For the evening meal, we gave the newcomers more food from the storehouse than we gave ourselves. The high oak beams of the meetinghouse were grand, I thought, in their simplicity. We women pushed the tables together for the occasion and decorated each with a pitcher of sweet goldenrod. We placed our venison pies, soft cheeses, salad herbs, corn meal boiled with dried peas, loaves of bread, and generous amounts of butter atop the tables.
My husband gave a speech, welcoming the newcomers. One butterfly followed the flowers into the room and fluttered around my husband as he spoke. I smiled at the kind of sign this could be.
And some, he said, not so new, and motioned to Thomas Morton.
The congregants in the crowd chuckled with unease. Morton smiled. Before dinner, back at home, my husband had voiced fury with Weston for bringing Thomas Morton back. Weston claimed he had not known of Morton’s banishment.
Water under the bridge, Bradford. Give him another chance. As an Englishman, he does improve relations with the Indians, Weston had said.
Our elder, William Brewster, stood. He was our lay minster most of these past ten years, for we could not find a suitable priest for Plymouth.
Let us pray, he said, and bowed his head, leading us in a blessing of the food, and thankfulness to God’s bounty, so that it might protect and nourish us.
I prayed, too, that these newcomers would not cause as much trouble as I feared they would. I was reminded again of what Pastor Robinson had said when my husband wrote to him proudly about the deaths of Massachusett men. Once there is bloodshed, there will be more. I wished he had not been right in this, as he so often was.
The Billingtons absence was unnoticed, or noticed only in its relief. I offered my new stepson a plate and ale before the other children. The seamen sat together at one table, hulking over their food, few with napkins over their shoulders. I thought of a boy and his mother I had seen on the dock before I boarded the Anne. The mother said, Be of good courage, and slipped a red cap upon his head. Her son loped off, new seaman that he was, and only then, privately, did she turn her head and wipe her tears away. Somebody loves us all. Not only God, but someone earthly, too. Or did, anyway. The seamen’s uncouth ways were not, when thought of this way, a bother to me.
Weston had a seat next to my husband, and beside him, Elder Brewster, and then Susanna’s husband. Thomas Morton and the seamen were already getting seconds of ale and meat before I had taken my first bite. The butter was down to slivers. We women ate together with the children, taking less than what our bellies wished for, hopeful some would be left over. There never was.
After their ale and with bellies warmed, and after my husband’s prayer for what we had consumed, the men’s laughter grew. I watched the dirty bowls pile up on tables not abandoned. In the center of the room the elders talked. I imagined they spoke of money. Debts. I perceived a growing tension at my husband’s table by the way Elder Brewster’s arms were folded. William had told me before dinner how few provisions Weston had brought over with the newcomers. I worried the state of our affairs was dire, but sitting there worrying would do nothing. There was a meetinghouse to clean. I took up three empty pitchers and asked the women who would like to join me. Elizabeth stood. I left Joseph sleeping in his Moses basket next to his father. Mercy and William the younger were amongst the other children—William playing jacks and Mercy twirling together stems of wild flowers. Elizabeth and I set out for the brook.
As safe as I felt in Plymouth, there was stillness in that path, and the sound of the water prevented me from hearing other sounds, which left me unsettled. Had I known what fates were being made there in the forest that night, I would have avoided the brook. The cleaning could have waited.