch balm for those scratches."

      "Blast that Miller!" one of the men said. "I'd have paid a ransom to see that fight! And did you win? Come on out of there and tell us all about it."

      Richard and Francis stepped out of the river, cleaned from the evidence of the swamp.

      For the next half-hour, Richard and Francis competed with each other in recounting stories of the grand cockfights, of the brawl, and of their winnings. The rare appearance of coins was explained as the losings of a New England trader, and of a recently arrived gentleman from London. John was temporarily distracted from his fascination with Catherine by the exciting stories and by the sight and feel of the Spanish and Dutch coins his father let him hold. Joseph was silent as he drank his breakfast ale and ate the hot bread.

      As soon as they had eaten and Richard had expressed his gratitude to the Dean family for their hospitality, he and the boys left to the flatboat which was already loaded and waiting with the ox, the cart, and the hogshead of sweetscented.

      They pushed off from Dean's landing and, following the pace set by Richard, the boys poled quickly and steadily back up the river into Virginia.

      John Biggs and other Friends at the Great Bridge met Thomas Miller, dressed in the vermin-infested rags that he'd paid dearly for, from Maddog. Joseph was still shaken by the adventure and looked at his father with increased awe and affection. Joseph knew that he would never be adventurous like his father, but the story of escaping through the swamp, and the manner in which his father talked to a former governor and Customs Collector—even making the man strip naked and squat in a hogshead for hours—it made his father like one of the heroes in the old stories his mother told him when he was a child.

      John Williams saw his father in a different light, now, too. But John's new vision of his father was a complicated one of appreciation for the money they'd brought back, and the shame he felt to be involved in aiding the escape of a felon—even if the felon were just a renegade from Albemarle. John was angry, too, that his brother, Joseph, had known about it all before he did, John only discovering the existence of their passenger when the boat reached Maddog's rotting cabin at North West Landing. To John's amazement, his father had climbed onto the cart and split apart the hogshead of tobacco, freeing a haggardlooking, naked man! That was the first moment his thoughts had strayed from Catherine Dean.

      Anne was awakened by her husband when he crawled into the bed. She opened her eyes to see a face etched with scratches, but wearing a big grin. He silently moved a sweaty hand to her breast as the boys climbed to their sleeping places in the loft. She moved his hand and turned over on her side.

      "Go to sleep," she whispered fiercely. She was in no mood for such antics. An eagle had carried off her-best laying hen that afternoon, and a whole litter of pigs had been killed by wolves last night. The house was crowded and in need of repair. He might better attend to business at home before he went off on rescue adventures for thieves and heretics.

      Sarah Alice stirred and whimpered in her sleep. Anne removed Richard's arm from around her waist and got out of the bed to soothe the child. She wondered how and when her love for Richard had gone. No, not gone, but changed, she thought. It was, more and more, becoming like the love she had for her children.

On a sunny morning in May 1682, Anne was still pondering that question. Richard wasn't growing up; he was just an older child. His drinking and his gambling and his wenching were just games for an older child.

      Sixteen years earlier, when she was a mere girl herself, coming and going in consciousness during the labor of her first-born, hearing prayers around her bedside, and boisterous drinking in the hall-room, she'd decided that life should be more than the religious ardor of her father and her grandparents, and much more than the life of irresponsibility and revelry she already saw as her new husband's future. Since then, her children had been loved and protected, but she'd increased her expectations and demands for them—and for herself. She made certain that her children learned what others had done before them in Virginia. It was still new country, but not so new as when she'd been born, among the first of the New World's English children.

      Norfolk Town was being built just downriver, at the mouth of the Eastern Branch. Roads were connecting counties, and there was talk of Lower Norfolk being divided, like Lancaster and other counties up the Bay had been. There would come a time when the English in Virginia would make real contributions to the empire, and her children would be among those Englishmen.

      Tomorrow, John would take his place among the men when, for the first time, he participated in the yearly General Muster. John had gone with his father to last year's General Muster, and had watched the men at most of the monthly drills, but tomorrow he officially became a man; declared a tax-paying tithable, and man enough to be part of the militia.

      Anne was already proud of John. She was proud of all her children, of course, but John—her first-born—had shown his promise from the beginning. Even the year of his birth, 1666, had been among the most bounteous years of the colony. His life—like her own and those of all the children—had never known a day of hunger or fear for life. She was never hesitant to remind her children of that fact, and of the duties they owed to their ancestors and descendants.

      At times, Anne worried for England. After the maligned Governor Berkeley left Virginia following the troubles with Bacon, the King was often mis-advised, and he appointed governors who appointed Councils that acted, seemingly, more in their own behalves than in that of King and country. Grandfather Ware's confiscated lands were never returned to his estate, nor those of many whom were loyal to the King's governor. Attempts to control tobacco production were, seemingly, abandoned, and this year's crop was reported to be by far the largest ever. Prices would fall to nothing and the planters would fall deeper and deeper into debt to their London and Bristol factors.

      Anne missed the musky aroma of dried, casked tobacco that mingled with the scents of summer and fall flowers. That smell was gone from their Deep Creek plantation. Even Richard's newest land was sapped of its strength for growing tobacco. Anne, with Lucy, the one, surly female servant still indentured, and with Edy, and little Richard and Edward, grew vegetables for the family. Richard and John and Joseph supplied the game and brought in the loose-ranging cattle and pigs from the edges of the swamp for slaughter. They could eat well from their land, but there was no fortune to be made growing corn or squash or peas.