So my husband had changed his mind about confession. He did not say he did it. That was one of the wiser things he had done in his lifetime. There was a chance.
I came home to the goats and our son, Francis, sleeping by the fireplace. I went for the shelf where we kept the wine, intending to split it with Francis, the first offering to our son of our good liquor, when he’d lived before on watery beer. I opened the bottle and tilted it. There was nary a drop.
I looked for the flask. Gone. Getting himself killed and drinking all our liquor.
Sure, they had not said yet what his punishment would be, but I knew. We all did. This was Standish’s chance. This was Bradford’s opportunity to kill the truth forever. Punishing my husband for shooting a man on his own property, who would not leave, was a disguise for what they really wanted to punish him for: speaking out against them.
How could I get my husband out of this? I needed to think, which was harder to do without an evening drink and without dinner. He’d returned with a dead man instead of a deer. There was pie, but I hadn’t an appetite for it.
I took a walk. Out into the field, crying despite myself, angry at everything. Sassafras scratching against my arms, which I hated, hooting owls high in the trees, which I despised, and the distant howl of wolves.
There was no one left to help me fight against them, except Francis.
I walked for an hour, maybe longer, until I knew not the way.
Go home, a voice said unto me.
I felt the prickling of my skin, the kind that comes when someone says something true, too true, and unexpected.
Go home and care for your son.
A breeze came from behind and pushed me toward the home my husband and I had built. Approaching it again, by full moon’s light, I saw it with the eyes of one who could lose everything. I’d split the wood for the beams. He’d hammered and hoisted and roofed it. Our eldest son was buried behind back. I did not wish to be far away from him, to be banished and to never return to my boy. I could not leave him and I could not leave this. This was my home.
Our land was here, our house was here, our son was here. They’d give me nothing for it, pence, I’m sure, and where else could I go? Not back to London, where I had nothing and no longer knew a soul. Tom Morton could be a help. He had written about my husband as a fine man, a greater man than the people who ran Plymouth. Beloved by many, he called my husband.
But Morton was a jolly old drunkard and had enough money to do what he pleased. He had no understanding of the daily needs of us commoners. He was a man for celebrations. And he was charged himself, and liable to be the next murdered the first chance they could blame something on him. A passage back to London would cost me the value of this land and house. I was stuck here, you see.
I climbed into bed and thought of how this was the first time I’d slept in a bed without John since the eve of our wedding day, twenty-five years before. Francis joined me. I watched my young son sleeping so close next to me, lightly snoring. The mother and baby goat leapt in, too, their barnyard smells something soothing. Our bodies pressed together, warming the cool evening air.
Yes, I resolved, or yes, I was resigned to it. Here I would stay and here I would watch the colony kill my husband.