The Captive Bride (14 page)

“You give these young men a time, Rachel,” he said with a smile.

“You've spoiled me, Grandfather,” she laughed up at him. “When I find a man as handsome and as witty as you, I'll submit at once!” She looked at him with a smile, half-serious, for he was still a fine-looking man at the age of 75. The auburn hair had some silver in it, but was still thick and smooth over his neck, and the lines in his angular face only made it look stronger than ever. His wide-set bright blue eyes, undimmed by age, gleamed from under bushy brows. He moved easily, his tall frame still strong enough to walk most young men into the ground.

“You'll have to settle for what you can get, girl,” he jibed with a sudden smile that made him look much younger. “You're pretty enough, but you've scared most of the suitors off with your pert tongue.”

“If they're afraid of a woman's tongue, they won't do for me!” she retorted.

He could never argue with her for long, this beautiful granddaughter of his. He had been the first to hold her after she was born, the only grandchild he'd have on this earth, and although he'd hoped for a grandson to carry on the family name, he had lost his heart to the red, squalling bit of humanity—part French, part English, and for fourteen years he had made her his chief interest in life, taking second place only to his loyalty to God.

They came to the great table laden with roast venison, roast turkey, fricasse of chicken, beef hash, boiled fish, stuffed cod, pigeons, boiled eels, Indian pudding, succotash, roast goose stuffed with chestnuts, pumpkin pies, apple tarts and to wash it all down, beer, cider, claret, flip, brandy, and sack posset.

As they ate Gilbert said, “I'm going to the Indian camp tomorrow.”

“Oh, take me with you!”

He grinned at her and said, “Who wants to make a hard journey to a dirty old Indian camp filled with fleas?” He
laughed at the color which had risen to her cheeks. “You couldn't intend to stop by and see Jude Alden, I don't suppose?”

“Why, I suppose, since it's on the way ...”

He smiled at her, knowing her as well in some ways as he knew himself. “You little minx! Think I don't read that devious little head of yours?”

“Can I go, Grandfather?”

“I suppose. Someday you're going to ask me for something I won't give you!”

She smiled up at him, and he said impulsively, “You're very much like your father—when you smile, I see him in my mind's eye as clearly as I see you.”

Her eyes opened wide, and she stared at the old man, for he almost never mentioned her father. “Do I really look like him, Grandfather?”

“Not so much as you look like your mother—which is God's blessing!” he added, and as always Rachel marveled that the only bitterness she had ever seen in Gilbert Winslow found its object in his son, Matthew. She had heard the whole story of his short marriage to her mother and his death. When her mother had first told her of her father's sad end, she had cried for days, then ended up hating him. She never reasoned it out that she despised him for being a coward, or for depriving her of a normal family. Inside she kept her feelings buried, but it always shocked her to see her grandfather subject to any fault, and now she stood there marveling at this one flaw in his otherwise perfect character.

He said hastily, “Be ready early, child, it's a long trip.”

He left, and all afternoon during the dances and festivities, Rachel could not help thinking of her father—even as Praise God carried Mercy over the threshold as the sun was going down. As the custom was, the rosy-faced couple sat in bed dressed in their shifts, and the young people took turns standing at the foot of the bed throwing socks over their shoulders. The belief was that if a sock thrown by a girl hit
the bride, or one thrown by a boy hit the groom, it was a sign of a speedy marriage.

When Rachel threw a sock that hit Mercy square in the face, a scream went up, and she ran from the room with her hands over her ears to shut out the rather crude jokes that always accompanied such a feat.

She made her escape from the crowd and walked along the rocky beach. Soon she passed beyond the large rock where it was said the first of the Pilgrims set foot when alighting from the
Mayflower.

Weary of the wild singing and loud merry-making, she let the quiet of the isolated beach flow over her. The crashing of the surf punctuated the silence and the cry of the gulls melded with them. She loved this coast, this beach, and for a long time she made her way aimlessly, picking up a shell to examine its intricate whorls, then tossing it back to the sandy beach.

