Chapter 7
Littleton and Shepperton
31 Jul THE MANOR HOUSE
’Twas here in a strange land that I looked at the grandest house ever seen. Built of light coloured bricks, it stretched out the length of two or three ships the size of the Black Swan. There were many large windows of glass on the ground floor and above, about twelve, as I recall. Thinking that I should find the servants’ entrance, I made my way around to the rear of the building—only to stand in deathlike silence. My head comprehended not the enormity of it all.
There were three giant peaks, as if three red Dutch houses were standing side by side, the taller peaks on each side forcing the smaller middle house toward the back. The sloped roof stretched across all three parts. I fancied the middle house to be a huge bird whose shadowy wings, the outer houses, would assoon stretch out and wrap around me in a suffocating heap of feathers.
Another much smaller window with its own, tiny peaked roof sat over the top of the middle house. A few steps led to a shiny, green door, rounded at the top and ornamented all over. That door was the beak of my imagined bird. In truth, the beak was the red head of a fierce, sharp‐toothed animal that peered out from the center of the door. A huge yellow ring hung from its mouth. Indeed, this place was no servants’ entrance.
1 Aug DOVE
I have let my mind mull over that first day in England. I shall try to relive it here with my quill. The story is not quickly told.
There, before that door, I lingered, wondering what next to do. There was not a sound from inside the house. My fretting deepened with every passing moment. A ship-tossed voyage and a bone‐rattling carriage ride brought me at last to a new world. Yet, just when the thrill of arrival at my splendid new house should have lifted my spirit, I felt alone, abandoned.
During those moments, I remember seeing a dove alight on the roof. The dove, looking downe, saw a strange girl in a bewildering land called England. I am certain that it tooke pity on me, pacing aimlessly, each tyme passing by that strange creature with a ring in its nose. Ever since my childhood, the mournful call of a dove has had a powerful calming effect on me. Now, I listened closely.
Curiously, the song of this dove was different. It gave out three short Coo sounds followed by a long, melodious wobbling C’hoo‐hoo‐hoo. My doves sounded the same except that the wobbling part came first and was followed by three Coo’s. So, even the birds in England speak in a different way.
More things caught my attention. Appearing slowly onto an expanse of short grass were some animals with thick, curly hair. They nibbled quietly as they moved along, looking up from the grass now and then and offering an occasional Ba-aaa. Well then, of course! They were sheep, the creatures with which Katrina and I had practiced our numbers. Amazed I was also to see rows of trees bordering the grass. They grew in a straight line at evenly spaced intervals. This was unnatural to my mind.
My arrival marked the first day of seven years that helped mold my clay and determine my future. They would leave me dangling perilously at the sharp edge between two worlds.
2 Aug DROUGHT
My mountain brook is dry! ’Tis now but a narrow bed of pebbles. Only the early morning dew moistens the moss along its banks. Empty of water are my gourds. A parched tongue will force me now to take that walk to the lake.
3 Aug LAKE
A terrible hardship it was to find the water. The long trudge was tedious and painful, but my feelings were uplifted at the sight of the lake! With a grateful prayer to Spirit of the Water, I let the precious drops slide onto my tongue. My presence disturbed a loon underfoot. It sputtered, half-running and half-flying, across the lake and soared up and out of sight. Having filled my gourds and made my bed of moss, I stretched out for the night, listening to the voice of another loon far away — Hooooaaa. Hooooaaa. Perhaps it was the same loon. I gave thanks for the wonder of a sky full of stars and the soft lapping of water along the shore.
Dawn. A shimmering mist rolled across the lake. My mouth parched no longer, I began the long climb back. Every bone talked to me as one step fell stiffly in front of the other. No, I was no longer the nimble young girl who bounced along a woodland trail so long ago. But return I did before nightfall, more than a trifle pleased with my day.
4 Aug RAIN
How mocking can be the conditions of life! It rained steadily during the night. For a long tyme at daybreak I just stared at the happy sight of a leaf quivering at the touch of a raindrop. Never more will I complain of too much rain.
5 Aug HAROLD
I begin now to write more of my first day in England and then of all the days in this country. My recollections of words exchanged with the people of England may not be exact, but I will try to give an account of what was said so long ago.
The long wait outside the great house stretched on. Finally, I decided to return to the other side. At the exact moment that I turned the corner, a human figure appeared. Noses neerely bumped. A man, startled, spilled some vegetables from a basket. Both of us stood frozen for a moment.
His hair was combed downe in front to form a short fringe. His eyes squinted beneath thick, shaggy brows. His beard was neatly trimmed to a point. An apron of well-worn leather covered his front. Not young, not old, neither plump nor slender was he. Perhaps, best said, ordinary in appearance, I was to learn over tyme that he was an extraordinary man indeed.
Speaking slowly, awkwardly as if talking to a ghost, he managed to ask, “You are, may I presume, from New Amsterdam?” He paused an instant after each word. His tongue, perhaps too large for his mouth, caused the words to slur. A quick twitch of his head and an eye blink at the same time did not help.
Groping for words in the English way of speaking, “Aye. I am called Sky Flower.” It was much comfort to know that someone knew of me.
“Harold is my name,” said he with a slight bow, againe stretching out each word for my sake. “Oh, I am so very clumsy. My thoughts were elsewhere. I beg of you to forgive me.”
In my muddled English, I returned something to the effect that ‘twas I who was at fault. Those weeks of learning from Bertrand had now suddenly become my heartfelt blessing.
“How went your journey?” asked Harold, again speaking slowly.
I told him that the journey was long, that crossing the ocean is not easy. He seemed a bit surprised and even pleased, to hear me stumble with words that might pass for English.
Harold explained that he was a gardener at the Manor House of Lord and Lady Walsingham, excusing himself to stoop to pick up spilled vegetables.
“What is a gardener?” asked I with child‐like innocence.
“My duty,” answered he in solemn tone, “is to care for the plants. The Walsingham family is very fond of plants…flowers and trees bearing fruit.”
I did not question further but held the thought that if these people cared so much, why did they themselves not take care of them. I had much to learn about this place called England.
The voice of Harold was soft-spoken, yet it had a stuttering way about it. His gray eyes met mine in an agreeable manner. Of him, there will be a continuing story.
6 Aug SERENA
“Come,” Harold beckoned, “I will take you to meet the Chief Housekeeper. She will instruct you on the ways of our Manor House.” Harold led me around to an outbuilding, past chickens underfoot and into a hot and crowded room. Ablaze on the far side was a fireplace of gigantic size. I was now in the kitchen where many people sat elbow to elbow around a large table, quietly eating.
On my appearance, all eyes instantly turned toward me as if I were a visitor from another world. Indeed, I was! A raw‐boned, tense‐faced woman of middle age, hair drawn back into a tight knot, rose from the table. She came to stand directly in front of me: tall, slender, straight and stiff as a tree, holding her arms to her side.
Harold bowed, saying to her, “I bring you Sky Flower. She arrives from the colonies.” To me, he said aside, “May God give you good day.” With these words he backed away, leaving me to be inspected by the woman‐like‐a‐tree.
7 Aug BERTHA
“I am Chief Housekeeper Serena,” said the woman. “We have been expecting you.” With a searing eye she looked me over from top to bottom. “They say you have a good head. I hear that you learn quickly.” That “good head,” as I remember, started to spin. “Well,” she went on, “we shall see.” These few words spoken, she clapped her hands, calling, “Bertha!”
The call brought a girl, about my age, promptly from the table. Bertha gave a quick bow of her head with knees bent. Serena instructed curtly, “Show this one to her room. Give her a housedress and an apron. See that she follows the rules of the house.” The unsmiling woman tooke a few steps away, then looked back, saying, still without rise or fall in her voice, “She must then return to eat. And mind the candles,” I remember her saying.
8 Aug GREAT HALL
Bertha, I noticed immediately, had unsmiling lips. Not a word was exchanged between us, whilst she led me outside past the chickens and into another side of the great house. Here was a swinging door without an animal head.
Inside, I beheld a grand room, larger than either the meeting longhouse of our village or the groggery of the Hoevenberg inn. I perceived myself in a dream in which I was floating giddily into a gigantic cavern, struggling to breathe, while watching out for flying bats. Of these, I saw none.
Holding a lighted candle, my guide led me through the spacious hall. There was no place in New Amsterdam that could compare with this house or these furnishings. I was awed by the magnificence of it all.
In front of large windows stood tables adorned with flowers. Candles in holders along each wall cast weird shadows across the room. An upright post stood in the middle of the room, whilst heavy beams crisscrossed the ceiling. On either side of a fireplace was a high‐backed chair pillowed in purple velvet. Other chairs were yellow in colour. Scattered across the dark walls were paintings of men and women in splendid attire, all life‐like as they looked out into the Great Hall.
Against the wall on the far end stood a tall, narrow box. It had a round face on which there were numbers. Below was a shiny, clicking disk that rocked from side to side. Before the day was over, I learned that my day would no longer beginne with the rise of the sunne and end with its setting. Now, this wondrous instrument ran the tempo of life at the Manor House.
9 Aug LORD OF THE MANOR
Although there was much in this great room to dazzle the eye, what I remember most on that first day was an aroma: the strong blend of rose perfume, ashes, leather, and oils. Even today, I can close my eyes and bring back that powerful mix of smells that I came to know so well.
Suddenly, a man wearing a bright red coat entered the room. He was as wide as he was tall, and he was tall. Bertha quickly moved to stand with her back tight against the wall, her blown‐out candle held close, and with the other hand pressing me to do the same, heads bowed, until the man passed out of view through another door. There is more to be writ of this man, the Lord of the Manor House.
Bertha then relit her candle against a burning one. We proceeded across a floor of wide planks to a stairway on the far side. As we climbed the steps, my fingertips, dragged along the wall feeling its smooth surface. It was not like the roughly sawn boards of the Hoevenberg home and not like the inner bark sides of a longhouse. Instead, it seemed more like the rounded flat rocks found in a mountain streame.
10 Aug BEDCHAMBER
Halfway up, the stairs tooke a turn at a broad landing. Here was a splendid window with glass. Katrina had spoken of families of great wealth in Holland who covered their windows with glass. So, here, too, in England were glass windows in houses bearing great wealth. How impressed I was to look out and see the sheep grazing quietly and a winding streame beyond! With each step on the way to my own room, I felt a thrill. It seemed that my nose, my fingers, and my eyes all were part of this joyful feeling: smelling new scents, feeling the smooth wall under fingertips, and seeing through windows of glass. And so elated, I continued up the stairs behind silent Bertha and her candle.
On the upper floor a narrow passageway led to a wooden ladder at the far end. There, we climbed to a small and cheerless room above. I looked around with a sinking feeling. The shutter of the tiny window, without glass, was only partially opened. The middle of the room, which came to a point on top, was the only place where I could stand at my full length.
“Your bedchamber,” were Bertha’s first words to me. A mattress lay in the middle. And so, it seemed, I would return to sleeping on the floor as I did in Katrina’s room. “Kinshasa sleeps here, too.” My little bed was meant to share with another! “This chest,” said Bertha, pointing to one of two knee‐high wooden boxes, “is for you.” At that moment I realized that I had not come to England to live in luxury beside the Queen. How foolish I was ever to imagine so.
11 Aug SERVANTS’ TABLE
Bertha rummaged through “my” wooden box from which she drew out some clothing. She bade me put on a gray dress, and over that, a white apron. My tied‐under‐chin bonnet would stay on. In the space of an instant, the free‐spirited, dancing Wilde girl from the forest an ocean away became a shorn housemaid‐in‐training. Well, if my fate was to be a servant, I promised myself, “Be the best servant ever.” A promise I would find not easy to keep.
By the tyme we returned to the kitchen, everyone except the Chief Housekeeper and two of the kitchen workers had left. The table was still heavy with enormous quantities of food. There were roasted sides of meat, duck and other birds, fish big and small, along with scallops, lobsters, and eels. There were a few vegetables, mostly peas and radishes. Chunks of dark, coarse bread were laid out on one table, whilst fruit of all kinds, on another. A huge pitcher of cider sat on a third table. My eyes bulged. I would never forget the ghastly stews on the ship.
“Go. Help yourself.” The urging voice of Serena startled me, as she handed me a wooden trencher. “The Walsinghams believe that good labor requires good food.” The true meaning of these words was assoon to come to me.
12 Aug MILDRED
I did help myself, eating heartily and sampling almost everything. I stopped when I was too engorged to move. Stuffed or not, I found myself anon in a large room with tiled walls. On the floor sat two great tubs of wood. I was assoon elbow deepe in water, scrubbing sheets, aprons, and underclothing, all under the strict oversight of Mildred, the Chief Laundry Maid. She barely said a word, preferring, it seemed, to hum a tune and occasionally give a grunt or a curse.
13 Aug LAUNDRY
Hot water filled the big troughs. Added in handfuls were caustic soda ashes from wood. Added, too, was a glob of animal fat in each batch. I learned quickly how to turn sheets around as they soaked. Next came pounding them with wooden mallets, then pressing them between two turning metal drums to squeeze out both the water and the wrinkles. Most especially, we had to take care of the white linen shirts. Once the washing was done, we needed to hang everything out to dry in what little sunne shine there was left. For this purpose, ropes were stretched between trees. Mildred watched me at every task the way a soaring hawk keeps its gaze on a darting field mouse.
As nightfall approached, a great uproar arose just outside the laundry: dogs barking wildly, many horses clopping, carriages clanging, and men shouting. Naturally curious, I moved toward the door, only to be drawn back by Mildred’s hand hooked around my elbow. Such a tumult, I was later to learn, was caused by the Lord and his guests returning from another hunting party. I was to give it no attention.
14 Aug KINSHASA
My bedmate turned out to be a wisp of a girl named Kinshasa. I had seen her earlier in the kitchen cutting vegetables. After my release from the laundry, I climbed the ladder carefully, ever fearful of losing my grip on the candle. I found her already lying in our bed. Hushing me with a finger across her lips, she gestured that I should take off my shoes and place them gently on the floor. (Oh, the joy of taking off those tight shoes!) Then with extended arm, she showed me where I was to walk and where I was to place each step. Slowly I made my way across the room at the instruction of her pointed finger.
As we lay together in our small lumpy bed, the candle blown out, I learned that talking had to be in whispers. Some of the floorboards creaked when stepped upon. Lord and Lady Walsingham slept directly under our room. Any noise from above would be dealt with in a way most harsh.
Kinshasa was a name of her birth home in Africa. I remember that Katrina had fancied one day traveling through all the jungles of that continent. Whispering, Kinshasa told me that as a young child she had come with her mother on a trading ship to England. She remembered nothing of her life in Africa, only the terrible voyage across the ocean. Upon arrival in London she never saw her mother againe.
