It was a welcoming surprise to see Tom on that ship and be again amongst friends. He came back to our house for a drink and caught us up on a manuscript he was writing, The New English Canaan, which railed against the hypocrisy of Plymouth.
Quoted ye, I did, said Tom to my husband.
What did ye say?
How you spoke for the people and were punished for it. How these Plymouth leaders are more Savage than the so-called Savages.
Tom spoke some of it to us.
He wrote of how the Algonquins he knew could tell a Spaniard from a Frenchman by the smell of their hands, how they behaved as landed gentry—moving from the seacoast inward with the weather, fishing and hunting with the seasons, living as free and leisurely as the well-born British, with their idle pleasures—but that the puritans would never acknowledge the comparison.
Thomas Morton had much to say and we had much to complain about. Even from the beginning those hypocrites fashioned themselves quite differently from what they were. It was with help from the Wampanoag Indians that the Englishmen of Plymouth flourished.
While back in London, Morton went to the house of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. He told us of two Indians he kept captive there.
Purchased in Malaga, and Gorges said, as if Jesus himself, “Saved them from slavery, I did.” Called them “His wonders.”
And they wonder why your trading post was the most successful, said I.
No person wants to be thought of as less than human. Tom was a man of wealth. He had little that he could lose, except his life, which is no small thing, but at the time, seemed worth the risk. We clinked our goblets and cheered his truth-telling.
One drink turned to three. Had my husband and Tom Morton not been imbibing on an empty stomach before dinner and instead gone out to the fields, I am certain the evening would not have taken the turn it did.
A bell rang through the colony, announcing dinner.
Tom said, Ah, we have not yet gotten dinner.
I had the meat pie on the table and offered it.
Go on, my husband said to Tom, make merry at the meetinghouse.
What he meant was, make trouble. My husband hated the hypocrites, but did not want to tell Tom we were not invited to dinner.
Tom smiled. I cannot miss the opportunity to see them squirm. He patted my husband’s shoulder, stood, and said, I shall join you after.
Tom slid a flask from his cloak and slipped it to my husband. Just the thing to celebrate with when I get back, Tom said, and walked out the door to the meetinghouse.
My husband took a long sip, then brought down his musket from the wall.
Where are ye going with the gun, John?
The woods, he said.
Going to shoot some hypocrites? I said. It was a joke.
Tomorrow. Tonight, deer.
But I have pie.
He had set his mind on deer, though, and would not be persuaded otherwise.
A bit late for that, I called, as he walked away from the house.