In Faith, I assure you Maryland is so beautifull and abundant that many have called it the Bower of Eden. Our Bay is full of Oysters and Striped Bass. The Land about the Bay is rich in Soil. Here do grow many towering White Oaks as grand as any in England. Indeed, when the Land is cleared and cultivated, it does resemble our native Gloucestershire. The Season for Growing and Planting is long and Winters but a mild Interlude—a mere Dream, if you will. In our Forests grow Wild Cherrys, Plums, Persimmons, and Strawberrys. Hickory and Walnut grow in plenty, and we do have Tulip Trees with flame-like gold and red Flowers. I need not tell you that many a Gentleman Planter has made his Fortune growing Tobacco in our Tidewater Districts. A full-sized Ship can sail up the Chesapeake and there reach the most far flung Plantations. The Indians here are peaceable. There are many who say that Maryland and Virginia shall be the wealthiest Region in the Americas.
Trying to keep her balance on the rocking deck, Hannah reread Cousin Nathan's letter to her father. "The Bower of Eden," she murmured as people shoved past to spew over the rail. A storm had blown the ship off course. The journey ahead would be long. After two weeks of staring into the waves, she had come to believe that the ocean itself was her new world, possessing a topography all its own, with precipitous mountains the ship barreled over only to slip into treacherously deep valleys.
The sailors had told her to banish seasickness by looking at the horizon. But how could she when the horizon was as evershifting and inconstant as everything else? There was much that confounded her. May's letters had not made Maryland sound like a Bower of Eden in the least. By this time her sister had been married for three years, with one baby born, perhaps a second on the way. Would she even recognize May? Had motherhood and the hard life in the wilderness made her robust and ruddy like Joan, or thin and haggard? And what of her husband? He would cease to be an enigma, Hannah thought. She would finally get to see him face to face.
***
She shared her sleeping box with a woman named Elizabeth Sharpe and her two sons, Will and Ned, aged eight and ten. Elizabeth would not allow her boys to sleep in the men's quarters. "God only knows what unsavory characters are lurking on a ship such as this. And you," she said, "must stay close by me. Let no one know you are an orphan. There are evil men what prey on girls such as you."
Elizabeth's husband had gone over eight years before as an indentured servant. "Last year he got his freedom," she told Hannah. "His master gave him seventy acres on the Eastern Shore. He's the first of our folk to ever have his own land."
Although Elizabeth's hair was thin and she was missing half her teeth, Hannah sensed that she had once been pretty. When she spoke of her husband, her eyes shone with pride. "My Michael can read and write, he can. When he was a lad, he had a kind master what taught him his grammary." Back in England, Elizabeth had begged the vicar to read her husband's letters to her. Now Hannah read them aloud as they huddled on the deck, trying to shelter from the wind.
Her husband's reports had made Elizabeth wise to the ways of the colony. When Hannah told her that her brother-in-law was a tobacco planter, Elizabeth just laughed. "A planter! Every cracker and freed slave calls himself a planter. Half of what folk call plantations are miserable smallholdings. After three years, the land goes barren, and they try to sell it back to the Indians. I hope your brother-in-law owns a few hundred acres." She pressed her hands together. "We only have seventy, but my Michael is a clever farmer. I hope we pull a decent crop the first year and buy more land. If we have enough acres, some might lie fallow until the soil is fertile again."
***
The ocean seethed. Hannah learned to walk in broad strides, shifting her weight from one foot to the other with the roll of the waves. She tried not to stare at the indentured servants, whose threadbare clothing and gaunt faces set them apart. They received the scantiest rations. In the hold, they slept six to a box. Most were men and boys, but there were a few women and girls. Elizabeth told her that many of them had been let out of debtors' prison, poverty being their only crime.
"When we get into port, the gentlemen planters will buy all the healthy young ones. But the sickly ones will be shipped straight back to Bristol Gaol."
"Do they not get their freedom back after seven years of indenture?" Hannah asked.
"If they survive the climate and fevers of the place," said Elizabeth. "Pity the servants what are wenches. In no time, their masters will be at them, seeking to roger them at every turn. If a master gets a wench with child, he can prolong her indenture. The only virgin in the colony is a girl what can outwit her master."
She clutched Hannah's arm and pointed at a pair of gentlemen planters striding across the deck. Their linen shirts, even after seven weeks at sea, looked almost clean. The feathers in their hats bobbed like living things.
"They do own many servants," Elizabeth whispered, "and many more slaves besides. Africans are the only ones what can bear the climate. Mark my words, Hannah. Late summer is the season of fevers. Many an English servant will sicken and die ere he sets foot off the ship. But the Africans will go on working."
***
After ten weeks on board, everyone on the vessel stank like a goat. The gentry tried to mask their stench with eau de cologne. The salt pork ran out, and the biscuit was infested with mold. The water tasted foul. One morning Hannah awoke with a burning forehead, her bowels in agony. Half the people on board were ill. Weak as she was, it was too awful to stay in the dank hold and breathe everyone else's offal and sickness. Swollen-headed, she leaned against the ship rail. In her fever, she fancied she saw tulip trees rising from the waves. Their crimson-gold flowers were like shooting flames.
She cleaved to her vision of those radiant trees, trying to see only them and not the corpses that the sailors launched overboard. Elizabeth's boys pointed and shouted as sharks devoured the bodies.