How long had she served in the Walsingham household? She did not know, but a long time, for certain. She started to tell me about the Master and Mistress of the manor and their children, but her voice soon faded. Anon, she drifted off to sleep. Of course, my English at the tyme allowed me to understand only a little. And in this manner ended my first day in England.
15 Aug RIVER ASH
On the first morning of my new life I remember pushing aside the shutters of that tiny window. I saw the meadow where sheep grazed, and in the distance, a streame. I came to know that this was the same window writ about yesterday, the window that sat by itself atop my imagined middle house.
The bright sunne of morning also gave me my first true look at Kinshasa. She was tall and singularly slender. Most astonishing was the striking color of her skin, as black as a bough of scorched pine and as smooth and shiny as freshly melted pitch. Taut skin around the broad cheekbones, white teeth perfectly set in rows, and large flashing eyes gave Kinshasa stunning beauty. Was she just a kitchen servant? No, there was something else about Kinshasa that was extraordinary. Her gift of imagination! But of her gushing fancy, another tyme.
More of the laundry. The working day beganne at six of the clock. Bundles of soiled linen came into the washroom twice every day. At the end of each wash, I had to empty the tubs of water, now murky and gray, into large buckets. It was my further duty to empty them into the little River Ash. My heart ached as I watched laundry waste spread out and slowly drift downe-streame. Always, I stayed by the riverside until assured that the streame water had turned clear once more.
There was never enough water. Whenever soiled clothes and sheets were not piled high for washing, I was expected to fetch water from a hole in the ground. The hole was surrounded on top by a waist high circle of stones. A bucket with a coiled rope tied to its handle sat on one stone. Mildred showed me how to drop it into the hole whilst holding onto the rope. The bucket plunked into the darkness below. I then drew the bucket up by winding the rope around a post, using a crank turned by hand.
16 Aug WELL
My first try at fetching water beganne with fascination for such a clever device. How easy it was to crank up a bucket full of water, but here is where I made a grievous error that plagues me to this day. Not realizing how heavy a full bucket was, I lifted it by the handle with one hand. The bucket slipped out of my grip, falling to the pool far below, whilst the crank spun around madly. The long handle caught me on my pointer finger. Oh, what pain! Now, the finger tooke a sharp bend to the side. Mildred looked at it with barely a murmur, sending me to Chief Housekeeper Serena who shrugged, saying, “So, you are already causing problems. Your duties will continue as best you can.” There was a brief pause before she added, “You may go now.”
My Mohawk life had tempered me to hardships, even with my advantage of birth. Yet, I hardly imagined such indifference to a broken finger. In the blink of the eye the shaman would have wrapped it snugly for healing.
With a throbbing finger and many sleepless nights, I suffered grievously. Where was the little girl who spent her days drawing pretty pictures on the ground under a shade tree?--the little girl who brushed her hair and decorated herself for much of a day?—the little girl who felt as free as the winde?
17 Aug INDOOR AND OUTDOOR SERVANTS
On late nights, though both of us weary, Kinshasa would tell me something of the household. In addition to the immediate family there were two aged aunts, one of whom was mad, never seen but sometymes heard screaming during the night. I learned that all the other people at the Manor House were laborers of one sort or another. Their work was to make life easier for the family. Simply, the Walsinghams were served, the others did the serving.
Kinshasa told me that fifteen people made up the servant household. There were six housemaids, one seamstress, three cooks, two laundry maids, a minder of the children and, of course, the chief housekeeper. I was meant to replace one of the laundry maids, a girl recently dismissed for rude behavior, the nature of which I never learned.
Kinshasa did not mention Harold so, of course, I inquired. “Harold,” she informed me, “tends to the gardens. He belongs to those working out of doors.” My astonishment grew as Kinshasa counted off other servants who worked in special outbuildings. These were the brewery, the bakehouse, the stables where horses and a mule were kept, and the storehouse. Then, there were the blacksmith and his helper who made horseshoes and wheels, the stablemen and a nice boy named Ezra who brushed the horses after a hunt, and finally a man charged with ridding the estate of rats and other pests. There were also seven cows tended by a dairymaid. How many out of doors workers there were, Kinshasa knew not.
I gave my opinion that the Walsinghams must care very much about their servants, judging from the great amount of food served at each meal. Kinshasa admitted, her whispered voice becoming even more hushed, that the Lord and the Lady cared little about the workers as long as the work of the household was done. “You will tell no one I tell you, yes? No one!” She hesitated for a moment but did not wait for a reply. “They believe that servants who are half-starved work feebly. Yet bellies too full, they say, make servants lazy. Remember, too, that all that food is left from the dinners we prepare for the family and for their guests. On days without visitors our tables are not plentiful.”
“There is a saying,” Kinshasa whispered, “A servant needs to have the back of a donkey to bear the burden of hard work, the snout of a pig to eat leftover cold food and sour wine, and the ear of a cow to suffer in silence the abuse of the master.” After a moment of thoughtful silence, Kinshasa added, “Now, I said not a word, did I?”
18 Aug AT WATER’S EDGE
One duty brought a trifle of joy, even in the weeks it tooke my throbbing finger to mend. Whenever there was an extraordinary bulk of laundry, oft after days of many guests, the laundry lines stretched out almost to the streame. I looked forward to working at the water’s edge. There I would be able to see the ferns, the moss‐covered boulders, and the feathery trees drooping over the water! Oh, how I had missed my world of mountains and flowers! The steady hum of flowing water brought back a sense of my earlier life, and from its gurgling rhythms I found inner strength.
19 Aug RULES
My first lesson at the Manor House concerned the rules for servants. Each one had to follow them fully and without question under threat of thrashing by words or worse. The reader can guess that I did not adjust to the rules easily. Perhaps I was amused by the folly of it all. Here were some of the rules for all servants to obey:
Oh, I cannot remember all the other rules but there were many. And may God have mercy on whoever should forget even one of them! If these silly courtesies were all a game between betters and lessers, then play along I could.
20 Aug INHERITED TITLE
At first, I understood not why the Walsinghams did not take care of themselves. They required many people to tend to their needs. In tyme I learned from Kinshasa that there were people of privilege in England. Such people of wealth can procure the services of poor people, as if they were objects for trade, much the way a canoe full of pelts can fetch an iron kettle or blanket.
I learned, too, that long before, the father of Lord Walsingham had been a grand warrior in a fierce battle. For that, the Queen gave him the title of Lord and rewarded him with property, including this house. Moreover, she gave him money. Lord John used it to buy more land from the humble farmers in the area. To stay on the land, they were compelled to labor for him for low wages. All this, his reward for bravery in battle, not like that of a Mohawk warrior whose brave deed might earn him the honor to wear the feather of an eagle in his headband.
When the Lord died, his oldest son, named John II, inherited the estate that included the house and land, all the servants, guardianship of the two aunts, and the respected title of Lord. In this way John the Second became privileged merely because he was born of privilege. I had much more to learn of the ways of life in England.
Now, an odd memory: During one of those first nights, I was awakened by piercing shrieks. Frightened as I was, a few gentle taps from Kinshasa calmed me. “It is only the mad auntie,” whispered she. “You best pretend to hear nothing, just try to sleep through it all.” The shrieking in the night came once or twice a fortnight. I learnt, as did Kinshasa, to sleep through it.
21 Aug PURE HAPPINESS
Our meals were thrice daily, sitting round a big table in the kitchen. In early morning the usual fare was cheese, bread, herring and some weak beer. The largest meal we took at high sunne. An evening bite, usually a small meat pie and cider, was exactly at seven of the clock.
Little was ever said to me at the big table. Yet, I sensed that other diners were speaking about me because conversations always stopped abruptly whenever I happened to glance toward them. I supposed that they were noticing my pockmarked face. The “Spotted Devil” had visited almost everyone, although other faces were not as deeply pocked or as widely spread as mine. I learned later that it was my “Indianness” that piqued their curiosity. Of that, I was not ashamed.
One day, bright and balmy, the lines of drying clothes reached the River Ash. Alone, working quickly to finish, I stepped closer to the water. Wading in bare feet, I enjoyed the cool splash against my legs, the mud gushing up between my toes, and tiny fish nibbling at the tips. Suddenly, a giant frog jumped up from the ferns, splashing my face before quickly disappearing with a plop into the water. For the first tyme since arriving in England, I felt an instant of pure happiness.
Within minutes Chief Laundress Mildred appeared at the scene, beckoning me to return to work. The Chief Housekeeper tooke me aside after dinner. “I am told,” she put in plain words, “that you were away from your duties today.” There was a pause as she pulled herself up into that tree-like bearing and folded her arms in front. Thus positioned, she added with great authority, “May I depend on such behavior not to happen againe?” Having spoken, she unfolded her limbs, pulled up her roots, turned, and stepped away as unfeeling as a tree.
Serena left me looking at my hands, red and cracked and painful from long days in the caustic water of the laundry. These were hands that once were soft and pink, threading corn silk for hair on a doll and painting her cornhusk smock with berry dyes and a tiny brush of sassafras twig. These were hands that once kneaded soft clay into tiny animals. Now they were hands ruined from a chore that I hated from the start.
22 Aug HUNTING
Always, there was much excitement throughout the manor when hunting season approached. Carriages would arrive over several days. From atop jumped a score or more of barking dogs. From inside the carriages stepped people dressed in lavish attire. Each visitation required the servants to dust, polish, and wash everything in the house for days before the arrival of the expected guests, and to have huge meals ready for them after each day of hunting.
Now I write of the hunt as seen from the laundry. At daybreak, the hunters in red or greene velvet coats and tall hats were off on horses, their ever‐barking dogs alongside and horns blaring. Their goal, as I saw it, was simply the thrill of hunting. They would return in the evening with more noise and more horn blowing. Slung across the mule were the trophies: foxes, deer, birds of all kinds, and some tymes, a boar. Whilst the hunters slept, servants were required to butcher the catch into cuts of meat. At tymes laundry workers were called upon to help. How I loathed that! For me, hunting parties always meant more clothing to launder, feathers to pluck, and hides to scrape.
Some tymes a falconer came to the Manor House bearing on one arm a great hooded bird. From my hanging line for drying clothes I watched as the falcon was unhooded and released. I followed it as it soared high into the sky, almost beyond sight, then swoop upon a hapless dove, all to the amusement of onlookers. They cheered and clapped with every strike until a basketful of doves had been killed. With every strike, I felt myself the dove, and felt the falcon’s sharp talons closing around my own throat.
23 Aug STORIES
The one person who lifted my low spirits during these many months was Kinshasa. Our late nights were filled with hush‐voiced stories that she had somehow dreamed up. They were about kings battling for power, mad kings, evil kings, and queens, too, handsome or treacherous. Her stories were also about stormes at sea casting ships ashore onto islands where a magician and a beautiful daughter, a monster, and a mischievous sprite lived. They told, as well, of a comic mix-up between two sets of twins. Then there was one about a bad-tempered but beautiful young woman who eventually marries happily. Another told of an enchanted forest with fairies and people in animal heads confused by magical potions. Every story went on, a bit at a tyme, night after night.
How Kinshasa, the lowest of the servants, spending every day peeling vegetables and cleaning fish, listening only to the idle tales of the kitchen workers, could think of such wonderful stories, stories that stretched imagination to the breaking point? This I know: before falling asleep in my cramped and lumpy bed I had some spellbound moments that gave me no little delight.
24 Aug CURTSIES
As my days at the laundry passed, all my thoughts put me in the mind of escape. But how? Fate, it seemed, was a step ahead.
One evening, perhaps three months after I arrived in England, the Chief Housekeeper informed me that I would meet the Lady of the Manor on the morrow. She instructed me to appear in fresh clothes and with my hair well-combed and tied back smartly. She then observed my curtsy over and over until my knees were bent just enough, and my arms were held graciously to the side. Only then did she give faint approval. She cautioned me to say little to Lady Walsingham, to answer all her questions but briefly and to say oft “Yes, Ma’am” and “Thank you, Ma’am.” I practiced this until she found no fault.
Serena, in the morning, led me trembling into the main room of the Manor House. One side of the Great Hall was flooded with early morning light. The dark side was lit by candles. In spite of my nervousness, I was most aware of the fragrances and colors in the room: the fruity aroma of orange peel and rose water, the smell of burning candles, the dark brown of the walls and floors and the glistening yellow satin that lined some of the chairs. We walked to the stone fireplace. There, covered by a huge purple shawl, sat a person with hands in her lap. She sat deeply in one of the overstuffed purple chairs. More of her on the morrow.
25 Aug LADY WALSINGHAM
Now I write of Lady Walsingham and her family. Once inside the Great Hall, I stood in fidgeting anxiety. Serena urged me forward. Oh, how well I remember that moment!
“Come closer, child,” came a shrill voice from beneath the shawl. “Stand by the fire. Let us have a look at you.”
I took a few steps forward, giving myself the opportunity to look at her. The housekeeper‐guardian stood close behind me.
The great purple shawl began to move. Lady Walsingham brought it down to reveal her head, giving me a glimpse of a high, ruffed collar. In the flickering light from the hearth, I saw that her eyes were sunk in shadows, whilst her sharp nose and in-sloping chin were boldly exposed. The face was unnaturally white save for full, ruddy lips, and the hairline was curiously high on the forehead. Most astonishing of all, she had no eyebrows! Her hair, frizzled at the sides, swirled upward in an absurd style, at a distance perhaps of another head’s length above her head. Jewelry was a necklace draped over lace. Overly long sleeves that protruded from the shawl were puffed into many pleats. The long‐nailed fingers pointing out underneath the sleeves were bejeweled with many rings. The skirt flowed out well beyond the boundary of the chair.
The Lady was a living statement of wealth. Her attire was meant to display a sense of superiority. At the same tyme, it told those who were destined to labor in her stead that she was unable to work.
There was an awkward pause before she announced in her flat voice, “So, you have come from the colonies.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Well then. A good friend of Lord Walsingham and mine, a Master Aubrey Jones, who is an able trader in furs, tells me that you learn very quickly and that you are good in handling troublesome people.”
“Thank you, Ma’am,” said I with a well-rehearsed bowed curtsy.
“I must learn all about our colonies in the Americas,” she continued. “They are such interesting places.” She coughed to clear her throat. “You should know that the grandfather of my husband knew much about them. Indeed, Sir Francis Walsingham, as a Chief Minister, long ago advised our great queen to plant colonies there. We have a handed‐down set of watercolors and drawings of the savages and their villages, along with all the strange animals and plants of the New World. John White, the artist, was there.”
