The Captive Bride (13 page)

“Well, he can't have gone far,” Gilbert said quickly. “Don't worry, we'll find him, Lydia.”

But that was not the case, for after getting the word out to all the village, the best they could discover was that he was not in Bedford. Everyone knew him well from his connection with Bunyan, and it was not until the following day, after a sleepless night, that Gilbert came to the Bunyan cottage to meet Lydia.

“You've found him?” Lydia cried, seeing no gloom on Gilbert's face as he had worn since the previous day.

“No—but the coach driver came back through—the one that drives the London stage. He didn't make the trip all the way through this time, but he has said that a man of Matthew's description got on here in Bedford and was still on the coach headed for London yesterday.”

“London! Why would he go there?”

“I fear he's making for the coast to get a ship out of the country.” Gilbert took her arm and squeezed it tightly. “I'll go at once. Surely I'll be able to find him! All I have to do is check the ships about to depart.”

“You must find him, Gilbert! He's out of his mind—I'll go with you ...”

“No, you stay here in case we're wrong and he comes back,” Gilbert said. “I'll not go on a coach; that'd be too slow. I've already bought a fast horse, and I'll be in London almost by the time the coach gets there. God willing, I may even overtake it!”

“Yes, hurry! And I'll pray,” Lydia said. She touched her body unconsciously, and he knew she was thinking of the child that was to come. “God is still in control!”

“Amen!” he said; he embraced her, then hurried away, his mind whirling with plans.

The hours crawled by for the next week, and although
Lydia knew with her mind that the distance was too great for Gilbert to go and return in such a short time, she spent hours looking south down the Great Road. She ate nothing, but fasted and prayed until her face grew pale with strain. Bunyan urged her to eat: “God knows the intent of your heart,” he said gently. “You must think of the child.”

On the sixth day, Pastor Gifford brought a note direct from the coach. It was from Gilbert: “I have looked day and night with no success. But do not despair. It may be that he left the coach and went on to a coastal town. I go to Southampton, which is the most likely place for a man to take a ship for other lands.” He urged Lydia to keep her trust in God, and promised to write as soon as he found any trace of Matthew.

Three weeks later Lydia looked up the lane and saw Gilbert walking slowly toward her cottage. There was something in his air that brought a great fear into her heart, and she rose to her feet slowly. His face was very thin, and it bore the unmistakable marks of grief as he walked up to her side and said at once, “Lydia, my dear ...”

She saw that he could not finish, and she said dully, “He's dead, isn't he?”

“Yes.” Gilbert's lips tightened, and he took her in his arms. “You must be mother and father now to the little one.” He drew back and there was a fierce intensity scored across his strong features.

“What happened, Gilbert?” she asked quietly. “I want to know all of it.”

“There's little to tell, child,” he said wearily. “I found no trace of him until a week ago. I had gone to Southampton first and found nothing. One of the men I met there was a ship's carpenter named Lyle. He was waiting for his ship to be refitted. It took longer than he thought, and he came to Portsmouth where his family lives. I ran into him by accident, and he remembered me at once.”

“Had he seen Matthew?” Lydia asked eagerly.

Gilbert nodded slowly. “Yes. Lyle knew him from my description, and he told Matthew about my inquiry.”

“What?”

Gilbert shook his head, his eyes cloudy with grief. “Lyle reported that Matthew said, ‘There's no one in this world who'd want to find me now!' ”

“But what happened?”

“Lyle told me he took passage on a trading schooner
Intrepid,
Captain George Milton's ship.” He took Lydia's hand and said softly, “My dear, the
Intrepid
went down with all hands in a hurricane two weeks ago.”

“Could—could there be a mistake?” Lydia's eyes pleaded with him, but Gilbert shook his head firmly.

“I went to Southampton and talked to the owners. Another ship,
West Wind,
was in the same storm. She saw the
Intrepid
go down, but there was no way they could help. He's gone, my dear!”

She looked up at him with horror and pain in her dark eyes. “Are you certain?”