You're very like your father sometimes.
The words of her grandfather came back to her, and she tried again to imagine what he had been like. There was no portrait at all, of course. Few people had such things, for they were expensive. The one portrait her grandfather had was a beautiful oil painting of his brother Edward, the older brother he'd been so close to. Rachel's mother had told her once that her father had looked very much like Gilbert and his brother. “All Winslow men look alike, they say. But you take after me.”

She thought then of her mother, who spoke of her father in a general way, but Rachel could never get beneath the impenetrable surface of Lydia Winslow's manner—in this one matter. Once Rachel remembered saying in exasperation, “Mother, you never tell me anything
important
about my father. Just little things!”

She thought of that conversation as she climbed the hill that led to the house she shared with her mother and grandfather, and her powerful gift of imagination brought it back to her as clearly as if it were painted on a canvas before her.
She saw her mother's smooth face suddenly break in some minute way, and her eyes dropped. Finally she said with just a suggestion of a tremor in her voice, “We had so
little
time, Rachel! Just a few months, and then he was—gone.”

“Did he love you?” Rachel heard her young voice piping back to the present.

Her mother looked up, her eyes moist as she whispered, “Oh, yes, child, yes! He loved me at first—but later ...” She had suddenly straightened up and said in a tone almost harsh, “He's gone Rachel, and it grieves me to speak of it.”

Rachel reached the house, a new “salt box” that Gilbert Winslow built when a chimney fire destroyed the tiny house he had built in 1622, when he and Humility had first been married. She passed through the front door into a short entrance hall; to the left was a combined kitchen and dining room, but she turned right into the common room where she found her mother entertaining Mr. Oliver Bradford, the grandson of the famous governor, John Bradford.

“Well, did you get the young folks married, Rachel?” he asked, getting up as she entered. He was a robust man of 46, slightly less than medium height, with brown hair cut short and warm brown eyes. He had always been partial to Rachel, and since the death of his wife, her willingness to spend time with his young children had made him value her even more.

“Oh, they're tied together forever, Mr. Bradford,” she smiled. “Happy as larks and poor as church mice!”

“Ah, but Praise God is so much in love, he'd never notice a thing,” Lydia laughed. She was dressed in black, as she always was, but the sober garb only seemed to set off her beauty. Her cheeks were as rosy as a girl's, as were her full lips. Many young women were put to despair when they took in her slender, rounded figure, for at the age of 32, time seemed not to have touched her. Her grandfather had said once, “Rachel, if I didn't know better, I'd think your mother was a witch! It's
unearthly
how she simply refuses to get old—why, she looks exactly the same as she did before you were born!”

Indeed, the dark beauty of Lydia Winslow had drawn men to her for years, but she had never shown the slightest interest in marriage. When Deacon Charles Milton had courted her in vain, Gilbert had said, “Well, Charles has looks, money, charm, and is a godly man, Lydia. If
he
won't do, who will?”

His daughter-in-law had only smiled at him, and gone to carry food to a hungry family. The church had become her life, and though many had said that an unmarried man like Gilbert Winslow would have trouble with her, she had spiked those guns by being a handmaiden of the Lord in a way that nobody could fault.

“Did you manage to give the bride a touch with the sock?” Bradford asked with a smile.

“Yes, but I'm waiting for a man like you or my grandfather to come along,” Rachel shot back. Glancing slyly at her mother, she asked innocently, “Did you two settle anything?”

Oliver Bradford had been slow in making his decision. It had been over a year since his wife died, but his sudden frequent calls on Lydia Winslow had been a little too obvious. Everyone in the settlement knew he had made up his mind to marry Lydia Winslow.

His sharp-featured face flushed, and he answered, “We— have talked somewhat, but your mother is reluctant.” He rose, suddenly uncomfortable, and took his leave. Lydia followed him to the door, and they said a few words that Rachel could not catch.

When Lydia returned, she said, “You shouldn't tease people, Rachel.”