Hearing of home, I dared ask if the grandfather had ever sayled to the colonies. With this, I felt a sharp thump from behind and saw an annoyed air on the face of the Lady.
“Well, indeed,” replied she. “I credit you for how well you speak our language, but think you have much to learn about when to use it.”
Hearing this critical reply, I shifted about with much anxiety.
“But first,” Lady Walsingham went on, “I want to see how you do with my children.” I gasped, sensing a possible change from laundry chores. “These are very active children, you understand, even difficult at tymes.” She continued, “You will see that they are always in clean clothes and that their hair is always proper. You will learn about manners from Nora. Nora is getting along in age and cannot keep up with the children as she once did. Her eyesight, too, is failing. I can see, anyway, that these children will not catch the pox from you.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“First of all, we must change your name. Sky Flower is lovely, but it sounds, oh, so pagan, really. I am certain we can think of a more proper name. The children will help pick one out. Serena,” said she in a commanding voice, “you tell them to think about a proper name.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” returned Serena.
“And you,” said Lady Walsingham, looking directly at me, “You will beginne on the morrow.”
“Thank you, Ma’am,” said I.
“If your performance is satisfactory, your wages—considering you are already being provided with a room, food, and garments—will increase from eight shillings a month to twelve.” Paid for work, I had not a thought of it before. “We must be frugal,” she explained. “Everything these days seems to cost more.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
“Serena. Return with this girl here at eleven of the clock tomorrow. See that she is in fresh clothes. The children are already curious about her. Perhaps they will like a new minder.”
“Perhaps so, Ma’am,” Serena replied. She curtsied, turned, and left the room, beckoning me to follow. Dutifully, I curtsied, turned, and followed on the heels of the Chief Housekeeper.
26 Aug THE CHILDREN
And so, my new life would commence at eleven of the clock on day twenty of November in the year of 1630. Even this day, the piercing voice of the Lady of the House rings in my ears. And I truly believe that the conversation written yesterday is word for word as it was spoken more than fifty years ago.
At precisely the tyme set by the Lady, Serena escorted me to a room just off the Great Hall where four children played, two in a hand‐slapping game, one stroking a big black cat, the smallest of them swaying quietly on a toy horse that rocks. All the children were in flowing white linen, the kind that I cursed every day in the laundry.
The older children came to me, politely dipping their knees a trifle, whilst holding out a hand for me to touch, yet keeping a respectful distance. The two older girls announced themselves: “Amanda, I am thirteen years of age.” “My name is Veronica, age of eleven.” Mary did not speak, but Serena told me that she was of nine years. The youngest, Charles, still rocking, held up four fingers of one hand, tucking the thumb into his upheld palm. Not one of the children, I was quick to notice, was scarred with pockmarks. Also noticed in an instant: the terrible condition of the teeth of the older girls, a sight that would assoon to become numbingly familiar among the people of England. The youngest girl was missing two teeth in front but, that, I assumed, was normal for her age.
More about my new life at the Manor House in the morning.
27 Aug NORA
Continuing, the day of twenty of November at the Manor house. In a far corner of the children’s room, a thin-faced woman sat in a padded chair that rocked back and forth. She spoke in a wavering voice. “So, you are Sky Flower. The Chief Housekeeper has told me of about you. My name is Nora. Nora Felch. The children call me Mistress Felch.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” said I, dutifully.
“Oh, you need not speak so formally to me. I am only the children’s keeper,” returned she. “You may call me Nora.”
“It is my pleasure to meet you,” said I in my much‐practiced English greeting.
She returned, “Well, I have done the best I can with the children, but they are spoiled terribly. Perhaps you can teach them to behave. Mind you, now, they need a strong hand. Mary will give you the most trouble. She listens to no one. My scolding her all day does no good. Let us see what you can do with a wayward child.”
“I will do my best,” said I with the laundry room heavy on my mind.
“Oh, you will do. Like you, I was the laundry girl a long tyme ago, for almost four years. Throughout it all, I learned not to think.” She chuckles, “My mind was as well scrubbed as the linen. In tyme, I became a housekeeper. I was the eldest of twelve children. My father was the stable master. When the youngest in our family was born, I was of age five years and ten. At the arrival of children in the Walsingham home, the family thought me suited to care for them.”
“How many years have you served the Walsingham family?” asked I.
“In another month, it will be thirty‐five years. Now, I am six and sixty years of age, double the years that most souls see.”
“You are well?”
“Yes, thanks to God. Oh, I do have ailments. My strength to follow the children here and there is waning. It seems I need of a bit more rest as the days go on.”
28 Aug GWENDOLYN
My first day with the children seemed to go well. They greeted me with curiosity, perhaps expecting me to be a wild animal just emerging from a forest. Said the oldest, “At Mother’s request we have chosen a name for you. Gwendolyn.” There followed a chorus of giggling. And so, my new life started with a new name and a strange one at that.
Next, the children excitedly wanted me to see something. In a cage that hung from the high ceiling perched a yellow bird. Imagine, a bird in a cage of wire! How strange for me to see but what great mirth for the children! I learned the source of their twittering laughter not for some days later.
Each morning on first arising, the children had to appear before their parents, though usually only their mother was there. First, they were supposed to bow deeply at the waist, and say “My father, Sir” and “Madam, my mother.” Following that, they were expected to recite their vows always to be obedient and always to be respectful. Only the older girls managed to meet these expectations.
These early morning rites required my attendance as well. And so, I came to see the more natural Lady Walsingham. Stubble from new growth along the hairline explained the high forehead that was popular among her class. Her hair was not curled, and her face not powdered and painted. Grooves in her face told me that she, too, had been visited by the night‐flying mice.
The children ate their meals with Nora and me standing by, trying to keep the mealtyme peaceful and the manners correct. Their meals were usually in the playroom, though occasionally on the terrace, provided that a day was sunnie and warm, but not too warm. Dinner came at high sunne. It was the only big meal of the day. Cook servants brought small portions of food in several servings. Porridge or meat stew or meat pyes came first. Afterwards, for the most part, dinner was beef, mutton, or venison, already cut into small pieces and placed on a thick slice of bread and that placed on a wooden plate. Dinner oft ended with apple pippin. Nora and I ate what was left after the children had finished their meals and busied themselves or gone to bed. Of course, our food was always cold by then.
29 Aug TABLE MANNERS
Nora insisted on the rules of proper dining. There was a special way to sit. Straight against the back of the chair. Elbows never on the table. Feet flush on the floor. No wiggling. No silly talk. And many instructions: about how to use a spoon for soup, how to grasp a morsel of food with the hand, when to wipe fingers on a linen cloth, and so on. In short, meals required an inane game of etiquette. All my energy was put into holding back laughter. Yet I was determined to play along— all to stay out of the laundry.
In brief, people tooke their meals according to the tyme of day. Not so in a Mohawk village where a pot of stew always hung neere a cookfire waiting for whoever was hungry. Take what you like without fuss.
30 Aug AMANDA, VERONICA, AND MARY
I shall try to describe the children one by one. Amanda, the oldest, was tall for her age, slender with long, yellow hair that hung below her shoulders. Eyes somewhere between blue and green seemed always to be gazing into the distance. Somehow, there was a haughty and dreamy air about her. Veronica, heavier of body, had short brown curly hair and dark eyes that looked out always with a bit of a squint. Of the two, Amanda was more loving of fun, easily laughing at the most ordinary happenings. She also proved to be the lazier.
And then there was Mary. Forewarned, I found her difficult and disturbing. Her behavior belied the delicate face, two front upper teeth beginning to show. She spoke no familiar words but seemed to have a babbling way of speaking as if a language of her own. She tended to stay by herself, yet frequently interrupted games and stories with screaming and tugging on the others. When invited to join in on games, she oft broke away in violent tantrums. Oft due to rude manners she was led away from the dining table, yelling and struggling mightily. The older girls had learned to shun Mary as best they could, excluding her from play. I became certain that they considered Mary stupid and annoying. Over tyme, it became clear to me that Nora and the parents shared this belief.
Mary, on the other hand, was gentle when playing with her little brother, Charles. She seemed happiest during our evening storytelling before retiring to bed; that is the tyme when she would cuddle tightly with me, although oft wiggling fitfully. It was never long into our story, however, when, suddenly, I would feel her whole body go limp. There was something about that moment of her entering sleep that became ever more precious to me.
I sensed a mystery shrouding Mary. Of one thing I was certain: she was not dim-witted. With softstone on a hand-board she sketched life‐like dogs, cats, trees but always favored those of horses. For a small child, she was skillful at rope jumping and pall‐mall, a lawn game requiring striking a wooden ball with a mallet. Certainly, little Mary was best of all the children in a foot‐skipping contest called hopscotch. Here was a child with pluck.
I showed her some figures made from a loop of string. My sisters, clever with making string figures, had taught me several. Mary shrieked with joy on seeing my string deer run up and downe the mountain. In no tyme, she learned to do it herself. Indeed, I became aware of a streak of jealousy in her sisters. No, Mary was not dull of wit. Then one day, the black cat with the absurd name of Sir Francis Drake, solved the mystery that surrounded Mary. Now, that is a story yet to be writ!
31 Aug CHARLES
Oh yes, how could I forget to write about Charles? Charles, who bears the name of the King of England. His way was a bit like Pieter, Katrina’s little brother. He had red cheeks and playful eyes, and was oft mischievous, rowdy at tymes and yet pleasant at other tymes. He tried to take part in his sister’s doings but of course was too young to keep up with them. For him, the girls exerted little patience.
Charles did love to eat. He had a habit of tucking food inside his shirt during meals for later secret munching, not heeding God’s reproach for overeating. His pudgy face told it all.
There was a touch of the devil in fun‐loving Charles. Just for fun he hid things belonging to his sisters, and oft in meanness broke up their games. Some tymes he teased Sir Francis Drake, occasionally being rewarded with a snarling nip.
Despite this roguish streak, Charles was easily frightened. Beyond his toy horse, he was terrified of a real horse. Charles protested by kicking and shrieking on being brought within touching distance of a horse. Horsemanship, the reader should know, was important for every cultured boy to master; that meant riding with good carriage and graceful bearing. To be truthful, horses frightened me as well. Girls were neither expected nor allowed to have anything to do with horses.
Over tyme, my duties went far beyond seeing that the children’s clothes were always clean, their hair always combed, and their manners at table faultless. It was my place to look after them at play, help them study their lessons, and attend to their prayers. I had to enforce the rules of expected good breeding: speaking softly, not spitting or wiping of the nose on a sleeve, always showing courtesies to elders and those superior.
1 Sep SUNDAY DINNERS
The elaborate tableware and variety of foods never stopped amazing me. One of my new duties was to monitor the children as they dined with their parents. Throughout these meals on Sundays, Nora and I were expected to stand in silence against the wall on one side of the table and to observe the manners of the children. It was our duty to remember every detail of what the children did wrong and to put right these mistakes before the dinner on the following Sunday.
Plates for Sundays were not made from wood but were of a grey metal. At every chair place there were two drinking vessels: a glass drinking cup and a silver tankard for weak beer, made from brewing grains. At first, I was aghast by such a custom for children, being witness to the abuse of the minds of seamen in the tavern from beer. Our beverage, however, was made from very weak brewing. It did not appear to cause foul behavior. Yet, every tyme it was served I wondered about the cleanliness of our well water.
The Lord and the Lady used the meal to speak of the importance of morality and obedience. When questioned directly, a child had to respond with a courteous, short answer. One auntie said not a word but ate her meal in tiny morsels in a show of elegant restraint. By contrast, the other auntie, mumbling continually, ate carelessly, dropping food and spilling drink. Both, it seemed, were completely ignored by the other members of the family.
2 Sep INFERIOR FOOD
Outside today: a glorious day! I sat outside doing nothing other than watching the tall grass sway a little with the slightest breeze. Stretched out on the warm ground, I listened to the gobbles of unseen turkeys. The forest has many mysteries, but on this day it was filled with familiar senses. Being close to the earth and hearing songs of the forest creatures is something that I would gladly share with the world.
The Manor House: In spite of all the richness, I craved food from the gardens in Tahawus. I even dreamed about the taste of beans and squash. Since these foods grew close to the ground, they were considered by English well‐bred people to be inferior. That means, I have learned, fit only for eating by inferiors, meaning, of course, those who work. Maize, grown from seeds brought from the colonies, was fed to cattle and so, they said, was not fit for humans. There were tymes when I would have traded my soul for an ear of corn.
3 Sep DAIRYMAID
This morning I awoke to a cool and cloudless day, a good day for my quill. Before starting my task, I paused a few moments to watch a chipmunk emerge from a hiding hole near my entryway. With the speed of lightning it scampered across the open space and disappeared in the rocky ledge on the opposite side. It tells me that I, too, must be of haste, and continue my story of Shepperton.
Bertha keeps coming to mind for reasons unexplained. I did try to seek her out in the kitchen, perhaps hoping that this might lead to friendship, but the opportunity for conversation did not come about. Then, she seemed to disappear. I learned much later that she had taken a new position with the outdoor servants. Her new duties as dairymaid, though unending, brought her, they said, much happiness. It is said that she had a name for each cow, that she—who seldom spoke—talked with her cows through much of the day. Oh, it was not an easy position, I was assured: milking seven cows daily, cleaning stalls, churning milk into butter and cheese. These chores I knew well from my days working for Mevrouw van Stroomer. That Bertha’s fate proved favorable for her was joyful news.
4 Sep MASTER HOLLINGSWORTH
Every day save Sunday, a man, called a tutor, came to the Manor House to instruct the children. I will try to write of them as best I can remember. In truth, these men were not easy to forget.
One tutor taught the children etiquette, court manners and polite speaking. I am forced to describe his exceptional appearance. First, the head covering and hair: a brimmed, black felt hat, boldly feathered and perched atop his black hair. It reminded me of a mother crow guarding her nest of little ones. One long hair lock was tied with a white ribbon. The face: a beak‐like nose, a tidy beard, and a thin mustache that curled up at the ends. These curly knobs reminded me vaguely of fiddlehead ferns that had not yet opened in the spring. The clothing: a red cloak, a tight-fitted vest, and a white linen shirt with lace at the neck and wrists. On the upper legs: loose, billowing breeches tied at the knees with ribbons. On the lower legs: tight‐fitting white stockings of silk tucked into narrow pointed shoes.
This appearance may have given the effect of fashionable grooming, but I found it comical. With great effort I restrained myself from laughing. The name of this tutor was Cuthbert Hollingsworth. Of all the tutors he was the only one who insisted that we call him by his last name preceded by his grand title. And so, by the children and me, he was always called “Master Hollingsworth.”