“It would be torment to live on false hope, Lydia, much as I would like to offer some hope. I questioned the quartermaster who fitted out the ship, and he remembered Matthew well. He signed on and left with the ship.”

Lydia shut her eyes and suddenly began to sway. Gilbert helped her to a bench in front of the cottage and sat down beside her, waiting until she had wept her heart out. Then he said, “I want to tell you what I think God has said, Lydia, concerning you and the child ...”

The salt spray bit Lydia's lips as she stood on the deck of the
New Hope,
a two-masted schooner, watching England fade as the ship plowed into the green-gray seas.

“I know, child,” Gilbert said quickly. “It's hard on the heart, leaving your home—but the New World will be a better place for you—and for my grandson.”

That had been his plan, and Lydia was anxious to go—to
find a new life for herself and her baby. The only relative she had in England was her aunt, and she had grown to love Gilbert Winslow as a father. He had no blood kin of his own, and this loss drew them together more than anything else.

Now she expressed one flickering moment of doubt. “Gilbert, is it right—my going to Plymouth?”

He looked down at her, and she thought with a sharp pain in her heart,
I'll never forget Matthew—not as long as his father is alive!

He put his strong arm around her and smiled. “It's only a little while before we
really
go home, Lydia. But until that day comes, you and my grandchild need a place and a people.” He paused and looked westward, almost as if he could see Plymouth with his keen blue eyes.

Then he looked down at her and said quietly, “The last of the House of Winslow, Lydia—that's the precious burden you're carrying!”

And then he led her to the jutting prow of the
New Hope,
where they looked out to the open seas to the future together.

PART TWO

PLYMOUTH

1675

CHAPTER NINE

RACHEL

The wedding day was clear and bright on the morning of April 2, 1675. Rachel Winslow smiled to herself as she peered into the polished mirror, murmuring, “Fourteen years old this day—an old woman you're getting to be!”

She tossed the mirror on the bed with a typical careless gesture, and left her small upstairs bedroom in a rush. Her mother looked up from the table where she was kneading dough, saying, “One would think you were the bride, the trouble you take prettying yourself up!”

The words sounded harsh, but there was little of that quality in Lydia Winslow. Plymouth folks had come to take almost for granted her numerous charities, and the daughter who came over to smile at her did not seem in the least alarmed. She reached out and tucked a raven black tress of her mother's hair under the kerchief she wore and said carelessly, “I want to look nice for Joshua, Mother. He's probably going to come by and ask me to marry him again.” Lydia did not miss the saucy look in Rachel's hazel eyes, and she shook her head.

“And you'll turn him away as usual. You may be sorry for that one day, Rachel. He'd be a good husband.”

“Country's full of good husband material,” Rachel responded cheerfully. “Full of groundhogs and all kinds of other pesky varmints, too, but I don't have to take up with any of them.”

Lydia stared at her, knowing she ought to be outraged and
shocked, but as usual she threw up her hands and laughed. “You are a silly girl!” she said with affection.

“Grandfather says I've got more brains than the whole New England Confederation,” Rachel stated with a demure look.

“Your grandfather is a wise man—except where you're concerned, and in that area he hasn't a grain of sense!”

“He says you're the most beautiful woman in the Colonies. I guess he's just prejudiced about you, too, Mother.”

“Indeed he is. Now, get out of here, you goose! Go help that poor girl who's going to look as plain as an old shoe when she stands up next to you!” Then she flung one last comment at Rachel as the girl was leaving: “But homely as she is, she's marrying today—and that's more than I can say for you!”

Rachel laughed and ran lightly down the road that sloped past Governor Bradford's house toward the harbor, and took a right. She found Mercy Doolittle, the bride, inside the bungalow where she lived with her parents and five other children.

“Oh, it's you, Rachel!” Mercy's mother exclaimed. She handed the comb to Rachel, saying, “See if you can do anything with Mercy's hair—I'll go help with the cooking!”

“Well, the big day is here, girl,” she said, pulling the comb through Mercy's hair with such force that the poor girl cried out. “Be still, now! This is your last day of freedom, and that husband of yours will give you worse if you don't mind him.”

