Chesapeake (18 page)

It was now that Steed began a frenzy of building, not a house and not
a barn. For some days Meg couldn’t decipher what it was, but then Chief Pentaquod appeared on the island with four helpers who cut and planked oak trees while Steed served as architect. Finally the building was done, a solid, low structure with a rude signboard over the door on which Steed had printed:

When Meg asked what this signified, Steed took her inside and placed her on one of the benches Pentaquod had made. ‘These are solemn times,’ he said. ‘The birth of a baby. The start of a new family.’

‘The baby’s no problem,’ she said, slapping her expanding belly.

Steed ignored the jest. Grasping her reverently by both hands, he announced solemnly, ‘I’m a Catholic. This is to be our chapel.’

Meg stared at him, then burst into laughter. ‘A bloody Papist!’ Shoving his hands away, she rose from the bench and moved to the door, where she broke into uncontrolled giggles, not mocking him or his chapel, but rather, ridiculing herself.

‘A Papist!’ she repeated. Then she came back to him, kissed him on the forehead and said, ‘It’s jolly. And what a surprise those farts in Jamestown will get when they hear about it.’ Her words offended Steed, and he drew back, but she continued her lively laughter. ‘I think it’s wonderful, Edmund. And you’ve got yourself a fine chapel.’ But then she broke into laughter again, unable to control herself. ‘Meg Shipton, wedded to a Papist!’ She left the chapel, still chuckling, and refused to set foot in it again.

She was having trouble with Pentaquod, too. Never having known a father, she had at first found this white-haired old man reassuring. She liked his stately mannerisms and his stories of how the Indians had lived before the white man came: ‘Turtles! Two or three times a year one would swim into our river. Delicious.’ He owned a gun now, which he fired ceremoniously once a month, hitting nothing, and a heavy ax which he wielded with startling power, felling the trees used in building the chapel. And when he found an oak of proper size, he directed Steed and the two Indian helpers in burning out the center and making a canoe so massive that it required four men to handle it. ‘For the baby,’ he told Meg.

She wanted to like this old chief but suspected that he did not approve of her. As Steed’s woman she merited his deference and he protected her as he would any pregnant woman, but consistently he rejected her rather blatant efforts to win him as a friend, and in the end she told Steed petulantly, ‘Get him out of here,’ and Pentaquod was sent back to the village.

With the Indian gone, she became surprisingly tender, conceding one day, ‘It’s been rather good here, Steed. When you take your beaver pelts to Jamestown, you might as well pay Janney his eight pounds … if you think I’m still worth it.’

‘You are!’ he cried enthusiastically.

‘Maybe I’ll even go with you … get married proper.’

The child was born on March 3, 1616, the first white infant on the Eastern Shore, a robust boy in whom the Indian women took delight. Meg allowed them to tend him pretty much as they wished, laughing heartily when they tossed him into the salty creek to see if he would float. ‘Good sign when a boy floats,’ they assured her. ‘With a girl it don’t matter.’ His first playthings were a deer’s antler and a bear’s claw; his first attempted sound was the
kraannk
of the heron.

In August, Edmund Steed packed his bateau with cords of trade goods and lashed the new canoe astern to house the overflow. When the last pail of caviar was stowed, Steed called to Meg, ‘We’re ready for the sail.’ On the first day in Jamestown he would pay for her, and on the second make her his wife. As she came down the path to the wharf, wearing a dress made from cloth woven on the island, carrying the baby easily on her hip, she was fair and buxom and laughing, and Steed knew a greater happiness than he had ever before experienced: this strange, secretive, passionate woman he had stumbled upon was a treasure, precisely the kind required to build an empire.

And then, just as they were about to leave, a pinnace sailed into the mouth of the creek, dropped its canvas and moved slowly to the wharf. In the bow stood a determined Simon Janney, impatient to leap ashore, and Steed had to assume that he had come to fight for Meg, whose passage money had not yet been repaid and who was theoretically still his property.

In the moment before the pinnace landed, Steed had to decide what he would do, the extent of his love for Meg. His two years with her had satisfied him that not in all Virginia could he find a better wife; there could be no equal to the way she had worked in the fields, no mother happier with her son, and even if she did frequently refuse Steed entrance to her inner thoughts, she had been exciting and satisfying. Meg Shipton was worth holding on to, and he would fight Janney to keep her.