5 Sep JEREMIAH and GEOFFREY
Another tutor, named Jeremiah, presented a different appearance and had a different manner about him. He came to teach numbers and account‐keeping. His attire was unadorned, and his shirt and his shaggy beard were spotted with evidence of breaking his fast that morning. Buttons on his tunic were oft done up in the wrong order. His floppy wide‐brimmed felt hat lacked both feather and ribbon. His demeanor was distant. He droned on and on about his numbers with little caring if his students were listening or not. Oft, he used a board with moveable disks. The placement of disks in each row made counting numbers easy, with ten the magic number. This tutor was always well‐pleased with his reckoning. Now and then he would doze off, leaving the children and me to find diversions. For that we were not unhappy.
Then, there was Geoffrey of music, unique among the tutors for his tiny tuft of beard at the point of his chin. His attire was a simple hat, a plain doublet, and puffed up breeches like those of Master Hollingsworth. Most memorable were his boots. They turned downe at the top; attached at the heels were silver metal rings called spurs.
This tutor was kind and cheerful. He sang silly songs, and played simple tunes on various instruments, tapping tyme with one foot, a spur jangling, all to the amusement of the children. Yet, his powers of inspiring the girls to play the lute and dulcimer were severely outmatched by their disinclination to learn. Throughout the visit, Charles hid with utmost skill; Mary shunned the tutor with outright passion.
6 Sep RAPHAEL
This morning proved how fragile life is. My little chipmunk reappeared in the rocky ledge, visible for only an instant. I sat observing, just outside my house. Suddenly a hawk, the kind with a reddish tail, alit behind a fallen log, disappearing, only to fly off againe, a thrashing chipmunk clasped tightly in its talons. I wanted to cry out, No, no! but my voice stopped midway. Understand that I do accept the place of things in nature. Yet, there are tymes when nature’s ways seem harsh. But perhaps I am just a lonely old woman who has become overly fond of these little striped creatures.
Of these visiting teachers, the oddest one was Raphael, a teacher of dance. It may be more charitable to refer to him as the most amusing one. He was tall, astonishingly slender and clean shaven. The brim of his hat was pinned up on one side. His clothing included embroidered sleeves and leggings, a high lacey ruff around the neck and a long, flowing cape of dark blue.
We made a game: who would be the first to catch a glimpse of Raphael as he strolled up the path to the house, announcing his arrival by playing a violin, his body swinging in wild arcs, a leg flailing forward with each step?
Raphael taught by example, seldom speaking. His unbounded locomotion carried into his teaching of the dance. He would leap across the room, swirl dizzily in broad circles, whilst his arms made great arcs from ceiling to floor. Yet all was lost on his lackluster pupils. Rather than trying to engage them, he would flit about alone; at other occasions when not lost in his own musings, he rested on a puffed‐up chair.
In tyme, be assured, some steps were learned, most especially by me. My purpose, after all, was to prepare the children for the lesson of the following week, using every ruse thinkable to this end. Making a game of dance bore some fruit. And so, with games played, we learned to perform the jig, the lively galliard, and the elegant minuet. These were not the spirited, loose flung dances remembered from my childhood. Rather, they were restricted into tight movements needing rigid control. In truth, I did enjoy these dances and saw to it that we all practiced them every day. On returning, Raphael seemed surprised at what a good instructor he had been the week before.
I write in all fairness that Amanda danced with naturally flowing movement. Yet, she was stubbornly childish and seldom tried to follow Raphael’s flights. Veronica, in contrary habit, tried a bit harder. Still her movement was stiff and awkward, squelching any hope of ever becoming a fine dancer. Between the two older girls, a deer and a goat came to mind. Little Mary followed by imitation, never catching the rhythm, never succeeding in pleasing Raphael. Most oft, Charles avoided lessons of dancing altogether.
7 Sep HENRI
A new tutor arrived during my sixth or seventh month of my caring for the children. He came to teach the language spoken in France. Named Henri, this tutor was short in stature but erect and decidedly proud of his attire. His long, yellow hair fell in ringlets to the shoulders. A hat with long plumes adorned his head. A scarf of many colors draped around his neck, while a long strip of fur decorated his jacket. His hands were covered by soft and scented white gloves. His sleeves were loosely slashed, so that an underlayer of bright red and green silk peeked through the openings. A chain of colored stone jewels sparkled around his waist. On his side a small sword dangled. His boots were adorned with delicate stitching. And always, there was the scent of strong perfume about him. I came to believe that he had used his entire means to dress in such finery.
Henri had little intention of teaching more than a few French words on a given each day, nor did his pupils have the intention of learning more. But why French? From what I could tell, England was always at war with France. Yet, I learned that French was the language of “cultured society.” It was the language of those who sought agreements with other nations. The language of England also had many words from France. Enfant, difficile, chambre, danser, and fleur are examples in everyday speaking.
On one sunnie day Henri gathered the children in the courtyard for instruction, leaving his jacket inside. I seized the moment to examine its collar of fur. ’Twas dark brown with long bristles and an undercoat of plush, thick hair. I doubted not that the fur was the pelt of beaver. Suddenly, it came to me that such collars, coats, and pretty what‐nots, so common among the wealthy of England, were the object of the ocean trade with New Netherland. So much bother for a fashion! I did not discover until years later that stylish hats of the English and Dutch were also made from beaver fur.
8 Sep PERCIVAL
Lastly, I tell of one tutor in greater detail because he had such a deepe-reaching effect on me. Percival Manville came to the Manor House after about one year of my services. Each Thursday he arrived, always precisely on tyme, to teach proper speaking, reading and writing.
Of the age of Percival, I cannot say but the whiting of his hair may speak for me. His face was dominated by a finely trimmed double pointed beard knowne as the “swallow-tail.” His frame: cornstalk thin and stiff. In fact, his walk was most awkward as if none of the joints in his arms and legs agreed with each other. Drawing most attention was his manner of speech.
His lessons demanded extreme attention to detail. This insistence was, of course, to the utter dismay of the children. Of speaking, Percival was particularly severe: no mumbling or slurring of words, no half sentences or misplaced sounds. Each child, standing with arms held to the sides, had to repeat every word at least ten tymes, and then recite whole sentences until the lips, tongue, and throat acted together in perfect harmony.
The older girls read aloud, wearily repeating every line until mastered. They engaged in simple stories continually until they recited them from memory. That meant word for word, without missing one, and without mumbling. A tug on the ear from tyme to tyme kept the two younger children alongside listening quietly, even if squirming all the while.
About writing, Percival insisted that every letter be written carefully, every word spelled correctly, every subject and verb in agreement, and all lines written across the board in a perfect line. The writing board was made from the horn of a cow. It was held in the left hand by a handle. For writing there was a sharpened softstone, called lead; for erasing, a tattered napkin.
This tutor left no room for careless work. His rules were exact. Space letters perfectly apart and make them all the same size. Each line must be straight. One line is separated the same distance below the line above as it is above the line below. Hold the pencil with a firm grip but loosely at the wrist. Keep the feet straight, the chin up and the back directly against the chair. Oh, I heard these instructions in my sleep.
Of course, I had seen people writing with a feather, but upon my request to use it, he replied that teaching the quill was meant for another day. It would wait until the children were perfect with the alphabet and the numbers.
Even with strict Percival, Mary failed to follow instructions for writing. Instead, she drew figures of animals, scenes of trees and brooks, and pretty designs. And she did so, holding the leaded marker in her left hand, while holding the handle of the writing board with her right. She persisted in this manner despite repeated taps on the wrist from our well‐meaning teacher. Her contrariness vexed the tutor sorely. I was reminded all the tyme that my brother, Tail Feather, also favored the left hand.
The reader by now should anticipate that the children hated every moment of the Thursday lessons. Mary was hopelessly lost in trying to achieve even the simplest words, yet she was the only one who showed any effort to learn. For me, however, Percival was a gift of good fortune. He taught me the magic of putting thoughts on paper. If I have any capacity to use the language of England in proper fashion, I am in debt to Percival and—can I ever forget?—to Bertrand, my first teacher, may his kind spirit wander happily forever among the stars.
9 Sep BOOKS
The lessons for me were interesting and for the most part easy, all the while my English tongue improved. I helped the girls with their reading, and their lessons, mostly in accounting, and their vocabulary in French. I practiced with them the fine points of dancing, turning my thoughts back to my childhood beneath the great shade tree in Tahawus. Charles, generally, was unwilling to deal with anything beyond his box of toys, but over tyme he did learn some steps of the jig and some words of French. As for Mary, I could tell not of her learning; there was an invisible wall between us. Try as I might, I could climb neither over that wall nor under it.
The one task that Nora performed with avid regularity was reading from a book, the Bible. She made clear that the lessons in the Book of Psalms were matters of great importance. She read slowly, seeming to lay emphasis on every word. Everything was about moral behavior and the awful fate of those who sinned against God.
Books that were fun to read were scarce. We did have two small books that were read to pieces. One was about a boy called Jack who slew horrible giants by tricking them into causing their own deaths. The most terrible of the giants had two heads, and in his search for food he proclaimed: “Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum. I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he living or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to be my bread.” The children squealed in part feare and in part delight with our reading and re-reading this strange story. My skill at reading aloud improved each tyme.
The older children favored another book, writ in verse. It was about a tiny person aptly named Tom Thumb. “His hat made of an oaken leafe, his shirt, a spider’s web,” I remember all these years from frequent reciting. Tom Thumb, born by magic and full of mischief, was knowne for his valiant deeds. The King was so enchanted by Tom Thumb that he had built for him a tiny coach pulled by six mice. The book itself, to me, was magic enough.
10 Sep THUNDER
The night last, the rumble of distant thunder took me outside for a look. In the moonlight I could see clouds lit up in the glow of great lightning strikes. Slowly the storme approached: winde, then rain, a flash and an instant later an ear‐splitting crash. It was tyme to withdraw into my little house. Afraid? Nay! The fury of a storme‐spirit lifts my spirit.
Iroquois people held sacred many legends about thunder. Some believed that a Thunder God pierced a cloud with his arrow, lighting up the sky, causing the cloud to loosen the rain. Others believed that a Thunder Man loved a young woman working in the fields, and he lifted her up beyond the clouds. They assoon married and begat a son named Thunder Boy. Living between the Sky and Earth created so much tension in Thunder Boy that he became enraged, accounting for the great flashes of light with its howling thunder. My belief? I believe what my aunt Meadow‐Bird-Singing told me, that lightning was the connection between those who have passed into the world beyond. The thunder that soon follows is their conversing among themselves. Rain that falls is their gift to Earth, giving thanks to the Great Spirit for their former lives in the land of the forests and fields and near waters large and small.
There is no rain this morning but the air smells different. What is it about the air after a tempest? What makes that sharp but pleasant smell that comes to my nose? Does it have to do with the acorns and hickory nuts that fell overnight? I look at the distant mountains and wonder. Did I hear in the thunder last night the voices of my sisters, my mother, Tail Feather? Yes, I believe so.
11 Sep PURPOSE OF EDUCATION
To return to the lives of privileged children in England: What girls learned was not what Mohawk girls learned. Our mothers, or oft our grandmother or our aunts, were our teachers, and everything learnt was meant to make us useful and respectable in the village.
Instruction for the Walsingham girls and others of their class, I discovered, was meant to produce attractive brides for noblemen, most importantly, rich noblemen. This purpose required mastering the niceties of well‐mannered behavior: polite conversation, table manners, fashion in dress, dancing, and playing a musical instrument. Learning to use numbers, what people called “accounting,” would serve well the Lady of the House to oversee the everyday needs of a landed estate. Girls learnt French for that was considered the language of high culture, most advantageous among people of grand society. Some day one of these girls might find herself in the company of royalty, where women were expected to act with perfect grace. In that case, knowing how to speak was as important as what was said, and knowing how one looked was as important as what one did.
Instruction for well‐bred boys also required good manners and conversation but it took on a different slant. Yes, some French was important, but required as well was the high‐cultured language of Latin. Boys had to become proficient in dance and the art of refined etiquette. Most importantly, they needed to master the knightly skills required for gentlemanly conduct, riding horses with a graceful carriage, hunting, wielding the sword, and managing an estate.
Despite these requirements Charles was not able to overcome his feare of horses. Nor was he at ease in the presence of any large animal, even a dog or sheep. What is more, he was terrified to pick up a weapon of any kind. Play swords, long guns, and tiny painted soldiers had remained idle at the bottom of his toy box. Obvious it was that Charles was not of a dashing, manly constitution.
Most apparent was his preference for ease and comfort. He was annoyed at the slightest discomfort, being too hot, too cold, too tired, too hungry, and complaining of never-ending vexations. How would he ever endure the hardships of a winter forest in Tahawus? Would he ever bear the rigors of playing the game “Little Brother of War”? I fear not.
For a long tyme, I understood not how the teaching of English children helped them become more useful for later years. Boys would never learn to fell trees, build a canoe, or weave grass into a fishing net. Girls would never be able to make a clay pot or stitch a shoe from a single patch of doeskin. Try as I might, I could not imagine Amanda or Veronica scraping fat off a fresh deer hide.
Slowly, I realized the truth: that privileged people, or the ones born of wealth, depended on other people, “commoners,” to carry out the drudgeries of their daily needs. Gentlemen or ladies were “the better-born.” They had no need to work. Their fine clothing, jewelry, extravagant coiffeurs and personal adornments defined them as persons of distinction. Work was done only by those born to a working class.
12 Sep GAMES
My design to engage the children in their studies was to invent games to make learning enjoyable. My tricks usually interested the older girls, sometimes Charles, but seldom Mary. Always amusing was seeing how pleased the tutors were to find their pupils well‐informed in spelling, diction, numbers, dance steps, French, and courtly bows that had been demonstrated spiritlessly only a week before. As expected, the tutors praised the children for being so clever, whilst believing themselves to be gifted teachers. All the while, remember, I was learning, too.
I mention here a couple of out-of-doors amusements in which the children passed some tyme. Pall‐mall was a game requiring the player to strike a wooden ball with a mallet, sending it through an iron ring suspended just above the ground. Another game was jumping over a swinging rope. It was the one activity in which the older girls found pleasure playing with their younger sister. With me as an additional holder, two girls jumped at the same tyme. They already knew songs to hold the rhythm of the twirling rope. Their favorite song for jumping was “London Bridge is broken downe,” repeated in many verses. I remembered that the Dutch children in New Amsterdam had jumped with double ropes. How did Charles react to rope jumping? He found great pleasure in running into the swinging rope and disrupting its turns.
13 Sep MATTERS OF HEALTH
Of what I had seen of people in England, they appeared not of sound constitution. I am bound to say that the privileged gentlemen and gentlewomen tended toward roundness from overeating, whilst the underprivileged “commoners” were likely to be angular from under-eating. Faces were oft pockmarked, though few as poxed as mine. Infirm people (the lame, blind, wheezers, and those crooked in the back) were everywhere to be found.
