The Captive Bride (3 page)

“What line is that, Uncle?”

“First we kill all the lawyers!” Edward remarked. “A sentiment I hold firm concord with after dealing with the breed for a lifetime and finding not enough honor for a squad in the whole profession!”

“The army then!” Matthew cried, his eyes piercing those of his uncle. “I'm not fit for the church, and the law, you say, isn't fit for me. Let me go for a soldier, Father!” He turned and held out one strong, square hand in a strange pleading gesture to Gilbert.

“Son, you can't mean that!” Gilbert protested, drawing nearer to Humility in an unconscious attempt to protect her, adding, “Your uncle will tell you it's impossible!”

“Why is it impossible?”

“Think, Matthew!” his uncle said intensely. “There
is
no army in England for you to serve in.” His face grew stern and he slapped the wooden table with a sharp gesture. “The Model Army of Cromwell was the finest body of fighting men on earth—but Cromwell is dead, and there is no man alive who can rally those troops. Within a year—if God doesn't do something—Charles II will be the ruling monarch of England, and if you think the son of a Puritan minister could serve in
that
army, you're a simpleton!” He had half risen in anger, but it was not at the boy in front of him, but at the fate of the England he loved. Now he settled back and forced himself to be calm.

“Not the army, Matthew.” It was a rare thing for a Winslow man to beg, but there was a pleading note in the older
man's voice as he said, “Matthew, give the church a try. You're young and think you have to have excitement. Very natural in a young fellow such as yourself. Your father was much the same,” he added with a smile.

“You've hit it, Uncle!” Matthew said at once. “I've heard stories all my life of you, Father! How you were the best swordsman in England, and how you fought duels and—”

“Son! Son!” Gilbert held up his hand and there was a horror on his face. “Don't call those days back! For heaven's sake, do you think I'm
proud
of them?” He shook his head, and let his head fall as he whispered, “I'd give my life to wipe out those wild days.”

Humility put her arm around him and said, “Hush! I won't hear it, Gilbert. You were not evil. You used your sword, yes, but in every case it was to right a wrong.”

“That's true, Brother,” Edward added. He waved his hand at the young man in front of him, saying, “He has your blood, Gilbert, and perhaps some of the faults that Winslow men seem prone to.”

“Are you saying he
should
go?” Gilbert asked in astonishment.

“No, certainly not! It's not my place to make such decisions for your family.” Then Edward rose and said, “I find myself more weary than I thought. Would you mind if I took my rest a little early?”

“You're sleeping with me in the loft, Uncle,” Matthew responded quickly. “I'll go make things ready.”

As he skimmed the stairs with agility, Humility suddenly sobbed, and Gilbert put his arms around her. “He's going to leave us!” she said in a broken voice.

Edward looked at the couple, not knowing what to say. He averted his head, and his glance fell on a sword hanging from a peg driven into the wall. He stepped to the wall, removed the sword and held it in his hands. “I haven't seen this in some time,” he remarked quietly. It was a rapier made by Clemens Hornn, once the greatest swordmaker in England.
He stroked its shallow guard, gleaming like a closing flower carved in steel, then traced the blade down to the tapering, murderous point.

“The boy has your skill with this, Gilbert,” he remarked quietly.

“Would God I'd never let him touch the thing! I would not teach him, as he begged me to do. But others did, and I allowed it—”

“You can't keep the boy locked up in a cage, Gilbert!”

“Yes, but—”

“Man, don't you remember
anything
about your youth?” Edward asked sharply. “You of all men ought to understand a little of the struggle the boy's going through!” He slapped the sword back on its peg, then turned and observed the pair with compassion, but with a severity in his face.

“You were forced into the church, remember? And what good did it do you, Gilbert? None! You gambled and ran after wenches day and night! And whom did you hate for it?”

Gilbert raised his head and said slowly, “You. I thought you talked Father into putting me into the church.”

“And whom do you suppose Matthew will hate if
he
is forced to follow the same path?”