As soon as the pinnace touched, the sturdy little farmer leaped ashore and rushed right at Steed, who resolutely presented his fists. No blows fell, because when the countryman reached Steed he extended his arms and cried, ‘Steed, great news!’

Steed dropped his hands and asked, ‘What?’

‘I can take Meg home. You owe me nothing.’

‘Meg has a child,’ Steed said, pointing to where the handsome woman stood with the baby.

‘No matter!’ Janney cried in great excitement. ‘She …’

He never finished the sentence, for at the rear of the pinnace appeared a woman, dressed in a cape which in spite of the August heat she held close to her throat. She was tall, slender, dark of hair and with hands that were extremely white. She moved hesitantly, picking her way over bundles cluttering the deck, and with the help of sailors climbed carefully onto the wharf, where she adjusted her cape. But once ashore, all hesitancy vanished. Walking firmly, she came up the wharf, passed the two men and went directly to where Meg stood with the baby.

‘You must be Meg,’ she said softly, extending a long, thin hand. ‘And this I presume is your daughter.’

‘Son,’ Meg said suspiciously.

‘You can go back to Jamestown, Meg,’ the visitor said. ‘I’m the new mistress of the island.’

‘She is!’ Janney cried happily. ‘Your father sent her, Steed.’

Now the tall woman turned slowly to face the man whose invitation had brought her to this remote island, and she came to him with the same resolution she had shown in tackling Meg. Extending her hand once more, she said, ‘Edmund Steed, I bring you greetings from your father. I am Martha Keene of High Wycombe in Bucks.’

Steed could manage nothing, not even a stammering welcome, but Simon Janney moved forward, ready to handle any eventuality—except the strange one that now developed. ‘She’s a fine woman, Edmund,’ he said rapidly. ‘Everyone on shipboard respected her.’

‘Mr. Janney has my boxes in the pinnace,’ the newcomer said, and when they were handed ashore, lending finality to her arrival, Janney said, ‘Now Meg can come home with me.’

‘That I will never do,’ Meg said. With exaggerated gestures she handed the baby to Martha Keene, saying, ‘You can have the little bastard, and the big one too.’ She looked at Steed and sniffed. ‘They’re both yours, Mistress Keene. I’ve been ready to get out of here for some time.’

‘Meg!’ Steed cried.

‘Boat’s loaded. Let’s be off!’ And she flounced toward the shore, with Simon Janney attempting to stop her, to grab her, to do anything to get her into his pinnace.

‘I’m to take you back,’ he pleaded softly. ‘The fees are paid.’

She had had enough. Planting her feet resolutely on the wharf, her arms akimbo, she surveyed Janney and Steed contemptuously and cried, ‘Damn you both. You paid this and you paid that and you offered to buy. I’m not for sale. I came here and worked my hands red to build this island. I’d have done the same for you, Janney, if you’d given me a decent house. But now all talk of buying and selling is ended. Shove your fees up your arse and to hell with both of you.’

Steed was too shocked to make a response, but Janney asked in a whisper, ‘Where will you go, Meg?’

‘To Jamestown. To someone who appreciates a wife for what she is.’ To Steed’s surprise, she reserved her greatest bitterness for him. Regarding him scornfully, she railed, ‘Trap your beavers and build your chapels and be damned to you.’

Steed gasped. He had never suspected she harbored such bitterness, and in the fire of her rejection she seemed even more desirable than when she had passively accepted him because of her gratitude for his offering her a refuge.

It was Martha Keene who best comprehended what was happening. With the stateliness inherent in a large family accustomed to English county living, she pursued Meg down the wharf, holding the baby, and asked quietly, ‘Are you in good mind … to leave your child?’

‘Take the Papist bastard and be damned. He’ll amount to nothing, and if I should feel need of another, I can catch one.’

Mistress Keene offered a response that would be long remembered in the Choptank: she took Meg’s hand, brought it to her lips and kissed it. ‘You will have better days,’ she said quietly. ‘And thank you for the child. What’s his name?’

‘Ralph,’ Meg said, and to everyone’s surprise she climbed down not into Janney’s pinnace nor into Steed’s bateau but into the stout oak canoe. ‘This is my boat,’ she said grandly. ‘We’re off to Jamestown.’

