On the last day of September, in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and thirty, the colonists gathered to watch. The righteous women were there, of course, gawking like the rest, then pretending to hide their faces in their husband’s shoulders as if the death they supported was too much to bear.
Two grey dogs whimpered, then ran away rather than come to their puritan masters. They knew what these men were made of. Dogs are not fooled by fine cloth and endless quotations from Scripture.
I saw Francis Eaton, the town carpenter, who I’d known to be a profiteer since the Mayflower, when he’d benefited from selling his goat’s milk at a high price to the thirsty on the ship. Here, he sold roasted chestnuts for the occasion of my husband’s murder. Men would get full while my husband was killed.
People from the Massachusetts Bay Colony took the Wampanoag footpath south, a days-long journey, to watch the first hanging of a colonist in Plymouth. Plymouth, a land in God’s good favor, showing signs of being touched by the ungodly. If it were not my own husband at the gallows, I would have enjoyed watching it myself.
Thomas Morton stood by me, good gentleman.
At eleven my husband emerged from the meetinghouse, the minister beside him, my husband’s head down as if bowing. His body slumped like the farmer he was, though I’d never noticed that about him before, the effect of all those years of bending. I wondered then how often I’d not stopped to really look at him.
People jammed through the meetinghouse doors to see him. More full than any service. Every person wants to feel that they have avoided death. For a few days longer, anyway.
Bodies lined up, blocking the windows.
Captain Shrimp started things off by saying my husband was guilty of murder and that he’d been given a fair trial.
Liar! I yelled.
Thomas Morton took my hand.
The crowd turned, most of it, but Shrimp was accustomed to talking loudly over any words a woman like me spoketh. He did not pause. A minister I did not recognize—from Marshfield, someone said—wore a sanctimonious expression. He was young. This would be the first sermon he would have five hundred listeners for.
In the minister’s hand, I saw, was a primer book for priests. The Convict’s Visitor. He opened the book. His voice was dry and his hand shook.
He did not begin with grace, instead he started with a stilted fury: Master Billington, God has shut you up in a place of darkness. A violent death is soon to remove you from the land of the living.
The crowd leaned and pressed foward, enraptured by the fate that was not theirs. This stranger extolled the lack of virtues in my husband.
He said, Let us learn from what we now behold.
The minister turned the book to my husband and put his finger there. There were parts for my husband. My husband’s line: O Lord, turn them from darkness to light. He said it, he did, for my husband wanted to show them all he could read.
But no more, I said inwardly to him, do not follow the lines of this minister.
Now you say, the minister intonated with this finger.
My husband scanned it—I saw his eyes moving across the page—but he did not speaketh.
The minister registered this refusal and changed directions.
The minister said, Consider, Master Billington, that now you must die before your time. Consider that there is a second possibility, for you to escape the second death. Though your sin be great, God can pardon it. Yea and He hath—upon deep and unfeigned repentance—forgiven those that have committed this sin which you are now to suffer for.
My husband looked out into the crowd.
All the crowd saw was a criminal.
The minister said, There are some in heaven who were once bloody sinners. Consider David …
He went on about David.
The minister said, God is a great forgiver, God is a great forgiver! So I say to you in His Name, the Lord is a great Forgiver. It is His name that can forgive transgression and sin. Consider presently it will be too late for you to think of these things when once you are dead.
The minister spoke to the crowd, for this whole display was not for my husband, but intended to gain the minister more parishioners. He said, Oh, consider it and let it break your hearts.
My husband was both a criminal who should die and a sinner who deserved pity for how he refused to repent.
The minister called for all sinners among the crowd to repent. He looked out expectantly, as if a sinner would then step forward. But with the gallows so close, no one would, particularly the criminal.
The minister put his arm on my husband’s shoulder, and said, Let us pray.
I expected my husband to protest, but he did not. He bowed his head.
Again he was told to confess his sins. Oh, John Billington, repent of your wickidness!
It was my gun, but it was not my volition. These hypocrites, that lying Shrimp—
Quiet, the minister said low and mean. I saw a glimpse of the man this minister boy would become. Thick brown hair over his eyes, fervent and never questioning himself. That kind of child, the most indignant and self-righteous, brought up to be that way from their fathers.
My husband added, The investors promising bloom and delivering rot.
Quiet. Quiet. God does not—
But even Shrimp was tired of the minister. He stepped forward and said, Enough.
My husband’s last words?
I love thee, my son. I love thee, Eleanor.
Death near turned him a milk sop.
True, he was.
A true, true fool.
Standish led my husband out of the meetinghouse, to the gallows erected by the sons of the hypocrites, including William Bradford’s son John.
Standish guided my husband up the stairs. The last moment drew near. He pulled the cap over his eyes. It happened fast and slow at once. When in the presence of a life ending, one thinks the world should shudder, too, but it does not. Standish kicked the crate John’s feet stood upon. My husband launched down into eternity. John’s body shook, then stopped. The crowd cheered.
He hung there half an hour before he was permitted to be cut down.
Francis Eaton made quite the profit. And so, too, did Bradford and the rest of the hypocrites. All those people coming into town, purchasing oxen they’d walk back to Boston, buying food and ale to watch my husband hang. But little did I know there was another impending conviction. Two officials from Salem waited until the crowd dispersed to take each of Tom Morton’s arms.
I turned, ready to fight myself.
What is this? Tom asked, gentlemanly, but these men were not gentlemen, they were looking for more death.
You are wanted, Thomas Morton, for slander and speaking out against the King.
Let him go, I yelled. I’d had enough.
One of the men pushed me down in the dirt. Bloodied my lip, he did. Of course they took him anyway.
It was his New Canaan, his version of life in the colony, the true depiction of the hypocrites, catching up to him. Tom was not even given a trial, but ordered to be banished from Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and sent, once again, back to England.
The man with the infant daughter came to me.
Your husband saved my girl, he said.
What’s this?
I had not known anything about John saving a girl.
Found a priest to baptize her, he did, and now look at her.
Before me was a dough-cheeked baby, healthy as can be. My husband had said nothing to me of this. But that was his way. He didn’t boast of what he did for others.
If there is anything I can do, the father said.
I thanked him. At least someone had noticed.
On the walk home, I heard the profit jingling in Eaton’s pocket. I resolved to get my son out of here as fast as I could.
Two servants returned my husband to me that afternoon. He was buried beneath the oldest oak tree. I go there and sit on Sundays, watch the birds, call him Good Husband and remind him of all the ways he should be thankful for me.
Now it’s just me and Francis. They took our land. Said I was not fit to care for it. What John, John the younger, Francis, and I had labored on these past ten years.
In those weeks after, I thought our friends would come and check on me, but few did. They stayed away, as if my husband’s murder was a plague they could catch from me. I understood. They were cowards.