Gilbert's face was pale, but he said steadily, “Me, of course. Do you think I haven't thought of that?”

Humility drew out of Gilbert's embrace and stared at Edward. “You have a thought, don't you, Edward?”

“I fear,” Edward shrugged, “there's no easy answer to this business—there never is! But you
must
see that it can't go on. Sooner or later the boy will go bad if he doesn't have some liberty.”

“What—what sort of ‘liberty' do you mean?” Humility asked.

“Not the law—and not the army!” He paused and began setting things in order in his mind, a custom they recognized. Finally he said, “Let him come to England with me—not to London, but to a small town where he'll be out of
some
temptation. I have a friend there, the pastor of the church. He was quite a worldly man at one time. Served as a Major in the Royalist Army for a time, and was pretty much of a gambler, a drunkard and a blasphemer. But that's different now. He's ‘Holy Mr. Gifford' now.”

“But—what would Matthew do there?”

“Study business, perhaps. At least that could be the excuse for his going. I have a man there who does very well in that way, and we could set Matthew under him. But I hope for better things.”

“Such as?” Gilbert asked.

“Such as Matthew growing older. And under the influence of a man like John Gifford, he will, I pray, find his way. I dare hope you will receive him back a candidate for the ministry in a few years.”

Gilbert glanced down at Humility with a strange look on his face, and Edward added at once, “As a matter of fact, it might be well for all of us to go. Why, it would be very good for you to go back to England—see old friends—”

“Gilbert could never leave his church, Edward,” Humility said. She stood there, thin and worn, but there was a light in her eyes that reminded both men of the fire she had had in her youth. “We will pray,” she added quietly. “God will give us His mind on this.”

As Edward turned to mount the stairs, Gilbert asked, “What place is this—where Reverend Gifford lives?”

“Bedford.”

“A small place?”

“Very small,” Edward assured him. “Matthew will be bored, but he will be safe. Nothing ever happens in Bedford.”

CHAPTER TWO

LYDIA

The 200-ton
Fortune
rose and fell with the rolling waves under an iron-gray sky. The crew stood by to weigh anchor, waiting only for the couple who had come aboard to have a final word with young Matthew Winslow.

Gilbert held Humility in a firm grasp to steady her against the motion of the ship, and with the other he held to the rail. His bright blue eyes scanned the face of his son as if he sought to find in the handsome features some portent of the boy's future. He raised his voice against the rising wind, saying, “God guide you, my boy. God make His face to shine on you.” The strong baritone softened to a lower pitch, and he held out his free hand to grasp that of his son, and he said, “Be faithful to God, Matthew! Never fail Him—never!”

Matthew nodded, marveling at the strength in his father's right hand, and he moved forward quickly to throw his free arm around his mother. As he bent to kiss her faded cheek, the thought that he might never see her again on earth swept through him, cutting his spirit more sharply than the stinging winds whipping across his face. He bit his lip and said impulsively, “Mother, if you ask me to stay...”

Humility raised her face to his, the dark blue of her eyes dominating her wasted face, and put one unsteady hand on his cheek. “You would never be happy here, son,” she murmured so quietly that he had to lean forward to catch her words. Her hand lifted to push a lock of his reddish-blonde hair back from where it fell in his eyes. There was something
so familiar in the gesture that the lump in his throat grew unbearable and his eyes stung with unshed tears.

“Only a year, Mother,” he finally whispered, gathering her in his arms and fighting off the dismay her fragile form triggered in him. “Just a year!”

“Time to go,” Gilbert said quietly. “The captain must catch the tide.”

Humility pulled away from Matthew's grasp and looked up one last time. “Christians never say goodbye, son,” she said, and touched his cheek once more. “Just until we meet again.”

Then she turned and Gilbert handed her down the ladder into the boat, aided by a burly sailor. He started down, and when just his head and broad shoulders were visible he caught his son's eye, raised his hand in a curious gesture, as though he were flourishing a sword. A smile broke the austerity of his face, making him look very young in the clear sea air, and he called out loudly, “Be faithful, my boy! Be true to God—and to yourself!”