Parents, in truth, cared much about the health of their children but did so in strange ways. The Walsingham children ate enough, never missed a midday nap, and were never exposed to foul weather. They were instructed to keep their breath fresh by sleeping with their mouths open and to wear a red nightcap with a hole at the top to allow unhealthy vapors to escape.
One trait that English people seemed to share with the Dutch was their dislike of bathing. Washing of the hands and face they did almost every day; baths, on the other hand, rarely. My nose told me that strong perfumes were not sufficient to mask their odors.
Getting the children to bathe was resisted to the fullest. How many stories were invented, enticements made, games played all with the purpose of dunking the children into a tub of warm scented water, made bubbly with “Castile soap brought all the way from Spain”? In this endeavor, I failed more oft than succeeded.
I note here that no older adult in the manor, family or servant, seemed to have a full set of teeth. Did the difference from my people depend on brushing? I was determined from the beginning to see that the children cared for their teeth. On my request for some twigs with soft bristles at the end, Harold gave me some that splintered when the ends were brushed firmly against a stone, much like twigs from the sassafras tree. It was not long before the children were cleaning their teeth after every meal in a Mohawk way, though at first it tooke much persuading, even threats, from me. I was amused to think that, in one tiny way, these pampered children had become Wilden, a secret I kept to myself.
14 Sep FROG
I did endeavor to whet the children’s curiosity in small things of nature: butterflies, wildflowers, bees, the haunting c’hoo of the doves, and the shapes of leaves. Always, their attention was fleeting, their interest nil. They shunned even touching anything wild: an earthworm, a fallen feather, dew on the morning grass, or wet moss. Even the wonderful soaring, turning, diving of a hawk produced little excitement. Spotting a tiny black snake sent them into screaming panic. These common delights of my childhood meant nothing to these children. Yet, changing their way of thinking about nature’s wonders was my intention. And so, with self‐driven determination, I meant to coax the children into the natural world as oft as they would tolerate.
Once, when we were all together by the River Ash, I was able to catch a frog. “Eeuw!” they cried, keeping at first several steps away. The frog was as large as my fist. Its great eyes stared back at me in bewilderment. With a fingertip, I felt its little heart thumping a thousand tymes at my every blink. Only Mary darst touch the frog, timidly so, a wide smile appearing as her fingertips sensed the pulsation within its breast.
Charles, to my surprise, offered to hold the frog. When in‐hand, suddenly, to my horror, he flung it to the ground. He lifted one foot as to stomp on the frog. I pushed him aside, picked up the dazed creature for a moment before releasing it into the river. With two quick leaps, the frog disappeared into the depths. What distressed me most of all was seeing the corners of Charles’ lips curl up into a brutish grin.
15 Sep NORA
Almost four months after my arrival at the Manor House, Serena came to me with the news that Nora was dead. She had died quietly in her sleep.
A simple ceremony tooke place on the following day at the neereby Church of St. Mary Magdalene. Wrapped in a white, oiled cloth, Nora lay in a plain wooden coffin beside an open grave. Dressed in black with umbrellas against the drizzle, the Walsingham family stood around the gravesite. Behind them without umbrellas, stood all the servants. The funeral service moved along: reading from the scriptures by the vicar, lowering the body into the grave, and dropping of flowers into it. The gathering assoon quietly scattered, each one thinking about Nora’s duty of many years. I thought, too, of my dear friend, Katrina, and how I had watched her burial from the window of our bedchamber.
16 Sep IMPROVEMENTS
In truth, there was no change in the household with the passing of Nora, save two issues. One, it was I who had to read a psalm to the children after each morning meal. My ability in this regard was humble. The older girls did oft giggle as I struggled through each reading but eventually my reading did improve.
The second issue: within days, Serena announced that I would take Nora’s bedchamber, that being next to the sleeping room of the children. The room was much larger than my sleeping space with Kinshasa. I smiled. No more narrow bed on the floor. No more trying to sleep with a fidgety bedmate, though I came to miss the far‐fetched stories she told. No more worry about stepping on creaking floorboards.
But most pleasant of all, the room was above the entrance door. When the household was asleep, I took some air by slipping out quietly on hot nights to sit by the river. I had the forethought to silence the squeaking of the iron door hinges with goose grease.
The water at night in the River Ash was clean. No animals were drinking it and no laundry water was being dumped into it. Mildred was not here to scold me. Dunking my feet in the cool water was a most wonderful feeling. The moonlight reflection on the water and the chirping sounds of tree frogs were two more of my delights in this Place of Happiness. Those nights were tearful tymes, too, when my mind would take me back to a simpler life by the great elm tree of my childhood. No one, I am pleased to write, ever found out about my peaceful nights along the river.
17 Sep BRIDGE
Some days at tyme for naps, when I was certain all the children were asleep, I walked along the river. I came to the same bridge that my carriage had crossed months before. I admired how it held in mid‐air, even though it was longer than three or four tall tree trunks laid end‐to‐end. More astonishing was its strength to allow the burden of horses and carriages. The name of the bridge, I learnt, was Squire Bridge, named for Squire Edward Wood, an officer of the government in the City of London. He lived in Astleham, a tiny village beyond.
My new knowledge of the strange world about me came from Harold. I came to cherish my visits to his gardens and more his friendship. About gardens and friendship in the morrow.
18 Sep ORANGERY
On a chilly after‐noone in early spring, Harold met me strolling about aimlessly during nap tyme and proposed that I visit the covered garden. He led me to a building made all of stone except for one side which was covered with cloth. The cloth was oiled, Harold explained, to allow the rays of the sunne to diffuse through. He knew of Dutch flower growers in Leyden who enjoyed the luxury of a glass cover in their winter gardens. Glass, he rued, was too expensive in England. Such lavish spending, he was certain, Lord Walsingham would not allow.
Inside, the room was warm, bright, and soggy. I detected the strong scents of orange and lemon, bringing back memories of the saylors’ treats at Fort Oranje. At the far end stood a brick fireplace. He told me, “People speak of an inside garden as an orangery.”
What struck the eye were hundreds of plants in pots set on tables, all aligned in perfect rows and spaced evenly. There were rows of golden chrysanthemums, lilies as white as snow, and roses of every color. Small trees stood in pots at ground level, some bearing fruit. At first sight, I was too startled, too taken with awe, to utter a word. Even though some of the fruit appeared ready to eat, I was not offered a taste. The reason, I was to discover later.
The gardener explained that the Walsinghams desired flowers and fresh fruit throughout the year, even in winter. “My orangery serves them well, though it requires more attention than the stablemen tend their horses.” Stroking a small tree, he said, “Here you see apricots. They are favored by Lady Walsingham.” Another astonishing sight was a tree bursting with small oranges and another with limes. “These plants were grown with care from seeds brought from warm climates, from colonies in the tropics.”
I praised his gift with raising plants. He returned, “To be sure, ’twas God who planted these gardens. My nurturing is my honor. I trust you will come againe.” Harold went on, “I will show you how we can coax nature into making new kinds of fruit.” Aye, that thought, so darkly mysterious, stirred my curiosity.
“Yes, return I will,” my promise to Harold. How I longed to keep that promise on wintry days, the warmth of his orangery never far from mind.
19 Sep HIDE-AND-SEEK
Another day came when Harold showed me how he could cut the branch of one small tree and attach it to the stem of another. With his knife he made sharp slashes and tied the raw surfaces tightly with stout twine. Curiously, ’twas during these fussy tasks that the trembling of his hands disappeared altogether.
Harold performed his cutting and binding so close to his eyes that the graft almost touched his nose. “Short-sighted,” he admitted. “Blessed with fortune, in another season, we shall see something between an orange and a lemon of the parent trees,” words spoken softly but with much pride.
For me, these moments with Harold became ever more cherished. He always spoke gently, answered silly questions, explained much about life at the Manor House and life beyond. He was the sole person who tooke interest in the world of my people, querying me about our plants, our houses, and our tools. He inquired about the teaching of children and the ways of life in a Mohawk village. Of special curiosity to Harold were the plants used by our doctor, the shaman, to restore health.
Now comes to mind one terrible moment with the children. ’Twas during a high-spirited game of hide-and-seek. Veronica, the seeker, found all the hiders except Charles. We admired his cleverness at hiding, as we all looked for the missing boy. Suddenly Mary poked me with a hard jarring and pointed toward the River Ash. It seemed that some movement there had caught her eye. I ran to find Charles, mostly underwater, thrashing mightily to free himself from the slippery mire. His face pale with terror and his lips blue, he sputtered to breathe. I struggled to pull him onto firm ground. Then, we cuddled for a long tyme by the riverside until his crying ceased. It was the first and only time that Charles and I were close in body. Such was a precious moment.
20 Sep LITTLE ADULTS
I slept not that awful night, certain of my return to the laundry. Indeed, early on the next morning, Chief Housekeeper Serena requested my presence. One of the older girls, of course, had told her about the near-drowning. Said Serena, “Your disregard for the children was inexcusable. You must be more watchful.” She said no more, and I heard no more about the laundry. Looking back, I am certain that she did not share my oversight with the parents. My notice of the children from that tyme improved not a little.
Another point of child-caring was quite clear: The Lord and Lady had little tyme for the children, the solitary exception being Sundays when the children needed to be scrubbed, groomed, and dressed in freshly washed, white clothes. Yes, they were, in the eyes of their parents, little adults and were meant to behave and look as such. I could hardly imagine children running naked through the village as they oft do in Tahawus.
On a pleasant Sunday morning the family, riding in an open carriage, would set off for church service and a picnic by the “big” river. Nora’s death meant that this diversion passed on to me. The church was in Shepherd’s town, named for a gathering place of those who tend sheep and now called by some, Shepperton.
21 Sep ASTLEHAM
Crossing Squire Bridge brought us to the village of Astleham and thence to the grand house of a gentleman named Francis Townley. Where Squire Wood lived, I cannot say. Riding on, we came to a few tumble‐downe cottages with sagging roofs. These were the houses of the craftsmen and laborers who served the village. There were no houses of wood, as there were in Fort Oranje. Trees, it seemed, were plentiful only in the King’s forests and too precious to make planks for the houses of ordinary people.
Barefooted boys kicking a ball stepped aside as our coach splattered them with mud. The horses continued along the road, unmindful of the ruts caused by the overnight rain. Though our coach swayed with every bump, all aboard stayed dry and unmuddied.
It was during this first trip to Shepperton that I overheard Lady Walsingham say that the preacher, she was quite certain, would be tolerant if their “heathen servant” attended the church. She knew my knack for keeping the children reasonably calm. “Perhaps,” said Lady Walsingham, “she will do the same during a long service.” The meaning of the word “heathen” was a question for Harold.
Tomorrow, I shall write about my first look at St. Nicholas Church. The name arose in Nora’s lessons from the Bible. Nicholas, we learnt, was the saint who protected the ships that sayled the ocean.
22 Sep SAINT NICHOLAS CHURCH
’Twas a brief ride to Shepperton. Yet, it proved to be another world. The carriage came to a cluster of handsome little houses and some larger buildings, “The Anchor” and the “Rose and Crown.” Standing out at the far corner of the square was the church of St. Nicholas. The sight left me stunned. It was longer than the longest longhouse in Tahawus and taller than any building in New Amsterdam.
Sparkling, black stones studded the white walls of the church. I peered closer. Yes, they were flint. Yes, flint! I am one of the “People of Flint”! And here was flint in England, chipped and placed shiny side out in mortar. But the purpose? Not to point a spear or to scrape a hide but to decorate a church!
Once through the massive door I felt as if I were back in the hull of The Black Swan and that a giant wave had turned the ship upside downe. I was terrified at first, half expecting the roof to crash upon us at any moment. All others seemed not aware of the peril that loomed above us.
Through the large glass window at the far end sunne rays played out in an eyeful of sparkling blues, reds, and yellows. The preacher, Samuel Proctor, raised his arms, as he held high a cross. All the while the people watched him attentively. He then climbed to a high platform from which he looked downe upon the people. His eyes swept across the room and then seemed to stop at me for a long moment. That brought me not a little discomfort.
A thund’ring voice coming from within that fragile body echoed throughout the church. He spoke with passion for almost two hours. Of what he spoke, I could not say. My duty was to sit with the children in the last row of benches. They were expected to say not a word.
23 Sep GOD AND THE KING
Sunday after Sunday the church service was the same, save for the occasional addition of a lute player to accompany the singers. I heard the sermons oft enough for some of the ideas to stay in my mind. There were two main points. The first one: “People who follow the laws of God will go to heaven in the afterworld.” The second idea: “Love others as you would love yourself.” From what I have seen in England, these two ways of thinking clashed with how people behaved in everyday life.
Behind these ideas, Preacher Proctor stressed, was the King. Every person in all ranks of life in England was expected to obey the King. To do so served God. “Remember,” said he, speaking with a slower voice, “The King rules by Divine Providence. The King is God’s chosen agent on earth, and the bishops are the spiritual overlords of all people. A humble parish Vicar like me is merely a bearer of the holy message, and you, at last, are the receivers. You will obey the wishes of the King which are also the wishes of God.”
Imagine how this manner of thinking went against everything in my teaching of the Great Spirit! Mohawks believe that there is a Sky Chief and a Sky Mother. Their daughter fell from the sky deep into water and from her daughter came the formation of the earth and all things that live upon it. Within the people, and within the four‐legged, the winged, and the fish, even the trees and the great waters, lives the Spirit of the Sky Chief. Was this English God the same as the Great Spirit of my people? The question would vex me not a little.
24 Sep PICNICS
In pleasant weather on a shady riverside meadow the Walsingham family would frequently enjoy a bountiful picnic. By sermon’s end, the kitchen servants had already set up a cloth‐covered table with chairs placed around. When we arrived at the meadow, all was ready for serving a meal. The picnic food, already prepared at the manor kitchen, was now re-heated over small cookfires: oysters, roast beef, pheasant, and white potatoes from the colony of Virginia. Dessert was milk pudding and pippins, those apples from Harold’s covered garden. Sunday dinner on the meadow was the one tyme that I was permitted to sit at a chair and eat with the whole family, rather than just observe.
Oddly, Lady Walsingham and the two aunts wore masks, plain wooded masks with small holes for eyes and a round hole for breathing. Kinshasa afterwards told me that the masks protected their skin from the sunne. White skin, unnatural so, appeared much favored among the women of quality in England. Amusing it was in a roundabout way that they did not want to look like me.