“Why don't you marry him, Mother?” Rachel asked suddenly. She came to look closely into Lydia's face, and then, seeing a trace of confusion, she added a question she had wondered about for years. “I've wondered why you never married—but then, everybody has. Is it because you're still in love with my father?”

“No!” Lydia answered brusquely. “No, that would be
foolish, Rachel. I shall never marry because I believe that God has called me to live a single life.”

“Don't you need a man, Mother?” she asked, then flushed suddenly and stammered, “I—I mean ...”

Lydia threw back her head and laughed, and it made a merry sound in the room. “That's one of the few times I've ever seen you blush, Rachel!” She put her arm around the young woman, a younger edition of herself, and laughing, added, “I thought you were much too grown up and ‘advanced' to be embarrassed by a reference to what the deacons call ‘the intimacies of the connubial bed'!” Then she saw that the girl was really stricken, and she stopped laughing, saying softly, “Most women do need a man, just as a man needs a woman, Rachel. But Paul says, ‘The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit.' That is what I will do, Rachel—and it is not hard, for we have such a loving Bridegroom!”

Her mother had always had such a close and intimate walk with God that Rachel had learned more from just being around her than from all the sermons she'd heard in church. Lydia Winslow could pray and God would answer. Rachel had learned when she was just toddling that when she scraped her knee or injured herself, she could run to her mother, and as she prayed and rubbed the injury, the pain went away. She never called it “healing”; indeed, she never called it anything; she just did it. Rachel had come to take her mother's faith for granted, and never questioned her about it.

“Well, Mother, what about me?” Rachel asked suddenly. “I'm going with Grandfather to the Indian Village, and you know I don't give a pin about that. I'm thinking a lot of Jude.”

She had always been an honest girl, and as Lydia looked into her eyes, she was thankful that her daughter had confidence enough in her to speak her heart.

“He's getting to be quite prosperous, I hear. How much land does he own now?”

“I don't know. I told him once he just wanted
all
the land
that joins his, and he got embarrassed. But I don't care about land, Mother.”

“What
do
you care about, Rachel?” Lydia asked quietly.

Rachel stood there in surprise. The question had caught her off guard and it went through her quick mind. Finally she said, “I don't know, but I want to do
something!
”

Lydia Winslow bit her lip, then said slowly, “That's your father, Rachel. He was exactly like that.”

“Am I like him, Mother?”

“You have some of my French impulsiveness, but it's not that I fear.”

“What then?”

Lydia gazed at her daughter steadily. “It's the Winslow blood. Your grandfather may seem to you the most steady man in the world, but when he was your age, he was
wild!
And my Matthew had the same restlessness. It sometimes skips a generation, Gilbert tells me, but you have it, Rachel—and that's why I've wanted to see you marry early.”

“So I'll have a husband to keep me from running wild?”

“You laugh at that, but I've seen it happen. Your father was for me all that I could ever desire—but the Winslow blood was strong, and—I lost him. I can't lose you, Rachel! Not you, too!”

Rachel suddenly found her mother's arms around her, holding to her fiercely as if to protect her from some sudden danger.

Finally Lydia drew back and said gently, “Well, I've wanted to say these things to you for a long time. Now you think I'm just a nervous old woman worried about her only chick.”

“No.” Rachel stared at her mother, and for the first time in her life, she saw her as a woman—not a mother, just as a woman, and it saddened her.

CHAPTER TEN

KING PHILIP

Rachel left the house when the east was barely tinged with the red light of dawn, and was delighted to discover John Sassamon standing beside her grandfather, his bronzed Indian features a welcome sight. “John! You're back!” She ran to greet him, and in an uncharacteristic move he embraced her. It was a rare gesture; women and men who were not related never embraced, but it was even more unusual for an Indian to show such feeling for a white woman.

But John Sassamon was not a typical Indian by any means. He had been reared in a community of Christian Indians at Natick, fifteen miles west of Boston, and had studied at Harvard. Then in a crisis of identity, perhaps, he had rejoined his native Indians in the wilderness. He served as an aide to Philip Metacomet, the son of Massasoit.