Then he was gone, and Matthew turned blindly and walked toward the forecastle. He heard the thumping sound as the sailors shoved the small boat off, but did not stop until he had found a place of solitude along the forward rail. The first mate cried out, “Weigh anchor!” and the rattle of the chains struck sharply on his ear. He bent over the rail, his lungs filling with the sharp briny air faintly mixed with the odors of land, the loamy smell of raw earth. “Hoist the mainsail!” came the cry of the mate, and slowly the ship heeled over, her prow turning away from the land.

As the sails slid up, the wind caught them, and filled them with puffs of air that cracked like whips. The riggings creaked, and suddenly the ship caught the breeze and lifted like a living thing to breast the waves, leaving the land behind.

“Give them a wave, boy!”

Matthew wheeled to face his uncle, who motioned toward the receding shore. “See? They're waving at us.”

Matthew turned to see the small figures of his parents,
still in the boat, both of them lifting their arms in a gesture that was sadder than anything he'd known all his days. But he lifted his arms and waved strongly, continuing until the small boat touched the shore. As it did the ship shifted and he could see the small craft no more.

“I'm a fool, Uncle Edward!” he said bitterly, his lips twisted into a grimace of pain. “What kind of man would leave his mother behind, sick as she is?”

“A
young
fool, I suppose,” the older man said gently. He put his arm around Matthew's shoulders in a gesture of affection, which was unusual for him, and added, “Never grieve over past decisions, Matthew. There'll be no end of it if you do—and it never changes things.”

His uncle's words stayed with Matthew in the three weeks that followed, as the
Fortune
nudged her way across the rutted surface of the gray Atlantic. For a few days he kept to his cabin, surfacing only to eat, then to stand beside the rail, his eyes fixed on the unseen land they were leaving far behind. He made a lonely figure, but his uncle was wise enough to let time heal the worst of the parting grief. Finally, since no emotion can be sustained forever at such a pitch, Matthew began to recover, and day by day as the ship drew closer to England, his spirit lightened.

He spent the days watching the sailors scamper like monkeys up the shrouds to trim the sails. He listened for hours to his uncle tell of the first voyage in the
Mayflower,
of the hardships of that terrible first year when half the colonists died. “We finally had to bury our dead at night—so the Indians wouldn't know how we had dwindled to nothing,” he told his nephew one night as they stood at the stern watching the broken reflection of stars shatter like diamonds in the wake of the ship.

“I marvel any of you ever had the courage to go,” Matthew said.

His uncle thought about it, then raised his fist and struck
the rail with a sudden sharp blow. “We had to have God, Matthew!”

“I—I thought it was land and freedom.”

“No! It was God that we hungered for!” The older man paused, then smiled gently in the silver moonlight. His eyes gleamed and he gave a small laugh. “We were all fools for God in those days!” Then he told more about how Matthew's father had found God, and had turned down a life of ease in the service of Lord North to become a poor preacher. “He could have married Cecily, Lord North's daughter,” he added idly. “He was quite a ladies' man in those days.” A thought struck him and he said slyly, “Like you, I suppose.”

Matthew flushed and was glad for the covering darkness. He changed the subject quickly. “Tell me about Bedford.”

For the rest of the trip the two talked a great deal, but after they landed at Southampton, made the trip by coach toward the north, Matthew's spirits were dashed by his first view of the small village his uncle indicated. “There it is, boy. That's Bedford.”

“It's... small, isn't it?” Matthew said. Perhaps if he had not seen Southhampton first, he would have not been so disappointed. Bedford was composed of a scattering of half-timbered houses, all with thatched roofs. They followed only a very slight sort of plan, seeming to have been thrown like a group of dice to rest at random where they landed. The one road more or less connected many of the houses, but in the center of the village, Young Winslow saw, was a more structured look. “That's the Mote Hall,” his uncle said, indicating a large two-story building with high-pitched gables crowning the over-hanging second stories. “Most of our large meetings take place there.”