The children were permitted to play games and their parents did look on admiringly, though oft with reminders not to overexert themselves, run too fast, or stay too long in the sunne. For me, it was an opportunity to run and dance along with them.
25 Sep HOUSEGUESTS
In addition to the hunting parties, other visitors with their entourages of servants would come to the Manor House. Some would stay for several days. Tables in the Great Hall, dining room, and bedchambers were adorned with vases of flowers and floral displays, all due to Harold’s loving care.
’Twas at these tymes that the servants felt the most anxiety. To the Walsinghams, no partridge was ever spiced just right, no linen napkin quite white enough or folded perfectly. Serena scolded the staff over some small matter—the uneven burning of the candles, for example—but I came to learn that she did that only after the Lady had scolded her for another servant’s oversight. This realization caused me to sympathize with Chief Housekeeper Serena and to come to endure her stern ways better.
Always on such visits the parents proudly dragged the children out to perform: to bow before the guests and recite a short poem, to play the lute or dulcimer, or to dance. Clapping of hands and praise followed, no matter how stumbling the performance. Only then did the Lord and the Lady abruptly dismiss the children.
Although I felt most responsible for the children’s staged accomplishments, I was shut out of being at their performances and was denied any direct contact with the visitors. Instead, I had to observe unseen through a crack in a door ajar. I was a servant. No matter what I accomplished through the children, my position at the Manor House would never change. It became a sore that slowly gnawed away at my inside. Remember how Katrina was forbidden to teach me writing? Was my feeling the same?
To keep ordinary people (that is, commoners of “low birth”) in their place, people of “high birth” upheld this division among people with every reminder possible. It was called the Great Chain of Being, linking those who ruled with those who worked. Everyone’s destiny, the people of England believed, had been determined by birth. For me, there was something cruelly wrong with this idea. Whilst I felt more and more removed from my Mohawk family as tyme went on, I never became a part of my English family. In truth, I was an orphan, wandering between two worlds at opposite ends of the universe.
26 Sep QUILL
I write now about the feather that writes. It was Percival who showed me its great power. The story of how he obtained a quill is my most amusing memory in all my years in England. Ever prim yet clumsy in the extreme, the man had feet that were too narrow and too long for his gangling legs. How he chased after and finally caught a wandering goose was comic theatre at its best. While holding the thrashing creature between his knees, he plucked off choice feathers near the wing tips, all accomplished with a broad grin of satisfaction. The quills he laid near the hearth overnight to harden. To finish, he shaved the end of each feather until it was a perfect point. If there was anything that Percival was truly fussy about—and he was fussy about many things— it was the point of his quill.
Ink he made mostly from blackberries. I used to watch him carefully every time he did this. He stewed the berries slowly in some gum water, being careful not to let the water boil. Then he drained them through cotton and kept the juice in a covered cup.
The first lesson began with putting a smock on each child in case of a spill, but there was not one for me. Percival saw that the quill was held in a certain position, that it was not overloaded with ink, that every scratch on paper was smooth and graceful, and that the hand floated freely across the page. The learning was slow and messy. “Do not overload with ink. Press lightly. Keep the arm loose.” Without these lessons the story of my life would never be written.
27 Sep BAPTISM
On a Sunday morning something extraordinary happened at the church of St. Nicholas. Vicar Proctor completed his sermon, descended from his high perch, and beckoned a man and woman in front to come forward. Together they stood before a great, mushroom‐shaped pedestal made of stone. The woman held a baby. The preacher tooke the baby, held it up for all to see, and chanted some words (in Latin) of which I understood not one. Then in English, “In the name of Christ our Savior,” he said, “I name thee Anna. Anna, meaning Full of Grace.” He crossed his hands over the baby, saying more strange words.
Next, the preacher placed his hand in a bowl of water atop the pedestal, and then sprinkled some drops on the baby’s head. More strange words and handwaving followed. Turning to face his parishioners, the vicar ended the ritual with: “May Anna forever lead a virtuous life, fulfilling the lessons of the Ten Commandments. At service end, we will celebrate the coming of this child to Jesus with biscuits and marmalade.”
What was there about this ritual that interested me in the extreme? My sisters told me that a Black Robe had come to our village when I was a baby. They said he held me up at the meeting post where everyone had gathered. They told of his sprinkling holy water on me and crossing a hand over me, whilst speaking words of great mystery! Of course, I was too young to remember, yet I was beyond curious to know what it all meant. Harold would surely know.
28 Sep HAROLD’S ANSWERS
At year’s end, Serena told me that Lady Walsingham had instructed her to allow me a half day away from my duties, this to be every seven days. No reason was given, but it meant, for certain, that the family approved of my caring for the children. I treasured that half-day, hoping to use it to visit Harold more frequently and to take solitary strolls along the River Thames.
Harold always received me as a friend. Visiting his warm garden in winter became my continued yearning throughout the whole week. In sommer I came to know the sweet smell of huneysuckle as we walked through his outside garden, arranged in squares and rectangles, with fruit trees at every corner.
Harold and I spoke of many things. I learned that he had two small children. His wife spent much of her day weaving flax and wool into cloth. They sold batches of the cloth to tailors or to tradesmen in Shepperton.
Now my burning question, “What is a heathen?”
Surprised, Harold answered, “Well, my friend, you ask a natural question. A heathen is a person who cares not for the teachings of Jesus Christ, who does not attend church, cares not for the Bible, who may worship idols if he worships at all.”
“Do you go to church?” asked I innocently enough, never having seen him at the church of St. Nicholas.
“The King requires all subjects to attend church. Those who miss a service must pay a fine of one shilling. The money goes to the King.”
“I have not seen you at St. Nicholas Church.”
“No. All the servants of the Manor House attend the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene. You have passed by the church; it is across the road from the Manor House. It is the church where Nora now lies in peace.”
“Why do the Walsinghams not attend there as well, so close by.”
“Now you ask a prying question,” Harold answered. “I tell you in secrecy. I believe it is so because they do not care to sit beside their servants when praying to God.”
“But the servants bring great comfort to their lives.”
“Understand, Sky Flower, this is the way of life in England.”
I turned to another matter, “Your children must be happy when you take some of your fruit to them,” but was hardly prepared for what came from my innocent comment.
“No,” Harold spoke in a firm voice. “I vowed to serve Lord Walsingham and his family, not to take their fruit.”
“But one pippin for the children,” I protested mildly.
“No, not one. My duty is to grow fruit for my master, not to steal his pippins.” So, that was how Harold was, and that was the end of our talking about our places in life.
I described to him the ceremony at St. Nicholas with the baby. “That,” he said, “was the church’s way of making someone a Christian at the beginning of life.” He listened intently as I told him what my sisters told me about the Black Robe who came to our village. “He sprinkled holy water on me, too, when I was a baby.”
“So,” the gardener said with eyes wide and a smile, “you are a Christian, too!” His broad grin turned into a laugh, the singular tyme I heard Harold laugh out loud. “So, you are not a heathen. You are as much a Christian as any noble man or woman in England.” His response brought me to laugh with him. What would Lady Walsingham think now? I wondered. She never learned of my baptism into Christianity at the meeting circle in Tahawus.
29 Sep ALONG THE RIVER THAMES
Only a few footsteps from the church in Shepperton was a river—blue in colour and fresh in fragrance, not like the dark stinking river where The Black Swan docked in London. Later I discovered that my two views were of the same river, the River Thames. Harold later explained that this part was knowne as the “Cradle of the Thames,” where it makes a sharp bend at its most southerly reach before proceeding eastward to London City.
On my after‐noone of leisure whenever the weather was pleasant, I would enjoy walking along the towpaths, passing by anglers holding their rods and lines and other foot travelers. Many tymes I saw strange-looking flat boats on the river. They were different from our bark canoes and more like big rafts: these were barges, piled high with bundles and the strange English animals I had come to know: cows, sheep, and goats. Gangs of bow-haulers hefting long ropes guided the barges along a towpath. During dry spells, when they became stuck in the shallows, they became easy prey for thieves under cover of night. Bow-haulers and some tymes a team of horses had to tow grounded barges off the mud flats.
30 Sep SPIRAL POLE
One day brought much excitement to the household. A merchant in the spice trade arrived with his wife at the Manor House: he, in a wide pleated collar and a great, purple cloak; she, wearing a bonnet befitting a queen and a flowing, dark greene gown. Their splendidly decorated carriage, drawn by four horses, their luxurious robes with fur‐lined collars and hats, and their many servants showed to all that were people of great wealth. The Walsingham children, of course, had to present themselves in the great hall for their poetry or music recitals. After curtsying, the older girls performed with the stiff elegance expected of them. The younger two merely shrank back despite much coaxing. I managed to see it all through a crack in the doorway.
The merchant, of booming voice and generous girth, proclaimed that he had a wonderful surprise for everyone to see. Unintended, there was a surprise for me, too. From the doorway I continued to look at him with great curiosity. The merchant had a red nose shaped like an egg. From his long-stemmed pipe, he spilled ashes that fell onto his overhanging belly. This same man, the honored guest, had sat next to me on the carriage ride from London!
His surprise: two servants brought in a long narrow object wrapped in black velvet. They bore it with the care given a newborn prince. If placed upright, the object might have been the height of a man, perhaps even taller. Its unwrapping, the merchant performed slowly and gently. Everyone gasped: it was a white pole that tapered to a sharp point. I made out even at my distance a groove running in a spiral along its entire length.
There was much chatter and admiration of this strange object. The gentleman allowed each child to touch it, but only lightly and only for an instant as he revealed its story in great detail. From my hiding place at the doorway I was able to hear only a little bit of his words. Something was said about the pole being twice the value of gold. Not until many years afterwards did I discover the origin of that mystery pole. That is a tale for another day.
The merchant had one more surprise. “And here is a gift for the children,” bellowed he with a belly-shaking, “Ha, ha, ha, hooo,” holding up a small book. A flock of eyes opened wide. “No dull book, this,” he explained with enough voice to be heard by the stablemen. “Here is a story to delight your fancy.” The children were entranced, more so with the book than about the spiral-grooved pole. “It is a story that comes from the printers of Germany. It is here writ in French. Do you study French?” he asked.
“Yes, certainly,” said Veronica and Amanda, one voice atop the other.
“Ahh, splendid! Then, you will like this book. It is called Cendrillon. ’Tis a story about …”
The trader’s wife interrupted, “The story concerns a beautiful maiden, abused by her shameless older sisters, and a handsome prince who lived in a castle. He finds his dream bride with the fitting of a shoe.” I knew the story! Assepoester! It was the story that Katrina and I had read. I neerely burst through the door with excitement.
1 Oct UNICORNS AND PLANTS
That night the girls were eager to tell me all about the long, spiraled pole, but not before a complete reading of Cendrillon. Need I say that we struggled through the French words? But we read the book in its entirety, and guessed at many words that I had seen before in Dutch. The story told of a hard-working girl called Cendrillon. Her fairie godmother changed a pumpkin into a carriage, and turned mice into horses to pull the carriage, all to attend a ball given by the prince of the realm.
The children, laughing, also sang a song to me about red noses. Disrespectful it was. Since that night, I heard it so many times as to remember it today.
“Nose, nose, jolly red nose
Who gave thee this jolly red nose?
Nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and cloves
And that gave me this jolly red nose.”
What of the long pole with the spiral groove? Amanda was quick to tell me that it was the horn of a horse‐like creature. People called it a unicorn, and it lived in the forest. The unicorn, of course, had only one horn. It jutted out from the forehead.
“Have you ever seen a unicorn?” I queried. The girls assured me that unicorns were shy in the extreme. Few people had ever seen one. The legend holds that if a young woman sits within a clearing in the forest, a unicorn may appear and rest its head gently on her lap.
Much later, I learned something from Harold about unicorns and the curious pole with the spiral groove. He had once seen a painting of a maiden and a unicorn much in the situation told to me by the children.
The horn of the unicorn, Harold explained, was believed to have magical properties. Powder shaved from the horn and sprinkled into water would reveal if the water is poisoned. The shavings would remove the effect of poison. People said that the powder could also take away the pains of old age. The horn was worthy in exchange of half a city or twice its weight in gold. To me, these powers were absurd. My thinking, of course, I kept to myself.
’Twas on one of these visits to the orangery that Harold chose to show me a few of his medicinal plants with which, he said “the Almighty God graciously filled our gardens. Out of these plants have come remedies for easing the vast multitude of frailties that take over our mortal bodies. Come,” said he, beckoning. Perhaps, I add, those were not exactly his words and perhaps my recall of the plants is faulty.
He pointed to tall stalks each with a thousand tiny leaves topped with clusters of white flowers. Harold explained, “Common yarrow, found in every pasture. It is used for curing wounds and easing the pain.”
Next was basil. “The leaves applied to skin stung by a wasp or other venomous beasts draws the poison to it. And here is chamomile. When its leaves are boiled down to a liquid state, this plant can take away weariness. For this purpose, Lady Walsingham cares to sprinkle powder of chamomile in her bathwater.”
“And here you see a plant with sharp, teeth‐like edges, and so it is called the dandelion, the teeth of a lion. It helps the liver, gall and spleen. When given with huney‐suckle, dandelion is also a wonderful help for cough and for healing the wasting of consumption. If there is spitting of blood, we add the buds of red rose to make it of greater benefit. The plant you see next to the dandelion is called sweet marjoram. It also eases the breath and loosens phlegm when caused by consumption.”
Oh, how I wished that I had given dandelion and huneysuckle and red roses and marjoram to Katrina rather than my worthless sham of a remedy!
2 Oct MARY’S WAY WITH ANIMALS
We read the story Cendrillon each night until the older girls knew every word. Oh my, how fast their French speaking improved! There were wonderful words to learn. Here are some of them. A girl named Cendrillon swept the cendres from fireplaces. She had une fée marraine. This fairy godmother gave her une belle robe to wear to a royal ball. Cendrillon rode to the palace in a coach pulled by beaucoup de chevaux. In the ballroom she dansait with le Prince Charmant. When the horloge struck midnight, she ran from the palace but while on the stairs she lost one of her chaussures de verre. And there were so many other words learned before the story was over.
Of course, we spoke these words as if they were English words, but Henri assoon cleared us of that. The tutor never learned about our possession of the book Cendrillon. He could believe barely what a good teacher of French he had become. Henri never suspected that a creature from the wilderness of the colonies had anything to do with it.