No appeal from Janney could dislodge her from her perch among the beaver pelts, and Steed, shocked by her disclosures, made no effort to lure her into his bateau. From her canoe Meg fired a parting shot. To Mistress Keene she shouted, ‘You’ll be insisting upon a proper marriage, I should think. Join me and we’ll find a priest somewheres.’

It had been Martha Keene’s intention to sail back with Steed for a ceremony, but Meg’s insulting behavior forestalled this. Taking Steed far from the wharf, but keeping the baby in her arms, she confided, ‘Your father chose me because I’m Catholic. My family has suffered as deeply as yours, and to me the faith is precious.’ She spoke crisply and with authority, as if she had read books and in them learned of Sir Latimer’s martyrdom. She was only twenty-two that summer, but aged in wisdom. ‘Your father foresaw difficulties and so did mine. They agreed that if they arose, I might wait with you on the island until such time as a priest arrived.’

‘It could be years.’

‘I know.’

‘And you will be my wife till the priest comes?’

‘I will.’

He led her to the log chapel, where, after pausing to read the inscription from Genesis, she knelt to give thanks for her safe arrival. When she rose, Steed took her by the hands and said, ‘You must understand. I could not have built this island, nor this chapel—’

‘Without Meg,’ she interrupted. ‘I do understand, but now it’s we who live here.’

She kissed him, then smiled as she heard Meg bellowing from her canoe, ordering the boats to sail for Jamestown. She accompanied Steed to the wharf, watched as he boarded the bateau and hoisted sail. She stood there firm-chinned, holding the baby as the three craft stood out for the Choptank.

Three weeks later, when Steed’s bateau headed back into Devon Creek, he experienced a welter of confusions. His trading trip to Jamestown had been an unprecedented success—he was returning not only with more trade goods than he had expected but also with several Spanish coins, since he had not been required to pay Simon Janney eight pounds for Meg Shipton. But mixed with his elation was uneasiness over the fact that when his boat landed at Devon he would be alone with the stranger who was now his wife.

He knew nothing of her except that she had been chosen by his father, that she came from the neighboring county of Bucks and that she was Catholic. In the brief moments he had spoken with her she had seemed quite austere, but she may have felt the same about him; in her favor she had adjusted with remarkable ease to the extraordinary behavior of Meg Shipton and had accepted the baby without apparent qualms. One further thing: at least three fellow passengers from Captain Hackett’s
Victorious
had sought Steed out to assure him that in Martha Keene he was catching himself a wonderful woman: ‘She was most helpful on seasick days, and she a lady.’

Asquas and the other Indians had seen the Devon bateau approaching, and they were waiting on the wharf as it lowered its sails, but Martha Keene was not, so as the boat maneuvered into position one of the women went to fetch her. This was not necessary; Martha was tardy only because she had been attending the baby; now, carrying it as if she were a madonna, she came from the hut to greet her returning husband.

Steed would never forget this moment. He had been directing the Indians how to unload and bore in his arms a heavy bundle of cloth, its tag ends blowing in the breeze, when he saw her picking her way carefully down the path and onto the wharf. She moved with studied grace, as if entering a church, and carried the child as if it were her own. Her pale face was rimmed by a black cloth tied about her head, but her eyes and lips joined in a smile of welcome that seemed to Steed the warmest human expression he had ever seen.

Dropping the bundled cloth, he leaped ashore and ran to her, embracing her and kissing her in front of the startled Indians. ‘I am so glad you’re here,’ he mumbled.

‘This is my home,’ she said.

But Steed would always be a special kind of Catholic, a poetic traditionalist: five thousand years of Celtic poetry onto which had been grafted a thousand years of Saxon prudence. He could never rest easily with Martha Keene until they had been married ritually, and when in December he discussed it with her, he found that she, too, was experiencing a heavy burden of sin. They tried to ease their conscience by embellishing the chapel, the first such Catholic structure in Virginia, with a rude crucifix which he carved and a purple cloth which she wove and stained, as if this would impart sanction. But as the new year dawned, she asked abruptly, ‘Would the werowance marry us … in his fashion?’

That very day they sailed upstream to Patamoke, and as soon as Pentaquod saw the new woman, so austere and formal, he said in Choptank, ‘Steed, this one is much better.’