“Oh, Praise God and me, we'll do fine.”

Rachel smiled at the name of the bridegroom—Praise God Pittman. “It'll be hard for you to have a fight with him, won't it, Mercy? I mean, how can you scream with anger and yell ‘Praise God!' at the same time?”

Mercy was a tall, homely girl, rawboned and awkward, but her good humor and kindness redeemed her for everyone— especially Praise God, who could not be convinced that she was not as lovely as a rose. The stocky, muscular man of twenty-two was a blacksmith and a tinker, had been known to drink a little too much on occasion, and his reputation as somewhat of a ladies' man persisted in spite of his denials.
In any case, the two were satisfied with one another and as Mercy put it, “So long as we suit each other, why, let others keep their noses out!”

Her one beauty was her hair, and as Lydia combed it into a shining fall of reddish gold, she asked curiously, “Mercy, are you afraid?”

“Afraid? Of what?”

“Why, of marriage,” Rachel answered. “Won't it be hard to do everything Praise God tells you?”

Mercy pulled away, turned and stared at her friend, and a smile touched her lips. “Why, it would be for
you,
I'm thinking, you bein' so smart and all. But most women don't have a very strong mind.” This was commonly believed among most of the colonists, and Mercy elaborated on the doctrine. “Why, I heard tell of a lass once, and her father taught her all sorts of readin' and writin'. Well, one day she goes mad and strangles her daughter, she did! Them at court said 'twas the learnin' of readin' and writin' as done it, destroyed the brain, it not bein' so strong as a man's brain.”

“I see,” Rachel smiled wryly.

Mercy reached out and touched the cheek of the dark-haired girl, saying with a smile, “You'll not take to a man orderin' you around, will you, Rachel Winslow. Lord help the poor fellow who tries to get
that
job done!”

“No hurry about me,” Rachel said; then she laughed and urged, “You'd better get your finery on, Mercy, or Praise God will have to wait for his bride—and he's not a man to wait for a woman long, is he now?”

She had just finished helping Mercy put on her wedding dress, a bodice dyed blue for constancy and an orange skirt. Some who came from England had the idea that the Separatists at Plymouth wore only black or gray, but that was only for meetings on Sabbath; most of them loved bright colors and decked themselves out with finery on every other occasion.

They heard the sound of singing and Rachel cried, “There they come!” Soon the air was filled with the sound of song,
and they went outside to be greeted by the marriage party. There were at least forty of them, every young person who could get free, for marriage was not a church matter to the Separatists, just as Christmas was not recognized as a religious holiday.

They proceeded to the large open space in front of the Common House, where the civil wedding was performed by Judge Haskell. A long prayer by Gilbert Winslow completed the ceremony.

“Now, for the cake!” Judge Haskell cried out, and he took up a large plain cake in his hands, and parted it by breaking it gently over Mercy's head. He tossed it out to the crowd in fragments, and there was a wild scramble, for it was considered a fine thing to gather up a piece of bridecake and put it under your pillow and dream of whom you were to wed.

As Rachel picked up a small piece, she heard a voice in her ear say, “Why settle for a dream, Rachel, when you can have the real man?”

She turned with a smile to face a tall fair-faced man with dark blue eyes in his large round face. “Why, David, is this a proposal?”

He laughed at her and there was admiration in his face, but caution, too. “Well, you've got enough poor devils wandering around moonstruck without adding me to the bedlamites.”

“I thought you'd back out, David Morris! You're no man!”

He stood there laughing at her, drinking in her fresh beauty and her wit, but like others, he wondered if it was quite
right
for a woman to be so witty.
Well enough for a man to have sharp wit, but would it be wearing to have a wife who was so sharp?
He admired her, but she saw the same reservation she'd seen in other men, and since she had no idea of marrying David Morris, it gave her pleasure to keep him off balance.

Noticing her grandfather standing close, listening to their conversation, she left young Morris to take his arm. She pulled him away, saying, “Let's go eat while the food's hot.”