My special friend, Mary, possessed a true‐hearted affection for horses—real horses, as I suspected after seeing her drawings. With a tug on the hand she oft drew me to the stables. Horses loomed immense beside her tiny frame, yet she was fearless and, indeed, never seemed happier than she was when close to them. She carried fistfuls of grass for them to eat from her hand, giggling in the act. She stroked their flanks, and on tiptoes caressed their long snouts. Her manner with the great beasts told of a natural kindness. Mary’s way with the horses astounded the stablemen. Lord and Lady Walsingham thought not kindly of their daughter attending the stables, but allowed it, at least for a tyme. Perhaps, as I suspected, they had abandoned their hopes of wayward Mary ever becoming a proper woman of the court.
Mary was already knowne for calming the hunting dogs. She was the only child who could mingle with them without causing agitated barking. This unusual ability was not overlooked by the stablemen. The girl never tired of playing with baby goats and sheep or watching the owls that nested in the eaves of the stables. On many occasions, I found Lord Walsingham himself standing quietly out of Mary’s view, watching, perhaps admiring, her way with animals. Should I have knowne that her oneness with diverse animals would one day be explained? That the reason might have something to do with a great black cat? Should I have knowne that the bewildering mystery that hovered over this little girl might finally be solved?
Now, of Lord Walsingham, I have written little. Yet his unspoken authority measured his presence in every matter of the estate. In fact, he was seldom seen at the Manor House, and only then with his many assistant horsemen and servers. Always, he gave much attention to his elegant attire. His handkerchief was always white, of the sort remembered from my dreadful days at the washtubs. Announcing his presence was always the strong perfume of rosewater or orange peel. Indeed, amidst all his pomp, Lord of the Manor was a splendid figure.
3 Oct ENGLISH DIVERSIONS
Oh, how dour and sad have I writ about the life of commoners in England. There yet were tymes that belie these descriptions. Oft it happened that a stranger appeared in the village, causing a rush of people onto the street for a welcome diversion. Usually it was a wandering peddler. He would drag behind him a small cart, all the tyme yelling constantly, “Come buy of me, come buy of me.” He came to earn coins for any assortment of pins and ribbons, gloves, knives, and pipes that crammed his cart. Mostly, it seemed to me, that those who flocked around the peddler were eager to hear news beyond the village.
A few tinkers, too, came with baskets of tools with which to mend holes in pots. Neither tinkers nor peddlers were much trusted. Their tools, gossip said, were meant to pick locks.
Then there were the entertainers: acrobats, strolling minstrels, jugglers, and dancers. These visitors brought fleeting moments of joy to people who likely found little pleasure in their everyday lives. But a murmur of caution spread throughout the crowds: keep guard of your purses and pockets. These strangers, living from handouts by a grateful throng, ’tis said, had many tricks to separate the laboring citizen from his money.
4 Oct STAG
Now I write of a rare precious moment. One singularly hot night, I stealthily made my way to my Place of Happiness. The moon hid in part behind a cloud. This tyme, there were no dogs and the frogs were strangely quiet. Dozing off amid the ferns, I was awakened by a slight rustle. Now, backlit by the now full moon stood a giant stag. His great antlers stretched out more than my arms’ width. I durst not blink for feare of startling the creature, but I could not remain frozen for long. At my slightest move, he threw up his head, pawed the ground with a forefoot, and slowly sauntered away into the night.
Even today, the image of that encounter in the light of a bright moon brings a sense of joy. Thereafter at the manor, I could look not without a catch in my breath at each animal brought back by the hunting parties.
5 Oct BELIEFS
One after‐noone in the orangery I found the gardener lost in thought as he separated some closely growing plants sprouting out of a huge earthen pot.
“What are they?” I asked.
“Just some dahlias. They need more space for growing. Over here is myrrh. A tincture from it is good for toothaches. And here, valerian, to make a plaster for the pox.” I remember not all, but something about fennel for fever and rhubarb to calm the inflamed stomach.
“Sage over here,” he went on pointing to some shrubby and wrinkled leaves, “stops the spitting of blood in consumption. In small amounts, it sharpens memory and quickens the senses. Rub your fingers over a leaf and smell.” I did so and found it most agreeable.
“You are a wise man, Harold. I learn much from you.”
“No, not wise. It is God who is wise. My head, like my hands, is only to serve his almighty purpose.”
That said I was emboldened to ask what had been on my mind for a long tyme. “Think me not too cheeky to ask, in what God do you believe?”
Harold looked up, unblinking, more than a little startled. He stood straight up and turned toward me, “But, my child, there is only one God. He looks after all of us.”
“Are you a Royalist?” I had overheard talk of Royalists among the kitchen servants, serious and oft whispered, when speaking of faith in God.
“No. I am a Puritan. Puritans are not of the same mind as are Royalists. Do you know how we differ?”
I confessed of knowing naught about these ways of thinking.
Harold explained with words that reminded me of Vicar Proctor’s sermon. “Royalists believe that the King or the Queen—we call them the ‘Crown’—were chosen by God to lead all the people. The King or Queen instructs the bishops who claim to be the living agents of the apostles of Jesus Christ. The bishops then instruct the vicars who, in turn, tell the ordinary people what to believe. The vicars preach that all the people must serve the Crown in some fashion. In this way, the King and Queen wield their will over all the subjects of the realm.”
A bit confused, I replied with innocent curiosity, “Then, the Walsinghams are Royalists?”
“You must know, Gwendolyn, that there are those who are born into wealth. They are the families who own much land and other properties, and are educated. They do not wish change. They support the King. Yes, they are the Royalists. They think themselves as having attained wealth by exceptional talent and high virtue. The poor, our betters believe, are born idle and by that it is assumed they were born dim‐witted. They are destined to live their lives serving the well‐borne.” What more I can remember of Harold’s explanation, I will explain tomorrow.
6 Oct MORE BELIEFS
Now, to continue my meager understanding about the rules of England.
“Then you do not share the beliefs of the Royalists,” said I.
“Yes, that is so. You see, I am but a poor man. Nothing I do will change that. The goal of life for Puritans is the continual exertion of self-control, the reliance on oneself, thrift, dedication to a merciful God, and hard work whilst living in a simple way.”
I muttered something in reply, if only to prove me attentive.
Harold explained further, “The life of a Puritan is taken up with humble work and serving his family, and every moment dedicated to God. You will not see an idle, thieving or drunken Puritan, nor hear him on a Sunday profane the Bible-given day of rest and prayer.”
My head reeled from this subject so powerful.
“Puritans simply want the Bible, not the Bishops, to set the law by which God governs the people. Reading the Bible every day along with prayer is the map of life. Preaching the Word comes from commoners like my neighbors and me, not from bishops and priests and vicars.”
“You honor me in the telling,” said I. “Now, I speak my mind, please pardon. Your never‐ending work nurturing plants for so little reward must be unbearable.”
“No, not so,” the plant-nurturer pushed back. “This life may be with rare joy but it will be rewarded in the next life. All people know what happens to sinners: an eternity in the fires of Hell. Puritans conduct their lives to please God. When taken by death, the true believer goes to a better world for the rest of tyme. Heaven is the Puritan’s fulfillment.”
“But do you not think present life needs fulfilling, too?” said I.
He returned, “You should not compare the afflictions in this life with life hereafter, when the crushing weight will be lifted for eternity. Though life is joyless now, a Puritan will be blessed with tymeless happiness in the next life.”
As he picked up his watering pot with its long spout and turned toward his plants, Harold spoke in a quiet, somber voice, “You must know, there is danger in my telling you of my Puritan thoughts. You must not speak a word of them to anyone.”
“I promise. Not a word.” What else could I say?
“Now, my friend,” said Harold, “Would you kindly hold this stem from an apricot plant steady? I need to try to attach this branch from a peach tree to it.” Always, he held the stems close to his nose. I noticed how his eyelids tightened during this exacting work and how his tongue protruded slightly to one corner of his mouth. Katrina, I remembered, did the same when putting the smallest details on a drawing.
Naively asked I, “Do you think that spectacles would help your shortsightedness? Lady Walsingham uses them oft when she reads.”
“Ah yes,” said he. “But spectacles are too costly for a gardener.”
Quickly changing the matter of discussion, inquired I, “What kind of fruit will this graft bear?”
“Can you guess?”
“No, I cannot even imagine.”
“Then we will have to wait and see,” Harold returned, assuring me that he could create not a new plant. “Only God can do that. But through plants, God allows me to try to bring his creations into their best light.”
In all the years that have passed, I remember these last words exactly as said. With this explanation, my education about matters of religion from the Puritans’ viewpoint came to an abrupt ending, at least for the moment. My new lesson was on horticulture.
7 Oct SIR FRANCIS DRAKE
Now, about the cat that solved the mystery of Mary’s contrary ways. It happened during the telling of a story by the great fireplace. ’Twas on a chilly night. On such cold nights, we had permission to burn “sea coal,” special because it gives off less smoke than other kinds. It came on ships from a long distance and was much dearer in cost than wood and ordinary charcoal. Serena reminded me of that more than once.
The children were sitting before the hearth, gathering its warmth. I sat facing them, telling them a story of life in a wild forest and imitating the sounds of birds chirping, frogs peeping, and wolves howling. I flatter myself to write that I had become quite talented at making animal sounds. As usual, Mary squirmed restlessly in my arms, calmed only by my holding her quietly until tension of her body gave way in sleep.
I had just started to tell a Mohawk story about a mountain monster named Stone Giant, when Sir Francis Drake, the cat, decided to join in. Now, house cats were not kept as pets. Nor were they fed. A hungry cat better catches a mouse, they say. From his plump belly, this cat was either a good mouser or, as I suspected, he had a secret benefactor who was very human. (More on the suspect culprit later.) The children named their cat after a favorite folk hero, a sea master, Francis Drake, famous for his daring raids on Spanish ships and fabulous treasures of silver and gold taken from the New World. Sir Francis Drake, as a kitten and now as mature cat, was famous in the household for her cheeky raids for food left on plates.
8 Oct VASE
The cat had jumped from the back of a chair onto the mantle for a warm nap. I imagined that he wanted to hear about the Stone Giant who, the elders said, ate misbehaving children. In tonight’s tale the Giant had been rudely awakened by a thunderstorm and he was angry. Quietly, the cat nudged himself behind a large, white vase decorated with blue flowers. It was during my imitation of the giant’s loud growl that the vase came tumbling downe onto the stone hearth. It shattered into a thousand pieces making a powerful noise, CRAASHHH! I flinched with a jerk, as did the others—all except Mary. I felt not a muscle twitch in the limp body that lay nestled between my arms.
Chief Housekeeper Serena appeared at the scene within an instant. The incident of the broken vase earned a cuffing for the cat and a rebuke for me. As Serena’s angry words turned on me for allowing the cat to climb onto the mantle, the mystery of Mary’s unruly behavior suddenly became clear.
Of course! Mary did not hear the crash! How had I been a stupid goose for so long? My lack of insight preyed on me throughout the night. Why had it taken me so long to realize that Mary was deaf? Yes, I had been a play-actor on a ship, pretending to be a person wanting of hearing! How could I not have discovered this reason earlier?
9 Oct HAND‐SPEAKING
My night of sleepless agitation slowly turned into a tyme to think of ways of helping Mary. Early next morning, I devised a few tests to be sure of my suspicion: clapping whilst standing behind Mary, calling her name, clanging pewter cups loudly neere each ear. Every test that I performed proved to me that Mary had no use of her ears. From then on, my bond with Mary changed.
First, we stood at the cage of Gwendolyn, the canary. I made the Iroquois sign for bird: thumbs together and palms flapping. Mary at once imitated my hand flutters with a delighted laugh. Next, I made the sign for an owl – the thumb and pointer finger of each hand made circles that were the eyes. The small fingers turned up made ears. This, Mary performed as well. It was not long before we had hand names for all the animals that strolled about the manor: cat, dog, sheep, cow, horse, sparrow, hawk, dove. She tooke to her bed that night excited about speaking with hands. For me, I lay in my bed of goose feathers feeling a sense of inside joy that happens too seldom in a lifetyme.
10 Oct INVENTING HAND-WORDS
Mary woke me up before morning sun by tugging on my blanket. By candlelight we went over hand-words for the senses: to see, to taste, to feel. The action words, too, were easy: stand, sit, open, eat. By using hand and facial movements my little student quickly learned to express notions such as sadness, happiness, or pain. Within days, she learned to count. Weather, food, household objects were soon mastered. Although I never, as a child, tooke the trouble to learn hand-talking well, such signals were used commonly in the land of the Iroquois. They were important when traveling to places where different tongues were spoken. Now, how I regretted my laziness! But what hand-words I did not know, we used our powers of invention. Before long, Mary and I had simple conversations together. Through it all, we laughed and swirled around. Need it be said that Mary became tightly bound to me, following me everywhere and imitating me in every action?
To the present tyme, the morn is splendidly bright, the air crisp. Trees in the valley have shed most of their leaves, no longer fiery. The mountainside stays green from plentiful stands of fir trees. High up there are patches of white. The wintry face of Cloud-Splitter has returned.
11 Oct DAY OF THE MAYPOLE DANCE
A bird that pecks at trees has visited me every morning for the past many days, attending to its duty, coming ever closer to my longhouse. Hah, I well know this bird by its loud knocking against a tree. ’Tis a bird with a red tuft on its head, a white stripe along its neck, and great wings. It makes holes the size of a fist in the tree. What compels a bird to do that? I do not know.
With the arrival of Spring in Littleton there was talk of the annual Day of the Maypole Dance. I had taken little notice until the day had come. ’Twas on a Sunday afternoon in a month called June, not as one would expect from the name. On this special day servants were allowed the afternoon free of duties providing, of course, that they had completed their chores by noon. The air was dry, the day filled with sunshine, and there was a sense of excitement all around. My curiosity was extreme.
Joined by Kinshasa, the children walked with me the distance to Church Square in Shepperton, their delight at the excursion rising with every step. As we walked, others joined in along the way, so that the street was crowded by the tyme we had reached our destination. There, at Church Square, to my amazement, were more people than I had ever seen before in one place.
People milled around with great agitation. They were of all ages, most hale and some lame. From the clothing, I could tell that these were all commoners, the people who work, the laborers, makers of bricks, thatchers and planters. Not a wig, a ruff, a bejeweled satin doublet, a taffeta‐lined cloak or a white glove met the eye. Here were not the upper links in the Great Chain of Being.
Among the merrymakers, I spotted Mildred from the laundry, singing loudly with a group of several women. Familiar faces of workers in the manor kitchen and men from the stables appeared here and there. Ezra, also of the stables, was there, too, playing a game in which one boy leaps over another who was bent down as they made a chain of leaping boys. I looked and looked for Chief Housekeeper Serena, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Rising at the center of the crossroads in Church Green was a tall pole, high as any tree but stripped of all branches. Festooned atop of the pole was a huge spray of flowers. From the tip hung many ribbons with alternating red and blue colours.
