Good Wife! my husband called from the yard, in a tone too serious to be a welcoming sign.
What trouble do I have to get ye out of now, Good Husband?
I knew this was not going to be pleasant, but I wasn’t ready to give up our way. I thought my humor might help.
I’m afraid you won’t be able to help this time.
He appeared in the doorway, blood on his cheek.
What’s all this? I asked.
That newcomer.
I watched him. He’d gone and finally done what I feared he always might.
Where is he? I said.
I made a start to bolt out into the colony, and beyond it into the fields. He held up his hand, the world’s sign for stop, as if urging me and the world to halt. He had done the irrevocable.
He’s dead, Eleanor.
What did he do?
Took down my tree.
I raised my eyebrows.
I warned him.
I pursed my lips.
Ah, hell. Newcomen wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t right, but I’ve gone and done it.
I thought for a minute.
Your musket misfired.
It didn’t.
They won’t—I couldn’t say it. They’ll pardon you. Bradford won’t want blood on his hands.
Hard to market a colony with murderers.
You aren’t a murderer, John. It was a crime of passion, say. Your humors were temporarily unbalanced. The drink.
He just looked at the dirt.
No one knows it was you.
I can’t leave him there. It’s not right for a man to be left like that.
I tried to persuade him, I did, to pretend as if it never happened. But gentleman that he was, he would not leave that body.
We walked fast—but slowed our pace as we passed the meetinghouse—to where he’d laid Newcomen near the oak tree, his head resting on a fallen log.
I heard a guttural sound, and we both inched closer to Newcomen. The man lurched upright, opened his mouth wide, and gasped.
He lives! I said.
But no sooner had I said it then he slammed back down on the log.
My husband just stood there shaking his head.
Say it was an accident. It’s Standish’s fault, leaving us to fend for ourselves while he enjoys the fat of a roasted duck.
No, he said. I’ve done it, Eleanor. I’m not a man to lie about what I’ve done. I have to accept my fate. Hanging, no doubt.
I turned away from him. I stared at the vacant field that had never bothered me. Now it did. I almost said John the younger, almost told him to speak of our son’s death as why he did what he did. But I did not. I took the sleeve of my dress and wiped away the blood on my husband’s face. The mark of a stranger’s blood smeared on my newly washed dress. It didn’t matter.
We heard a crowd rumbling.
Here come the Savages, I said.
A dozen hypocrites and a handful of fight-eager, drunken seamen—guns raised, some still with stew-smattered napkins on their shoulders, a few in the back carrying their cups—yelled Huzzah! and charged toward us.
Newcomen’s body lay there, his dead eyes wide open. I went to him and with my fingers shut his lids.
Standish charged my way, his rifle high, the men behind him, with Edward Winslow in the back next to that coward who sends everyone else to do his work, Governor Bradford.
Ten paces from the body, they stopped short.
I steadied a smile.
Gentlemen, I said, and gave a curtsy, my best curtsy.
I stood above Newcomen.
My husband was behind the tree, slender enough to not be seen. Only a few more minutes of freedom. I understood why he lingered there. That night I’d learn—but it shan’t have been surprising—that his parting gift to me was drinking all the liquor Morton had given us.
Standish took one look at Newcomen, one look at me, and yelled, Billington!
What have ye done? said Bradford, running forward.
The militia boys, those paid hands, those traitors, called, Murder!
Not even knowing what had happened.
The blood was through Newcomen’s tunic and his cloak.
My husband stepped from behind the tree, slowly, like a bear awoken at the end of winter. You would not know he was afraid, unless you saw his thumb tapping against his left leg. As a boy … Why speak it? No one cares of us.
I’ll tell it anyway. As a boy, he watched his mother have her head chopped off with a dull blade in the town square, when he was not even tall enough to reach the barstool. It took ten chops, he said. The crowd laughed at her, called, Again, again. The blood splattered on his face. That’s how close he stayed to her.
She’d have died soon anyway. Her body was covered with white paint to make herself look paler, as was the fashion, but also to disguise the sores on her arms. The great pox, syphilis. Sad, common women like me dying that way in London, my own mother dying that way before the law could get her. One of the bishop’s hens of Winchester.
Standish picked up Newcomen’s arm. Dead.
He said, What did ye do?
I looked at my husband, willing him to say it was an accident. His word against a dead man’s.
You sold him land that was mine.
That man never listened to me when he needed to.
Arrest him, Bradford said to Standish.
Standish motioned to Hopkins and Samuel, two newly freed servants. Barely men. The age John the younger would have been.
They took my husband by the arms.
A seaman hoisted Newcomen over his shoulder. Once they got near the meetinghouse, Bradford and Winslow took the body, to appear as if they had carried it all along.
I followed alongside. I yelled what Standish needed to hear, You think him guilty before you know the story, though he dothn’t have ears, hearing only what he wanted to.
I’ve been calling the dead man Newcomen, but there’s something else.
What is this man’s name? Bradford asked.
And no one knew.