We had arrived in tyme to hear music in the distance. Assoon to come into view was a band of musicians with drums, horns, and instruments with strings. Following them were young men and women bedecked in garlands of flowers and emblems of diverse colours, all marching in grand style to the Church Square. Good cheer was plentiful.
12 Oct MAYPOLE DANCE
Each of the lads and lasses of the parade picked up an end of one of the ribbons that dangled to the ground. Each brought it out to full length to form a large ring around the pole, the lads holding the end of a blue ribbon, the lasses, a red one. Then, to a lively tune, they danced round the pole, the girls skipping in one direction, the boys in the opposite, weaving in and out among themselves in what is called the “Chain Dance.”
The crowd pressed inward to form a ring around the dancers. As Kinshasa and I squeezed the children closer for a better view, I eyed Bertha among the dancers. A crown of yellow flowers adorned her head. She carried a smile that was a broad as her face. That smile, it is safe to say, was the biggest surprise of the day!
Soon the ribbons, both red and blue, were slowly intertwined into a braid. Then the task was to unravel the braid by reversing the dance and weaving in and out againe. At the end came the selection of a May Queen and a final celebration with great cheers and dancing.
Throughout the Dance of the Maypole, I searched the faces of bystanders for expressions. In my half year in England, I had become quite accustomed to serious, even dour features. But now, I saw something different. It was an unclouded happiness no matter if among the lame, old, drunk, or hopelessly poor. This pageantry, ’twas clear, brought out a joy in humble people that was absent, I suspect, in their everyday lives. The Day of the Maypole Dance was their special day.
13 Oct RAINBOW
Very well remembered was a particular morning at the Manor House. It beganne with rain that ended suddenly before midday. Rays from a half‐hidden sunne streamed through the mist, and a wide rainbow stretched high above the meadow. Seeing Mary stirring from her nap, I beckoned her to the window. A smile came upon her face that turned up the corners of her eyes. With five extended fingers, I made a long arc with my outstretched arm, then pointed to myself. I saw a light come into her face that I shall never forget. Mary followed with a like gesture, but ended the sweep pointing to me. I knew at that moment that she understood: the arc of many colours in the sky was my true name.
Mary tooke my hand and led me excitedly to the playroom. There, she searched through a huge box of toys until she came up with a piece of glass found at the very bottom. The cleer glass was shaped by three sharp angles. This, she set on a table where a beam of sunne fell on the table’s white smooth stone top. At once, there appeared a most astonishing sight on the table: a tiny rainbow. It was just as perfect as one in the sky, colours matching. Sensing her satisfaction as if she were a navigator showing a map of a newly discovered continent to the King, Mary stepped back, her arms folded in front, her face beaming.
Whilst I endured hearing the name Gwendolyn called out a thousand tymes a day, Mary from then on used my birth name, “spoken” by waving one arm in a long arc, with fingers outstretched. No one ever caught onto our secret. Of course, the other children assoon noticed a change in Mary. They also seemed jealous of my attention to her. Yet, they did not complain, for their sister was now less of a bother.
Lady Walsingham at first resented my suggestion. People deaf, she believed, were weak‐minded and altogether strange, compelled to live sorry lives in their silent worlds. Nonetheless, she eventually accepted the truth, and became more tolerant of her daughter. She never did acknowledge my role in the discovery.
That day ended with a less cheerful happening. We watched in horror as four soldiers with metal helmets and long pikes dragged a man into the yard of the Manor House and then pushed him into a waiting carriage. The man was gaunt, scruffy, and frightened. He had been caught hunting in the forest, an act considered unlawful by the gentry. I knew in the bottom of my soul that he was trying to provide a meal, perhaps a hare, for a hungry family. Unfortunately, he chose to do so where hunting was a passer of tyme solely for the privileged, those who already enjoyed a plentiful table.
On the following day, Harold told me that poachers enter the forest at great peril. The woodlands are royal property, not to be entered by commoners. Punishment for the violation was severe, he told me, without further explanation. I grieved for this pitiful man.
14 Oct THE GREAT SPIRIT
On one of my free after-noones I durst open the great door of the church of St. Nicholas. It was empty of people. My footsteps echoed on the tiled floor. The window of many colours glowed dazzlingly in the sunne.
I sat on a bench at the front, looking up at the pulpit, and hoping that the preacher would not enter. There, completely alone, I felt a spirit of calmness, a peace, that I had not knowne since I was a child. Had the God of Vicar Proctor finally come to me, to forgive me for my sins, to bring me to the Savior knowne as Jesus? Was the King, God’s chosen one on Earth, beckoning me to become his subject? Were the words of Harold true about a life tyme of hard work with true happiness only in the next life? Was my lowly place in the Great Chain of Being as meant to be?
In that vast church I heard, instead, the voice of the Great Spirit, the Creator‐of‐All, calling me back to my People and to a world where no man and no woman is a life‐long subject at the whims of the leisure‐minded gentry. He was calling me back to a place where every creature has a soul. My Creator, the Sky Chief, tells us that we are at one with the spirit in every animal, tree, rock, plant, or river. From the four‐legged, the winged and the swimming creatures we take our food, wear our clothes and make our tools. The long leg tendon of a deer ties together a snowshoe or the string on a bow. A foretooth of the beaver makes a sharp-edged cutting tool. To the deer and the beaver and to all the other animals, we give thanks. We pray not to a cross but to the Spirit of the Universal Giver. The echoing emptiness of the church with its window of shining colours and the silent pulpit looking downe upon me brought these thoughts crashing together. Peaceful? Yes. Confusing? Yes, that too.
15 Oct GENTLEMAN CALLER
This morning a light cover of snow greeted me. By high sunne, ’twas gone. Yet the rim of snow on the peak of Cloud‐Splitter lies a bit farther down day by day. Where is Jacob? I worry with the coming of winter.
Early one morning during my second year in Littleton, Serena came to my room, appearing more formal than ever. She announced that a gentleman caller would come to see me in the after-noone. By instructions from Lady Walsingham, I should be scoured and freshly dressed. My inside almost burst with curiosity, yet I could not imagine who the gentleman caller might be.
In the after‐noone, Serena returned. She led me straight away to the Great Hall, my heart a’twitter, leaving me alone. All the candles set along the wall were lit. I sat on a velvet-covered chair and waited and wondered about this mysterious gentleman. At last, the door opened. In came a tall man, limping slightly, all in black aside from a red lining beneath a black cape. Our faces turned, smiling.
“Sky Flower, do you remember me?” he asked.
“Yes, Master Jones, indeed I do remember you,” stammered I, jumping up in surprise and at the same time delighted in hearing my own name spoken once again.
“Very well. Please sit.” And with that, he sat in the other soft chair. “So, Lord Walsingham has told me that you have become wonderfully accomplished in speaking English. I hear that you have a new name, an English one.”
“Yes, all is true,” said I.
“And how do you get along at the Manor House?”
“Thank you, Sir, quite well.”
“You see, my instinct about you long ago in New Amsterdam is clearly borne out.”
“You have good instincts, Master Jones.”
“Well, they say you have a talent for managing the children. Lord Walsingham also informed me that you have done wonders with Mary.”
“Yes, Mary is quick-witted, and a good child at heart.”
“Thanks be to God,” returned Master Jones with a quick glance upward. “And what of you? Are you content?”
“Indeed, I have a good life here at the Manor House, Master Jones. Useful, I am. But I do miss terribly my sisters. Do you have news of New Amsterdam and Fort Oranje?”
“Surely, though not of your sisters,” came with a strong nod. “Ships arrive almost every day at New Amsterdam from ’round the globe. By now, there are twenty languages spoken there. The village seems to grow by the day. Assoon, it may become a city.”
Master Jones went on, “Puritans come from England in great numbers, mostly to a colony on the eastern shore, Boston, to find a better life. Yet, the Dutch and the English fester in conflict and the local tribes are caught in between. You should be happy to live away from the constant strife. Despite all the troubles, I am pleased to tell you that business in your old tavern is better than ever. Even now, Mijnheer Hoevenberg is building a larger tavern with a dozen rooms for paying sleepers.”
“Will you return to New Amsterdam soon, Master Jones?” inquired I.
“Hmm, probably not for a spell,” he returned. “Do you wish for me to inform you when I do?”
“Please, Master Jones. I shall be most grateful for such a kindness.”
“Then I shall. Oh, I almost forgot. Here is a gift from the Hoevenbergs,” said he, handing me a canvas pouch whilst buttoning the top of his cloak with the other hand.
Master Jones left with these words, “I trust that your position here in England is satisfactory. You are better for it, I am certain. Do I see before me a young woman now indeed quite refined in manner?”
“Oh, I am greatly obliged to you, Sir. Please be so kind as to give Mijnheer and Mevrouw Hoevenberg my thanks should you meet them again.”
“Spoken like a fine gentlewoman, Gwendolyn,” said he with a chuckle. “May God be with you.” And with that, Master Jones tooke his leave, assoon disappearing at the crack of a whip and the rattle of wheels.
16 Oct SEASONS PASSING
What lay inside the pouch brought by Master Aubrey Jones? ’Twas a mystery. There, I found a clay pot. Late at night, I broke the wax seal and found the pot filled with maple syrup! This gift from the other side of the world filled me with delight. I could see the little smile of Mevrouw Hoevenberg as I licked some drops of syrup from my fingertip. I put the pot aside to await some celebration, yet to be chosen.
The seasons in Littleton came and passed with scarcely a notice. Now that Spring had come, Harold was busier than ever. The Manor House had to be decorated for the next set of house guests. That he had few moments to occupy my fancies, I accepted without complaint, though somewhat jealous was I of his plants.
Another person engaged more of my attention. I write now of Percival, the tutor for proper speaking and writing. Over the months, he lingered longer and longer after his lessons to read to me a newly writ poem. Each poem spoke to the beauty of things: a fresh rose blossom, slowly drifting clouds, a drop of rain falling on a birch leaf. Oh, how I wish my shrinking brain could remember even one of those poems.
Somehow, that tutor is with me today. His presence is felt even as I write these pages. No sentence is ever completed without his spirit in the details of proper spelling and structure. As he oft reminded us in his squeaky voice, “Names of people and places require a capital first letter.” Another, “A paragraph expands a single thought.” And evermore, “Mind your punctuation.” And, so it went every week for those many years. He continues in some mysterious way to see over the flow of ink from my quill. Alas, I oft find myself wandering shamelessly from his idea of perfect.
Gradual changes in the children were seen. The older two became more obedient in their training. Charles, being a boy and the youngest child, was allowed greater freedom. Perhaps because of this he became more rebellious in study and manners. It was Mary who tooke most of my attention, ever at my elbow, pleading to walk in the garden, playing at games and, of course, visiting the stable. Improving steadily was our ease at hand speaking. The others, including the parents, showed no inclination to gain any skill in this silent language. Mary withdrew more and more from her sisters and brother, preferring when I was otherwise occupied, to be by herself, if not with Sir Frances Drake.
And so, the years in Littleton passed for me not unpleasantly for the most part. My life had become an overseer of etiquette, dance, music, working numbers, polite talk, and the art of fine letter writing. Of course, as the children suffered through their lessons, I was learning all the tyme.
17 Oct A WHOLE DAY FREE
The days become colder on the mountainside. Now, I must keep my cookfire burning through the night sleep. I lay all my blankets atop me at night.
During the spring of my sixth yeere, that is, 1635, the Lady called me to her side. With no little anxiety did I approach her. She was lounging in her usual chair by the hearth. I saw that she had lost more teeth, that the white powdered wax on her face was a bit thicker, and that the dyed lips were even redder.
“Gwendolyn,” Lady Walsingham offered, “Please take your ease. Serena informs me that you have served this house for six years.”
“Yes, I believe that is so, Ma’am.”
“Well, I do believe that Gwendolyn is a suitable name for a useful servant. Do you agree?”
“Yes, a fine name, Ma’am,” said I, all the while thinking that I am the yellow bird trapped in a cage.
The Lady paused before continuing. “You have served the family with some satisfaction. I believe the children are better for it. Master Jones has a good nose for value. Of his recommendation in your case, to be truthful, I was doubtful but meant to be charitable.”
My initial dread abated somewhat as she went on, “What do you think of having a whole day to yourself each month?” Surprised, I hesitated. “Come, speak up, girl,” she commanded.
“Yes,” said I. “I would like that very much, Ma’am.”
“Good, ’tis settled then. Every first Monday of every month. Do you agree?”
“Quite agree. Thank you, Ma’am.”
“Enough then. You may continue to your half day each fortnight, but not on those weeks occupied by your whole day. Do you understand?”
“I do,” said I most solemnly.
She added, “You would like that, I presume.”
“Oh, yes, very much. Thank you, Ma’am.”
“Then, that being the end of it.”
And so, the conversation ended. I bowed and turned. Then, I felt my feet carry me across the Great Hall as stately as if I were, as first imagined, the Queen of England. I felt my spirit soaring freely into open space. Need I write that the Lady never did call on me to discuss her interest in the Colonies. Nor did I ever get to look at the precious watercolours and drawings that her friend made there.
18 Oct KINSHASA’S PLAN
To celebrate my new-earned liberty, Kinshasa proposed taking me to the city of London, to a theatre. Long she had raved of once seeing a stage play there. From hearing much talk of wonderful pleasures, I desired to go. I anticipated a stage play much like stories told by my people around the meeting post.
I knew that Veronica and Amanda also enjoyed the city. To honor the birth of the Savior, Jesus, the Walsinghams had traveled to London Christmas last. The children had returned with great glee, all having awakened on Christmas morning with a sweet and a toy next to their pillows. They told of great hordes of people, among them acrobats and animals that performed tricks. I heard of high‐roofed palaces of many windows, rooms trimmed in gold, gardens of flowers covered by glass and long tables of minced pye and plum porridge. Who would not have a hearty desire to visit London? There was a nothing in the children’s report about the people I saw near the wharf on my arrival day.
Now as we made plans to see the great city, Kinshasa cautioned me that London meant a long walk. To me, “long walk” meant a journey of several days. I feared that the Lady would never allow that. Laughing, Kinshasa pointed out that it tooke no more than four hours each way, walking briskly. The English, ’twas clear, had a different sense of distance than the Mohawks.
Of course, I agreed to use what few pence I had saved for the adventure. In the early morning on a Monday in June, we made our way on foot. The simple joy of walking free from all my duties, I cannot express here on paper.
I have not written of Kinshasa of late. The years of kitchen toil had left its mark on that delicate face. Her expressions were now, more oft than not, cheerless, and her frame, thinned to excess. We spoke only in passing. Now, the prospects of a journey to London instilled a great tickle in both of us. In Kinshasa, there was a new bounce to her step.